Sustainability, culture and ethics: Models from Latin America

In order to develop sustainable relationships with the natural environment it is necessary to focus on approaches that may yield workable models of sustainability. Here I sample a few approaches from Latin America that point toward a promising model of sustainability. I argue that these approaches share the idea that the natural environment is in very close interdependence with human beings and their communities. I also outline the beliefs and practices of certain Latin American populations which exemplify this idea, and conclude that the crucial feature for achieving sustainability is a particular type of cultural matrix. Notes Regarding the ethics of care see, for example, Plumwood (Citation1995). In most parts of the world, including Latin America, indigenous people are the keepers of ethno-ecological knowledge. Also see Heyd (Citation1995). Gragson & Blount (Citation1999, p. vii) say that 'ethnoecology is increasingly used as a cover term for natural history studies derived from local people', but then propose that 'ecology and ethnoecology can be defined in the broadest sense as the study of relationships between organisms and the totality of the physical, biological, and social factors they come into contact with' (p. vii). Toledo explains that this perspective is based on a general principle of political ecology according to which 'contemporary society and nature suffer generalized processes of exploitation and deterioration [due to] the loss of control of human society over nature and itself ' (Toledo, Citation1997, p. 237). The idea of 'liberation ecology' resonates with Herbert Marcuse's idea (for example, Marcuse, Citation1972) that the time will come for the liberation of humanity and nature. Gómez Hinojosa (Citation1990) directly uses the term 'liberating ecology' in the title of his article. This perspective agrees nicely with Richard Peet and Michael Watts's notion of liberation ecology movements, which combines the concerns for environmental integrity with the concerns for 'livelihood, entitlements, and social justice' (Peet & Watts, Citation1996, p. 39). Emphasis added. Boff is drawing a contrast between 'sustainable development', focussed on the continued generation of goods for human beings, and 'sustainability', conceived as a condition in which both human and non-human natural beings flourish. His usage contrasts with Toledo's, who supposes that 'community sustainable development' can bring about 'sustainability' understood in the sense I have proposed here. The meaning of the terms 'modernization' and 'globalization' constitutes contested territory, of course. Suffice it to say that I understand by these terms certain approaches to the generation of goods for human beings that are dependent on a certain complex of techniques and tools such as capital, synthetic ingredients (such as pesticides and fertilizers), reliance on the demands of remote markets, introduction of exotic (even genetically modified) species, large-scale irrigation, absenteeist property management, etc. Other principles listed by Toledo include diversity, equity and economic justice, as well as the integration of practices with landscape units and natural cycles. They propose that, in the attempt to chart 'the shifting dialectic of nature–society relations, important new avenues were opened up for research and activism', which include 'analyses of how the capacity to manage resources could be constrained by the relations of production in which peasants were enmeshed, how particular forms of state subsidy stimulated the mining of the soil, or how local forms of knowledge could be harnessed in ecologically adaptive ways' (Peet & Watts, Citation1996, p. x). For example, see McFall & Morales (Citation2000), on the creation of the cultural identity of Mapuche people, and their strategies for protecting it. I am indebted to Barkin (Citation2002) for ways of expressing these ideas here. See, for example, Centro de Documentación Mapuche. This and all translations from Spanish are by myself (Quienes son los hijos de la tierra: Los Mapuche). For a critique of development efforts in Amazonia see Morán (Citation1993). See Chimalapas Autonomía Indígena y Defensa de la Selva Zoque. Also see Heyd (Citation2004), which anticipates some of the material discussed here. This points toward the importance of the exploration of what we may call 'cultures of nature', that is, patterns of thought and ways of acting that allow the inherent qualities of natural things to flourish. See Heyd (Citation2005).