Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Planetary Well-Being
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Elo, Merja (Ed.) et al. Book Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Planetary Well-Being Routledge Studies in Sustainable Development Provided in Cooperation with: Taylor & Francis Group Suggested Citation: Elo, Merja (Ed.) et al. (2024) : Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Planetary WellBeing, Routledge Studies in Sustainable Development, ISBN 9781003334002, Routledge, London, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003334002 This Version is available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/281331 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your personal and scholarly purposes. You are not to copy documents for public or commercial purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public. If the documents have been made available under an Open Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
INTERDISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVES ON PLANETARYWELL-BEING This book proposes a paradigm shift in how human and nonhuman well-being are perceived and approached. In response to years of accelerated decline in the health of ecosystems and their inhabitants, this edited collection presents planetary wellbeing as a new cross-disciplinary concept to foster global transformation towards a more equal and inclusive framing of well-being. Throughout this edited volume, researchers across the humanities, social sciences,andnaturalsciencesapplyandreflectontheconceptofplanetarywellbeing, showcasing its value as an interdisciplinary, cross-sectoral changemaker. Thebookexploresthesignificanceofplanetarywell-beingasatheoreticaland empirical concept in sustainability science and applies it to discipline-specific cases, including business, education, psychology, culture, and development. Interdisciplinary perspectives on topical global questions and processes underpin each chapter, from soil processes and ecosystem health to global inequalities and cultural transformation, in the framework of planetary well-being. The book will appeal to academics, researchers, and students in a broad range of disciplines including sustainability science, sustainable development, natural resources, and environmental humanities. Calling readers to assess, challenge, and rethink the dominant perceptions of well-being and societal activities, this rich resource that explores the interconnection between human and nonhuman wellbeing serves as a tool to foster transformative action towards a more sustainable society. Merja Elo is a postdoctoral researcher of community ecology at University of Jyväskylä, Finland, covering topics from macroecology to conservation biology and restoration ecology.
Jonne Hytönen is a research coordinator at University of Jyväskylä and a postdoctoral researcher at Aalto University Department of Built Environment. He conducts research on sustainability transition in spatial planning. Sanna Karkulehto is a professor of literature at University of Jyväskylä, Finland, whose most recent publications include the ESCL Collaborative Research Award Finalist Reconfiguring Human, Nonhuman and Posthuman in Literature and Culture (2020, Routledge, ed. with A-K. Koistinen and E. Varis). Teea Kortetmäki is a senior researcher in social sciences and philosophy at University of Jyväskylä, Finland. She conducts research on environmental ethics, climate policy, and sustainability transitions. Janne S. Kotiaho is a professor of ecology and director of the School of Resource Wisdom at University of Jyväskylä, Finland. He is the chair of the Finnish Nature PanelandascientificadvisortothegovernmentofFinlandinissuesrelatedtobiodiversity and ecosystem restoration. Mikael Puurtinen is a research coordinator at the School of Resource Wisdom at University of Jyväskylä, Finland. He conducts evolutionary ecology research and coordinates interdisciplinary sustainability education at his home university. Miikka Salo is a senior lecturer at University of Jyväskylä, Finland. He conducts research on energy politics and environmental governance and citizenship.
“The work of IPBES has shown that many sustainable development goals will not be met by 2030 with current negative trends in biodiversity and may only be achieved through transformative changes across economic, social, political and technological factors. Transformative change calls for deep systemic transformations in our production and consumption habits, and in the way people value nature and conceive a good quality of life. This novel work on planetary well-being addresses the critical need for more work on transformative change, in particular by conceptualising well-being for all life on Earth, for humans and non-humans.” Anne Larigauderie, Executive Secretary, Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) “This wide-ranging, multifaceted volume advances a bold theoretical proposal: Earth as a whole, as an integrated complex system, can fare better or worse – in specifiable,measurable,theoreticallydefensibleterms.Thenthevolumeadvances another, equally bold suggestion: thinking in terms of planetary wellbeing can inform policies in novel ways at various scales – to include and balance the needs, interests, leanings, and powers of all those humans and nonhumans that across time concur to propel Earth’s transformations. This volume opens and most competently orients a whole new research program, which is as ambitious and urgent as the theoretical and practical tasks it sets for itself.” Marcello Di Paola, Assistant Professor in the History of Philosophy, University of Palermo, Italy
Routledge Studies in Sustainable Development This series uniquely brings together original and cutting-edge research on sustainable development.Thebooksinthisseriestackledifficultandimportant issues in sustainable development including: values and ethics; sustainability in higher education; climate compatible development; resilience; capitalism and degrowth; sustainable urban development; gender and participation; and well-being. Drawing on a wide range of disciplines, the series promotes interdisciplinary research for an international readership. The series was recommended in the Guardian’s suggested reads on development and the environment. Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Socio-Ecological Challenges Sustainable Transformations Globally and in the EU Edited by Anders Siig Andersen, Henrik Hauggaard-Nielsen, Thomas Budde Christensen and Lars Hulgaard Sustainable Development Goal 16 and the Global Governance of Violence CriticalReflectionsontheUncertainFutureofPeace Edited by Timothy Donais, Alistair D. Edgar, and Kirsten Van Houten Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Planetary Well-Being Edited by Merja Elo, Jonne Hytönen, Sanna Karkulehto, Teea Kortetmäki, Janne S. Kotiaho, Mikael Puurtinen, and Miikka Salo For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ Routledge-Studies-in-Sustainable-Development/book-series/RSSD
London and New Yo rk INTERDISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVES ON PLANETARY WELL-BEING Edited by Merja Elo, Jonne Hytönen, Sanna Karkulehto, Teea Kortetmäki, Janne S. Kotiaho, Mikael Puurtinen, and Miikka Salo This volume is a joint project and edited in collaboration. The editors are listed alphabetically to indicate that they have contributed equally to the project and want to attribute an equal share of credit to each editor. Funding by Academy of Finland (project number 333366) has enabled Jonne Hytönen to take part in editing this book.
Designed cover image: © Eva Kaján First published 2024 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor and Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 selection and editorial matter, Merja Elo, Jonne Hytönen, Sanna Karkulehto, Teea Kortetmäki, Janne S. Kotiaho, Mikael Puurtinen, and Miikka Salo; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Merja Elo, Jonne Hytönen, Sanna Karkulehto, Teea Kortetmäki, Janne S. Kotiaho, Mikael Puurtinen, and Miikka Salo to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Elo, Merja, editor; Hytönen, Jonne, editor; Karkulehto, Sanna, editor; Kortetmäki, Teea, editor; Kotiaho, Janne S., editor; Puurtinen, Mikael, editor; Salo, Miikka, editor. Title: Interdisciplinary perspectives on planetary well-being / edited by Merja Elo, Jonne Hytönen, Sanna Karkulehto, Teea Kortetmäki, Janne S. Kotiaho, Mikael Puurtinen and Miikka Salo. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2024. | Series: Routledge studies in sustainable development | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2023009437 (print) | LCCN 2023009438 (ebook) | ISBN 9781032368283 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032368269 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003334002 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Sustainable development. | Environmentalism. | Well-being. Classification: LCC HC79.E5 I52879 2024 (print) | LCC HC79.E5 (ebook) | DDC 338.9/27—dc23/eng/20230323 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023009437 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023009438 ISBN: 978-1-032-36828-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-36826-9 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-33400-2 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003334002 Typeset in Times New Roman by codeMantra
List of figures xi List of contributors xiii Acknowledgements xix Introduction to interdisciplinary perspectives on planetary well-being 1 Merja Elo, Jonne Hytönen, Sanna Karkulehto, Teea Kortetmäki, Janne S. Kotiaho, Mikael Puurtinen and Miikka Salo PART I Grounding the concept 7 1 Planetary well-being 9 Teea Kortetmäki, Mikael Puurtinen, Miikka Salo, Riikka Aro, Stefan Baumeister, Rémi Duflot, Merja Elo, Panu Halme, Hanna-Mari Husu, Suvi Huttunen, Katriina Hyvönen, Sanna Karkulehto, Saana Kataja-aho, Kirsi E. Keskinen, Inari Kulmunki, Tuuli Mäkinen, Annukka Näyhä, Mari-Anne Okkolin, Tommi Perälä, Jenna Purhonen, Kaisa J. Raatikainen, Liia-Maria Raippalinna, Kirsi Salonen, Katri Savolainen and Janne S. Kotiaho CONTENTS
xiv Contributors Merja Elo; Postdoctoral Researcher in Community Ecology, University of Jyväskylä, Finland Teppo Eskelinen; Senior Lecturer in Social Sciences, University of Eastern Finland, Finland Kyle Eyvindson; Associate Professor in Forest Planning, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Norway Miia Grénman; Postdoctoral Researcher in Business and Economics, University of Jyväskylä, Finland Jari Haimi; Senior Lecturer in Bioand Environmental Science, University of Jyväskylä, Finland Panu Halme; Senior Lecturer in Conservation Biology, University of Jyväskylä, Finland Anni M. Hämäläinen; Postdoctoral Researcher in Evolutionary Ecology, University of Jyväskylä, Finland Pilvi Hämeenaho; University Lecturer in Ethnology and Anthropology, University of Jyväskylä, Finland Hannu L.T. Heikkinen; Professor of Education, University of Jyväskylä, Finland Kari Heimonen; Professor in Economics, University of Jyväskylä, Finland Mikko Hiljanen; University Teacher in Pedagogy of Sustainability, University of Jyväskylä, Finland Hanna-Mari Husu; Associate Professor in Social Sciences, LUT School of Engineering Science, Finland Suvi Huttunen; Leading Researcher in Environmental Policy, Finnish Environment Institute, Finland Jonne Hytönen; Research Coordinator, University of Jyväskylä; Postdoctoral Researcher in Spatial Planning, Aalto University, Finland Katriina Hyvönen; Senior Researcher, Institute of Rehabilitation, Jamk University of Applied Sciences, Finland
Contributors xv Toni Jernfors; Postdoctoral Researcher in Environmental Microbiology, University of Jyväskylä, Finland Veera Joro; Doctoral Student in Development Studies, University of Jyväskylä, Finland Juha Junttila; Professor in Economics, University of Jyväskylä, Finland Eva R. Kallio; Senior Lecturer in Cell and molecular biology, University of Jyväskylä, Finland Sanna Karkulehto; Professor in Literature, University of Jyväskylä, Finland Saana Kataja-aho; University Teacher in Bioand Environmental Science, University of Jyväskylä, Finland Minna Käyrä; University Teacher in Corporate Environmental Management, University of Jyväskylä, Finland Jenni Kesäniemi; Postdoctoral Researcher in Evolutionary Biology, University of Jyväskylä, Finland Kirsi E. Keskinen; Postdoctoral Researcher in Sport and Health Sciences and Gerontology, University of Jyväskylä, Finland Aino-Kaisa Koistinen; Senior Researcher in Contemporary Culture Studies, University of Jyväskylä, Finland Kaisa Kortekallio; Postdoctoral Researcher in Literature, University of Jyväskylä, Finland Teea Kortetmäki; Senior Research Fellow in Philosophy, University of Jyväskylä, Finland Esa Koskela; Senior Lecturer in Evolutionary Ecology, University of Jyväskylä, Finland Janne S. Kotiaho; Professor in Ecology, University of Jyväskylä, Finland Irene Kuhmonen; Project Researcher in Corporate Environmental Management, University of Jyväskylä, Finland Inari Kulmunki, PhD in Art History, University of Jyväskylä, Finland
xvi Contributors Anton Lavrinienko; Postdoctoral Researcher in Microbial Ecology, University of Jyväskylä, Finland Heidi Layne; Senior Lecturer in Global and Sustainable Education, University of Jyväskylä, Finland Heikki Lehkonen; PhD. University Researcher, University of Jyväskylä, Finland Anna Lehtonen; Postdoctoral Researcher in Sustainability Education, University of Jyväskylä, Finland Meri Löyttyniemi; Doctoral Researcher in Corporate Environmental Management, University of Jyväskylä, Finland Marileena Mäkelä; Senior Lecturer in Corporate Environmental Management, University of Jyväskylä, Finland Tuuli Mäkinen; Assistant Teacher in Corporate Environmental Management, University of Jyväskylä, Finland Risto-Matti Matero; PhD Candidate in General History, University of Jyväskylä, Finland Aila-Leena Matthies; Professor in Social Work, University of Jyväskylä, Kokkola University Consortium Chydenius, Finland Niina Mykrä; Postdoctoral Researcher in Sustainability Education, University of Jyväskylä, Finland Kati Närhi; Professor in Social Work, University of Jyväskylä, Finland Annukka Näyhä; Academy Research Fellow in Corporate Environmental Management, University of Jyväskylä, Finland Godfred Obeng; Doctoral Student in Development Studies, University of Jyväskylä, Finland Mari-Anne Okkolin; Associate Professor and Lead Expert in Peace Education Institute, Finland Tiina Onkila; Associate Professor in Corporate Environmental Management, University of Jyväskylä, Finland
Contributors xvii Jane-Veera Paakkolanvaara; Project Researcher, Institute of Rehabilitation, Jamk University of Applied Sciences, Finland Tommi Perälä; Senior Researcher in Computational Ecosystem Sciences, University of Jyväskylä, Finland Jenna Purhonen; Researcher in Community Ecology, University of Jyväskylä, Finland Mikael Puurtinen; Coordinator in Sustainability Education, University of Jyväskylä, Finland Kaisa J. Raatikainen; Postdoctoral Researcher in Sustainability Science, University of Jyväskylä, Finland Juulia Räikkönen; Postdoctoral Researcher in Biodiversity Unit, University of Turku, Finland Liia-Maria Raippalinna; Doctoral Researcher in Ethnology and Anthropology, University of Jyväskylä, Finland Satu Ranta-Tyrkkö, Senior Lecturer in Social Work, University of Jyväskylä Eleanor Ratcliffe; Lecturer in Environmental Psychology, University of Surrey, UK Mitra Salimi; Doctoral Researcher in Sustainable Business, University of Jyväskylä, Finland Jelena Salmi; Postdoctoral Researcher in Anthropology, University of Jyväskylä, Finland Miikka Salo; Senior Lecturer in Sociology, University of Jyväskylä, Finland Kirsi Salonen; Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Welfare Sciences, Tampere University, Finland Minna Santaoja; Project Researcher, University of Eastern Finland, Finland Milla Sarja; Project Researcher in Corporate Environmental Management, University of Jyväskylä, Finland Bhavesh Sarna; University Teacher in Corporate Environmental Management, University of Jyväskylä, Finland
xviii Contributors Katri Savolainen; Senior Lecturer in Psychology, University of Jyväskylä, Finland Tiffany Scholier; Doctoral Researcher in Evolutionary Genomics, University of Jyväskylä, Finland Ingo Stamm; Postdoctoral Researcher in Social Work, University of Jyväskylä, Kokkola University Consortium Chydenius, Finland Johanna Suikkanen; Researcher in Product’s Environmental Performance, Finnish Environment Institute, Finland Outi Uusitalo; Professor and Head of Marketing, University of Jyväskylä, Finland Anu S. Virtanen; Doctoral Researcher in Philosophy, University of Jyväskylä, Finland Yingying Wang; Postdoctoral Researcher in Disease Ecology, University of Jyväskylä, Finland Phillip C. Watts; Professor in Evolutionary Genetics, University of Jyväskylä, Finland Terhi-Anna Wilska; Professor in Sociology, University of Jyväskylä, Finland
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We would like to warmly thank all living systems who contributed to and helped in completing this project. We are especially grateful to the multidisciplinary group of chapter authors for their enthusiasm and insightful effort as well as patience duringtheprocess.WewouldalsoliketoexpressourgratitudetoMārisGrunskisfor preparingthefiguresandourresearchassistantOttoSnellmanforhisskillful,competent,andinvaluableassistanceinfinalizingthebook.Weareespeciallythankful to the Routledge Studies in Sustainability series and the anonymous peerreviewers forbelievingintheneedandsignificanceofanewconceptofplanetarywell-being inthefieldofsustainabilityscience.WewouldalsoliketothankHuman and social sciences communications journal for the possibility to use our original research article“Planetarywell-being”asareprintinthisbook.Thefinalthanksgotothe whole JYU.Wisdom research community at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, where this book has been planned and prepared and where we have enjoyed numerous discussions that have supported the creation of this book.
Life matters. Life on Earth emerged about 3.7 billion years ago and what we call diversity of life is the result of genetic information passing from one generation to the next and diversifying in the process. The metaphor of the tree of life captures how all life is intertwined: Imagine leaves growing from the twigs of a tree. Each leaf is a species connected to others through the branches and the trunk of the tree. One of the leaves among millions is our species. We are all the same yet different— we are all different forms and shapes of the life that once emerged. Thousandsofscientificpapersandreportshavedocumentedthehuman-induced devastation of the diversity of life and destruction of whole ecosystems, testifying to our inadequate care for the planet. The creation of the unprecedented current material wealth of the high-consumption societies has converted natural ecosystemstoagriculturalfields,cities,andotherinfrastructures;exploitedrenewable natural resources more quickly than they can regenerate; changed the atmospheric composition too rapidly for many life forms to adapt; polluted and poisoned; and has moved non-native species to areas where they overrun vulnerable native species. We humans shake the tree of life heavy-handedly: Twigs are breaking and leaves are falling. All life has intrinsic value, and our moral obligation is to respect and cherish, not destroy, its diversity. Even though the contribution of different peoples and nations to the present crisis is highly uneven on a global scale, we humans together hold the knowledge and capacities, and the equal but differentiated responsibility, to repair the damage done to human and nonhuman well-being. This volume strives to secure the preservation of the diversity of life and the prospects of well-being for all on Earth. It is a manifestation of an ambitious goal to establish the new, non-anthropocentric, and holistic concept of planetary wellbeing. At its core, planetary well-being insists that the planet’s life-sustaining INTRODUCTION TO INTERDISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVES ONPLANETARY WELL-BEING Merja Elo, Jonne Hytönen, Sanna Karkulehto, TeeaKortetmäki, Janne S. Kotiaho, Mikael Puurtinen and Miikka Salo DOI: 10.4324/9781003334002-1
2 Merja Elo et al. systems remain sufficiently undamaged by human activities so as to allow all species and populations to survive and thrive. Planetary well-being is a novel cross-disciplinary concept coined to foster global transformation to a more inclusive and equal expression of well-being for all. As such, it pushes for a paradigm shift in how human and nonhuman well-being are perceived and approached. The concept has grown from an understanding that preservation of the diversity of life demands an urgent reversal of the deterioration of Earth and ecosystem processes threatening the existence and well-being of so many of Earth’s inhabitants. The concept stems from theoretically and ethically critical stances that call into questiontheanthropocentricbiasesofWesternscientificandpoliticalthoughtaswell as the dualistic idea of human–nonhuman relations. It brings new perspectives to the ethical discussions on sustainability, justice and responsibility, and well-being. Despite decades of work on sustainability and sustainable development, the planet’s life-supporting systems are failing. While explanations for this can be offered at multiple levels, what matters now is whether the harmful trajectories can be changed. As moral agents, we humans are responsible for changing these trajectories. We believe that the actors who deliberate, plan, and enact the change need new conceptualizations to make their decisions and actions effectively transformative. By adopting process-oriented and systems-focused thinking and by unifying human and nonhuman well-being, planetary well-being offers a new conceptual frameworkfortheoretical,methodological,andempiricalresearchinthefieldof sustainability science, and for stimulating actions to preserve well-being on Earth. In this edited volume, researchers across human, social, and natural sciences applyandreflectontheconceptofplanetarywell-being,showcasingitsvalueas an interdisciplinary, cross-sectoral changemaker. The objective of this volume isto scrutinizethe meaning,position, andsignificance ofplanetary well-being as a theoretical and empirical concept in sustainability science. We apply it to discipline-specific domains including anthropology, art and culture, business, financingandcorporateenvironmentalmanagement,consumption,development, ecology, education, history, philosophy, planning, psychology, and social work. Thesediscipline-specificandinterdisciplinaryexplorations,whilefarfrombeing exhaustive, cover a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches. In addition to addressing the consequences of the degradation of ecosystem processes, such as climate change and biodiversity loss, the volume tackles other global threats and challenges facing humanity, such as economic inequality, uneven power structures, and social injustice. This way, planetary well-being serves as a tool to sharpen and broaden the analytical outlook beyond the conventional frameworks of sustainability transformation, just transition, and sustainable development. Many contributions in this volume also address methodological questions related to the use of planetary well-being in research: How can it be operationalized for different purposes, and what aspects of human and nonhuman well-being are highlighted, omitted, or sometimes purposefully obscured in various methodologicalaswellassocietalcontexts?Theultimateobjectiveistoreflectonhow
Introduction 3 planetary well-being as a non-anthropocentric and holistic framework can be used to promote transformative action towards a world where all forms of life, humans and beyond, would have the opportunity to achieve well-being. The organization of the volume Thisbookisdividedintofivepartsthateachapproachplanetarywell-beingdifferently.Thefirstpartfocusesonintroducinganddefiningtheconceptbypresenting its theoretical, contextual, and ethical backgrounds. The opening chapter, “Planetary well-being”, is a verbatim reproduction of a research article originally published in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, where planetary well-beingwasconceptualizedforthefirsttime.Thechaptercriticallydiscusses the problems of the existing conceptual frameworks within sustainability science and well-being and introduces planetary well-being as a needed addition to address the root causes of ecological crises. Chapter 2, demonstrates how planetary wellbeing is positioned in the broader ontological and ethical-theoretical landscape, owing to its process-oriented perspective and non-anthropocentric normative grounds. Chapter 3, encourages more attention to ontological questions as well as openness to differences and transdisciplinary and multi-ontological co-researching in the pursuit of planetary well-being. After the introductory part, the book continues examining theoretical, methodological, empirical, contextual, and political questions on planetary well-being, with a division of four parts. Each part approaches the concept and puts it into use and practice in certain spheres of urgency that are key when aiming at collective sustainability transformation: The second part deals with the urgency to assess ecological processes as constituents of planetary well-being and to change the direction of humanity’s impact on them; the third part covers the urgency to challenge and revise economic structures and practices; the fourth part underlines theurgencytorethinkandcontestanthropocentricideasofwell-being;andthefifth partfocusesontheurgencytofindsolutionstofosterculturalandsocietaltransformation towards planetary well-being. Part 2, lays the groundwork for planetary well-being by exploring many of those processes whose integrity contributes to planetary well-being but are currently threatened or undermined by the harmful impact of human activities, driven especially by high-consumption societies. Chapter 4, argues that human activities such as overexploitation of natural resources, ecosystem degradation, and global trade have had severe consequences for the prevalence and spread of pathogens in human and wildlife communities. The chapter outlines how human activities can provide favourable conditions for pandemics and trigger cascading consequences for ecosystems worldwide. Chapter 5, argues that landscape approaches hold transformative potential for the managing of socio-ecological systems and offer an opportunity to put planetary well-being into practice. Chapter 6, maintains that soils are closely interlinked with planetary well-being as they are related directly
10 Teea Kortetmäki et al. Hornborg, 2014). According to the historical graphs, these developments have “been almost entirely driven by a small fraction of the human population, those in developed countries” (Steffen et al., 2015b). Global inequalities among humanity are stark regarding who receives the benefitsofenvironmentallydamagingactionsandwhohastobeartheirdetrimental impacts. Around the world, nations’ top 10% of earners capture 37–61% of national income; globally, the share of the top 10% of global income is between 53% and 60% depending on the method of measurement (Alvaredo et al., 2018). The costs of ecosystem degradation and climate change, on the other hand, hurt the well-beingofatleast3.2billionlessaffluentpeople(IPBES,2018;UNEnvironment, 2019). Retaining the present standard of living in the wealthiest countries necessitates structures that maintain globally unequal, exploitative labour division, and ecological exchange (Hornborg, 1998; Newsome et al., 2015). Transformative changes to social, economic, and technological systems are increasingly called for to change the course towards a more sustainable future in both environmental and social terms (e.g., Díaz et al., 2019; Kohler et al., 2019; Willemen et al., 2020). The above described environmental and social problems have generated a broad spectrum of discourses and action, from the sustainable development framework and goals (United Nations (UN), 2015; World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), 1987) to the foundations of social justice (Nussbaum and Sen, 1993) (for key frameworks, see the Supplementary Material in Kortetmäki et al., 2021). From the ecological viewpoint especially, a serious challenge is that a majority of the frameworks focus on the human perspective and consider nonhuman well-being important only to the extent it contributes to human well-being (e.g., Dryzek, 2005, p. 157). Solely human-focused ethos of many conceptualizations of sustainability is typical of Western science, contrary to some other knowledge systems (for example, some forms of Indigenous and non-Western knowledge) that emphasize balance and collaboration with nature (Díaz et al., 2015). Another challenge with the existing frameworks is that they seldom focus on the systems and processes that support life, well-being, and biodiversity at different spatial scales. Although sustainability studies have recognized the interconnectedness of the social, economic, and ecological aspects of life, and the importance of studying processes as taking place in complex socio-ecological systems (Ostrom, 2009), the mainstreaming of such thinking to well-being studies has been slower. Lack of a systems-oriented and multiscalar outlook can result in a fragmentary view of the problems and their solutions. Many frameworks aim to overcome either anthropocentrism or the lack of systemic and multiscalar outlook, but few attempt both and do that with the viewpoint of well-being. For example, the widely used notion of ecosystem services is focused on the instrumental values of nonhuman nature to humanity, which reduces nonhuman nature into capital and has even been suggested to be the “Trojan Horse” of anthropocentrism within the community of conservation (Washington, 2020). In Supplementary Material in Kortetmäki et al. (2021), we list the widely acknowledged concepts that address the ecological crisis, sustainable
Planetary well-being 11 well-being or the environmental impacts of human actions, and we shortly describe how these notions differ from the concept that we propose in this paper. The need to conceptualize well-being in a way that is non-anthropocentric and encourages a systems-oriented, multi-scalar outlook, raises a fundamental question: What is well-being? In human psychology, the focus is traditionally on subjective, experienced well-being: Persons with subjectively high well-being are satisfiedwithlife,experiencepositivefeelings,areableto fulfilpersonalaspirations, have favourable relations, and are in good mental health (Keyes, 2005; Kokko et al., 2013). The subjective accounts of well-being have also been criticized from the environmental sustainability view-point: If experienced well-being dependsonthefulfilmentofseeminglylimitlesshumandesiresandwants(instead of limited needs) with manifold direct and indirect material impacts, this poses unsustainably high material criteria for well-being (Gough, 2015). To address this problem, ecopsychology (as well as the ecosocial approach to well-being, see the Supplementary Material in Kortetmäki et al., 2021) argues that human beings are simply a part of nature (Winter and Koger, 2004). From this perspective, nature and humanity are ineradicably linked and high levels of well-being can only be achieved through the experiential realization of nature connectedness and exposure to nonhuman nature (Roszak, Gomes and Kanner, 1995; Mayer and Frantz, 2004; Brymer, Cuddihy and Sharma-Brymer, 2010). Especially from the viewpoint of social justice as an equal opportunity to achieve well-being, nearby nature which anybody can access is important. In spite of that, focus on subjective well-being is problematic from the viewpoint of social justice and equality even when the ecological inter-connectedness is incorporated. Underprivileged people can adapt to their circumstances (demonstrating “malleable preferences”) and may be unable to articulate their experiences of lower well-being and satisfaction of life, whereas minor losses of the privileged groups can get overemphasized (Nussbaum and Sen, 1993; Nussbaum, 2011). In social sciences, consequently, well-being is often approached nonsubjectively and understood to depend on the satisfaction of basic human needs, such as the need for material subsistence, protection, affection, understanding, and autonomy, which contribute to physical and mental health, and to the abilities for social participation (e.g., Doyal and Gough, 1984; Rice, 2013; Gough, 2017; see also Nussbaum and Sen, 1993). The argument is that these universal human needs persist through cultures and time, even while the strategies and means to satisfying the needs, and thresholds for adequate needs satisfaction, can change (Gough, 2017). Needs-based approaches thereby conceptualize well-being in a way that is more suitable (than subjective experiences of well-being) for public policy planning and implementation. Needs-based, objective accounts of well-being are also used in the context of nonhumans, since studying their experienced well-being is challenging (Wemelsfelder, 1997). This newer strand of literature alleviates the anthropocentric orientation of the well-being discourse by acknowledging that it is not only humans who
12 Teea Kortetmäki et al. can gain or lose well-being. Most of the literature on nonhuman well-being focuses on nonhuman animals and maintains that they have species-typical physical and behavioural needs, the satisfaction of which is crucial for their well-being (e.g., Broom, 1991; Bartussek, 1999; Singer, 2002; Nussbaum, 2006). Nevertheless, the conceptofwell-being(alsoreferredtoasthrivingorflourishing)hasbeenapplied to other organisms, too: Populations, species or lineages, and even ecosystems. Ecosystemwell-being,forexample,hasbeendefinedasthefunctionalintegrityof an ecosystem and its capacity to retain its typical functionings and characteristics (Schlosberg, 2007; Kortetmäki, 2017; see also Prescott-Allen, 2001), including succession and adaptation. The well-being of species or lineages is addressed via regenerative capacities that are related to functional integrity: To be well, species must be able to maintain self-sustaining capacities and to adapt to environmental changes (Kortetmäki, 2018). In sum, the theoretical and conceptual research literature on well-being has expanded much. It has advanced from disconnected and subjective accounts to interconnected ecopsychological and ecosocial views, to objective and needs-based conceptualizations that help to address well-being from the social equality and public policy-related aspects, and finally also to the well-being beyond humans. Nevertheless, the contributions typically focus on one level or aspect at a time, be it the human–nonhuman connections, sentient animals, or collective nonhuman entities. Thechallengeofconnectingdifferentlevelsanddomainshasremainedinsufficiently addressed.Althoughtheconflictsbetweenthewell-beingofdifferentorganismshave beenacknowledgedandreflected upon(e.g., Nussbaum, 2006; Schlosberg, 2007 forthepredator–preyrelations),thesereflectionshavealsoreceivedcriticism(e.g., Cripps, 2010; Hailwood, 2012), and interactions between well-being at different levels are articulated mainly in parentheses,3 lacking the multiscalar approach. Contributions cannot be easily integrated, as the criticism has pointed out. We propose a new concept, planetary well-being, to address the above discussed need for a non-anthropocentric, systemic conceptualization of well-being that takes into account the multiple scales of interaction. Planetary well-being acknowledges the value of both human and nonhuman well-being for their own sake (intrinsic value): The moral right for both humans and nonhumans to exist, to have their needs satisfied, and to realize their typical characteristics and capacities. The needs of organisms—both human and nonhuman—are interconnected so that the satisfactionoftheneedsofvariousentitiescreatesbothsynergiesandconflicts. Hence, the concept transcends the level of individual organisms and focuses on the integrity of Earth system and ecosystem processes underlying the well-being of all forms of life. It also serves as a framework that ties together ecological and social equalityconsiderations.Asaconcept,planetarywell-beingfacilitatesscientificand political discussions by using the same vocabulary to address the impacts of human activities on the well-being of human and nonhuman nature. To derive and propose a non-anthropocentric concept means that we openly commit to certain normative views on moral considerability. Morally considerable
Planetary well-being 13 beings and collectives have moral value for their own sake (inherent or intrinsic value), regardless of whether they have instrumental value for humans. Consequently, the well-being of morally considerable entities matters for their own sake. We adopt a pluralist or multicriterial approach to moral valuation; it grounds the moral considerability of entities on several criteria (Warren, 1997). The pluralist valuing grants moral considerability to human and nonhuman individuals but extends the sphere of moral considerability beyond them: Species or lineages and ecosystemsthatcanbewellorflourishandhaveself-regulativecapacities(e.g., Rolston, 1985, 2002; Schlosberg, 2007) are also morally considerable (hereafter, the term “living entities” denotes this diverse ensemble of morally considerable individuals and non-individual entities). While our normative viewpoint may not be shared by all, we believe that responding to ecological crisis adequately requires adopting a non-anthropocentric normative approach where nonhuman nature is valued also for its own sake, not only due to its importance for human prosperity. Conceptualization of planetary well-being We ground the concept of planetary well-being in accounts that link well-being with the satisfaction of basic needs as they are perceived from a neutral, nonsubjective viewpoint. As described above, the needs-based accounts of well-being have been previously applied to human well-being (Doyal and Gough, 1984; Max-Neef, 1991; Rice, 2013; Gough, 2015, 2017), animal well-being (e.g., Broom, 1991; Bartussek, 1999; Singer, 2002; Nussbaum, 2006) and the well-being of populations and ecosystems (e.g., Schlosberg, 2007; Kortetmäki, 2017). Yet, the overall diversity and number of different needs of various life forms prevents the integration of those views easily into a singular calculus of well-being—or at least renders the possible results hardly applicable in practice. Therefore, instead of focusing on needs themselves, we propose a focus on the systems and processes that are necessary for the satisfaction of the needs of diverse life forms on Earth. The focus on life-supporting systems and processes enables the integration of human and nonhuman well-being into a single framework. A systems-oriented approach (Bunge, 2003, 2004) allows conceptualizing well-beingatagenerallevel(seeTable1.1).Weutilizethisapproachtodefine planetary well-being in a way that links well-being across levels of biological hierarchies, from organisms (including humans) and populations and lineages to ecosystems—these all can be considered as systems—and to Earth system and ecosystem processes. In general, life on Earth can be understood as a set of interlinked, interdependent systems, and well-being at any level as the integrity of that particular system (be it an individual organism, population, or ecosystem). Crucially, the functional integrity of any system (i.e., its well-being) is dependent on the satisfactionofitsneeds.Needsatisfiersareusuallyproductsof,orcomprise,interactions between other systems. In other words, the well-being of any particular system depends on inputs provided by other systems.
14 Teea Kortetmäki et al. The conceptualization of well-being as the functional integrity of a system could, in principle, be applied also to human artefacts (like motors), or to socially constructed systems (like economic systems). However, as we do not consider such entities or systems to have moral considerability (value of their own that does not depend on their value for humans), the well-being of artefacts and socially constructed systems falls outside the scope of this manuscript. The consideration of life on Earth as comprised of interlinked and interacting systems directs attention to how the needs and well-being of different species and ecosystems are connected. For example, the needs of organisms have evolved over their evolutionary history in the context of the ecosystems they inhabit. All organisms participate in many interactions. Some of the interactions are critical for their well-being (such as feeding), while others may be detrimental and even lethal for them (like being fed upon), yet critical for the well-being of some other organism(s). Interactions take place in ecosystems that in turn are dependent on the functioning of other, larger-scale processes (such as climatic processes that affect temperatures and rainfall). Ecosystems further interact with other ecosystems; the examples of teleconnections between ecosystems include precipitation in terrestrial areas, which in large part depends on evapotranspiration in distant forested areas (van der Ent et al., 2010) and transport of energy and nutrients from marine toterrestrialecosystemsbymigratoryfish(Cederholmet al., 1999). Wedefineplanetarywell-beingasastateinwhichtheintegrityofEarthsystem and ecosystem processes remains unimpaired to a degree that lineages can persist to the future as parts of ecosystems, and organisms (including humans) can realize their typical characteristics and capacities (see Table 1.2). Planetary well-being puts the emphasis on the integrity of Earth system processes (such as the global climate and biogeochemical cycles of elements) and ecosystem-level processes TABLE 1.1 The generic systems-oriented conceptual framework for well-being System A system is an entity that is comprised of its components, that can be impacted by the environment, has characteristic relations and interactionsbetweenitscomponents,andhassystem-specific characteristics and capacities that stem from the system processes. Critical system System processes are recurring interactions between system processes components. Interactions require inputs to function. Critical system processes are those without which the system cannot continue itsexistenceandrealizeitssystem-specificcharacteristicsand capacities. Needs and need Needsareconditionsofdependenceoninputs(needsatisfiers).Needs satisfiers mustbesatisfiedforthecriticalsystemprocessestofunction. Well-being Well-being is the functional integrity of the system, or in other words, the integrity of the critical system processes, that allows the system tocontinueitsexistenceandrealizeitssystem-specificcharacteristics and capacities.
Planetary well-being 15 (such as succession and pollination) instead of organismal well-being, because at theorganismallevellifeisrifewithconflictssuchaspredator–preyrelations,and consequently not all organisms can “be well” all the time. Death and senescence are also normal life processes although they may demonstrate the lack of organismal well-being. However, the integrity of Earth system and ecosystem processes is fundamental for the survival and evolutionary potential of species and lineages— and for the existence and well-being of organisms and ecosystems they inhabit. We intend planetary well-being as a concept to promote respectful ways of cohabiting Earth with all forms of life so that both humans and nonhumans can achieve wellbeing in all parts of the world. By the integrity of Earth system and ecosystem processes, we refer to the integrityofthoseflowsofenergyandmatteronEarthandbioticinteractionsin ecosystems that are critical for the satisfaction of the needs of various organisms, populations, and communities.4 These processes are manifold, and while there is a reasonable understanding about several important processes, such as nutrient cycles or pollination, it would be foolhardy to assume that all important processes are known inside out. For example, the ozone layer depletion following the emission ofchlorofluorocarbonscameasasurprisetothescientificcommunity(Rowland, 2006).Thus,allactionsthatsignificantlyimpacttheflowsofenergyandmatterare a serious concern for planetary well-being, be it by resource use such as the human appropriation of 38% of the net primary production on Earth (Running, 2012), or by the release of nutrients, greenhouse gases, or other chemicals with possibly TABLE 1.2 Key concepts of planetary well-being Organismal (human and Organismal well-being is a state where an organism can nonhuman) well-being realize its typical characteristics and capacities. Organismal needs and need Organismal needs are conditions of dependence on inputs satisfiers (needsatisfiers).Needsmustbesatisfiedforanorganism to realize its typical characteristics and capacities. Needs depend on the evolutionary history of the lineage an organism belongs to. Lineages, species, A group of organisms with a shared genetic ancestry that is populations distinct from other such groups constitutes a lineage. For sexually reproducing organisms, species and populations constitute lineages at global and local scales, respectively. Ecosystems Ecosystems are communities of organisms that interact with each other and the abiotic environment. Earth system and ecosystem Processesrelatingtotheflowsofenergyandmatteron processes Earth and to biotic interactions in ecosystems. Planetary well-being Planetary well-being is a state in which the integrity of Earth system and ecosystem processes remains unimpaired to a degree that lineages can persist to the future as parts of ecosystems, and organisms (human and nonhuman) can realize their typical characteristics and capacities.
16 Teea Kortetmäki et al. unknown effects. Similarly, excessive interference with natural ecosystems (by, for example, the destruction of natural habitats or overharvesting of natural populations) is likely to harm planetary well-being by impacting the integrity of crucial processes. While we (as the research community) have an incomplete understanding of specificprocesses,wealsohavelimitedknowledgeaboutinteractionsbetweenand among the Earth’s geophysical systems, ecosystems, and human-created systems (e.g., Reid et al., 2010; Liu et al., 2015, 2018). Many of these interactions are likely to magnify each other: The risks of causing irreversible changes to the Earth system are higher in studies that consider interactions between systems or processes (e.g., Lade et al., 2019). Given that there are profound uncertainties regarding the consequences of human interference with the Earth system and ecosystem processes, abstinence from potential harm even in the absence of the proof of harm— the precautionary principle (e.g., Cameron and Abouchar, 1991)—is often a safer strategy to avoid worsening global environmental problems. Thedefinitionofplanetarywell-beingunderscoresthepersistenceoflineages (e.g., species and populations) as parts of ecosystems for both instrumental and normative reasons. As discussed above, the processes contributing to the satisfaction of the needs of various living systems are not fully understood. However, it is possible to monitor the status of populations and species, and this gives a good indication of whether the needs of lineages and organisms within them can beadequatelysatisfied.Forexample,ifpopulationsizesshowunusualpersistent declines, this usually indicates a failure of some critical process(es) relating to need satisfaction (of also individual organisms). The viability of species and populations thus indicates the integrity of the critical, but sometimes intractable, processes that underpin well-being at all levels. As a non-anthropocentric and systemic concept, planetary well-being aligns with views that consider the survival of lineages to be an end in itself (Rolston, 1985). The present human exploitation of and interference with ecosystems harm vast numbers of other species and populations, with the estimated number of species considered to be at risk of extinction being up to 1 million (IPBES, 2019). However, humans also haveneedsthathavetobesatisfiedforhumanwell-being.Thesatisfactionofsomeof these needs—like the need for adequate nutrition—is practically impossible without some interference with ecosystems and, consequently, lineages. From the planetary well-being point of view, the level of human interference with ecosystems must not compromise the ability of other species and lineages to persist in these ecosystems to the future (i.e., it must not put them at the risk of extinction). The importance of lineageshassignificantimpactsontheconsiderationof,forexample,theimpactsof human-managed food system activities. Achieving planetary well-being necessitates thathumanbasicneedsaresatisfiedinawaythatdoesnotcompromisethecapacity for nonhuman entities to achieve well-being. An important step in this direction is to prioritize the satisfaction of basic human needs over the satisfaction of desires and wants that have a negative impact on nonhuman nature.
Planetary well-being 17 Putting the concept to use Planetary well-being is not purported to simply replace the existing concepts, many of which are valuable in their particular domains of application. However, by integrating the systemic, process-oriented view and the concept of well-being with the needed ethical transformation away from anthropocentrism, planetary well-being provides a fruitful analytical and discursive lens for many domains of addressing— thinking about, researching, and acting upon—the ecological crisis. In academia, it has the potential to advance research on transformational changes (sustainability transition) and advance sustainability sciences by encouraging the non-anthropocentric framing of future research questions (cf., Kates et al., 2001). Outside academia, the notion of planetary well-being contributes to discussing and acting upon the ecological crisis at several levels: In addressing the trade-offs between different needs and desires, in setting targets and measures for decision-making, and in bridgingdivergentworldviews.Wereflectuponthesenextinmoredetail. Reconciling human needs with planetary well-being Theideaofneedsandneedsatisfiersisintegraltotheconceptofplanetarywellbeing. While the satisfaction of needs is necessary for the well-being of any system,therelationshipbetweentheneedsandneedsatisfiersiscontingent:Needs canoftenbesatisfiedinvariousways.Whenitcomestosecuringthesatisfaction of the needs of nonhuman nature, the human action mainly concerns safeguarding or not harming the Earth system and ecosystem processes as far as possible. Active measures are often unnecessary; the well-being of “wild” nonhuman nature is often best served by “deconstructing the impediments to nature’s own capabilities [or capacities] to fully and continually function” (Schlosberg, 2007, p. 150). Domesticated animals and ecosystems (gardens, for example) on the other hand depend on human provision for their continued existence. While we do not discuss the status of domesticated nature (that raises distinct normative questions) here, we note that many domesticated animals are not able to realize their characteristics andcapacities,andecosystemmodification(e.g., building a garden) may interfere with ecosystem processes that are critical for the satisfaction of the needs of wild nonhuman nature. Whenitcomestothesatisfactionofhumanneeds,itisnecessarytoreflectupon what the quality of life—as associated with well-being—entails, especially regarding the consumption of material goods (IPBES, 2019). Humans are complex social beingsanddifferentscientificfieldsprovide differentaccountsofhuman wellbeing with varying emphasis. However, when the question is how societies can organize and operate in ways that best support human well-being, it is necessary to approach well-being in a way that is institutionally applicable and meaningful to governance and policymaking. This directs attention to the needs-based, nonsubjective conceptions of human well-being. They are grounded on the assumption that all humans, like all organisms, have certain universal basic needs that have
18 Teea Kortetmäki et al. tobesatisfiedinordertoavoidharmandhaveagoodlifeincludingtheabilityto act fully in life: The satisfaction of needs is a necessary (though not necessarily sufficient)conditionforwell-being.Althoughthearticulationoftheneedsvaries between different authors (e.g., Doyal and Gough, 1984; Max-Neef, 1991; Rice, 2013; Gough, 2017) and some accounts emphasize the capabilities to achieve various functionings that contribute to needs satisfaction over the actual outcome of needs satisfaction (Nussbaum and Sen, 1993; Nussbaum, 2011), they all have as key elements the need for physical and mental health, for relationships, and for autonomy in action and thought. Satisfaction of these key elements may require, for example, adequate nutrition, safety, and at least some kind of health care and education. When approached from a human perspective, planetary well-being is a state in which the organization of human systems simultaneously allows human needs to be met, and the impact on Earth and ecosystem processes is limited so that lineages can persist to the future as parts of ecosystems and organisms can realize their typical characteristics and capacities. Needs-based approaches to human well-being have several features that are relevant to discussions about sustainability (Gough, 2017). First, many human needs areobjective:Regardlessofsubjectiveexperiences,itisempiricallyverifiablethat, for example, malnourishment or the lack of caring relationships causes serious harm to individuals (this is not to deny that needs are still subjectively interpreted at the individual level). Second, human needs are plural: They include material, social, and psychological aspects. Third, human needs are non-substitutable: It is not possible to satisfy, for example, a need for healthy nutrition with more education. Fourth, human needs are in principle satiable: It is possible to identify a levelofneedssatisfactionthatwouldsufficeforadequatewell-being.However, in consumerist societies, being able to “live without shame” requires a level of consumption that matches—or exceeds—the consumption of others, which drives ever-increasing consumption. Yet, at the societal level, this does not lead to increasing social well-being but to fragmentation and anomie (Jackson, 2017, p. 124). Fifth, needs are substantially universal and apply to people in different places and at different times although the ways of satisfying them vary in different times and cultures: Even the objective and universal needs are not “absolute” but involve relative,context-specificaspects.Thepreciselevelwhereaneedissatisfiedmay vary across individuals and contexts (consider the differentiated needs for nutrition or, for example, belongingness); and some space of choice for needs satisfaction and actual doings in one’s individual life are required for freedom (Nussbaum and Sen, 1993). The conception of universal needs and average requirements for their satisfaction at individual level, nevertheless, provides a useful tool for guiding and evaluating societal activities in directions that support human well-being. This gives a foundation for considering the well-being of both present and future generations in such arenas. Theideaofsatiablehumanneedsmeansthatgood,fulfilling,anddignifiedlife canbeachievedwithlimitedconsumptionsufficienttomeetthematerialneeds,
Planetary well-being 19 together with the satisfaction of non-material needs like significant primary relationships, leisure, and social participation (Max-Neef, 1991; Gough, 2017). Acknowledged, the levels of subjectively experienced well-being in such scenarios of reduced material consumption are not well known although similar changes have historically occurred in societies, especially during the post-war periods. Suggestionsforachievingwell-beingwithsignificantlylessermaterialconsumption, however,aredifficult.Theyareinstarkcontrastwithconsumeristandmaterialistic societies, where ever-increasing production and consumption fuel the dynamics of the economy, where well-being is understood as the realization of insatiable human preferences, and where the good life is understood as the rising material standard of living. Planetary well-being does not require the reduction of well-being but calls for reducing the consumption of material goods that are not relevant to human needs or that directly harm well-being. Global and regional equality considerations necessitate a focus on the satisfaction of both material and non-material needs of all, instead of increased (assumed) well-being for the already privileged. There are successful examples of participatory well-being workshops that utilize the needsbased approach to human well-being and help communities critically discuss what is needed for well-being, what is not, and what are the obstacles to achieving wellbeing in ecologically less harmful ways in the societies (e.g., Guillen-Royo, Guardiola and Garcia-Quero, 2017). We suggest that planetary well-being could be put into use in citizen deliberation and policy-making arenas in similar ways, which would produce the benefit of expanding the well-being considerations beyond humans. Itisalsoimportanttonotethathumanmaterialneedscanbesatisfiedinmany ways(bydifferentneedsatisfiers),withsignificantlydifferingimpactsonplanetary well-being. This directs attention to the processes of production. One relevant example that has received much research attention is the human need for protein, whichcanbesatisfiedinvariouswaysthatdifferintheirimpactsonplanetary well-being.Whentherearemultiplewaysoffulfillinghumanneeds,thosewith theleastharmfulimpactsonplanetarywell-beingandthemostbeneficialimpacts on needs satisfaction globally, between and within human communities, should be prioritized to move towards planetary well-being. Simultaneously, it should be keptinmindthatthebestneedsatisfiersmaybedifferentindifferentlocationsand societiesandshouldhenceremainopentocommunity-levelreflectionsandsome level of individual freedom of choice (cf., Nussbaum and Sen, 1993) because of the importance of autonomy for human well-being. Understanding and propping up the factors that promote pro-environmental behaviour (including lower material consumption) at individual levels is also crucial. Related behaviour patterns areinfluencedby,forexample,institutional,economic,social,emotional,motivational, value, attitude, and awareness factors (Kollmuss and Agyeman, 2002). The multiscalar view of processes calls for attending to the dynamics between different levels, such as the impact of global processes on the needs satisfaction, and preferences within different communities, from the viewpoint of planetary well-being.
Introduction Planetarywell-beingisdefinedas“astateinwhichtheintegrityofEarthsystem and ecosystem processes remains unimpaired to a degree that lineages can persist to the future as parts of ecosystems, and organisms (including humans) can realize their typical characteristics and capacities” (Kortetmäki et al., 2021, p. 4). This “state” is a dynamic rather than a static condition: Planetary well-being may increaseanddecline,andhumanactivitiesinfluenceitgreatly.Understandingthese dynamics necessitates grounding the ontology and ethics of planetary well-being. In this chapter, we examine how the conceptualization of planetary well-being is grounded and positioned in the broader theoretical landscape, both in ontological andethicalterms.Wealsoreflectupontheoverallconceptualunderpinningsof planetary well-being and its implications for the different well-being frames that are used for guiding societal development and policy-making, hoping to encourage further research. It should be noted that we limit our normative reasoning to human activities: Although large-scale natural events might also affect planetary well-being by disrupting large-scale processes, only humans are morally responsible for their activities’ impacts on planetary well-being. Ontology behind planetary well-being: Systems and processes Ontologically, planetary well-being takes a systemsand process-oriented approach. Planetary well-being commits to the Bungean type of systemism (see e.g., Bunge, 2000) where every “thing” is a system or a component of one (Kortetmäki et al., 2021). Ontologically speaking, a system is an entity that consists of interacting components and has structures and processes that are characteristic of 2 PLANETARY WELL-BEING Ontology and ethics Teea Kortetmäki, Mikael Puurtinen, Miikka Salo, Gonzalo Cortés-Capano, Sanna Karkulehto and JanneS. Kotiaho DOI: 10.4324/9781003334002-4
Planetary well-being: Ontology and ethics 27 the given kind of system. All systems are situated in a context (environment) where they interact with other systems. Most systems are material and independent of human and nonhuman minds.1 Communication systems as well as human-made complex systems, such as schools,financialsystems,andpreservablesemioticandsymbolicsystems(texts and images), may be partially immaterial but their immaterial parts have causal effects only through cognition and action, i.e., through the material neural system (Elder-Vass, 2010a). For example, money does nothing unless humans believe it does and agree with (and act upon) the rules determining what money can do. Systems have both aggregative and emergent properties. Aggregative properties result from the simple addition of the properties of the parts. A classic example of an aggregative property is mass (ibid.). Emergent properties are those novel properties that emerge particularly due to the ordering and interaction of the components in a system (Bunge, 2000). Emergent properties are those that make the system “greater than the sum of its parts”: Its components do not have such properties in themselves, nor in aggregate. Certain emergent properties, such as the ability of systems to reproduce and preserve themselves, and sentience, also add to the properties of a system in a way that is relevant to moral considerations (see the section on ethical underpinnings). Emergentpropertiesconstitutethebasisforaviewofthestratifiednatureof reality. Various phenomena have physical, chemical, biological, psychological, and sociallevels.Variousscientificdisciplineshavealsospecializedintheresearch ofaspecificlevelofreality.Whilescientificactivitiesmayoftenbemostfruitful when a level is studied with the concepts, theories, and methods developed for that particular level, it is also possible and sometimes valuable to combine tools or apply them at different levels. For example, psychological level phenomena can be viewed through psychology but also approached with the tools of neurobiology (a lower level), or with social psychology and sociology (a higher level). Phenomena in complex systems, such as societies, can only be explained comprehensively by studying them with multiand interdisciplinary approaches. In the planetary well-being framework, the well-being of a system is understood in a nonsubjective way, as the functional integrity of that system. Well-being means meeting the needs conveyed through critical processes at the biological, mental, and social levels. This understanding is in line with the above-described systemsand process-oriented approach where also non-conscious entities can gain or lose well-being. In the case of conscious entities such as sentient animals (those who can feel pain and suffer), consciousness does not always capture all critical processes. Also, some subjects with rich imagination and tendencies to comparison (many human beings) may consider some non-critical processes hastily as critical to their well-being. Hence, the subjective experience of well-being—although generally a good indicator of, for example, experienced human well-being—is not necessarily accurate or a comprehensive description of the state of well-being of an individualinthesenseofthedefinitionrelevanttoplanetarywell-being.
28 Teea Kortetmäki et al. Processes and relations Planetary well-being is rooted in the idea that all living systems come into existence (emerge), develop, and behave in ways that result from complex sets of causal relations and patterns of species association (assemblages/communities of species) (Banitz et al., 2022; DeLanda, 2016). Relations and feedbacks between interacting entities generate emergent properties: Many ecological processes are produced by the interactions between species (Folke et al., 2016). For example, pollination as an ecological process often emerges from the relations between animal pollinators and the plants they pollinate (see also Chapter 6 for soil processes). These processes are mostly contingent: If the interactions end, animal pollination as an emergent process would cease to exist (DeLanda, 2016). The integrity of ecological processes in turn is vital for the continuity and well-being of the members of the communities, that is species and organisms (Levin et al., 2013). It is important to note that in many relations between the entities (e.g., species) and the emergent systems they belong to (e.g., ecosystems), entities maintain their relative autonomy and are not fused together into a homogeneous whole (DeLanda, 2016). For example, individuals can be connected to each other in many ways yet also remain as individuals in their community. Acknowledging the relative autonomy of entities as parts-of-wholes implies in some cases replaceability or functional redundancy within processes: A pollination process can (at least in many cases) continue even if the current pollinator species is replaced with other species, local or exotic, or robot brushes, as long as the replaced entities realize the same functions in the system. However, very rarely does a species have only one role in an ecosystem. Pollinators, for example, also interact in numerous other assemblages beyond pollination such as comprising a food source for other species in that system. This overall complexity of relationships means that precautionary measures and preventive action should be adopted to avoid potential harm to the integrity of larger ecological systems, and hence, to planetary well-being. Knowledge about the interactions between and among Earth’s geophysical systems, ecosystems, and human-created systems is still very limited (e.g., Mastrángelo et al., 2019). The ontological basis of planetary well-being implies the need for interdisciplinary work to make sense of the connections between different processes that comprise planetary well-being. This also necessitates acknowledging epistemic humility: We humans will likely never be able to know, and thus take into account, all relevant relations and interactions between different species. To avoid too simplistic ontological or epistemic assumptions, it is important to recognize the social dimensions of such knowledge, while asserting the reality of the material dimension of the problems (Bhaskar et al., 2010). The ontological position taken in planetary well-being challenges traditional dualisms between humans and nature and the assumption that humans’ interactions with (the use of) nonhuman entities or materials could be considered in isolation from their ecosystems and processes. Planetary well-being emphasizes that
Planetary well-being: Ontology and ethics 29 humans are part of co-evolving systems and participants in multispecies processes in nature, not external to the rest of the natural world (cf., Berkes and Folke, 1998). The processual viewpoint in planetary well-being also highlights the presence of agency throughout nature, as life is intertwined in these processes in myriad ways: Humans are not the active agent using and managing passive nature, but a participant in the webs of actants. However, moral agency—the capacity to think of (and shape) one’s actions with an ethical perspective—and, thus, also the responsibility toactethically,isspecificonlytohumans.Asthetechnologicalcapacityofhumans to use nonhuman world and interfere with its processes has grown, the concept of moral agency has also become more important since human actions can have such huge and far-reaching effects on planetary well-being. Notably, the ontological basis of planetary well-being described here leaves room for different, more detailed ontological perceptions. For example, it is possible to emphasize the different levels of complexity in the existence of entities. Moreover, questions about how inter-entity relations are constitutive of the entities engaged in such relations, remain open to different characterizations. This, we believe, allows the engagement with planetary well-being from different perspectives and worldviews (see also Chapters 3 and 8). The ethical underpinnings of planetary well-being Planetary well-being is based on certain normative premises, some of which are influencedbytheabove-describedontology,thatconstitutestheethicalunderpinnings of planetary well-being. By “underpinnings”, we emphasize that such considerations still leave room for the diversity of further ethical elaborations. In our treatment,weadheretoscientificrealismaboutvalues.Scientificrealism commits one to treating values as socially produced and historically contingent. This does not, however, prevent us from reasoning about values, nor from developing critiques by combining ethical reasoning with a theoretical understanding of the social world and its possibilities. (Elder-Vass, 2010b, p. 33) Most importantly, planetary well-being transcends human-prioritizing value hierarchies (moral anthropocentrism) for more inclusive and equal valuation. The more inclusive stance is known as moral non-anthropocentrism or more-thanhuman ethics (e.g., Puig de la Bellacasa, 2017; see also Kohler et al., 2019) and broadens the sphere of moral considerability. Morally considerable entities have a particular moral status and moral (intrinsic or non-instrumental) value regardless of their utility for humans. The value of nonhuman well-being is not derived from its importance to humans (without denying such importance): In the planetary wellbeing framework, both human and nonhuman well-beings are morally worthy for their own sake.
30 Teea Kortetmäki et al. The basic sphere of moral considerability in planetary well-being grounds moral value in the self-regulative and self-regenerative capacity of living entities, extending moral considerability beyond humans (Kortetmäki et al., 2021, p. 3). This is closely connected to the functional integrity, the well-being, of such entities. Understood this way, well-being as a morally relevant idea also extends beyond individuals. However, since individuals’ striving for well-being unavoidablygeneratescontinuousconflictsbetweenorganisms,andbecausetheorganisms aresovastintheirnumber,itwouldbeextremelydifficultorevenimpossibleto adequately capture ethical concern for all well-being by paying attention to each individual. Thus, planetary well-being seeks to focus on another level to capture the moral concern for all well-being in a way that is meaningful and applicable to guiding societal development and policy evaluation. To succeed in this, planetary well-being takes a dual standpoint to moral valuation: First, it takes lineages (a group of organisms with a shared genetic ancestry) as the key entities of moral concern, and second, it embraces a multicriterial valuation that is relevant for addressing the diversity in how well-being is manifested in different life forms. Focusing on lineages (e.g., species and populations) is a theoretically and pragmatically satisfactory way to capture the moral concern for all nonhuman wellbeing. This is for two reasons. First and foremost, lineages as species possess particularly weighty value. Each species manifests a unique historical continuum and story of evolving life; many lineages have existed for thousands, even millions of years, and many of them will continue to exist far beyond the duration of human communities. However, if a species is driven into extinction by human activities, it is likely lost forever; the irreversibility of the harm and the piece of history lost due to it makes the harm particularly severe (Rolston, 1985). Second, pragmatic reasons also favour the focus on lineages. The status of lineages indicates well the overall state of affairs regarding the possibility of nonhuman entities to satisfy their needs and strive for well-being. Population declines or the increased number of endangered species are signs that some critical processes are failing and compromising planetary well-being (see Chapter 14). Another ethically focal acknowledgement in planetary well-being, already highlighted, is that both human and nonhuman well-being are valuable for their own sake.Thewell-beingofvarioushumansandnonhumansrequiressufficientintegrity of Earth system and ecosystem processes (shared preconditions for all wellbeing)butalsothesatisfactionofspecies-specificneeds.Thisimpliesthatplanetary well-being is inclusive of multicriterial approaches to moral considerability where the moral status can be grounded in several criteria. The multicriterial approach also has the advantage of being much better equipped to explain some of the carefully considered ethical intuitions that are illustrated by the range of problem cases used to test various moral approaches. For example, single-criterion approaches that attribute moral value only to an entity’s characteristic of having a life would not explain why we might have special (additional) duties to the individuals of endangered species (Warren, 2000, pp. 172–173). The use of multiple criteria also
Planetary well-being: Ontology and ethics 31 helps distinguish and clarify why we have such different duties to dif ferent morally considerable entities: Our duties to fellow human beings are different from our duties to nonhuman individuals, let alone the duties to non-individual entities such as species or populations. In multicriterial moral valuation, different criteria constitute together the overall sphere of moral considerability, which is comprised of different (overlapping) spheres of morally considerable entities. Different spheres set different demands and limitations to acceptable human behaviour, depending on the features of the systems. Sentience,forexample,constitutesonefeature-specificsphereofmoralconsiderability. The well-being of sentient creatures sets some additional well-being related requirementsbecause sentienceinfluencesthe behaviouralandphysical needsof these beings. Many of those activities that are wrong towards sentient beings (such as industrialized meat production) would not, to our current knowledge, harm nonsentient beings and would therefore be wrong only when practised towards sentient beings. This way, multicriterial valuation is also compatible with the view that we humanbeingsowesomespecies-specificdutiestofellowhumanbeings. The broadest sphere of moral considerability includes all entities that can have well-being and have self-regenerative capacities. This broadest sphere is relevant for the framing of well-being in contexts that aim to guide overall societal development. Planetary well-being, thus, means a paradigmatic change in how well-being should be framed in such contexts. The inclusive notion of well-being broadens the scope of consideration when the well-being impacts of societal development are to be assessed (or when policy planning and implementation aim to improve the overall well-being or more equal well-being). As a non-anthropocentric notion, planetary well-being requires that a society-guiding conception of well-being is framed in a way that considers nonhuman well-being for its own sake, not only as a factorthatinfluenceshumanwell-being.Thisimpliesthatthepossibilitiesofnonhumans to satisfy their needs, now and in the future, must not be undermined when societies strive to increase well-being or promote development that is assumed to increase well-being indirectly. The needs-based understanding of well-being also highlights the universality of humanneeds,whichhasramificationsontheappropriateframingofhumanwellbeinginsocietalcontexts.Ramificationsconcernuniversalityandinclusiveness. Regarding universality, an objective approach to well-being—a conception where well-beingisneitherdefinednorusuallymeasuredbysubjectiveexperiencesbut by external criteria—is necessary for considering social contexts and inequalities adequately (e.g., Nussbaum, 2011).2 Objective approaches have a strong foothold in justice and social policy studies (e.g., Doyal and Gough, 1984; Nussbaum, 2011). Protecting the opportunity of all humans to satisfy their needs and strive for a good life is a condition for minimum social justice (e.g., Nussbaum, 2011). This condition of considering all humansisquitedemanding:Theneedsfulfilment of current generations should take the global perspective and must not compromisethepossibilityoffuturegenerationstofulfiltheirneeds(Max-Neef,1991;the
32 Teea Kortetmäki et al. World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), 1987). The needsbased understanding of well-being is thereby also more attentive (than subjective accounts) to the situation of disadvantaged human communities and groups. It urges the prioritization of the satisfaction of universal human needs before investing in thefulfilmentofdesiresthatstemfromtheincreasedstandardoflivinginhighincome communities and consumerist marketing processes (see also Chapters 9 and 10), even though such desires might be perceived locally as important to subjective well-being. Overall, an objective approach to well-being provides a tangible set of criteria for conceptualizing well-being for societal development purposes in a more suitable and morally acceptable way than subjective approaches do (e.g., Doyal and Gough, 1984; Kortetmäki et al., 2021; Nussbaum, 2011; Rice, 2013). The objective approaches to well-being also allow the moral inclusiveness that planetary well-being seeks to promote. Some approaches already extend inclusiveness beyond human well-being and thus provide a compatible platform for further theorizing about the politics of planetary well-being. They have addressed the well-being of nonhuman animals (e.g., Broom, 1991; Nussbaum, 2011), other organisms, and even species and ecosystems (Kortetmäki, 2017; Schlosberg, 2007; see also Prescott-Allen, 2001). Adopting the non-anthropocentric, inclusive framing of well-being to guide societal development makes a big difference for the consideration of legitimate and illegitimate societal actions, policies, and development trajectories. It renders the nonhuman world from a background resource and serviceproviderintoanensembleofactiverecipients,beneficiaries,andsufferers, of societal development. The relevant community affected by societal development and policies always includes the biotic community (Dryzek and Pickering, 2018). Planetary well-being and moral duties Assigning at least some moral value to well-being for its own sake means that moral duties related to well-being arise in relation to any entities that may gain or lose well-being. Such duties, however, are not identical towards all morally considerable entities. Negative duties, or duties to avoid causing harm, comprise the cornerstone of environmental ethical duties to nonhuman nature. Because planetary well-being comprises processes whose functioning is the general precondition for the well-being of morally considerable entities, the primary duty for planetary wellbeing would be the negative duty to avoid impairing those processes. However , the impairments already caused—and the consequent harm to nonhuman and human well-being at all levels—suggest that positive duties to restore the prospects of nonhumanstostriveforwell-beingcanbejustifiablydemanded.Weseethiskind of positive duty, or a duty to actively promote good, as crucial. The moral obligation to aim at restoring the impaired Earth and ecosystem processes is an important ethical implication of the idea of planetary well-being. May positive duties also imply duties to advance planetary well-being even in situations where the impairment is not human-originated? The quick answer
Planetary well-being: Ontology and ethics 33 intuitively appears to be “no”: Humans are unlikely to have duties to compensate the impacts of volcanic eruptions to nonhuman species. However, the actual question is more complex since it is increasingly hard to tell whether the negative impacts from “nonhuman activities” are exacerbated by human activities. For example, volcanic eruptions might today induce greater harm to nonhuman well-being because the human-induced habitat degradation prevents nonhumans from migrating to new places from areas damaged by the eruption. Addressing the question of positive duties beyond restoration goes, in its complexity, beyond this chapter’s scope. Here it can be noted that even for now, the positive duty to restore processes that comprise planetary well-being but have been degraded by human activitiesissosignificantthattakingitseriouslyimpliestransformativechangesto human activities. When it comes to duties to individuals, the planetary well-being framework goes beyond individualistic approaches in its framing of moral considerability. This does not need to render the well-being of individuals unmeaningful or valueless. Both individuals and entities beyond individuals, such as species or ecosystems, are acknowledged to be morally considerable. Yet, the duties for planetary well-being must be imposed on levels higher than the individual to make the obligations feasible. The ethical framework that underpins planetary well-being allows the integration of various approaches with the attribution of moral considerability (also inherent value) in environmental ethics. Yet, the requirements set by planetary well-being limit the range for the approaches that planetary well-being embracing pluralism can accommodate. Moral obligations to individuals, whatever they comprise (depending on the chosen ethical approach), must not require actions that would cause societies to undermine planetary well-being. Mapping planetary well-being in environmental ethics How is the normative core commitment of planetary well-being positioned within environmental ethics? Inclusive approaches that grant moral considerability to nonhumans comprise three stances where moral considerability is grounded in different attributes (e.g., Goodpaster, 1978; Schweitzer, 1969; Taylor, 1981; for a good summary, see Warren, 2000): sentientism, biocentrism, and ecocentrism. Sentientism (e.g., Nussbaum, 2011; Singer, 2002) only considers sentient animals. Biocentrism grants moral considerability to individual organisms that act as teleological systems so that something can be good or bad for them.3 It has also been proposed that biocentric moral considerability is grounded in the state of being alive as the ultimate goal or good, for which all other goals are instrumental. Ecocentrism, in turn, emphasizes the stability and integrity of ecosystems and/or ecological entities (such as lineages) more broadly but essentially beyond individuals who are not of primary concern in ecocentric approaches (Callicott, 1986; Leopold, 1949; Naess, 2008). The most-cited articulation of an ecocentric viewpoint is Leopold’s (1949,pp.224‒225)landethicthesis:“Athingisrightwhenittendstopreserve
34 Teea Kortetmäki et al. the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.” Ecological dynamics entail that individuals’ striving for well-being creates constantconflicts.Thus,evenifanindividual’swell-beingisvaluableforitsownsake, we align planetary well-being in the camp of approaches which posit that individualist non-anthropocentrism cannot meaningfully ground normative guidance for societaldevelopment.Despiteworksthatattempttoresolvetheseconflictsindifferent ways by, for example, determining certain simple rules (such as choosing the action with the least number of harmed individuals) or principles for making prioritizations for certain goods to be protected or harms to be avoided (e.g., Taylor, 1981;Wienhues,2017),thereisanoverwhelmingnumberofconflictingdemands. Attempts to include and navigate all the claims between different kinds of individuals, let alone the claims between ecosystem-, species-, and organism-levels, have been heavily criticized as prone to fail (e.g., Cripps, 2010). We agree with the criticismthatcreatingaconflict-generatingapproachisunlikelytosuccessfullyguide societalaction:Itisimportanttofindawaytoconsiderallwell-beingwithout considering all possible claims at all levels. More-than-individualistic environmental ethics, such as ecocentrism, usually ground moral considerability in the selfregulative and self-regenerative capacities of living entities (e.g. Kortetmäki, 2017; Rolston, 2002; Schlosberg, 2007) and planetary well-being aligns well with them. There is also another reason why planetary well-being must reach beyond individualistic ethics: The moral considerability of non-individual entities is not reducible to individuals. We agree with Callicott (1986) and Rolston (1985) that the loss of a species due to human action is morally reprehensible for its own sake and not just due to the suffering it causes to individual beings. The extinction of lineages are exceptionally grave and morally reprehensible losses because of the timeframe of evolutionary history that reaches up to millions of years to the past and could have reached equal periods in the future without human interruption. Thus, planetary well-being aligns with those normative views where the survival of lineages is an end in itself (Naess, 1989, 2008; Rolston, 1985). This is a huge issue since the currently estimated number of species under risk of extinction due to human-originating interference is around 1 million (based on a rough but informed extrapolation, IPBES, 2019). Amongst the established environmental ethics approaches, deep ecology is the most resemblant to planetary well-being. Deep ecology is grounded in a relationalandholisticapproachandconsidershumanandnonhumanflourishingas morally valuable for their own sake. This implies that “[h]umans have no right to reduce this [nonhuman] richness and diversity except to satisfy vital needs” (Naess, 1989, p. 29; “vital needs” remains a vague notion but is not restricted to biological survival needs). Planetary well-being differs from deep ecology by paying more attention to socio-ecological systems, relations, and processes. This is in line with socio-ecological sustainability and transformations research, thereby providing a more elaborate basis for the examination of societal development and
Planetary well-being: Ontology and ethics 35 for creating non-anthropocentric framings of sustainable development (see United Nations (UN), 2015; WCED, 1987 for the recent and original framings). Second, planetarywell-beinggivesamoreprocess-orienteddefinitionforthelimitsofpermissible harm by focusing on process integrity. This might also imply differences between deep ecology and planetary well-being approaches in the permissibility of someactionsdeepecologyandplanetarywell-beingfindmorallypermissible,but an examination of them is beyond the scope of this chapter. It must be, however, emphasized that planetary well-being is meant to complement, not to replace social ethics that further guides the promotion of equal well-being among humans and the organization of human societies. Since planetary well-being addresses large-scale processes (see section Introduction in this chapter), it may become confused with the planetary boundaries framework that is also systemic and process-oriented. The planetary boundaries framework was introduced (Rockström et al., 2009) as a framework to help maintain the Holocene, the stable environmental conditions on Earth. The essential difference between planetary boundaries and planetary well-being is both epistemic and normative. Planetary boundaries are measurable thresholds, the crossing of which could lead to irreversible changes and unstable environmental conditions, threatening safe human existence. It highlights the importance of avoiding the crossing of “tipping points” (and thus staying within stricter boundaries of safe action) that could lead to the abrupt changes or collapse of crucial processes. In contrast, planetary well-being focuses on functional integrity. These thresholds differ greatly: Consider, analogously, the difference between avoiding the crossing of a human individual’s tipping point (physical or psychological collapse) vs. securing their functional integrity (well-being). Protecting one’s functional integrity requires more than simply avoiding the crossing of a safety boundary; admittedly, however, the state of integrity is also fuzzy. Moreover, planetary boundaries are definedwithreferencetohumansafety:Theframeworkisthusexplicitlyanthropocentric in normative terms. This also shows in the status of biodiversity loss rate as just one of the safety boundaries. In the planetary boundaries framework, extinctions are not a concern per se but due to their impacts on the safe existence of humans and stability of the Holocene. Planetary well-being sets more demanding limits for permissible activities: Increasing the risk of extinctions is a concern assuch,andsomedisruptionsthatareinsignificantforplanetaryboundariescanbe verysignificantforplanetarywell-being. Finally, one central ethical aspect of planetary well-being is the shift of attention from actual well-being outcomes to the opportunities to achieve well-being, to avoidparalysisinfrontofunavoidableconflictsbetweenindividualsintheirrealization of well-being. Planetary well-being focuses on factors that are constitutive of the opportunity of almost any living entity to achieve well-being. In its focus on the opportunities to achieve well-being, the ethical grounding of planetary wellbeingresemblestheinfluentialcapabilitiesapproachtojusticeanddevelopment (Nussbaum, 2011; Nussbaum and Sen, 1993). The capabilities approach focuses on
Introduction Scientificconceptsandmethodsnotonlycharacterizeandanalyzeworldsbutalso shape them. Global systemic concepts born and raised in Western universities may appeartobeneutralandunbiasedabstractionsfloatingabovethecomplexityof theworld,buttheyreflecttheworldviewsoftheirmakers.Indeed,humanperception,includingscientificknowledge,issociallyandculturallyproduced(Latour and Woolgar, 1986; Said, 1978) and takes part in the shaping of realities (Law and Urry, 2004). Planetary well-being draws attention to the integrity of ecosystem and Earth system processes that are vital to the well-being of all organisms, species, populations, lineages, and ecosystems. The concept addresses the need for an ethically inclusive and systemic conceptualization of well-being that takes into account the multiple dimensions of interaction between divergent entities (see Chapter 2). It also works as a tool for bridging different worldviews to make the concept globally applicable (see Kortetmäki et al., 2021). This chapter approaches the notion of planetary well-being as a dynamic, political process that develops through transdisciplinary collaboration, which brings together viewpoints, concepts, and methods from both natural and human sciences. We contribute to the development of planetary well-being by discussing its cross-cultural applicability and suggesting how to make the concept more open to difference and, hence, better able to resonate withperceptionsthatdifferfrommainstreamWestern(scientific)thinking.Our suggestions aim to support the goal of promoting planetary well-being through transdisciplinary and decolonizing research. One possible way of enhancing the cross-cultural reach of planetary well-being is to open it to divergent ontologies. By ontologies we mean various understandings 3 ONTOLOGICAL DIFFERENCES AND THE PURSUIT OF PLANETARY WELL-BEING Liia-Maria Raippalinna, Pilvi Hämeenaho and Jelena Salmi DOI: 10.4324/9781003334002-5
Ontological differences and the pursuit of planetary well-being 43 of what exists, and the constitutive relations of diverse kinds of beings. Ontologies are enacted and performed through an array of practices, including discourses, scientificmethods,andeverydaymundanetasks(Gad,JensenandWinthereik,2015); thus, we start from the premise that practices shape realities. Planetary well-being is a particular kind of practical ontology that both perceives and enacts the world as a range of ecological processes and categorizes all beings as biological species and mutually exclusive biological organisms that are part of ecosystems. While this is anappealingwayofapprehendingexistencewithinthescientificdomain,biological speciesandecosystemsmaynotbemeaningfulorsufficientorganizingcategories in all ontologies. Furthermore, not all ontologies are based on a human–nonhuman dichotomy or other Cartesian dichotomies such as culture (social)/nature, material/immaterial, mind/matter, and animate/inanimate. While planetary well-being, faithfultoscientificrealismandmaterialism,perceivesecosystemsasmaterialand independent of the human mind (Chapter 2), ecosystems can also be approached as dynamic material-discursive wholes, which change and develop through practices such as ecosystem conservation programs. From this perspective, the human mindbody is embedded within the ecosystem and “nature” more generally. Western, Eurocentric science tends to view the world from an “exterior observational point” (Barad, 2003, p. 828), thereby enacting a category of pure Nature existing independently of human cognition. Here, however, we do not seek to reproduce the dichotomy of “the West” and “the rest”, but recognize that “the West”, too, is ontologically multiple (Jensen, 2021, p. 100) and that ontologies interact and entangle. In fact, the coming together of divergent ontologies as equals is necessary for a common world that enables planetary well-being to be realized. This does not require their becoming the same; rather, it involves respecting difference (Verran, 2002). Ontologicaldialoguestartswiththerecognitionthatthedominantscientificontology is not an objective view coming from a detached, external nowhere. Thegreatdivideofnatureandcultureisdeeplyembeddedinscientifictheories and Western thought dating back to the age of Enlightenment and René Descartes, or all the way to the emergence of mainstream monotheistic traditions in the Middle East(Ginrich,2014).Whilenatureandthematerialworldhavebeentoasignificant extent excluded from social theory, the social and the human have been correspondingly excluded from natural sciences (Tsing, 2014). We have ended up with a separation of the human and natural worlds, as if human culture was not part of nature. While sometimes represented as overlapping and interrelated, they are still conceptualized as two distinct realities. Another outcome of these Cartesian dualisms is anthropocentrism, which lies at the root of the current environmental and climate crises, since nature and other entities have been valued merely as resources for human beings to utilize. The concept of planetary well-being defeats normative anthropocentrism by prioritizing the intrinsic value of nonhuman populations, species, and lineages over their instrumental value for human prosperity (Kortetmäki et al., 2021). Thus, it puts humans back to nature by rendering Homo sapiens a species among others.
44 Liia-Maria Raippalinna et al. We argue that to promote and achieve planetary well-being, we also need to recognize that culture is not a separate entity but enmeshed within nature. Instead of framing human practices merely as a threat to biological systems, it is important toanalyzehowtheymaymaintain,enhance,andevencreatebiodiversity(Maffi, 2007, 268; see also Pretty et al., 2009) and planetary well-being. For example, the concept of biocultural1 diversity views biology, culture, and language as dialecticallyandinextricablyintertwined(Franco,2022;Maffi,2005,2007;SkutnabbKangas, Maffi and Harmon, 2003).According to Luisa Maffi (2007, p. 269), biocultural diversity is based on three key elements. Firstly, it recognizes that the diversity of life is made up not only of the diversity of plants and animal species, habitats, and ecosystems found on the planet, but also of the diversity of human cultures and languages. Secondly, it acknowledges that these diversities do not exist in separate and parallel realms but affect one another in complex ways. Thirdly, it notes that the links among these diversities have developed over time through mutual adaptation between humans and the environment at the local level. In sum, biocultural diversity realizes that biological, cultural, and linguistic diversity co-occur and mutually support one another. They are also threatened by the same forces. To maintain the resilience of social-ecological systems on the long run, it is imperative to maintain diversity in all its forms (Pretty et al., 2009). Focusing on biocultural diversity highlights cultural differences in the satisfaction of basic needs, central to the notion of planetary well-being (Kortetmäki et al., 2021). However, instead of perceiving difference only in terms of culturally varying need satisfaction, the concept of biocultural diversity encourages sensitivity towards ontological difference and related perceptions of needs and well-being: Determining what well-being means requires openness to different ontologies (Hiemstra, Subramanian and Verschuuren, 2014). But how, then, could ontological multiplicity be addressed in the development and implementation of planetary well-being? John Law and John Urry (2004) encourage researchers to ask what kinds of realities we make with our concepts and methodologies, and what kinds of realities we would wish to make with them. Taking these questions as our starting point, we propose that the pursuit of planetary well-being be geared towards cultivating divergent biocultural realities. This requires that ontological difference is appreciated by means of “softening” the realisms of biology (Law and Joks, 2019, p. 441). We seek the means to do this by drawing on ontological politics, discussed in the following section. After that, we propose some conceptual and methodological tools that open up a space for interdisciplinary and cross-cultural dialogue on planetary well-being. Anthropologist Anna Tsing’s (2017) conceptual pair of multispecies resurgence and Anthropocene proliferation is helpful in envisioning planetary well-being from the point of view of biocultural diversity grounded in and emerging from particular landscapes. Her approach to landscapes as more-than-human assemblages enables investigation of how multiple worldmaking practices—ranging from those of plants and fungi to industrial landscape
Ontological differences and the pursuit of planetary well-being 45 projects,Indigenouscosmology,andscientificclassification—cometogether.In other words, landscapes are open-ended and constantly changing gatherings. Their livability depends on how well the gatherings succeed in cultivating biocultural diversity and well-being. Tsing’s conceptual tools, we argue, are hospitable to differentrealities,includingthescientificontologyofplanetarywell-being. Enacting realities Within the social sciences and humanities, the core concepts of culture and society are subjects of constant debate. The concern with cultural and social differences reliesonaconceptionoftheworldasone,while“culture”impliesonlyaspecific kind of perspective on the one world. In other words, epistemologies (ways of making sense of the world) vary, but there is only one ontology (what kinds of things exist and their constitutive relations) (Heywood, 2017). Conventionally, the task of anthropologists has been to study people’s cultural perceptions—that is, epistemologies—of the one world. However, the Western notion of culture takes its ontological status for granted as it relies on the dualism of nature and culture (Blaser, 2013, p. 550). Therefore, we need to move beyond “cultures” in thinking about difference. Western science tends to treat Indigenous and other realities as cultural takes on a single natural world, the one reality. Politics, then, comes to be about negotiating individual and collective rights and duties within the social realm, a “politics of who” (Mol, 2002, p. 166). Marisol de la Cadena (2010, p. 360) calls this “politics as usual”, referring to “power disputes within a singular world.” But what if we start from a position that the common world is not pregiven, that semiotic and materialpracticesdonotjustreflectknowledgeoftheoneworldbutenactand perform diverse realities or ontologies? A sensibility known as ontological politics assumes that the making of reality is open-ended, contested, and shaped within mundane practices (Law, 2002; Mol, 1999). Approached from this perspective, science’s single Nature loses its purported objectivity, and “multiculturalism” turns into “multinaturalism” (Latour, 2011; Lorimer, 2012). Multiple natures, however, are not different kinds of human perspectives, but emerge from embodied entanglements of human and nonhuman agents including plants, animals, materials, and technologies, which make these knowledge communities more-than-human. Furthermore, differing natures are not stable and mutually exclusive totalities; rather, different kinds of enactments clash and collaborate (Mol, 1999, p. 88). Therefore, it is more fruitful to focus on worldmaking practices than on “orders” that locate actors within impermeable worlds (Gad, Jensen and Winthereik, 2015). Indigenous peoples, for instance, do not live in closed and pure “indigenous worlds.” Their knowledge and practices cannot be separated from the larger world of media, science, and political and economic systems or ignore the impact of (uneven) power relations within these global systems of localities (see, e.g., Hastrup, 2015; Kottak, 1999). For instance, economic
46 Liia-Maria Raippalinna et al. globalization has resulted in changes in many indigenous contexts, including that of turning traditional practices into commercial activity (Kopnina 2012, p. 131). Abandoning mononaturalism in favour of multinaturalism opens the possibility of attending to the ways in which ontological difference is recognized and handled. For example, in their analysis of the enactment of the Deatnu River and its salmon by the Norwegian state and Indigenous Sámi people, John Law and Solveig Joks (2019, p. 440) argue that the former tends to be intolerant of different realities. Although the Norwegian state recognizes traditional ecological knowledge in theory, genuine dialogue between divergent realities has not been achieved in practice, leadingtothegradualdisappearanceofSámifishingpracticesandtherealitiesthat go with them. The “settler” way of ignoring ontological differences is a form of colonial politics (ibid.). A more successful case of ontological dialogue has been presented by Helen Verran (2002) who has studied how Yolngu Aboriginal landownersandenvironmentalscientistsinAustraliarelatetheirrespectivefire-control strategies, worrk and prescribed burning, in workshops involving lectures, seminartypediscussions,andpracticaldemonstrationsoffirecontrol.Verranarguesthat a postcolonial knowledge space resulting from the workshops enables the participants to see how their strategies are both the same and profoundly different. The common world, then, is not a pregiven solid ground, but “a risky and highly disputable goal that remains very far in the future” (Latour, 2011, p. 9). Yet, despite beingextremelydifficulttoobtain,thecommonworldisanexistentialandethical imperative, which necessitates co-researching and collective experiments (Latour, 2011). As Wim Hiemstra, Suneetha M. Subramanian, and Bas Verschuuren (2014, p.24)posit,“apluralityofwaysofknowingisbetterabletofindwaysofflourishing within ecological limits than one mainstream way of knowing on its own.” From the perspective of ontological politics, the methodological choices of natural and human scientists are not objective or innocent. They are political and performative, taking part in the shaping of realities (Law and Urry, 2004). In global research, it is important to understand divergent ontologies and avoid imposing concepts and categorizations that may not be relevant outside the West or which may even reproduce colonialist attitudes and power structures. Anthropology’s historical complicity in the colonial project (e.g., Asad, 1973; Hymes, 1969) has led to a heightened awareness of how research practices may reproduce systems of oppression.Decolonizingsciencemeansengagingincriticalreflectiononquestions of power in knowledge production, how we teach, and how we frame our research questions and relate to the people with whom we work (McGranahan and Rizvi,2016).Allthisstartsfromrecognizingandreflectingonone’sownontological presuppositions and position within intersecting structures of power—a prerequisite of ethical research. Promoting planetary well-being, however, requires both understanding diversity and supporting the struggles needed to sustain it (see Brightman and Lewis, 2017, p.22).Thefightagainsttheerasureofdifferences,aninstantiationofcolonialpolitics, amounts to “resistance against territorial expropriation, against institutional
Ontological differences and the pursuit of planetary well-being 47 disaggregation, and against ontological erosion” (de Almeida, 2017, p. 283). As scholars, we need to be cognizant of the fact that our concepts shape the worlds that they describe. Choosing and using certain methods, concepts, and (underlying) ontologies are world-making practices, since they outline how the world will be categorized and represented, and what will be left out of the inquiry. In the following section, we present some conceptual tools that assist in approaching divergent world-making practices and cultivating a postcolonial sensibility in striving for planetary well-being. Tools for bringing culture back to nature Reconciling human interests with nonhuman well-being poses challenges. For instance, most conservation and development projects seek to preserve either nature or cultures (Kopnina, 2012), something visible in struggles over who decides the aims and ways of preservation and the opportunities local people have to be involved in these negotiations (see Chapter 8). Nature preservation plans have been seen as neo-imperialist since they have sometimes ignored the rights and/or ways of life of local residents and Indigenous communities in favour of endangered species (Kohler and Brondizio, 2017; Kottak, 1999). Correspondingly, prioritizing the social, cultural, and economic rights of human communities over biodiversity and the rights of nonhuman species has been criticized for enacting elite-imposed concepts such as development and human rights that support the anthropocentric line of thought (Kopnina, 2012, p. 141). A focus on biocultural diversity helps to reconcile these challenges (Kopnina, 2012; Pretty et al.,2009).AsToveSkutnabb-Kangas,LouisaMaffi,andDavid Harmon (2003, p. 42) have stated, “fostering the health and vigour of ecosystems is one and the same goal as fostering the health and vigour of human societies, their cultures, and their languages.” The study of biocultural diversity also assists in addressing ways of protecting natural places that have endured over generations and that value certain sites as sacred (Pretty et al., 2009); these are not based on scientificontologiesbutonspiritualconnectiontothemore-than-humanenvironment. While Indigenous and local lifeways must not be romanticized, they provide diverse solutions to current environmental crises and help to envision “radically alternative futures” (Chapter 8). Focusing on interactions and relations that occur in divergent environments, the concept of biocultural diversity enables culture2 to be integrated into interdisciplinary research of planetary well-being. But how can the various relations that contribute to the making of biocultural diversity and particular biocultural realities be approached? How can this be done in a world where ontologies and localities are affected by and involved in global processes? Severalfieldsofsciencehavesoughttoovercomethedivisionofnatureand culture. Among others, these include cultural geography, with the elaboration of the concept of landscape (see Wylie, 2007); posthumanist, feminist, and new materialist theories that attend to vibrant matter (e.g., Barad, 2003; Bennett, 2010); and
48 Liia-Maria Raippalinna et al. philosophies that see the world as composed of assemblages and actor-networks (e.g., Deleuze and Guattari, 2004; Latour, 2005). Anthropologist Anna Tsing builds on Deleuzian assemblage theory to investigate more-than-human histories of places, entities, relations, and multispecies communities on multiple scales. In the following, we present her approach and suggest it as a suitable tool for interdisciplinary investigation of the making and unmaking of biocultural diversity—and, thereby, planetary well-being.3 Multispecies resurgence and Anthropocene proliferation Planetary well-being states that human activities are sustainable if they “retain the opportunity for all types of living entities on Earth to satisfy their needs now and in the future” (Chapter 2). Visioning true and serious sustainability, Tsing (2017) presents a similar idea on a local level, grounding analysis in landscapes: Dynamic gatherings or “assemblages” of more-than-human encounters (Tsing, 2015, pp. 22–23). She claims that human ways of life within particular landscapes are truly sustainable only if they “align themselves with the dynamics of multispecies resurgence” (Tsing, 2017, p. 51). Here resurgence refers to the ability of multispecies communities to regenerate after disturbances through the actions of many organisms, including humans. In the long run, the continuity of human cultures also depends on multispecies resurgence that forms livable landscapes. Tsing uses the term “resurgence” instead of “resilience”, because of its polysemy and lack ofexactdefinition.Withthisconceptualchoice,sheaimstofacilitateopen-ended discussion among natural scientists, humanists, and social scientists (ibid., p. 63). Tsing’s radical, non-anthropocentric reconceptualization of sustainability encourages us to envision what kinds of worlds we want to enact with planetary wellbeing. It facilitates the perception of humans as part of multispecies communities and landscape gatherings, and cultural practices as part of their regenerative processes. Consequently, Tsing’s approach is useful for researching biocultural diversity and the more-than-human practices and processes increasing and decreasing it. To describe the making of livable landscapes, Tsing (2017) turns towards the ecological modality of the Holocene, the era starting from the glacial retreat in the northern hemisphere after the Ice Age. Species recolonized land emerging from the ice through the dynamics of succession. Holocene farming encouraged the reenactmentofpost-IceAgesuccession,suchasthatoffieldandwoodlandspecies. Some patches of Holocene resurgence where farming practices reproduce resurgence processes and species assemblages typical of the Holocene still exist. Tsing (ibid., pp. 56–57) gives an example from her own research on Japan’s Honshu Island, where traditional cultivation produced a biodiverse woodland, the satoyama forest. The peasants made intensive use of these forests by cutting down trees fortimberandfirewood,collectingleavesandhumusforfertilizingfields,and gathering products for everyday needs. Farming and subsistence in villages was dependent on the surrounding forests. Meanwhile, human engagement in the forest
Ontological differences and the pursuit of planetary well-being 49 repeated the pioneering succession where pines that would have died out without human disturbance, smothered by broadleaf trees, colonized bare mineral soil with their companion species, matsutake mushrooms. Without villagers cutting down broadleaf trees, pines would have disappeared from the forests together with the culturally appreciated matsutake. Multispecies resurgence of the satoyama forest both depended on and enabled traditional farming as a way of life. Currently, however, these forests have mostly been replaced by timber plantations or transformed after being abandoned by peasants. People have moved to cities and traditional farming practices have been replaced by chemical fertilizers and fossil fuels. Without human engagement, deciduous trees have taken over the forests with species assemblages that no longer support traditional farming; matsutake is now imported from Europe and North America (see Tsing, 2015). Pretty et al. (2009) state that many of the drivers for the loss of biocultural diversity evolve from capitalist economies that stress economic growth. Growth orientation has resulted in a shift in consumption patterns, the globalization of markets, and the commercialization of resources, paving the way to the homogenization of cultures and landscapes. For instance, globalization of the food system leads to loss of ecological knowledge and locally developed skills and practices, and monocultural plantations lead to loss of traditional diets and knowledge of famine foods (ibid., pp. 104–105). Tsing (2017, pp. 51–52) argues that in the Anthropocene, multispecies resurgence has become severely threatened by ecologies of proliferation: Simplified,human-madeecologiesthataredesignedtoproduceassetsforfuture investments and kill off beings not recognized as assets. The Anthropocene is characterized by plantation ecologies, industrial technologies, and large-scale governance projects, as well as capitalist modes of accumulation that drive major changes in landscapes and earth system processes (ibid., p. 53). Its ecological modality produces monocultural proliferation of a few species, separating organisms from their life worlds and companion species. Monocultural plantations and related global trade kill off diversity and enable the unmanageable proliferation of viruses and pathogens (see also Chapter 4). For instance, industrialization of the nursery trade of ash trees led to a dieback of ashes around Europe in the early 1990s as trading and shipping young plants across regions and continents allowed the spread of a fungal pathogen. The dieback of ashes poses a threat to biocultural diversity; in additiontohavingculturalsignificance,theashisakeystonespecies,supporting many insects, lichens, fungi, molluscs, and birds (Tsing, 2017, p. 59). Overcoming the ecological crises requires an understanding of the more-thanhuman histories and socialities of the Anthropocene (for examples, see Tsing et al., 2021) that are killing off biocultural diversity. However, there are still patches where human practices align themselves with regenerative processes that sustain multispecies communities. Spotting and learning from those rare patches may be critical to sustaining a livable world (Tsing, 2017, p. 62) and achieving planetary well-being. In sum, to promote planetary well-being, we need to be aware of the histories in which various more-than-human social relations come into being:
50 Liia-Maria Raippalinna et al. Relations of proliferation (destructive to planetary well-being) as well as relations of resurgence (supportive to planetary well-being). More-than-human assemblages A focus on multispecies relations and communities makes Tsing’s conceptualization of sustainability well suited to envisioning planetary well-being. Furthermore, and not restricted to biological and ecological relations, her approach to the morethan-human formation of landscape assemblages and multispecies socialities has potential for bridging different ontologies. In assemblages, the lifeways of organisms and non-living ways of being come together and emerge through mutual transformations. They consist of everything that gathers in a place: “Assemblages arejustthosewefindassembled”,suchasplantsgrowingaroundeachotherina particular landscape, or plants and their symbiotic fungi (Tsing, 2014, pp. 31–32). Both landscape assemblages and entities gathering in them take shape within morethan-human social relations that transform over time. Investigating what gathers paves the way to noticing underlying relations without making a priori assumptions about what kinds of relations or entities matter. Importantly, the investigation does not have to be restricted to living organisms. Assemblages can include biotic and abiotic, natural and supranatural, material and immaterial, as well as discursive and practical entities, among others. For example, rocks, rivers, gods, ancestors, and sacred places can participate in the making of landscapes, and so can tools, technologies, infrastructures, governance discourses, global economies, and so on. Therefore, Tsing´s understanding of assemblage is particularlybeneficial inbridging differentontologies andperceptionsof wellbeing in the pursuit of planetary well-being. It attends to what matters in actual more-than-human landscapes where biocultural realities are made. Assemblages are continuously taking shape, but careful, sensitive, and critical description enables the co-emergence of gathered entities in a landscape to be traced and explored and opens their more-than-human histories to investigation. Various scales and sources from Indigenous cosmology and unwritten histories toscientificreportsandobservationcanbecombinedwheninvestigatingmorethan-human landscapes and their historical trajectories, keeping in mind that different sources have different methods of knowing and making the world (Tsing, 2017, p. 62; on Indigenous storytelling as research, see, e.g., Iseke, 2013). Tsing (2014) advises us to start by following people into their landscape. Listening to human informants and perceiving and participating in their actions offer insights into the cultural practices involved in the shaping of landscapes, although it is not human practices as such but the dynamic relations among many species that create the multispecies web of social relations. In addition, landscapes are the products of multiple histories of various scales from microbial to global. For example, satoyama forests emerge from local interspecies relations as well as from global timber and fuel markets (ibid., pp. 35–38). Apart from understanding the material
Ontological differences and the pursuit of planetary well-being 51 and semiotic nature of divergent ecologies, we need to combine observations in particularmultispeciescommunitieswithbroadhistoriesanddifficult-to-traceconnections (Tsing, 2017, p. 61). Approaching (landscape) assemblages and entities as products of more-thanhuman histories enables transdisciplinary work and research that covers multiple aspects of complex realities.4 Tsing’s assemblage approach can be used as a tool for investigating Anthropocene proliferation as well as multispecies resurgence in livable landscapes. Therefore, it has the potential to provide a bridge between the biological relations and ecological processes central to the notion of planetary wellbeing, and the multiple more-than-human relations that remain outside the scope of the ecological/biological perspective. These include relations to spirits, gods, and ancestors to which planetary well-being does not assign any moral consideration. Undertaking cross-disciplinary and multi-ontological “assemblage studies” throughthelensofplanetarywell-beingwouldbenefitbothconceptualelaboration and practical implication of the concept. The approach allows the combining of different ontologies and conceptualizations of well-being without forcing them into a unifiedframework. While we encourage ontological bridging both on the theoretical plane and in empirical research and development projects, we are not claiming it to be an easy task.Indeed,softeningthescientificrealismofplanetarywell-beingwithassemblage thinking poses challenges. For instance, the assemblage perspective on landscapesasemergentandfluidgatheringsunderminesthestabilityofbiologicaland ecological systems and processes that are central to the concept of planetary wellbeing. Seeking synthesis between different ontologies is problematic, but some promisingattemptshavebeenmade.Inthefieldofsociology,TimothyRutzouand Dave Elder-Vass (2019) have sought to combine critical realism with assemblage thinking. The way they integrate critical realist focus on structure, stability, and causalitywithassemblagetheorists’interestinheterogeneity,fluidity,andprocesses could be useful in further conceptual and theoretical development of planetary wellbeing. Bridging ontologies will certainly involve (yet unforeseen) problems. Nevertheless, the aim of ethically inclusive well-being requires us to go through the trouble of seeking to broaden the ontological foundations of planetary well-being. Conclusions This chapter has focused on recognizing the importance of ontological sensitivity and conceptual choices to the development of the concept of planetary well-being. Enacting a world of mutually exclusive species, lineages, populations, and ecosystems,planetarywell-beingproposesapredefined,singulardomainofNature(see Lorimer, 2012) removed and abstracted from social and cultural life, or the “human mind” (Chapter 2). However, these categories are not universally meaningful. Hence,wehavesuggestedfirstacknowledgingthat scientific practices shape realities. Second, we encourage shifting the concept of planetary well-being towards
Ecosystem degradation decreases planetary well-being Properly functioning ecosystems support diverse processes that sustain life, ranging from climate regulation and oxygen production to maintaining biodiversity. Ahealthyecosystemmaybedefinedasasustainableandresilientsystemthatmaintains its function despite external stress (Costanza and Mageau, 1999). A healthy ecosystem provides key services to its biota, and disturbances to the system may impact the health and/or abundance of key members of its assemblage, such that they can no longer perform their ecological roles. In this chapter, we discuss the cascading effects that ecosystem degradation has on the health of wildlife, humans, and entire ecosystems and the consequent threat to planetary well-being. Overexploitation of natural resources by humans has resulted in widespread ecosystem degradation: More than half of all ecosystems on Earth have deteriorated because of human actions (Myers, 2017; Song et al., 2018). This degradation has negatively impacted a range of ecological functions with notable adverse consequences for the well-being of wildlife (undomesticated animals and plants inhabiting natural environments) and humans. Environmental change has, for example, directly increased infectious disease prevalence in humans and other organisms by facilitating the spread of invasive species, disease vectors (organisms that carry and transmit pathogens to other organisms), and pathogens (Parmesan and Yohe, 2003). The interplay between ecosystem, human, and nonhuman health is recognized by several well-established health-related concepts, such as Conservation Medicine (Aguirre et al., 2002), EcoHealth (Charron, 2012), One Health (Gibbs, 2014), and Planetary Health (Lerner and Berg, 2017). These concepts all share the recognition that humans share the Earth with wildlife and the 4 ECOSYSTEM HEALTH AND PLANETARY WELL-BEING Ilze Brila, Anni M. Hämäläinen, Toni Jernfors, Eva R. Kallio, Jenni Kesäniemi, Esa Koskela, AntonLavrinienko, Tiffany Scholier, Yingying Wang and Phillip C. Watts DOI: 10.4324/9781003334002-7
60 Ilze Brila et al. need for interdisciplinarity to safeguard health. Nonetheless, they tend to be anthropocentric and emphasize the protection of human health, whereas planetary well-being aims to identify humans as only a part of ecosystems and recognize the needs of nonhuman organisms. Similarly, infectious disease research is biased towards pathogens that cause illness in humans or in economically important species such as livestock. Meanwhile, the potentially devastating effects of pathogens (organisms that can cause disease by invading another organism) in nonhuman organisms generally receive less attention. Wildlife disease research is largely directed towards reservoir hosts (organisms in which pathogens can reproduce and that serve as a source of infection to other hosts) of zoonotic pathogens (infections that can be transmitted between humans and other animals). Because of this knowledge bias, the patterns of disease dynamics are best known forvertebratesandtheirpathogens(reflectedalsointhischapter),butthegeneral patterns can be expected to extend to other taxa. In this chapter, we present the role of ecosystem health in the well-being of all organisms. We demonstrate that (1) the health of ecosystems is declining worldwide due to human actions, (2) ecosystem degradation has complex adverse effects on the health of humans and nonhuman organisms by affecting disease dynamics, (3) planetary well-being and the health of ecosystems are interconnected. While planetary well-being is unattainable without sustaining healthy ecosystems,theplanetarywell-beingconceptoffersausefulapproachforfinding solutions for global disease burden, for example through improved ecosystem management. Disease as a part of a healthy ecosystem All organisms have evolved in contact with a certain ecological community, includingbeneficialsymbioticorganismsaswellasparasites that exploit the host’s resources, causing loss of health or mortality. These organisms, including pathogens, are important for proper ecosystem function, for example as a means of naturally controlling host population size (Fischhoff et al., 2020). As such, in healthy ecosystems the well-being of parasites is equally important as the wellbeing of their hosts, however, ecosystem functioning can suffer from a shifting balance of host-parasite associations. Pathogens and their hosts are engaged in an evolutionary “arms race” between the hosts’ immune defences and the diverse solutions evolved by pathogens to bypass the host defences. Many pathogens have a higher rate of evolution than their host, which limits the capacity of hosts to avoid or eliminate pathogens completely. Thus, disease is a natural feature of ecosystem dynamics, but the introduction of a novel pathogen into an ecosystem can have unpredictable consequences when the pathogen is transmitted to a new or sensitive host. A host encountering novel pathogens may be vulnerable to infection due to the lack of evolved defence mechanisms, possibly leading to a more severe disease. For example, when a large proportion of a population
Ecosystem health and planetary well-being 61 is simultaneously in poor health, there can be a concomitant decline in their function within the ecosystem. Disease spread and disease burden increase due toanthropogenic impacts Anthropogenic impacts on disease burden in ecosystems Human impacts on ecosystems, for example, through changes in climate, land use (e.g., agriculture, and growth of urban areas), pollution, and exploitation of natural resources, have caused profound and unpredictable changes in the ecology of pathogens, hosts, and host communities (Figure 4.1). Human activities can impact the infectious disease burden of nonhuman organisms by affecting the distribution and interactions of hosts and vectors, and the susceptibility of individuals and ecosystems to disease. These processes are outlined below. Changes in the distribution of vector and host species Human activities and climate change alter the geographic ranges of vectors, hosts, and pathogens on local and global scales (Parmesan and Yohe, 2003), FIGURE 4.1 Disease dynamics of animals and humans are altered due to anthropogenic impacts on changes in the distributions, communities, and susceptibility of organisms to pathogens. Increase in disease risk of wildlife will, in turn, threaten human health and well-being through human–animal–vector interactions.FigurecreatedbyMārisGrunskis/@PHOTOGRUNSKIS.
62 Ilze Brila et al. potentially impacting the distribution and emergence of many diseases (Cohen et al., 2020). Changes in the distribution and abundance of vector or reservoir species were implicated in nearly 10% of the 100 largest zoonotic disease outbreaks in the last 47 years (Stephens et al., 2021). For example, some tick species have extended their distribution in the northern hemisphere and thus altered the prevalence and geographic distribution of tick-borne diseases (e.g., anaplasmosis, babesiosis, Lyme disease, and tick-borne encephalitis) (Bouchard et al., 2019). Similarly, there are concerns that certain mosquito species originating from tropical and subtropical areas, such as Aedes albopictus, a vector of dengue virus and Chikungunya virus, may be able to thrive in temperate regions in the near future (Caminade, McIntyre and Jones, 2019). Indeed, climate change has been implicated in increasing human malaria infections in Southern Europe and altering the distribution of avian malaria in wild birds (Garamszegi, 2011). At local scales, animals may also change their typical movement behaviours to escape a degraded habitat or new competitors or predators, concurrently spreading pathogens to new communities. Altered community composition and ecological interactions among species Changes in the species composition of a community (e.g., through biodiversity lossorspreadofinvasivespecies),caninfluencekeyecologicalinteractionsand thus impact disease dynamics in wildlife communities and humans (Keesing et al., 2010; Keesing and Ostfeld, 2021). A high-species diversity is thought to reduce disease risk in a community, whereas the loss of species can increase the pathogen burden (i.e., the dilution effect hypothesis; (Keesing and Ostfeld, 2021)). Large mammals (e.g., top carnivores) are more vulnerable to human impacts than smaller mammals (e.g., rodents), which often thrive in human-disturbed ecosystems (Gibb et al., 2020). Certain small-bodied and short-lived host species also support pathogen replication and transmission exceptionally well, making them particularly competent reservoir hosts (Cronin, Rúa and Mitchell, 2014). Human-disturbed ecosystems are therefore expected to have increased disease risk because they support more competent hosts (e.g., small mammals) relative to undisturbed communities. Human actions can likewise play a critical role in the dynamics of pathogens carried by domesticated species, with potentially far-reaching consequences for host-pathogen interactions in ecosystems. For example, the accidental introduction of canine parvovirus on Isle Royale, USA, led to a major decline in wolf abundance and consequently released moose populations from predation pressure (Wilmers et al., 2006). The introduction of domestic (and thus feral) cats to many ecosystems is responsible for numerous extinctions (Doherty et al., 2017) and for the spread of new pathogens, such as the protozoan Toxoplasma gondii, which causes disease or
Ecosystem health and planetary well-being 63 even death in humans, livestock, and diverse wildlife (Dubey, 2008). In contrast, theeradicationofcattleplaguebyhumansledtosuchasignificantincreaseinwildebeest populations in the Serengeti, Tanzania, that its ecosystem impacts include substantiallyreducedfires,highertreedensity,andincreasedcarbonstorageinthe area (Holdo et al., 2009). Thus, human-associated species can mediate and amplify the effects of human activities on disease dynamics, with diverse and unpredictable ecosystem-level effects. Immune system functioning and susceptibility to disease Stressors linked to human activities (e.g., urbanization, pollution, habitat loss, and fragmentation) affect wildlife and human health, including immune system dysregulation and a reduced host resistance to pathogens (Martin et al., 2010; Lee and Choi, 2020). For example, in Australia, deforestation has led to the establishment of populations of Pteropusbats(flyingfoxes)inurbangardens.Inadditiontoa change in distribution and movement, the high-density, isolated urban populations offlyingfoxesappeartohaveanalteredpatternofherdimmunitytoHendravirus, characterized by less frequent but larger disease outbreaks (Plowright et al., 2011); this is cause for broader concern as Hendra virus can be fatal for humans and horses. Increased human–wildlife encounters and pathogen exchange Human activities promote the spillover of pathogens from host animals to humans through increased contact rates at the “animal-vector-human interface” in interaction with environmental, ecological, and social processes (Jones et al., 2013; Destoumieux-Garzón et al., 2022). Human–animal interactions occur through (wild) animal trade and (wild) meat consumption, or indirectly through humans living in increasingly close vicinity to wildlife due to the growth of urban areas, intensive farming, and unsustainable exploitation of natural resources (Magouras et al., 2020). Several disease outbreaks in humans have been traced back to contacts with wildlife, including Ebola (Marí Saéz et al., 2015) and SARS-CoV-2 (cause of the COVID-19 pandemic (Holmes et al., 2021)). Disease dynamics at the socio-ecological interface Human social and economic systems are broadly intertwined with the state of natural systems, including but not limited to a shared disease burden. For example, the COVID-19 pandemic has been presented as a result of the complex dynamic system incorporating human population growth, culture, and actions that altered ecological processes, including climate change (Thoradeniya and Jayasinghe, 2021). Socioeconomic inequality, as well as political and economic disturbances,
64 Ilze Brila et al. influencethepressureplacedonecosystemsandcreateconflictsbetweentheneeds of humans and nonhuman organisms. For example, threats to human food security due to loss of crops or trade (e.g., disruption of global supply chains following COVID-19 restrictions (Erokhin and Gao, 2020)), or socioeconomic hardship may increase contacts at the human–animal interface, such as increased harvesting of wildlife (Golden et al.,2016).Profit-driven,intensiveanimalhusbandryhas resulted in the mass rearing of livestock in conditions that expose animals to suffering and generate opportunities for further disease outbreaks (Jones et al., 2013). Additionally, there is an elevated risk of zoonotic infectious disease emergence and spread among humans in high-density urban hubs near wildlife habitats or agricultural areas, particularly in the absence of effective public health infrastructure (Santiago-Alarcon and MacGregor-Fors, 2020). Global travel and trade have transformed the spread of pathogens, vectors, and hosts Few human activities have transformed disease dynamics and distribution of pathogens as fundamentally as the increased human mobility and trade on a global scale. Human mobility across countries and continents has a long history of facilitating infectious disease spread, but high-volume air travel has multiplied that potential (Findlater and Bogoch, 2018). For example, air travel has been implicated in the global distribution of Aedes aegypti and A. albopictus mosquitos, important vectors of many infectious diseases (Kraemer et al., 2015). Global trade of live and dead animals and plants has dramatically transformed the way pathogens and vectors can spread to new geographical locations, causing many infectious and zoonotic diseases to spread across continents (Jones et al., 2013; Can, D’Cruze and Macdonald, 2019). The globalized scale of disease spread has resulted in profound consequences, such as increased morbidity and mortality and economic losses, as well as threatening the well-being of many species, populations, and entire ecosystems (examples in Table 4.1). TheCOVID-19pandemichasexemplifiedtheeffectsofhumanmobilityonthe spread of infectious diseases. Initially detected in a single location in China, the SARS-CoV-2 virus rapidly spread in human populations around the globe, aided by international travel and trade (Sigler et al., 2021). More than 585 million cases and6.4milliondeathshavebeenconfirmedinhumans(asofAugust2022;World Health Organization (WHO), 2022). This pandemic has likewise emphasized the inequalities present in the globalized world, for example, low vaccine availability in low and lower-middle-income countries and the lack of human preparedness to deal with large disease outbreaks. Additionally, spillback of SARS-CoV-2 from humans to wildlife (Chandler et al., 2021) and domestic animals (Shi et al., 2020) have been observed, further highlighting the global-scale interconnectedness of human and animal health.
Ecosystem health and planetary well-being 65 TABLE 4.1 Examples of the globalization of disease dynamics by human activities and consequences for ecosystems Disease name Pathogen type, species Host organism and area affected Outcome Anthropogenic factors affecting the disease spread or outcome References NA Bovine tuberculosis Chytridio-mycosis White-nose syndrome Chestnut blight NA Bacterium. Xylella Hundreds of plant fastidiosa species. Global Bacterium, zoonotic. Domestic cow (Bos Mycobacterium taurus), European tuberculosis badger (Meles meles). United Kingdom Fungus. >500 species of Batrachochytrium amphibians. dendrobatidis, B. Global salamandrivorans Fungus. PseudogymBats (Chiroptera). noascus destructansNorth America Fungus. Cryphonectria American chestnut parasitica (Castanea dentata). North America Nematode. European eel Anguillicoloides crassus (Anguilla anguilla). Europe Local biodiversity loss andlossofcrops→ economic loss Slaughter of infected cows, extensive culling of wild badgers 90speciesconfirmed or suspected extinct, more experience severe population declines Decimation of populations Near wipe-out of American chestnut, previously the dominant tree species in Eastern USA Population decline Introduced to Europe from North America Wild animal culling as zoonotic disease management—badgers were culled to slightly lower tuberculosis prevalence in cattle and lower the economic loss Pathogen distribution facilitated by global trade of various amphibian species Disease spread by cavers, bat researchers, and tourists Imported with seedlings from Asia Import of the parasite’s native host, Japanese eel (Anguilla japonica), exposing the European eel, a novel host species, to the pathogen Godefroid et al. (2019) Downs et al. (2019) Fisher and Garner (2020) Hoyt et al. (2021) Jacobs (2007) Currie et al. (2020) (Continued)
66 Ilze Brila et al. Disease name Pathogen type, species Host organism and Outcome Anthropogenic factors affecting the References area affected disease spread or outcome Crayfishplague Oomycete (fungusManynativecrayfish Decimation of Legalandillegalcrayfishtrade Martínlike pathogen). species. Eurasia populations from North America Torrijos Aphanomyces astaciand Australia et al. (2021) NA Virus. Varroa destructor European honey Colony collapse Asian honey bee Apis cerana Nazzi et al. mite vector for bee (Apis transported from Asia together (2012) deformed wing virus mellifera). North with V. destructor. European honey America and bee—a novel host. Europe African Swine Virus. African swine Domestic and wild Mass mortality of Legal and illegal trade of pigs and Beltranfever fever virus pigs. Global domestic and wild swine products Alcrudo pigs, economic losses et al. via loss of domestic (2019) pigs Myxomatosis Virus. Myxoma virus European rabbit Severe population Introduction of new species as pest Kerr (2012) (Oryctolagus declines control. Virus from South America cuniculus). Europe was purposefully introduced to control rabbits in Australia but then spread to rabbits in Europe. TABLE 4.1 (Continued)
Ecosystem health and planetary well-being 67 Harnessing principles of disease ecology as ecosystem health indicators for planetary well-being Human activities that prioritize human needs over ecosystem health have led to a worldwide disruption of disease dynamics, with severe consequences for planetary well-being. The rapid evolution of microbes allows pathogens to effectively take advantageofbeneficialconditionscreatedbyhumanactionstospreadandinfect susceptible hosts. The failure of disease control mechanisms in disrupted ecosystems can lead to a cascade of altered disease dynamics through socio-ecological systems at a global scale. Therecognitionofthesedynamicsraisesadifficultquestion:Isitpossiblefor modern human societies to integrate as part of healthy ecosystems? Such assimilation may be achievable when small human societies use natural resources sustainably and locally, but in the globalized world most ecosystems that are affected by humans are linked to practically all other ecosystems on the planet. This facilitates potential universal sharing of pathogens among those ecosystems, risking both nonhuman and human health and well-being all over the world. This potential for global negative impacts begs questions such as whether it is ethical to allow any human activity within the relatively few thus-far undisturbed ecosystems, even when such activity is beneficial for human individuals and has no immediate destructive effects. Reaching comprehensive solutions requires shifting the focus away from the satisfaction of human needs and towards the well-being of whole ecosystems, in line with the planetary well-being approach. Tools and data are needed to evaluate the impacts of different policies and practices on pathogen spread and changing pathogen burden, including pathogens with noimmediateeconomicsignificance.ToolssuchastheRedListIndex,anintegrative measure of species extinction risk (Kortetmäki et al., 2021) could serve as a proxy measure of planetary well-being from the perspective of disease burden, as (novel) pathogens and diseases not only threaten organismal well-being but also induce population declines, increase species extinction risk, and can have cascading effects in communities and ecosystems. Tools are also being developed that allow decision makers to estimate the economic cost through public health costs of altering habitat (see examples in Myers (2017)). These approaches could be complemented with indicators of (1) ecosystem health and functioning, such as measures of biodiversity, resilience, and pathogen or disease prevalence in the system; (2) societal characteristics (urbanization, socioeconomic equality, healthcare, etc.); and (3) risk factors for the spread of invasive species and pathogens (e.g., global travel and trade). Developing reliable and compatible indicators for these complex issues is challenging but increasingly important because the combined information from such indicators could help in navigating trade-offs between human and nonhuman needs, supporting decision-making. Training public health experts and decision makers with the use of such tools and applying the planetary well-being perspective is a potentially effective way to
74 Rémi Duflot et al. FIGURE 5.1 Conceptualization of a landscape approach to planetary well-being. Landscapes are an operational arena for planetary well-being because the biophysical elements and processes that meet human and nonhuman needs are situated in landscapes, as are the human and nonhuman beings themselves (hereafter referred to as: Actors). The three basic dimensions of a landscape (actors, processes, and biophysical elements) can be seen from the human and nonhuman perspective (icons). This chapter focuses on the biophysical elements and processes that mediate need satisfaction for humans and nonhumans.FigurecreatedbyMārisGrunskis/@PHOTOGRUNSKIS. an important ecosystem service for humans, as 75% of the world’s food crops are at least partially dependent on pollination (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), 2016). Pollination illustrates how landscapes host socio-ecological processes. The humansinvolvedinandinfluencedbyanylandscapeprocessarecommonlytermed stakeholders. They are important in land-use planning, i.e., targeting the use of land in a spatially explicit and meaningful manner (Antrop, 2000). The best environmental practices often require collaboration between stakeholders to create functional landscape features that ensure the persistence of nonhuman species and their associated functions and simultaneously meet the objectives of the stakeholders (Vialatte et al., 2019). To illustrate the transformative potential of the landscape approach to planetary well-being, we present three examples of land-use planning principles that acknowledge the role of landscape-level processes and support planetarywell-being.Inthefollowingsections,weexaminethebenefitsofagroecological farming, urban green infrastructure, and multi-objective forest management zoning approaches to planetary well-being. These examples show how to put planetary well-being into practice (Figures 5.2–5.4).
A landscape approach to planetary well-being 75 Agroecological farming systems: From field to landscape levels Decades of farming intensification and landscape homogenization have substantially decreased biodiversity in agricultural landscapes (Benton, Vickery and Wilson, 2003). In contrast to industrialized farming systems, which are based on agrochemicals and mechanization, the agroecological approach relies on biodiversity-driven ecological functions to support food production (Jeanneret et al., 2021). Key ecological functions, which are perceived as ecosystem services by humans, include soil fertility (Chapter 6), natural pest control and pollination. Importantly,agroecologicalpracticesbuildonandbenefitfromthelocaldiversity of species and their biotic and abiotic interactions which maintain ecological functions (Dainese et al., 2019). Given the very large extent of agricultural land on Earth and the vital societal importance of agriculture, the agroecological landscape approach has tremendous potential to enhance planetary well-being by supporting biodiversity and various ecosystem services. Figure 5.2 shows how the agroecological landscape approach is linked to planetary well-being, with a focus on organism food provisioning. The biodiversity of agricultural landscapes (including species that co-produce processes useful to humans) depends on the provision of resources needed by the FIGURE 5.2 Conceptualization of a land-use planning principle of agroecological farming, as a landscape approach to planetary well-being, with a focus on food provisioning for humans and nonhuman species. The three basic dimensions of a landscape (actors, processes, and biophysical elements) can be seen from the human and nonhuman perspective (icons). This chapter focuses on the biophysical elements and processes that mediate need satisfactionforhumansandnonhumans.FigurecreatedbyMārisGrunskis/@ PHOTOGRUNSKIS.
76 Rémi Duflot et al. species, such as feeding, shelter, and reproduction and overwintering sites. These areoftennotavailablewithinthecropfieldsbut,rather,intheirsurroundings.Thus, the central process is the movement of species between semi-natural habitats and cropfieldsorbetweencropfieldsofdifferenttypes,enablingspeciestoaccess their required resources at different places and time and adapt to recurrent disturbances (Blitzer et al.,2012).Atthefieldlevel,theintensityoffarmingpractices, e.g., related to the amount of pesticides, determine the suitability of a crop forhostingdiversespeciesandsupportingassociatedecologicalfunctions(Duflot et al.,2022).Typically,organicallyfarmedfieldshavehigherspeciesdiversityand abundance (Puech et al., 2014). At the landscape level, most organisms rely on resources provided by semi-natural habitats (e.g.,floralresourcesoroverwintering sites), therefore, landscapes with a high percentage of such non-crop habitats have higher biodiversity and ecological functions (Duarte et al., 2018). Because most species in agricultural landscapes are very mobile, the agroecological approach acknowledges the need to maintain adequate ecological conditionsatboththelocal-fieldandlandscapelevels(Jeanneretet al., 2021). The synergeticinfluenceoflandscapeheterogeneityandfarmingintensityonbiodiversity and the associated functions (Ricci et al., 2019) suggests that environmentallyfriendlypracticesarerequiredatboththefieldandlandscapelevels.Practices such as less intense soil management (e.g., no tillage and direct seeding), longer and more diversified crop rotations, and crop mixtures have significant potential to maintain biodiversity, functional agroecosystems, and productive farming systems (Duru et al., 2015). At the landscape level, increasing the proportion of semi-naturalhabitats,cropdiversity,andreducingfieldsizepromotebiodiversity and ecological functions that contribute to crop production (Sirami et al., 2019). Complexconfigurationpatternwithmanyedgesbetweendifferenthabitattypes andsmallerfieldswillfacilitatespeciesaccesstomultipleresourcesand,therefore, further enhance biodiversity, related ecological functions, and crop yields (Martin et al., 2019). Agroecological approach also provides a socio-ecological perspective to food production and highlights the leading role of farmers and the importance of selfsufficientfarmsforsustainablelandscapemanagement(Jeanneretet al., 2021). For this purpose, agri-environment-climate policy schemes (such as a part of the EU Common Agricultural Policy) subsidize a selection of agroecological practices aimedatreducing field-levelintensityofpractices andrestoringsomeform of landscape heterogeneity (e.g.,throughimplementationofgrassyorflowerstrips). While reducing farmers’ dependency on agrochemicals and promoting biodiversity, the implementation of such agri-environment-climate schemes remains limitedduetolackofinstitutionalsupportandfinancialresources(Pe’eret al., 2020). As agricultural landscapes consist of spatially intermingled networks of farmers andnon-farmers,andcorrespondingfarms,fields,fieldmarginsandotherlandscapeelements,suchschemeswould,however,alsobenefitfromadditionalstrategies for integrated landscape-level cooperation (e.g., through collective contracts; Jeanneret et al., 2021; Vialatte et al., 2019).
A landscape approach to planetary well-being 77 Green infrastructure in urban design: Restoring processes inheavily modified ecosystems Over 55% of the world’s human population live in urban landscapes, with further urbanization being projected (United Nations (UN), 2019). Moreover, urban area is increasing twice as fast as the urban population, spreading into other valuable land uses, and is expected to quadruple globally by 2050 as compared to 2000. Urban expansiontransformsvegetatedlandcoversintoartificialsurfaceswithinurbanareas andtheirsurroundings.Urbanlandscapesareheavilymodifiedbyhumans,withan altered biophysical environment and ecosystem functioning, thereby compromising planetary well-being. For instance, urbanization increases the fragmentation and shrinking of green areas, which result in dramatic decline in biodiversity in urban landscapes (Lepczyk et al.,2017).Italsodisruptsimportantecosystemfluxes,asartificialsurfacespreventwaterinfiltration,whichcreatesadryenvironmentandflooding risks (Chapter 6), and increases solar energy absorption and storage, which increases the air temperature in cities (IPBES, 2019). The development of urban landscapes with green infrastructure, i.e., an interconnected network of nature-based elements (hereaftergreenspaces),providesvariousbenefitsforbothhumansandnonhumans (ibid.) and may, thus, support planetary well-being. Figure 5.3 shows how the effects of green infrastructure are linked to planetary well-being, with a focus on organism mobility. FIGURE 5.3 Conceptualization of a land-use planning principle of urban green infrastructure, as a landscape approach to planetary well-being, with a focus on human and nonhuman organism mobility. The three basic dimensions of a landscape (actors, processes, and biophysical elements) can be seen from the human and nonhuman perspective (icons). This chapter focuses on the biophysical elements and processes that mediate need satisfaction for humans andnonhumans.FigurecreatedbyMārisGrunskis/@PHOTOGRUNSKIS.
78 Rémi Duflot et al. Urban green infrastructures offer a variety of habitats, ranging from remnants of native vegetation, vacant land, and gardens to green roofs and managed parks (Lepczyk et al., 2017). In urban landscapes, habitat patches are typically small, and species’ habitat selection is often governed by patch size and landscape heterogeneity (e.g., Pithon et al., 2021). Therefore, green infrastructure is commonly planned in the form of habitat networks, consisting of multiple habitat patches that are connected by corridors to allow organisms to move within the network (Lepczyk et al., 2017). The ability to move is based on landscape connectivity, which is considered a major factor in species survival and the long-term persistence of biodiversity (Crooks and Sanjayan, 2006). Thus, urban biodiversity is best supported by the careful spatial planningofgreenspacesandtheirlanduses,includingspecifichabitatmanagement actions (e.g., infrequent grass mowing). Urban green infrastructure can support populations of species that can adapt to urban environments and provide complementary habitats for species threatened by intensive farming and commercial forestry in rural areas (e.g., Selonen and Mäkeläinen, 2017). Biodiversity also supports ecosystem functioning in urban areas, thereby, promotes planetary well-being. Recreation in green areas benefits human health via three main pathways (Markevych et al., 2017): (1) Reducing harm, e.g., reducing exposure to heat and noise; (2) restoring capacities, e.g., relieving stress (Tyrväinen et al., 2014) and producing positive psychological effects (see Chapter 12); and (3) building capacities, e.g., supporting immune balance (Haahtela, 2019), facilitating social cohesion, and encouraging physical activity. Simultaneously, elements of green infrastructure provide ecosystem services to humans, e.g., by reducing water runoff,theyprovidepeakflowcontrolandfloodalleviationforintenserainfalls and stormwater management (Li et al., 2019). Ideally, green infrastructure is developed at the landscape level during the urban development planning phase. However, elements of green infrastructure can be added to existing urban landscapes. For example, setting aside vacant land to unmanaged or less intensively maintainedgreenareasis shownto bea cost-efficientwayto increasegreen infrastructure and increase access to green spaces (McKinney and VerBerkmoes, 2020). Furthermore, encouraging residents to turn their yards into gardens with native species can contribute greatly to green infrastructure and support multiple processes (Cameron et al., 2012). Involving stakeholder groups in green infrastructure development and management may increase knowledge for decisionmaking, as well as empowering citizens and the local community to take agency (Grêt-Regamey et al., 2021), but it also requires the consideration of social inclusiveness and the reconciliation of differing views. Multi-objective forest management: Improvements through landscape zoning Managing forest resources while balancing the ecological needs of species living inforestedlandscapesrequireaspecificfocusonthefrequencyandintensityof
A landscape approach to planetary well-being 79 forestmanagement.Traditionally,forestmanagementhasprioritizedtimberprofits (Faustmann, 1849), operating on homogenous parcels of forest land. This timberoriented management aims at sustained timber extraction, that is, maximizing forestgrowthwhileensuringanevenflowoftimberfortheforestindustry.Meanwhile, the habitat needs of species living in the forest have been largely ignored in practice, harming forest biodiversity. Innovative management practices intended to enhance the quality and amount of suitable forest habitats strive to mimic natural disturbances and the associated variability of forest structures, i.e., habitat heterogeneity (Kuuluvainen et al., 2021). To reconcile human interests and biodiversity conservation, the division of forest landscape into intensive use, extensive use, and reserve zones has been proposed (Himes et al., 2022). This landscape approach plansandconductsforestoperationsatmultiplelevels,firstvialandscapezones, witheachofthemprioritizingaspecificobjective(i.e., timber production, multiple use, and conservation), and then via locally applying diverse management practices, with varied harvesting intensities and cutting methods (e.g., continuous cover forestry or delayed clear-cut harvests). Such land-use planning of forest management focuses on balancing the societal demand for raw material and energy with the needs of nonhuman species and ecosystems, that is, contributing to planetary well-being itself. Multi-objective forest management zoning is shown in Figure 5.4, which describes how human active and passive management of the forest landscape impacts planetary well-being, focusing on maintaining resource extraction while preserving the processes of the forest ecosystem. The processes of natural disturbance-succession dynamics, i.e., the progress of forest regrowth after partial or total nonhuman tree destruction, is crucial to forest biodiversity, as various species groups depend on the diversity of successional stages and the structure created by disturbances, e.g., deadwood (Hilmers et al., 2018; Tikkanen et al., 2006). Prioritizing biodiversity conservation will, therefore, requirea transformationofhow wemanage human-modifiedforestlandscapes (Arroyo-Rodríguez et al., 2020). The forest management zoning strategy allows landscape processes to proceed along differing disturbance-succession dynamics. Extensive forest management aims at maintaining some level of forest complexity locally and of heterogeneity at landscape level. This can be achieved through substantialadjustmentsinhowforestryisappliedandthediversificationofmanagementpractices(Duflot,FahrigandMönkkönen,2022).However,managedforests are not comparable with natural forests, because the tree species composition, tree age structure, and characteristics of deadwood composition differ considerably, even if forests are managed extensively. Thus, forest reserves must be included in the land-use plan to allow ecological processes without human interference. Meanwhile, some proportion of carefully located areas of intensive forestry, primarily oriented towards timber production, could be used to meet human needs. Intensiveextractiveactivitiesintheforestlandscapecanprovidean evenflow of timber, allowing for a shift away from non-renewable resources (e.g., fossil fuels),1 indirectly contributing to enhanced planetary well-being (e.g., climate
80 Rémi Duflot et al. FIGURE 5.4 Conceptualization of a land-use planning principle of forest management zoning, as a landscape approach to planetary well-being, with a focus on sustained forest management. The three basic dimensions of a landscape (actors, processes, and biophysical elements) can be seen from the human and nonhuman perspective (icons). This chapter focuses on the biophysical elements and processes that mediate need satisfaction for humans and nonhumans.FigurecreatedbyMārisGrunskis/@PHOTOGRUNSKIS. changemitigation).Intensivetimberextractioncanconflictwith,andreduce,the availabilityofotherforestbenefitsforbothhumansandnonhumans(Eyvindson et al., 2021). Human activities in the forest disrupt the natural functioning of forest ecosystems, leading to a substantially reduced long-term ecological value for biodiversity and ecosystem services (Pohjanmies et al., 2021). Extensive management focused on multiple uses, including non-timber services (e.g., water quality and recreation) can have synergies with the ecological functioning of the forest landscape. For example, for recreational areas, humans prefer subtlety managed forest so as to ease access and create places to enjoy landscape vistas (Pukkala, Lähde and Laiho, 2012). Determining the relative proportion and spatial distribution of the management zones is challenging (Himes et al., 2022). Forested landscapes are often dominated byhumanactivities,withtheintensityofmanagementbeingdefinedbythehuman demand for timber and non-timber resources. This human-centric perspective must shift towards a focus on planetary well-being. This can be accomplished by wisely managing the forest in a way that minimizes damage to the ecological system, e.g., choosing the management plan with most similarity with the natural disturbancesuccession dynamics (Côté et al.,2010).Thespecificdistributionandorganization of the zones should also be carefully considered, as improved ecological outcomes
A landscape approach to planetary well-being 81 (e.g., representativeness and connectivity of protected area networks) are possible at a relatively low economic cost (Tittler et al., 2015). Conclusion Asillustratedbytheaboveland-useplanningprinciples,landscapeshostconflicts and synergies between human and nonhuman nature, providing an opportunity to put planetary well-being in practice. The availability of suitable biophysical elements and their spatial organization in a landscape are important aspects of each of our examples, demonstrating how the existence of life-supporting processes depends on the ability of organisms to co-occupy the landscape. Ecological processes, such as dispersal and succession, are impacted by intensive land use. To relax the human-induced pressures faced by nonhuman nature and facilitate ecological functioning, the planning of land uses at the landscape level must be done carefully. Landscapes are the arena in which human actions take place; thus, landscapes are the operational level to achieve planetary well-being. Because they have transformative potential, landscapes can act as an interface across various disciplines and stakeholders, providing a shared representation of space as maps, which are powerful tools to guide human activities towards planetary well-being. However, all landscape approaches have two main limitations that may hinder their ability to enhance planetary well-being. First, landscapes are open systems subjecttoexternalinfluences.Thus,notallproblemscanbesolvedatthelandscape level if they originate from outside of the system. Landscapes are embedded in larger entities, such as ecological regions, cultures, or economic and institutional contexts, which impact the organization and dynamics of landscapes. Transforming negative impacts into planetary well-being positive will also require actions beyond the landscape level. In addition, what is done in a landscape may “leak” elsewhere. For example, planning for less dense cities with more green spaces will likely promote further urban expansion. That being said, the challenges resulting from the unboundedness of landscapes can be somewhat controlled for by considering context dependencies in landscape analyses. Second, landscape approaches often elude ethical consideration; the presented examples offer no principles regarding how to balance between human and nonhumanneeds.Theydonotdefinelegitimateorjustactionsviawhichtomeetthe basic needs of organisms, except the presumption that supporting biodiversity, as amanifestationofevolution,isdesirable.Thelackofaunifiedethicsonplanetary well-being-orientedlandusesisreflectedintheprovidedexamples,whichdifferentiate ecosystem services (human needs) from biodiversity conservation (nonhuman needs). Although land-use planning is generally a process that has been conducted primarily by and for humans, it provides an opportunity to look for synergies between ecosystem services and biodiversity conservation. We argue that land-use planning based on knowledge about ecosystem and landscape processes can strongly
82 Rémi Duflot et al. benefitbothhumanandnonhumanorganismsandultimatelypromoteplanetary well-being.Landscapeapproachesarepowerfulindetectingsuchmutualbenefits given that nonhuman species are equally considered as actors in landscape-level processes. In that sense, the concept of planetary well-being might trigger a revolutioninland-useplanningbygivingequalmoralsignificancetohumanandnonhuman species. Acknowledgement RémiDuflotwasfinanciallysupportedbyapostdoctoralgrantfromtheKone Foundation.KirsiE.KeskinenwasfinanciallysupportedbyagrantfromJuho VainioFoundation.KyleEyvindsonwaspartiallyfinanciallysupportedfrom the Norwegian Research Council (NFR project 302701 Climate Smart Forestry Norway). Kaisa J. Raatikainen was a postdoctoral fellow of the School of Resource Wisdom. The study sponsors had no role in designing or writing the book chapter. Note 1 Studies exploring the potential displacement of carbon emissions from wood substitution highlight that, in general, substitution of wood decreases GHG emissions (Myllyviita et al., 2021). References Antrop, M. (2000) ‘Background concepts for integrated landscape analysis’, Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment, 77, pp. 17–28. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0167-8809(99)00089-4 Arroyo-Rodríguez, V. et al.(2020)‘Designingoptimalhuman-modifiedlandscapesforforest biodiversity conservation’, Ecology Letters, 23, pp. 1404–1420. https://doi.org/10.1111/ ele.13535 Benton, T.G., Vickery, J.A. and Wilson, J.D. (2003) ‘Farmland biodiversity: Is habitat heterogeneity the key?’, Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 18, pp. 182–188. https://doi.org/10.1016/ S0169-5347(03)00011-9 Blitzer, E.J. et al. (2012) ‘Spillover of functionally important organisms between managed and natural habitats’, Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment, 146, pp. 34–43. https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.agee.2011.09.005 Cameron, R.W.F et al. (2012) ‘The domestic garden—Its contribution to urban green infrastructure’, Urban Forestry & Urban Greening, 11(2), pp. 129–137. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.ufug.2012.01.002 Côté, P. et al. (2010) ‘Comparing different forest zoning options for landscape-scale managementoftheborealforest:PossiblebenefitsoftheTRIAD’,Forest Ecology and Management, 259(3), pp. 418–427. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2009.10.038 Crooks, K.R. and Sanjayan, M. (2006) Connectivity Conservation, Conservation biology. New York: Cambridge University Press. Dainese, M. et al.(2019)‘Aglobalsynthesisrevealsbiodiversity-mediatedbenefitsforcrop production’, Science Advances, 5, eaax0121. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aax0121
A landscape approach to planetary well-being 83 Duarte, G.T. et al. (2018) ‘The effects of landscape patterns on ecosystem services: Metaanalyses of landscape services’, Landscape Ecology, 33, pp. 1247–1257. https://doi. org/10.1007/s10980-018-0673-5 Duflot,R.,Fahrig,L.andMönkkönen,M.(2022)‘Managementdiversitybegetsbiodiversity in production forest landscapes’, Biological Conservation, 268, 109514. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.biocon.2022.109514 Duflot,R.et al. (2022) ‘Farming intensity indirectly reduces crop yield through negative effects on agrobiodiversity and key ecological functions’, Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment, 326, 107810. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agee.2021.107810 Duru, M. et al. (2015) ‘How to implement biodiversity-based agriculture to enhance ecosystem services: A review’, Agronomy for Sustainable Development, 35, pp. 1259–1281. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13593-015-0306-1 Eyvindson, K. et al. (2021) ‘High boreal forest multifunctionality requires continuous cover forestry as a dominant management’, Land Use Policy, 100, 104918. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2020.104918 Fahrig, L. et al. (2011) ‘Functional landscape heterogeneity and animal biodiversity in agricultural landscapes’, Ecology Letters, 14(2), pp. 101–112. https://doi.org/10.1111/ j.1461-0248.2010.01559.x FAO (2016) ‘Pollinators vital to our food supply under threat’, 26 February. Available at: https://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/384726/icode/ (Accessed: 28 April 2022). Faustmann, M. (1849) ‘Berechnung des Werthes, welchen Waldboden, sowie noch nicht haubare Holzbestande fur die Waldwirthschaft besitzen [Calculation of the value which forest land and immature stands possess for forestry]’, Allgemeine Fotstund JagdZeitung, 25, pp. 441–455. Forman, R.T.T. and Godron, M. (1981) ‘Patches and structural components for a landscape ecology’, Bioscience, 31(10), pp. 733–740. https://doi.org/10.2307/1308780 Grêt-Regamey, A. et al. (2021) ‘Harnessing sensing systems towards urban sustainability transformation’, npj Urban Sustainability, 1, p. 40. https://doi.org/10.1038/s42949-021-00042-w Haahtela, T. (2019) ‘A biodiversity hypothesis’, Allergy, 74, pp. 1445–1456. https://doi. org/10.1111/all.13763 Hilmers, T. et al. (2018) ‘Biodiversity along temperate forest succession’, Journal of Applied Ecology, 55(6), pp. 2756–2766. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2664.13238 Himes, A. et al.(2022)‘Perspectives:Thirtyyearsoftriadforestry,acriticalclarificationof theory and recommendations for implementation and testing’, Forest Ecology and Management, 510, 120103. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2022.120103 IPBES (2019) Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5517154 Jeanneret, Ph. et al. (2021) ‘Agroecology landscapes’, Landscape Ecology, 36, pp. 2235– 2257. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-021-01248-0 Kuuluvainen, T. et al. (2021) ‘Natural disturbance-based forest management: Moving beyond retention and continuous-cover forestry’, Frontiers in Forests and Global Ghange, 4. https://doi.org/10.3389/ffgc.2021.629020 Lepczyk, C.A. et al. (2017) ‘Biodiversity in the city: Fundamental questions for understanding the ecology of urban green spaces for biodiversity conservation’, BioScience, 67(9), pp. 799–807. https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/bix079 Li, C. et al. (2019) ‘Mechanisms and applications of green infrastructure practices for stormwater control: A review’, Journal of Hydrology, 568, pp. 626–637. https://doi.org/10.1016/ j.jhydrol.2018.10.074
90 Saana Kataja-aho and Jari Haimi mites and springtails, which chop up dead organic matter and increase the surfaces availableformicrobes.Ecosystemengineers(organismsthatsignificantlymodify or even create their habitat) process the soil habitat by feeding and burrowing activities, such as mixing organic and inorganic materials and affecting soil structure. Earthworms, ants, and termites are often referred to as soil engineers as theysignificantlymodifytheirhabitats.Micro-foodwebs,littertransformers,and ecosystem engineers operate in the complex soil environment in their own spatial, size and timescales (Wardle, 2002; Coleman, Callaham and Crossley, 2018). All these diverse functional groups contribute to major ecosystem processes such as nutrientcycling,carbontransformationandfurthertoformationandmodification of soil structure. In addition, although they live in their own microenvironments, soil organisms strongly interact with the populations of other organisms and eventually affect aboveground biodiversity. Climate regulation Nearly 80% of the carbon in Earth’s terrestrial ecosystems is found in soils (Lal, 2008; Eglinton et al., 2021). Correspondingly, the soil carbon pool is more than three times larger than that of the atmosphere (Oelkers and Cole, 2008). More than 60% of the soil carbon is organic carbon, dead organic matter at some stage of the decomposition process. The rest is soil inorganic carbon, or elemental carbon and carbonate materials (Lal, 2008). By being the major terrestrial pool of carbon, the soil carbon stock is critical for the global carbon cycle and for regulating Earth’s climate (Figure 6.1). Even a small change in the soil carbon pool can cause a large impact on atmospheric CO2 concentration (Crowther et al., 2016; Bispo et al., 2017). Soil processes also control the emissions and sequestrations oftheothersignificantgreenhousegases,suchasmethaneandnitrousoxide,and release aerosols to the atmosphere. In addition to being the reservoir of carbon, soilswithvegetationfixmorethanathirdofanthropogeniccarbonemissionstothe atmosphere. Further, soils contribute to Earth’s radiation balance, either positively or negatively, through evaporation and the albedo of Earth’s surface (Lal et al., 2021). Hence, the composition of atmosphere and consequently Earth’s climate are strongly related to the structure, composition, and processes of soils. Water retention and cleaning processes When rain reaches Earth’s surface, the water picks up varying amounts of different impurities, such as particles and chemicals. In rural settings and natural environments,mostrainwaterinfiltratesthroughthesoil.Partofthewateriscaptured alongthewaydowninthesoilprofile,reservedinsoilporespacesandgradually used by organisms that need water for their metabolism. Water is one raw material in photosynthesis, and nutrients needed in other biosyntheses (such as protein synthesis) are transported into plant tissues in the process of transpiration. As water
Soil processes are constituents of planetary well-being 91 passesthroughthesoilprofile,itiscleanedphysically,chemically,andbiologically. Soils with many grain sizes contain a matrix of pores of different sizes and can efficientlyfilterparticlesoutoftheinfiltratingwater(Figure6.1).Soilorganicmatter is, however, the most important in removing impurities from water (Ontl and Schulte, 2012). Most soils are negatively charged and hence they capture positively charged ions from soil water. These ions, inorganic forms of nutrients, are available for uptake by green plants and microbes, and also prevented from leaching into groundwater and surface waters. Many other chemicals are removed from the water as they become adsorbed into soil particles, for example through a process of covalent bonding. Moreover, many bacteria and fungi are capable of transforming and decomposing chemicals dissolved in water with appropriate enzymes. Even harmful anthropogenic organic chemicals, such as pesticides and solvents, can be metabolized by certain microbes (Cravo-Laureau et al., 2017; Pesce et al., 2020). Soils detoxify chemicals and prevent their problematic effects on non-target organisms and processes. In this way, they reserve and purify fresh water, which is a vital process for all terrestrial organisms, including human beings. Degradation and loss of soils Human impact on the Earth system is continuously intensifying, and land use for agriculture, livestock farming, and commercial forestry speed up the loss of biodiversity and habitat degradation (Vitousek et al., 1997; Goudie, 2019). Agricultural management practices and intensive forestry have also degraded soils physically, chemically, and biologically, for example, through erosion and loss of organic matter (Kaiser, 2004; Ontl and Schulte, 2012). These substantial changes in soil composition and structure may lead to serious inhibition of soil-driven ecosystem processes. Soilfoodwebshavebeenshowntobestronglychangedandsimplifiedunder more intensive management systems, such as increased use of fertilizers and pesticides,intensifiedtillage,useoflargerandheaviervehicles,andhighergrazing pressure (Bardgett, 2005). These changes are associated with increased nutrient leaching and carbon losses from the system. It also seems these changes in the soil food web structure may even be irreversible (ibid.). However, the reduction of organic matter losses from cultivated soils by using less intensive management practices and the addition of organic amendments could result in positive development in the abundance and diversity of soil biota and the intensity of soil-mediated ecosystem processes (Ontl and Schulte, 2012). Correspondingly, more sustainable management practices in forestry can increase soil health in forests. The constantly increasing global population and urbanization have drastically decreased the amount of soil that is organically and functionally part of ecosystems.Globally,hugeareasoflandhavebeensealedwithartificialimpenetrable surfaces for housing as well as for transport, industrial, and commercial infrastructure (Liu et al., 2014). Soil sealing leads to serious interference or total inhibition
92 Saana Kataja-aho and Jari Haimi of most ecosystem processes that either take place in the soil or are mediated by soils.Thisissimplybecauseofthelackoffluxesofwater,matter,andelements between belowground and aboveground settings and the disappearance of soil– plantinteractions.Inurbanizedareas,watercanflowoverthesealedsoilsurface and transport impurities and nutrients to water courses or surface-water drains. The strain on the water systems may result in eutrophication and pollution of streams and lakes and thereby drastically decrease the quality of these water basins as habitatforaquaticorganismssuchasfishes,mussels,andplankton.Furthermore,water contamination decreases the quality of human drinking water, while large-scale soil sealing permanently disturbs carbon and nutrient cycling in urban areas (Lu, Kotze and Setälä, 2020). Sealed soils also become unavailable as habitats for any organisms, with the exception of a few microbes. Soildegradationalsoaffectsthemitigationofclimatechange.Thefixationofcarbon emissions by vegetated soils is endangered because of human-induced environmental change (Eglinton et al., 2021; Lal et al., 2021). Especially, the amount of soil organiccarbonisacriticalcomponentwhichcontrolssoil–atmospherecarbonfluxand climatechange.Airtemperatureandprecipitationsignificantlyaffectsoilprocesses and, consequently, soil organic carbon stocks, while climate change may destabilize these stocks. The feedbacks may be large and unpredictable especially in the soils in northern permafrost regions. In addition, soil organic carbon stocks are prone to human land use changes. As a rule, intensive land use (deforestation, industrial agriculture, increasing mining and construction) increases the release of carbon from the soil to the atmosphere. Thus, all actions that minimize anthropogenic soil disturbance can help to restrainclimatechange.Sequestrationofcarboninsoilsefficientlymitigateschanges in the climate and environment that are evolutionarily too rapid. Concluding remarks Soils play a crucial role in numerous ecosystem and global processes that enable the existence and well-being of terrestrial organisms, from microbes and fungi to plants and animals, including humans (Figure 6.1). Conversely, those vital processes do not occur with the proper strength and frequency if organisms living in the soil are disturbed in a way that they are unable to play their roles in their communities. Soil organisms and processes, therefore, are an excellent example of how susceptible and fragile the integrity of the Earth system is and how important certain parts of the ecosystem can be for planetary well-being (Kortetmäki et al., 2021).Although human well-being has not specifically been addressed in this chapter, all soil-driven and soil-mediated processes are also essential for human well-being: Soils provide many of the ecosystem services that humankind (regardless of all technological development) still requires (see Chapter 5). For example, local populations of pollinators in cool regions depend on overwintering in soil, and human practices that degrade or seal soil with impermeable
Soil processes are constituents of planetary well-being 93 surfaces harm this overwintering process, which in turn reduces the pollination success of food crops and further decreases food production for both humans and nonhumans. Moreover, the cultivation of food and forage crops requires arable land where soil fertility is maintained by soil structure and processes. If soil in an area is disturbed either physically, chemically, or biologically, vegetation will respondandreciprocallyaffectsoilproperties,whichunderminesbeneficialfood production conditions, with direct and indirect harmful impacts on human and nonhuman well-being. Soil disturbances that are strong enough and large enough are reflectedalsoatthelandscapelevel. If human activity steadily and increasingly degrades soils by, for example, decreasing the amount of soil organic matter and changing the soil structure, soils cannot deliver the ecosystem services they used to offer. Human activities that have a strong negative effect on soil health include, for example, deforestation, intensificationofagricultureandlivestockfarming,andtheenlargementofurbanized areas. Soil degradation impairs the typical characteristics and capacities of myriad organisms, not only soil decomposers but also those inhabiting soils during a certain part of their life cycles, to the level where ecosystem-level and global processes do not function properly. At that stage, the integrity of the Earth system could be irreversibly lost. When humanity cares for the health of soil, it is also taking care of the well-being of both human and nonhuman organisms and contributing to planetary well-being. Acknowledgements We are grateful to the editorial team for their valuable comments on our earlier versions of this chapter, and Matt Wuethrich for language checking. Thanks to Boost project of Janne Kotiaho for supporting the language check. We thank Photogrunskis for the great illustration they prepared for our chapter. References Anderson, J.M. (2000) ‘Food web functioning and ecosystem processes: Problems and perceptions of scaling’, in Coleman, D.C. and Hendrix, P.F. (eds.) Invertebrates as Webmasters in Ecosystems. Wallingford, CT: CAB International, pp. 3–24. Bardgett, R. (2005) The Biology of Soils. A Community and Ecosystem Approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bispo, A. et al. (2017) ‘Accounting for carbon stocks in soils and measuring GHGs emissionfluxesfromsoils:Dowehavethenecessarystandards?’,Frontiers in Environmental Science, 5(41). https://doi.org/10.3389/fenvs.2017.00041 Callaham, M.A. Jr. et al. (2000) ‘Feeding ecology and emergence production of annual cicadas (Homoptera: Cicadidae) in tallgrass prairie’, Oecologia, 123, pp. 535–542. https:// doi.org/10.1007/s004420000335 Coleman, D.C., Callaham, M.A. Jr. and Crossley, D.A. Jr. (2018) Fundamentals of Soil Ecology. 3rd edn. Cambridge, MA: Academic Press, Elsevier.
94 Saana Kataja-aho and Jari Haimi Cravo-Laureau, C. et al. (2017) Microbial Ecotoxicology. Cham: Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61795-4 Crowther, T.W. et al. (2016) ‘Quantifying global soil carbon losses in response to warming’, Nature, 540, pp. 104–108. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature20150 Eglinton, T.I. et al. (2021) ‘Climate control on terrestrial biospheric carbon turnover’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(8), e2011585118. https://doi. org/10.1073/pnas.2011585118 FAO (2021) FAO Soils Portal. Available at: https://www.fao.org/soils-portal/about/alldefinitions/en/(Accessed:12December2021). FAO et al. (2020) State of Knowledge of Soil Biodiversity – Status, Challenges and Potentialities. Rome: FAO. https://doi.org/10.4060/cb1928en Fogel, R. (1985) ‘Roots as primary producers in below-ground ecosystems’, in Fitter, A.H. et al. (eds.) Ecological Interactions in Soil: Plants, Microbes and Animals. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 23–36. Goudie, A.S. (2019) Human Impact on Natural Environment. 8th edn. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell. Jenny, H. (1941) Factors of Soil Formation. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company. Johnsson, D.L. and Johnsson, D.N. (2010) ‘A holistic and universal view of soil’, Proceedings of the 19th World Soil Congress, pp. 1–4. Available at: https://www.iuss. org/19th%20WCSS/Symposium/pdf/0454.pdf (Accessed: 12 December 2021). Kaiser, J. (2004) ‘Wounding earth’s fragile skin’, Science, 304, pp. 1616–1618. https://doi. org/10.1126/science.304.5677.1616 Kortetmäki, T. et al. (2021) ‘Planetary well-being’, Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 8, p. 258. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-021-00899-3 Lal, R. (2008) ‘Carbon sequestration’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, B 363, pp. 815–830. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2007.2185 Lal, R. et al. (2021) ‘The role of soil in regulating climate’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, B 376, 20210084. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2021.0084 Liu, Z. et al. (2014) ‘How much of the world’s land has been urbanized, really? A hierarchical framework for avoiding confusion’, Landscape Ecology, 29, pp. 763–771. https://doi. org/10.1007/s10980-014-0034-y Lu, C., Kotze, D.J. and Setälä, H.M. (2020) ‘Soil sealing causes substantial losses in C and N storage in urban soils under cool climate’, Science of the Total Environment, 725, 138369. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.138369 McCormack, M.L. et al. (2015) ‘Redefining fine roots improves understanding of below-ground contributions to terrestrial biosphere processes’, New Phytologist, 207, pp. 505–518. https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.13363 Oelkers, E.H. and Cole, D.R. (2008) ‘Carbon dioxide sequestration: A solution to the global problem’, Elements, 4, pp. 305–310. https://doi.org/10.2113/gselements.4.5.305 Ontl, T.A. and Schulte, L.A. (2012) ‘Soil carbon storage’, Nature Education Knowledge, 3(10), p. 35. Oxford English Dictionary (2021). Available at: https://www.oed.com (Accessed: 30 November 2021). Pesce, S. et al. (2020) ‘Editorial: Microbial ecotoxicology’, Frontiers in Microbiology, 11, 1342. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2020.01342 Ritchie, H. and Roser, M. (2013) Land Use. Available at: https://ourworldindata.org/landuse (Accessed: 5 August 2022).
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PART III Challenging the economic imperative
Introduction As explained in the introduction of this book, planetary well-being is a state that impartially acknowledges human and nonhuman well-being as a part of healthy Earth systems and ecosystems (Kortetmäki et al., 2021). In this chapter, environmental history is used to add a temporal perspective to understanding planetary well-being. As the realization of planetary well-being requires, for instance, restraints to the human use of natural resources, it is necessary to look into the past and ask, “What has prevented less anthropocentric conceptions of well-being from thriving and why?” This is all the more important since historically, it has been typical for modern industrial societies to promote an understanding of well-being with a sociocentric1 emphasis with little to no attention paid to the well-being of either other species or future human generations. Thissociocentricemphasis,whileoftentakenforgranted,notonlysimplifies our reality enormously into mere social needs but has also been criticized for easily turning both nature and humans into mere resources for societal (economic) needs (Connolly, 2017). This chapter presents an example of how this tendency can be understoodhistoricallyinthefieldofpolitics,inwhichtheadaptationofamore ecocentricframeworkforwell-beinghasprovenparticularlydifficult. Examples of different conceptualizations given to sustainable development over time by global and national actors, such as the European Union (EU) and the Green Parties in Finland and Germany, demonstrate how our understanding of well-being develops in time entangled with our social processes. We analyze why the practical implications of a non-anthropocentric understanding of wellbeinghavenotflourishedandhowdifferentpathdependenciesandsocialneeds provide incentives for a drawback that typically occurs despite good intentions. 7 AN ECONOMIC TAIL WAGGING AN ECOLOGICAL DOG? WELL-BEING ANDSUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF ENTANGLED HISTORY Risto-Matti Matero and Atte Arffman DOI: 10.4324/9781003334002-11
106 Risto-Matti Matero and Atte Arffman programme, although a shift to green growth ideology had already happened in 1991 (Die Grünen, 2002, p. 28). The discussion to radically re-conceptualize the anthropocentric and growth-oriented understanding of well-being disappeared from party programmes, as the focus turned back on an economically oriented understanding of well-being. Finnish Greens were explicitly afraid of losing competitiveness if green technology was not to be developed for exportation (Vihreä Liitto, 1994), using environmental politics as tools for the economy. The explicit reasons for the turn were notably unideological in nature in Green argumentation: There was a pragmatic need to adapt to a system that demanded certain preconditions to be taken as granted in order to access power. The Finnish Greens felt this harshly in the 1991 government negotiations: During an era of depression, they had no possibilities for governmental cooperation with a growthcritical programme (Isotalo, 2007a). As statements from leading Green politicians reveal,manyGreenactorswerefocusedonmaintainingpoliticalinfluence,which wasperceivedasaprerequisitetoactefficientlyinthenewparadigm.InFinland, Green environmental minister Pekka Haavisto pointed out how nothing would have been accomplished with the attitude of the NGOs after NGO criticism started to build up towards the Greens’ government participation (Isotalo, 2007b); in Germany, realo Green Hubert Kleinert was explicitly afraid of the party dying out entirelyiftheywouldfailtofind“efficient”meanstoparticipateinpolitics(Kleinert, 1991, p. 35). These quotes provide just a few of the many examples in which Green actors thus felt compelled to adapt to the presuppositions of the surrounding discoursesinordertobecomemoreefficientinthepoliticalfield. “Race to the bottom” in a nutshell In order to understand these development patterns as path-dependent, their outcome would have had to be somewhat predictable, since stepping away from the path would have become increasingly costly. This is precisely the case here. As an initial step, European politicians started demanding the surpassing of state-led industry regulation policies (and other obstacles to economic productivity), with demands of re-allocating responsibility to the consumer. Second, as one country created favourable competitive conditions, others felt compelled to follow, causinga“racetothebottom”thatbecameincreasinglydifficulttostop.Finally,as Green parties wanted to participate in national-level decision-making, they found themselvesinsituationsinwhichefficientmeanstoparticipateinpoliticswere already tied to a path-dependent repetition of promoting industry competitiveness. Thus, the representative political system did not allow decision power to those who drifted too far away from the cultural normalcy of sociocentric premises, causing the focus to shift from ecological to economic perspectives. The example of what happened to Green parties in the 1990s in the pressure of new market-friendly environmentalism demonstrates the kind of path dependencies that tend to draw radical thinking back towards a state of normalcy when
An economic tail wagging an ecological dog? 107 entering the realm of politics. As Mahoney pointed out, changing a system at any given time is more costly than returning to the path-dependent sequences already inusethatprovideimmediatebenefits.Thisisaprimeexampleofasituationwhere “actors rationally choose to reproduce institutions […] because any potential benefitsoftransformationareoutweighedbythecosts”(Mahoney,2000,pp.507–512). Re-allocating responsibility to the individual consumer was the most predictable outcome also among other parties participating in this “race to the bottom”. Political actors in individual countries felt compelled to adapt to this changing paradigm (Olsen, 2019). Here, Green parties are examples of the same hegemonic nature of market-oriented thinking in Western political culture4 that was in the process of strengthening in other parties during the 1980s and 1990s due to the globalization of the economy. When addressing this development, it is worth noting that these path dependencies are not entirely deterministic, as they take place in the form of “expectations”, as mentioned above (Mahoney, 2000). Expectations, however, are thoroughly subjective and discursively constructed. Economist Mariana Mazzucato has claimed that the deregulatory framework associating competitiveness with complete freedom of the markets is based on a “discursive battle”, with political incentives driving the discourse that is eventually taken for granted once it has achieved a hegemonic status. These discourses “reproduce stereotypes and images which serve only ideological ends”, she claims, as presumed market punishments that supposedly follow market interventions are not true in any empirical sense but merely discursively assumed (Mazzucato, 2014, pp. 1–13). Beliefs play a major role in such discursive games: As John Dryzek (2005a) has pointed out, it has been the beliefofsustaininginvestorconfidenceinfearofmarketpunishmentsthathas driven politicians to emphasize competitiveness over other values that they might personally endorse. Breaking free from such fear-based path dependencies is thus not a question of political realities but of political will. Conceptually, the emphasis on economic competitiveness has led to a consumerist change in the meanings given to sustainable development, as discussed above. Jeremy Caradonna (2018, pp. 154–158) pointed out that even the sustainable development discourse started out as “a radical departure from the status quo of industrial growth”, an attempt to reconcile a compromise between the needs of human and nonhuman well-being. When the concept of sustainable consumption was developed in political language in the early 1990s, the sustainable development discourse had already turned into an attempt to stand by the materialistically understood conception of well-being, although with the add-on of not jeopardizing the needs of future (human) generations (Akenji, 2019). The compromise to start using the concept in a more market-compliant manner linked the whole concept with an anthropocentric and materialistic understanding of well-being, thus turning the focus away from new ideals to the market-oriented framework of growth and competitiveness (Dryzek, 2005b). Furthermore, this compromise created a contradiction between the stated goals and the means used to get there, as environmental
108 Risto-Matti Matero and Atte Arffman responsibility was simultaneously re-allocated to individual consumers in order to enhance industry competitiveness. Based on this development, Lewis Akenji (2019, p. 14) pointed out how green consumerism “lays the responsibility on consumers to undertake the function of maintaining economic growth while simultaneously, contradictorily and with limited agency, bearing the burden to drive the socio-economic system towards ecological sustainability”. Our social conceptualizations of well-being are also connected to entanglements with nature. However, as these conceptualizations are drawn back to anthropocentrism, they tend to blind us from the needs of Earth systems, on which all human well-being is nevertheless still based. This seems to be precisely what occurred in environmental politics in the 1990s. As the social zeitgeist of the decade promoted globalization (Kananen, 2008), the needs of the Earth’s systems, as well as thethreatscausedbyadvancingclimatechange,desertification,andbiodiversity loss, mattered little (Caradonna, 2018). Instead of labelling these decisions “greenwashing”, as some scholars (e.g. ibid.)havedone,wefinditmoreconstructiveto understand these turns as path dependencies that can be carefully analyzed and understood as rational drawbacks, caused by the understandable need to be effectiveinthefieldofpolitics,andthatcanbeavoidedoncedetected.Aspoliticians are making decisions based on short-term expectations of economic and political benefits,thepressuretoadapttoourculturalneedsisimmenselystrong,whichis why radical visions of well-being have tended to fall back to a state of sociocentric normalcy. Once these expectations are understood as part of discursive and ideological development, they can be questioned and potentially abandoned. This would require enough political courage and imagination to abandon the everyday presuppositions that have so far guided political decision-making. Conclusion Looking at environmental political ideas and concepts from the perspective of entangled history opens up new research questions. There is an increasing need to understand the reasons behind the beliefs and ideas that guide political thinking back to a state of sociocentric normalcy. We have mapped some key elements that affect how well-being is conceptualized in politics and to whom well-being is attributed. As environmental political goals are moving in a more moderate directionwhilespeciesextinction,desertification,oceanacidity,andclimatechange, among other issues, are rapidly advancing, we conclude that the key incentives for this development have not lied in ecological needs but rather in economic, humanoriented needs, based on political, social, and economic path dependencies. The case of sustainable development and its effects on Green parties is merely one example of a much larger phenomenon that environmental history can make visible: Our understanding of well-being being driven back towards a state of anthropocentricnormalcyinordertoactefficientlywithinsocialstructures.From the perspective of entanglements, the danger of feeling compelled to return to
An economic tail wagging an ecological dog? 109 normalcy in political decision-making is closely connected with the well-being of the nonhuman nature, as the positive effects of political action on the environment can diminish. Therefore, it is of vital importance to detect and analyze the causes of these drawbacks in order to start developing effective strategies on how to manifest planetary well-being without losing its paradigm-shifting nature in contexts of action, such as politics. Approaching the issue this way opens up another, perhaps more important question: How can we break free from these path dependencies? In other words, how can we break free from the deterministic perception of politics that resorts to shortterm calculations as a mandatory must in a globalizing world? How can we not let aneconomictailwaganecologicaldog?Thefirststepinthisdirectionwouldbe to understand that the presumably unavoidable perspectives to politics are, in fact, always discursively constructed and forged to seem as if there are no alternatives to them. In our examples, such assumptions have been taken for granted, causing a drawback in ideas that attempt to escape the status quo inthefieldofpolitics. Weareremindedofhoweasilyanewsetofideas,nomatterhowbeneficial and innovative, gets drawn back when it is put to use in contexts of action, such as politics, in which effective action is path-dependent on older models of conduct and thought. Stepping out of these models requires stepping out of a sociocentric understanding of well-being. This requires political will, courage, and imagination to look outside the self-created box. Meanwhile, historical research itself can do its part in challenging old ways of thinking by developing a theory embedded in entangled humanism rather than in purely anthropocentric grounds. Notes 1 The term is used somewhat interchangeably with “anthropocentrism”, but is also laden with social values, such as the economic measurement of well-being. 2 The Molitor report proposals are directly quoted in the Commission’s commentary. 3 This idea was examined more thoroughly in the upcoming dissertation of Risto-Matti Matero (2023) currently in review. 4 Meaning here primarily Western liberal democracies. Primary sources Die Grünen (1980) Das Bundesprogramm [Federal Programme]. Berlin: Heinrich Böll Stiftung. Available at: https://www.boell.de/sites/default/files/assets/boell.de/images/ download_de/publikationen/1980_001_Grundsatzprogramm_Die_Gruenen.pdf (Accessed: 16 December 2022). Die Grünen (2002) Die Zukunft ist grün [The future is green]. Berlin: Heinrich Böll Stiftung. Available at: https://boell.de/sites/default/files/assets/boell.de/images/download_de/ publikationen/2002_003_Grundsatzprogramm_Buendnis90DieGruenen.pdf (Accessed: 16 December 2022). European Commission (1993) ‘‘Towards sustainability’: The European Community programme of policy and action in relation to the environment and sustainable development’, Official Journal of the European Communities C138.
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Introduction The planetary well-being approach emphasizes the need to protect vital natural processes in order to secure the well-being of both human and nonhuman nature. While the current hegemonic concept framing the balance between human needs and environmental protection is evidently “sustainable development”, planetary well-being departs from this idea, offering a more holistic approach and a stronger emphasis on nonhuman nature (hereafter nature) beyond its instrumental value. But to tap the full potential of the planetary well-being concept, insights from other disciplines should be used to complement its core ideas. In this chapter, we lay out a perspective from critical development studies. Critical development studies assists us to understand the shortcomings of the sustainable development approach. It highlights how “development” as a practice and a mindset has shaped our understanding of societal problems and solutions, and how current ideas about development (and hence also sustainable development, despite the recent broadening of its agenda) stand in the way of progress towards the aims of planetary wellbeing. Critical development studies also provides ideas that are complementary to planetary well-being by emphasizing the need to recognize the diversity of knowledge systems and hence of relevant ways of relating to the natural environment, as well as the role of global economic patterns in creating and sustaining inequalities. These insights assist planetary well-being theory to understand the systems of power and inequality which current “development” subtly advocates and operates within, as the theory moves towards addressing the needs of human societies and the planet. This chapter explicates and illustrates the critical development studies approach and how it can contribute to planetary well-being. We begin with a critical 8 LOCAL KNOWLEDGE AND GLOBAL JUSTICE From hegemonic development to planetary well-being Teppo Eskelinen, Veera Joro and Godfred Obeng DOI: 10.4324/9781003334002-12
114 Teppo Eskelinen et al. assessment of the meaning of development, focusing on its role as an epistemic monoculture and hierarchical system. This is done by means of a literature review. Then we apply ideas from the reviewed literature to a case study on climate change and cash crop cultivation, to illustrate the differences between sustainable development and planetary well-being approaches. The chapter closes with a discussion and conclusions. The problems of development as we know it As a concept, development appears to capture the human striving for progress, and it describes both a culture of modernity and an economic policy programme. Thanks to these associations, development easily becomes self-justificatory: As development is equated with progress, everything that falls under the label of development can claim to be positive. Moreover, it is the basis for policy interventions. When problems such as persistent poverty and environmental destruction are noted, development emerges as the suggested framework to design the remedies. For these reasons, it is particularly important to scrutinize the concept critically. Development is traditionally understood as economic growth, and as instrumental in foregrounding the grand target of achieving “the end of poverty” (Sachs, 2005). It is associated with the Enlightenment tradition along with advances in science, transport, healthcare, and the like. But the culture underlying these advances also entails the perception of human beings as superior, “estranged” and “separated” from nature (Diaz Cruz, 2020), leading to attempts to dominate nature as human beings see themselves as the only measure of true value (Purser, Park and Montuori, 1995). Through the process, nature has come to be seen as primarily a resource stock (Abedi-Servastani and Shahvali, 2008), leading to a reckless exploitation of the environment. Abilities to explain and control the natural world have also impacted upon the attitude of the “developed” towards other knowledge systems (Nygren, 1999). A myriad of cultures and related knowledges about local nature have been deemed “backwards”, inferior, or even incapable of reason. During the colonial era, subjects in the colonies faced discrimination as their supposed proximity to nature constituted an excuse for their domination. While less explicit and appearing in a more benevolent guise today, the notion of “the third world” (Escobar, 1995) and the perception of “underdevelopment” as an undignified condition (Esteva, 1992) continue to legitimize interventions among the “underdeveloped” for both the implementers and recipients of this intervention (Escobar, 1995). Furthermore, justifying policy processes in terms of development has meant the enforcement of market relations and rights, as well as a shift of ownership patterns away from communal ownership (Bryant, 1998). Within cultures of modernity, the state and the market are often seen as mutually exclusive domains, and in practical terms development has meant precisely the enforcement of these two locations of power at the expense of the community.
Local knowledge and global justice 115 Not only a process but also a criterion, development became the epistemological basis of how “good quality of life” was understood in terms of a command of goods with market value as well as specific kinds of relationships between states and individuals (Rist, 2007), rendering other relationships invisible. The resulting measures and approaches reflected the attempt to universalize the lifestyles of the global North. Later, these ideas about quality of life were rationalized into technical indicators (Bhuta, Malito and Umbach, 2018), the most prominent being of course the Gross Domestic Product. As the standards and benchmarks used to measure “high quality of life” directly reflect Northern lifestyles, in effect maximizing consumption, they are in direct conflict with many other value systems. Anecdotally, for example, many Andean populations critique Western notions of development as increased material production and consumption (Carbonnier et al., 2017). Rather, there exists the multi-level world theories which influence and enrich the overarching concept of “buen vivir” or “good living” which generally depicts development not as an end or achievement of the state but as an ongoing process of enhancing nature-community living (ibid.). In addition to organising and assessing states’ performance, development can be also seen as the name and justification for the existing global political order. In this sense it shapes and upholds existing global relations, such as the lock-in of the colonized countries’ role as producers of a single unrefined crop. While development is justified as a discourse based on the notion of poorer countries “catching up” economically with wealthier ones, the global economic system has pushed economic disparities to an unprecedented level. Market relations, which are at the heart of cultures of development, mean that distributive logics do not follow human needs but market demands, which is strictly contrary to the idea of planetary wellbeing. Economic disparities are also intertwined with disparities in political power and epistemological dominance. Recently, there has been a further expansion of economic relations. The development of the modern market society has meant a globalization of resources and externalities, with negative externalities allocated to already disadvantaged social categories and regions (Hornborg, 2009). The cultural ideas underlying modernity and capitalism, according to which nature can be treated as “resources” or “raw material”, have been combined with the globalization of those ideas and the markets for those resources. This has led to new and destructive patterns of relating to nature. Such processes have also paved way for phenomena such as land-grabbing and capture (Abernethy et al., 2017), and the privatization of state property around the global South. Alternative pathways: Development as usual or something else? To sum up, despite the progress associated with development, seeing the world as essentially comprising nations at different “development levels” implicitly justifies the downplaying of global hierarchies and a culture that is destructive to the natural
122 Teppo Eskelinen et al. well-being of specific natural ecosystems in order to understand the conditions of human well-being in specific locations. The sustainable development approach would mean adapting to existing conditions as far as possible, securing responsible action within the domains under each institution’s or individual’s control, but accepting the constraints of export orientation, consumer power, and existing systems of trade governance. Farmers could practise mixed cropping, shift to other regions if necessary, and participate in certification schemes that would increase the value of their produce in the eyes of powerful global consumers. Possibly, farmers could also gain access to best practices from other regions. What is omitted in this discourse is questions related to the global division of labour, the allocation of vulnerabilities, local epistemologies, and the room for manoeuvre available to different societal positions. It is also unclear what sustainable development posits as the goal of cocoa farmers. Is there any “catch-up”, or just the perennially unequal global organization? Is there increased refinement, new and diverse production methods, or improved food security with more diverse produce? Most importantly, is there any recognized relationship with one’s natural environment other than an instrumental one? Planetary well-being, on the other hand, suggests a holistic approach. It respects limits in terms of both planetary boundaries and the protection of local ecosystems, but it also posits the empowerment of producers so that a needs-driven approach will replace existing power structures. If we are trying to understand the conditions of well-being, it is necessary to learn about local perceptions, and to ask questions about the wellbeing of nature from a non-anthropocentric perspective. It needs to be noted too that local perceptions matter, beyond confirming what science already tells us. Local environmental knowledge has an important role to play in altering environmentally destructive behaviour, but it might have a limited impact if individuals feel powerless to change the wider system. Farmers construct their relationship with nature based on both the general conditions of cultivation (largely impacted by climate change) and their own approach to farming (for example, opting for organic farming). But it is the broader system of markets that determines what is produced, and most drivers of environmental change are beyond the control of local farmers. Discussion Above, we have critically presented the concept and practice of development and the fundamental tension it involves, illustrating our points with a case study. On one hand, development is an effort towards progress: To utilize existing knowledge for the benefit of the whole of humanity. Its achievements need to be noted. Hence, development goals tend to be ambitious and expressed in very ethical rhetoric (Eskelinen, 2018). But development (as both a process and an intervention) can and should also be seen critically as (1) a project to undo locally relevant forms of knowing and relating to the immediate environment, in favour of an epistemological
Local knowledge and global justice 123 monoculture and an approach that sees nature in terms of resources to be utilized on the global market; (2) a process of universalizing market relations; (3) the making of a set of global hierarchies; (4) the setting of criteria for quality of life that are informed by these relationships and hierarchies. Understanding development entails understanding it both as progress and as a manifestation of all these aspects. So, what can critical development studies bring to planetary well-being? We need to note that theoretical ideas always carry old patterns of thought, and if not critically scrutinized these old ideas may unintentionally inform the new ideas too. Planetary well-being theory thus risks taking on dominant ideas about development if their roots and impact are not properly recognized. Critical development studies provides tools to analyze these dominant ideas. Not only can development studies help us to find new ways of understanding the root problems of this crisis and to engage with alternative visions, but it can also help to expand discussions of planetary well-being by framing the domain of the issue and where solutions may exist. It sheds light on the power relations that currently exist and need to be unmade if holistic well-being is to be pursued. While development as a practice and idea is not homogenous, its core ideas persist in subtly justifying a culture that portrays nature as a resource stock and is based on seeing various people and cultures as inferior precisely because of their supposed proximity to nature. Even though ideas evolve, this core of development thinking remains strong. These ideas need to be understood, especially in terms of how they form obstacles to more holistic ideas of well-being and how they creep into ostensibly progressive approaches such as sustainable development. While it needs to be noted that the distinction between business as usual and alternatives is not always clear-cut—for example, resourcist approaches can be incorporated into very critical accounts, such as discussions of ecological boundaries—it is important to understand how development as an idea and practice works. Crucially, even alternative approaches to development reconceptualize the dynamics of human society, rather than human–nature relationships. But there evidently remain human societies that are unable to even meet basic needs, and therefore there is a genuine need to ensure that all human beings can enjoy a dignified life. This entails an economic aspect: Farmers keep farming to achieve necessary material goods too. While the existence of poverty continues to be the justification for development, it is crucial to rearticulate the need to meet existing wants in accordance with planetary well-being values. Planetary well-being is not about romanticizing poverty, but about showing the connections between the well-being of humans and nonhuman nature—and we can add that it is necessary to see the diversity of possible vocabularies of the good life and progress. Human beings always contemplate their relationships with nature, use various vocabularies, and attach different meanings to nature. It needs to be asked what kind of knowledge is privileged and recognized as relevant in the fight against environmental destruction (Kaijser and Kronsell, 2014). Environmental protection
124 Teppo Eskelinen et al. involves more than state-level environmental policies to meet today’s needs without compromising those of the future (Brundtland, 1987), or “resource efficiency”: It is a call for human beings to reconsider their relationship with the environment, and various sources of ideas and inspiration are needed for this. Our case study showed that farmers are constantly contemplating changes in nature based on their experience, and seeking solutions with available methods. Yet their room for manoeuvre is curtailed by uneven relations in the global economy, epistemology, environmental damage, and risk allocation. Farmers have some room for manoeuvre, some space for their experiences and interpretations to be heard, and some share of responsibility for mitigating climate change, but this space is limited by economic and epistemological inequalities. Well-being should be seen not only as a matter of meeting certain baselines, but as a quality and virtue of society, extending from local communities to global society. Seen in this way, the issue is not to overcome poverty, but to overcome material inequalities and epistemological hierarchies. It is necessary to see the various facets of inequality: Wealth, political power, and cultural dominance. Crucially, inequalities are not arbitrary or caused by variations in individual achievements; rather, they are outcomes of long historical processes and economic and cultural structures. In the context of environmental protection, it should be noted that the level of responsibility for environmental damage varies significantly between individuals, groups of people, and nations. The planetary well-being approach helps us to unfold these various and overlapping aspects and understand how they intertwine, rather than managing policy within the system as it exists. The approach emphasizes that the depletion of natural processes also disables human well-being: Critical development studies complements this notion by emphasizing that the means of well-being are dependent on context. Not all means of well-being can be reduced to resources, and hence not even to resource efficiency. Other perceptions of human–nature relationships may be more relevant for promoting general planetary well-being. References Abedi-Servastani, A. and Shahvali, M. (2008) ‘Ecology and ethics: Some relationships for nature conservation’, Journal of Applied Sciences, 8(4), pp. 715–718. https://doi.org/10.3923/ jas.2008.715.718 Abernethy, P. et al. (2017) ‘Leverage points for sustainability transformation’, Ambio, 46, pp. 30–39. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-016-0800-y Ameyaw, L. et al. (2018) ‘Cocoa and climate change: Insights from smallholder cocoa producers in Ghana regarding challenges in implementing climate change mitigation strategies’, Forests, 9(12), pp. 742. https://doi.org/10.3390/f9120742 Anim-Kwapong, G.J. and Frimpong, E.B. (2008) ‘Climate change on cocoa production’, in Agyeman-Bonsu, W. (ed.) Ghana Climate Change Impacts, Vulnerability and Adaptation Assessments under the Netherlands Climate Assistance Programme (NCAP). New Tafo Akim: Environmental Protection Agency, pp. 263–298.
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Unsustainability in consumption and business Marketing, consumption, and planetary well-being Consumption or the acquisition of goods and services has reached a level that the planet cannot sustain from the viewpoint of securing long-term human wellbeing, let alone securing the prospects of nonhuman well-being. Satisfying human needs depletes resources on a scale that compromises the well-being of nonhuman species. Marketing is the engine that stimulates consumption (Kotler, 2011) and, consequently, the use of enormous amounts of natural resources. The interconnected areas of consumption and marketing have important roles in facilitating the transition towards sustainable consumption (McDonagh and Prothero, 2014) that respects planetary well-being (Kortetmäki et al., 2021). Due to the increasing awareness of the current ecological crisis and the risks it poses, companies integrate sustainability into their strategies and practices. Nevertheless, in the quest for business growth, revenues, and returns on investment, companies continue to feed excessive consumption (Gabler, Landers and Richey, 2021), subordinating ecological concerns to these goals. As marketing and consumption have severe adverse effects on PW, sustainable marketing, which reduces the damage, can even be considered an oxymoron. Concern for nature is seldom presentinmarketingdefinitionsandpractices,withafewexceptions.Macro-level, critical marketing approaches have been called for to foster harmonious relationships between marketing, consumption, and nature (McDonagh and Prothero, 2014).Martin(2013,p.18)stressedtheroleofnaturebydefiningsustainablemarketing as “a process of creating, communicating and delivering value to customers in ways that ensure maintaining and recovering both natural and human capital”. 9 CONSUMPTION AND PLANETARY WELL-BEING Jessie Do, Mitra Salimi, Stefan Baumeister, MillaSarja, Outi Uusitalo, Terhi-Anna Wilska and JohannaSuikkanen DOI: 10.4324/9781003334002-13
Consumption and planetary well-being 129 Apart from emphasizing that marketing should be ecologically sustainable, socially just, and economically enduring, she stated that it has persuasive power and can thus be used to encourage everyone to pay attention to nonhuman needs. Persuasive communicative tools can aid in mainstreaming consumption patterns that do not compromise many species’ opportunities to achieve well-being. Instead of endlesslyfosteringthegrowthofthedemandforandconsumptionofeco-efficient goods and services, sustainable marketing should acknowledge the systemic view and the delicate balance between human and nonhuman needs to support rather than endanger ecosystem processes. Companies seeking to comply with the PW premises can take more or less effective alternative routes to marketing. Usually, companies opt to make incremental changes, focusing on single sustainability actions, such as increasing their ecoefficiencyoraddinggreenproductstotheirproductranges(Press,2021).However, single acts would not address the ecological crisis but would signal weak sustainability,whichassertsthatnaturalresourcescanbeexploitedtoincreaseprofits. Assumingthatthebenefitsofeconomicgrowthcompensateforthelossofnatural resources and ecosystem services (ibid.), weak sustainability does not lead to changes in the logic of the growth and depletion of resources. The strong-sustainability approach rejects substitutability and requires maintaining and protecting the natural capital in the ecosystem (Dietz and Neumayer, 2007). This implies creating systemic changes, respecting the intrinsic value of nature in marketing, and altering everyday consumption practices, including reducing consumption levels (Geels et al., 2015; Press, 2021). Awareness of the negative impacts of excessive consumption has catalyzed alternative markets, the use of second-hand items, sharing, recycling, and the circular economy (CE). Deepening concern about nature gives reason to setting conditions for and boundaries to consumers’andmarketers’practices.Anexampleofsuchanormissufficiency, definedbyGossen,Ziesemer,andSchrader(2019,p.252)as“theabsolutereduction of the resources and energy used for consumption by questioning the level of demand”. Limited consumption can be hard to achieve when consumers expect certain social and cultural patterns of everyday life dictated by the consumerist culture (Kortetmäki et al., 2021). These demands drive consumers to go beyond the level of consumption that only meets their personal needs and that decreases the possibilities of satisfying nonhuman needs. In these cases, taking incremental steps in sustainability can be a practical way of achieving stronger sustainability over the course of time. Marketing is based on an anthropocentric ideology that is inconsistent with the needs of nature. Reducing the discrepancies between marketing, consumption, and care for nonhuman species is a move towards marketing that acknowledges PW. Structural and cultural transformations are needed to move production, marketing, and consumption from resource depletion to resource maintenance. Viable steps are mitigating unsustainability, reducing waste, improving resource management through circular supply chains, and adopting alternative consumption practices.
130 Jessie Do et al. Transgressions in marketing Humans’ dominance over the planet causes lasting alterations to ecosystems. The irresponsible practices of companies are among the most serious hazards, putting a variety of ecological and economic functions in jeopardy. Irresponsibility harms both living entities (e.g., humans and nature) and non-living entities (e.g., brands andbusinesses).Thesedamagingactivitiesinthemarketingareaareclassifiedas brand transgression (Aaker, Fournier, and Brasel, 2004), brand misconduct (Huber et al., 2010), and corporate social irresponsibility (Lin-Hi and Müller, 2013). “Brand transgression” is a broader term that can cover both “brand misconduct” and “corporate social irresponsibility”. Aaker,Fournier,andBrasel(2004)definebrandtransgressionasaviolationof theimplicitandexplicitrulesintheconsumer−brandrelationship,anditcanbe related to performance and value (Dutta and Pullig, 2011). Performance-related transgressions pertain to defective goods or services (e.g., product recalls), whereas value-related transgressions pertain to social or ethical concerns inherent in brand values rather than issues directly connected to goods or services. Value-related brandtransgressionshaveramificationsfortheconcernedbrands’perceivedsymbolic meanings; thus, their consequences on consumers’ and nature’s well-being can be more lasting and detrimental. A case of value-related transgression is Ryanair’s greenwashing news in 2020: The airline claimed that it has the lowest carbon emission rate among the European airlines, but the Advertising Standards Authority revealed that this claim is misleading and far from reality (British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), 2020). While some instances of greenwashing are inadvertent and arise from a lack of understanding of what environment-friendliness is, it is often carried out on purpose using a variety of marketing and public relations techniques and misinformation. Among value-related transgressions, social and environmental unsustainability is common and has the most tangible implications for life on Earth; the researched cases of value-related transgressions involved employee mistreatment and workplace discrimination, corporate fraud, sweatshop factories and child labour, environmental harm and animal abuse, and controversial marketing practices and unethical production (e.g., Ouyang, Yao and Hu, 2020; Xu, Bolton and Winterich, 2021). Unsustainability is “institutionalized” in many of the global conventional business structures and economic systems (Ritala, Albareda and Bocken, 2021). Breaking down these institutionalized patterns and acknowledging that nature and humanity are inextricably linked to each other may be the key to a successful transition to a more sustainable economy, ensuring a future for nature and humans. Incorporating the non-anthropocentric and systemic view of PW into business structures and economic systems is necessary for this change as businesses and consumers need to understand that human and nonhuman entities are interconnected, and our planet will not survive unless the needs of diverse forms of life on Eartharesatisfied.Bothconsumersandnatureprovideinputtocompanies,and
Consumption and planetary well-being 131 nature relies on the benign quality of consumers’ and businesses’ input to nature to continue to exist and be well. The current marketing and consumption system is part of the problem that threatensPW.Wesuggestandemphasizethatmarketingcanbecomeasignificant part of the solution if it adopts both incremental and radical methods to pursue planet-friendly outcomes. The second part of this chapter discusses various solutions pointing to the continuum from weak sustainability actions to major, systemlevel transformations as paths to PW. Solutions to consumption for planetary well-being Enhancing sustainable consumer behaviour Sustainable consumption helps restore natural and human resources and reduce the impacts of human consumption on nonhuman needs by adopting alternatives that usefewervirginresources.Itinvolvesashifttomoreefficientlyproducedneed satisfiers(Kortetmäkiet al., 2021) via waste reduction, product life extension, and reuse and recycling (Maitre-Ekern and Dalhammar, 2019). Coming up with solutions to unsustainable consumer behaviour requires an understanding of how needs and desires are culturally and socially determined in different societies. It is also important to understand sustainability in light of consumers’ generational values and attitudes. Today, it is generally thought that the youngest consumers are the most environmentally conscious; Generation Z is frequently called Generation Green by the media. However, many studies in different cultures suggest that the young generations (Y and Z) do not make the most environmentally friendly purchase decisions. Rather, the older generations (Baby Boomers and Generation X) have been the most sustainable consumers for the past few decades (Wilska, 2002; Kuoppamäki, Wilska and Taipale, 2017; Ham et al., 2021). Young people may have the greenest values and good intentions, but high product prices and the hedonistic pursuit of experiences (Kuoppamäki, Wilska and Taipale, 2017) may enhance unsustainable consumption among them (Ham et al., 2021). Products that have been produced in an environmentally friendly way are often more expensive than non-green products (e.g., fast fashion), and the desire for experiences may lead to unsustainable practices (e.g., travelling). Lifestyles with real non-consumption practices are still rare. However, new trends are emerging among the young, such as preferring second-hand fashion and vegan food (Bedard and Tolmie, 2018). The perceptions of what is sustainable and what should be done to increase sustainability in consumption vary in different theoretical approaches. The radical view emphasizes individual power and responsibility, whereas the reformist view relies on structural changes in society (Garner, 2000). The radical perspective aims tochangetheworldbychangingpeopleorinfluencingthewaytheyexperiencethe world (Dryzek, 1997). Radical green movements emphasize the need to reduce all
234 Aino-Kaisa Koistinen et al. The exhibition developed on the themes expressed in Gustafsson&Haapoja’s previous exhibitions, such as The Museum of the History of Cattle (2014) or Museum of Nonhumanity (2016–), that criticized the role of museums as institutions and spaces for preserving only human history and cultural heritage without recognizing the role of nonhuman animals in history and culture. In Pigs, Gustafsson&Haapoja called attention to the well-being of both humans and nonhumans by presenting the visitors with the experiences of pigs and pig industry workers, both suffering from poor living and working conditions. Thus, the exhibition was thematically intertwined with global contexts and critical questions on ecological, economic, and social sustainability and well-being on a planetary scale. The sound installation Waiting Room consisted of speakers playing pigs’ voices and nothing else, but it was framed by an exhibition text in the room leading to the sound installation, stating that the pigs were recorded on their last night before slaughter. The minimalist setting of the exhibition room highlighted the effect of the voices: There was not much else that the visitor could focus on (see Figure 17.1). The visitor was thus forced to encounter the pigs in a manner to which most citydwelling museum-goers are not accustomed—that is, by their overwhelming auditive presence. The lack of visual representation of the pigs also emphasized the simultaneous absence and presence of pigs in society that the exhibition sought to address. Scholars such as Carol J. Adams (2010) and Timothy Pachirat (2011, p. 3; see also Creed, 2017, p. 114) have noted the cultural invisibility of animals reared for their meat: The animals become products, meat, and the actual living and dying animals are concealed from sight. The pigs’ voices even seeped through the headphones when viewing the videos in the other rooms, thus contributing to the viewing experience. The fact that the voices were recorded on their last night before slaughter highlighted the pigs’ vulnerability and dependency on humans and confronted the visitor with questions such as the pigs’ possible awareness of their approaching death. The visual absence of the pigs in Waiting Room was in stark contrast to the video Untitled (Alive) displayed in the preceding room—even the title of the video serves as a counterpoint to the soon-to-be-dead animals. The video was captured by attaching a camera with a harness to the pig called Paavo, now living in an animal shelter. The camera was attached to Paavo’s neck, so his ears and snout were visible from the back (see Figure 17.2). In this sense, the video not only offers a visual representation of a pig (that was lacking in Waiting Room) but invites the viewers to see the world through the eyes of one. Unlike the pigs in the sound installation, Paavoisroamingfreelyonthefarm,sniffinganddiggingtheground,napping, and receiving human caresses. Watching the video, it is easy to describe Paavo as ahappyhogwhogetstoactaccordingtohisspecies-specificbehaviour.Thevideo portrays him as an individual, not as a resource to be consumed. In the exhibition catalogue, Gustafsson&Haapoja describe the video No Data as “an attempt to examine what kind of world is created by animal husbandry”.3 They alsonotethedifficultyinattemptingtograspthewholepictureofpighusbandry,
Towards cultural transformation: Culture as planetary well-being 235 where the well-being of both humans and nonhumans is connected to bacteria, feed production, and industrial infrastructure. The name No Data thus highlights the enormous scale and inaccessibility of the animal industry. The fragmented poetics of the video communicates this scale and inaccessibility: The viewers are presented with changing images and texts that do not provide enough data to see the whole FIGURE 17.1 Waiting Room. Copyright: Jenni Latva. Courtesy of Kunsthalle Seinäjoki. FIGURE 17.2 Untitled (Alive). Screenshot. Courtesy of Kunsthalle Seinäjoki.
236 Aino-Kaisa Koistinen et al. (see Figure 17.3). The effect is further emphasized by the fragmented nature of the presented texts, as the following excerpts illustrate: the bloodier incidents really bothered her, she said, such as when a new hire caught his an employee working on a sanitation crew pushed a button after removing parts from the upper of a machine. the employee then placed his foot into a a worker was reaching to pick up a box of clear a jam when his jacket became caught in a roller. As he tried to pull out, his Thefragmentsleavethesentencesopen,allowingviewerstofillinthegaps.The promiseof“bloodyincidents”inthefirstfragmentinvitesviewerstoassumethat the omitted texts would contain something violent for the workers. It is noteworthy that No Data also encompasses the experiences of the pig farmers in the fragment: “Farms facing distress have relied on short-term loans”.4 The precarious conditions of the pig industry workers discussed in the video thus extend to the farmers. Precarity is commonly understood as uncertainty of employment and human livelihood within the global capitalist economy (see, e.g., Precarias a la deriva, 2009, pp. 100, 387). In the era of ecosocial crises, precarity has become an existential question about the possibility of future human and nonhuman life on Earth. In this precarious condition, humans and pigs are both culprits of environmental disasters via complex ecological and economic interlinkages, and simultaneously the victims of conditions. The fragmented texts borrow their aesthetics from poetry. Discussing the possibility of writing the life of another meat animal, the cow, Jessica Holmes (2021) connects poetry to activism in its potential to lend voices to those who are silenced, “in part due to its capacity to embody loss, fragmentation, and absence”. Thus, “poems offer alternative methods of seeing or bearing witness to, remembering and assigning value to individual subjects” (ibid., p. 229). Within the context of the Pigs exhibition, the poetic language of No Data invited the viewers to bear witness to the vulnerabilities and interconnected lives of pigs and pig industry workers, habitually rendered invisible by the sheer logistics of technological civilization. It is often claimed that the potential of art and literature to instigate societal changes lies in their capacity to allow people to grasp the experiences, feelings, and emotions of others, including nonhuman animals (Rifkin, 2010, p. 312; Creed, 2017, pp. 123–124; Weik von Mossner, 2017; Lähdesmäki and Koistinen, 2021). In Pigs, the visitors were invited to share some parts of the experiences of both pigs and pig industry workers. In No Data, the fates and well-being of both humans and nonhumans are deeply entangled, speaking of their shared vulnerability and precarity. The images and texts depict conditions that are hazardous and deadly for both—and even for the broader natural environment that is affected by pig industrial waste. Some of the fragments also underline the role of immigrants as pig industry workers in poor conditions, highlighting how some humans are in more precarious situations than others (see Butler, 2004).
Towards cultural transformation: Culture as planetary well-being 237 In the case of the voice installation and the text fragments of No Data, Pigs can also be interpreted as “giving voice” to cultural “others”. The idea of speaking for others may be contested in the case of humans, since instead of “speaking for” one might instead need to listen to others capable of speaking for themselves (e.g., marginalized, indigenous, or racialized people; see Montero-Sieburth, 2020). However, as the texts in No Data represent the words of actual workers, the artists are borrowing their own words to speak for them, which emerges as a form of listening. When it comes to nonhumans, “speaking for” becomes somewhat problematic, and the possibility of human beings representing nonhumans via language has been criticized (Karkulehto et al., 2020; MacCormack, 2020, p. 56, pp. 79–80). That said, in human legislation and cultural practices, nonhuman animals need humans to speak for them, but this “speaking for” always requires listeningtononhumansfirst.ThesoundinstallationWaiting Room can be interpreted as inviting the visitors to listen to the pigs as living, breathing, and sometimes noisy animals. It is not always possible to concretely listen to nonhumans, but listening can be understood as turning human attention to nonhumans and their experiences. Approaching the experiences of others through arts and literature has been argued to lead to empathy towards other people (e.g., Keen, 2007; Fialho, 2019) and perhaps even to other species (e.g., Creed, 2017, p. 19; Weik von Mossner, 2017, pp. 1–16)—even though it cannot, of course, be argued that this is always the outcome of reading literature or experiencing art (Lähdesmäki and Koistinen, FIGURE 17.3 The fragmented poetics of No Data. Copyright Jenni Latva. Courtesy of Kunsthalle Seinäjoki.
238 Aino-Kaisa Koistinen et al. 2021). It can, however, be claimed that the Pigs exhibition used the imaginative potential of art to expose museum-goers to the experiences and living/working conditions of both humans and animals in the pig industry.5 Depending on the viewer, this may have been an affective and emotional experience that involved empathetic feelings towards the pigs and meat industry workers and reveals the more-than-human vulnerability, injustices, and (political) struggle in the industrialized, neoliberal, and postcolonial market economy. Art and the changing meanings of work The site of the exhibition brought another level to the discussion on the animal industry. Until the 1980s, the building was used as a cowshed, with a slaughterhouse and a meat processing plant in its immediate vicinity. Kunsthalle Seinäjoki’s exhibitions address issues arising from its location on the intersection of urban and rural contexts. The animal industry is still an important livelihood in the region, and Gustafsson&Haapoja wanted to bring the exhibition to discuss the future of food production on-site. The exhibition hit a pressure point at the intersection of local livelihoods, animal ethics, and sustainable transformation of (food) culture. In November 2021, Pigs attracted a lot of media attention. After two middle school classes from the nearby town of Kurikka had visited the exhibition, the mayor of Kurikka forbade further elementary school classes from visiting it. Parents, many of them pig farmers themselves, had contacted the mayor. The ban was based on the claim that the exhibition gave too one-sided an image of pig husbandry. According to the head of the local education and culture department, the decision aimed to protect children from offensive content (Koivuranta and Ahola, 2021). The media debate that followed the ban on school visits questioned whether the mayor had the authority to intervene in the curriculum. After all, animal welfare has been part of the Finnish school curriculum since 2016, although it varies significantlyhowthisisimplementedinschools.Inaninterview(Mäenpää,2021), the exhibition curator claimed that people who had not even seen the exhibition gave too scandalous an image of it. According to the curator, many of the people who had seen the exhibition said that they were rather positively disappointed than shocked, as everything was presented in a sensitive manner. The local pig farmers, for their part, took the exhibition as part of a broader attack on their livelihood, even though the exhibition did not directly comment on local pig husbandry. What was forgotten in the media discussions around the exhibition was that No Data also highlights the precarious situation of pig industry workers, as discussed above. The farmers’ reaction to the exhibition stresses the need for reimagining and transforming livelihoods and work for planetary well-being in ways that no one is left behind, even when the transformation becomes a site of heated cultural negotiation and political struggle. We suggest that the imaginative potential of art can be
Towards cultural transformation: Culture as planetary well-being 239 used to transform the normalized perceptions of work, as made visible by the Pigs exhibition and the media discussions it spurred. Especially in the video No Data, pig industry workers’ precarious experiences and vulnerability can be interpreted on the larger scale of planetary well-being, including both human and nonhuman beings in critical discussions on ecological, economic, and social sustainability. In these contexts, it is interesting that ecological crises are often discussed in terms of consumption—both on the level of individual consumer choices and the multilateral political negotiations and agreements for sustainability—but not so often in terms of work. Nevertheless, most environmental harm is connected to some kind of work, and work causes many social and environmental injustices. Work, like culture, is a multifaceted concept, both a noun and a verb. Work may refer, for instance, to the effort of converting matter into a desired form, or to the diverse ways people contribute to society in exchange for salary or goods— or to services, charity, and care that people offer or share without any monetary exchange. Along with numerous changing practices regarding what we eat, how we produce energy, and how mobility is organized, the transformation entails fundamental cultural changes concerning work. Many occupations will become obsolete, whereas many new professions will be formed. At best, individuals and communitieswouldreceivesufficienteconomic,social,andpsychologicalsupport when transitioning to new livelihoods, and the cultural transformation could leave more time for care, societal participation, and cultural practices such as art (cf., BIOS, 2019; Järvensivu and Toivanen, 2018). The ongoing cultural transformation of work requires a new kind of political economy, including novel solutions for income that could facilitate meaningful lifestyles, economic, ecological, and social sustainability, and planetary well-being. TheconflictraisedbythePigsexhibitioncanbeperceivedasaconflictofvalues that entails a wicked moral choice: Should society prioritize the well-being of pigs or the current livelihoods of farmers? The exhibition was probably perceived as offensive as it showed pigs as individuals with desires that the visitors could and shouldempathizewith.ThemoralconflictwashighlightedinNo Data by presenting the viewer with images and texts featuring the ill-being of pigs, followed by a question that brings to the fore the anthropocentrism of pig husbandry: “Raising pigs on concrete—is it right for me?” Here, the well-being of pigs remains concealed, and the focus remains on the human farmers: No one is asking whether it is right for the pigs to raise them on concrete. Regardless of our moral preference, the persuasive power of art matters for the public discussion about pigs and farm workers—and this discussion may, then, ultimately affect the material living conditions of both. Upon opening of the Pigs exhibition in September 2021, Gustafsson&Haapoja organized a seminar discussing pigs in society.6 They had invited several experts from different fields to address the topic:An animal welfare representative, a researcher of regenerative agriculture, an animal rights lawyer, and an activist secretly shooting videos on animal farms. The seminar posed the question of how
240 Aino-Kaisa Koistinen et al. to live more ethically with nonhuman animals while acknowledging the problematic position of the farmers. In light of the seminar, the media debate on the exhibitionoversimplifieditbyconstructingabiasbetweenlocallivelihoodsand animal welfare. Laura Gustafsson recognized how farmers are caught between a rock and a hard place, as they are bound to the current production system by agriculturalsubsidiesandanemphasisontheefficiencyandgrowthoftheagricultural sector. Galina Kallio, a researcher in regenerative agriculture, described the many ways producers are already experimenting with re-organizing food production. “Invisible work” done by humans and ecosystems is not explicit in political talk, marketprices,orofficialstatisticsbutneverthelessincreasesthewell-beingofboth humans and ecosystems. Currently, these new forms of organizing work transpire mainly outside formal organizations (see also Kallio, 2018), but making them visible through art and research may make different ways of organizing livelihood more widely available to producers. In farms where forms of regenerative agriculture are already practised, relationshipsbetweenhumansandnonhumananimalssuchaspigsareconfiguredverydifferently from the “conventional” industrial pig husbandry. The animals on the farm do work—they may contribute, for instance, by keeping the grass short and processing it into manure, thus recycling nutrients back to the soil. They do not exist onlytobekilledandeaten,andtheygettoliveaccordingtotheirspecies-specific and individual needs. Working for the well-being of the ecosystems, animals, and humans could provide farmers with new meaningful livelihoods and work. The Pigs exhibition and the seminar exemplify art’s potential to invite the visitors to imagine a transformation towards more sustainable living. It shows the potential of art in raising questions about planetary well-being and making visible the subordinate role of many, especially nonhuman, others in culture and society. While the exhibition may have contributed to the cultural transformation towards planetarywell-beingbyquestioningthejustificationofindustrialmeatproductionand related work, it also showed how daunting the transformation may be. Pig farmers have been accusing urban dwellers and green politicians of aiming to reduce meat production without understanding where domestic meat comes from and how the animals are treated. During the exhibition, however, the farmers strongly opposed the artists’ attempt at educating audiences about pig farming practices—and, as the media debate shows, even deemed the topic unsuitable for their children. The farmers appeal for their right to practise their legal livelihood, but the debate goes deeper. By questioning the morality of industrial animal husbandry, art challenges the farmers’ identities, exposing their vulnerability by drawing parallels between the suffering of the pigs and of the animal industry employees. The example highlights how art’s affective and political impact can be considered threatening. This potential threat is intimately connected to art’s capacity to imagine the perspectives of others—even of people and creatures usually considered aliens or enemies. In transitioning to culture as planetary well-being,
Towards cultural transformation: Culture as planetary well-being 241 such concerns should be addressed by listening to the voices of all concerned— consumers or producers, pigs or farmers, artists or politicians. Conclusion: Culture as planetary well-being Cultural transformation is a matter of both visions and practices. It encompasses the imagination of what planetary well-being would look like in more-than-human societies and the ongoing realization of such visions as concrete actions. Sometimes, promoting cultural transformation entails paying attention to cultural practices that already contribute to planetary well-being. In this chapter, we have sought to highlight the work of societally engaged artists such as Gustafsson&Haapoja. As our examination of Pigs shows, Gustafsson&Haapoja’s work invites broad audiences to rethink how their lives are entangled with the lives of others—human and nonhuman. The power of cultural productions, like art, lies in the possibility of creating such visions of planetary well-being. More broadly, culture as ways of life has the potential to shift the emphasis from current consumer culture and its practices to planetary well-being. Planetary well-being is based on “needs-based, nonsubjectiveconceptionsofhumanwell-being”,meaningthefulfilmentofhumanneeds such as “the need for physical and mental health, for relationships, and for autonomy in action and thought” within planetary boundaries (Kortetmäki et al., 2021, p. 5). When art brings us to realize and rethink our material embeddedness in the lives of others and our shared vulnerability, it can deepen our understanding of what these needs are—for ourselves and others. Moreover,artcanhelpfulfilsocialandpsychologicalneedsinwaysthatareless destructive to ecosystems. Enjoying and practising art and cultural products can enhance mental health (Fancourt and Finn, 2019), for example, by supporting one’s experience of living a meaningful life (e.g., Thiele, 2013, pp. 168–193; Aholainen et al., 2021). The sense of meaning is essential in inspiring people to work for the greater good of the community, which may extend to the broader environment (Thiele, 2013, pp. 168–193; Salonen and Bardy, 2015, p. 9). The sense of meaning may also lessen the need to consume material goods and inspire hope for a sustainable future (Salonen and Bardy, 2015, p. 4, 12). In this sense, the potential of art to bring meaning to life should not be overlooked. It should be acknowledged that art is not independent of unsustainable material conditions (see Parikka, 2018; Brennan et al., 2019). The ecological footprints of cultural productions and practices vary greatly. Compared to energy-intensive digitalmediaservices,largemusicfestivals,orbigHollywoodfilms,smaller-scale practices such as drawing and writing, meditation, dancing, or loaning books from thelibraryhaveasignificantlylowerecologicalfootprint.Sustainabilityisagrowing concern for the cultural sector (e.g., Brennan et al., 2019). Acknowledging their current ecological impact, many cultural organizations have begun to reimagine and reconstruct their working practices.
242 Aino-Kaisa Koistinen et al. In our vision of culture as planetary well-being, engagement with art contributestosocialandecologicalsustainabilitybyprovidingopportunitiesforreflection, creativity, connection, and enjoyment. Working towards culture as planetary well-being could involve what botanist and Potowatomi philosopher Robin Wall Kimmerer (2020, p. 336) calls “biocultural restoration”. Kimmerer uses the term “culture” in the broad sense, as complete ways of life. In their view, biocultural restoration means that local people restore damaged lands and ecosystems, such as former mining areas or polluted rivers, which in turn contributes to the restoration of cultures that value respectful and reciprocal relations to the land: Like other mindful practices, ecological restoration can be viewed as an act of reciprocity in which humans exercise their caregiving responsibility for the ecosystems that sustain them. We restore the land, and the land restores us. As we have argued in this chapter, engagement with art may be essential to such restoration. Not only can it alert us to the destructive ways of contemporary cultural practices but it can also orient us towards culture as planetary well-being. Notes 1 Laura Gustafsson and Terike Haapoja. 2 These works were accompanied by English and Finnish translations of the texts seen in No Data; Laura Gustafsson’s essay on Paavo, the pig from Untitled (Alive); and an exhibition catalogue, which includes a brief description of the exhibition and discusses the use and well-beingofpigsinFinnishsociety.Forourexamination,thefirstauthortooknotesupon visiting the exhibition. We also collected media coverage of the exhibition from diverse electronic outlets. In addition, the research material includes some related videos and a recording from a seminar organized in connection with the exhibition. We are grateful to Gustafsson&Haapoja and Kunsthalle Seinäjoki for providing the needed materials and to Gustafsson for providing information on the source materials for No Data. 3 Translated by Koistinen. 4 Translated by Koistinen from the Finnish transcript that accompanied the video. 5 Museum-goers’reactionstoexhibitionsaredifficulttopredict(seeLandkammer,2018; Sommer and Klöckner, 2019), and exhibitions may therefore not produce the expected effect. People tend to visit museums to strengthen—rather than challenge—their own values and beliefs, and demographic factors may have an effect on the choice of the museum/exhibition (Smith, 2021, pp. 3, 161–174). Museums have also been critiqued for catering to elite audiences (e.g., Hall, 2008; Dixon, 2016; Turunen and Viita-aho, 2021). The media discussion around Pigs nevertheless highlights the potential of museums “to expand beyond their walls” (Turunen, 2020, p. 1022; see also Kros, 2014), reaching people not interested in visiting the physical museum space. 6 The seminar was part of a series entitled Art and the Rural Gathering, organized at Kunsthalle Seinäjoki. References Adams, C.J. (2010) The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory. 20th anniversary edn. New York: Continuum.
Towards cultural transformation: Culture as planetary well-being 243 Aholainen, M. et al. (2021) ‘Miten taide vaikuttaa? Kulttuurisia näkökulmia hyvinvointiin ja terveyteen’, Lääkärilehti76(9),pp.564–568.Availableat:https://www.laakarilehti.fi/ tieteessa/katsausartikkeli/miten-taide-vaikuttaa-kulttuurisia-nakokulmia-hyvinvointiin-jaterveyteen/?public=29e7a5eeae789608f35becb2cc8ef7a4 (Accessed: 26 August 2022). BIOS (2019) Ecological Reconstruction.Available at: https://eco.bios.fi/ (Accessed: 26 August 2022). Bolman, B. (2019) ‘Carnivorous anatomies art and being beasts’, in Karkulehto, S., Koistinen, A.-K. and Varis, E. (eds.) Reconfiguring Human, Nonhuman and Posthuman in Literature and Culture. New York: Routledge, pp. 163–181. https://doi.org/10.4324/ 9780429243042 Brennan, M. et al. (2019) ‘Do music festival communities address environmental sustainability and how? A Scottish case study’, Popular Music, 38(2), pp. 252–275. https://doi. org/10.1017/S0261143019000035 Butler, J. (2004) Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. London and New York: Verso. Creed, B. (2017) Stray. Human–Animal Ethics in the Anthropocene. Sydney: Power Books. Dessein, J. et al. (2015) Culture in, for and as Sustainable Development. Conclusions from the COST ACTION IS1007 Investigating Cultural Sustainability. Jyväskylä: University of Jyväskylä. Available at: https://jyx.jyu.fi/handle/123456789/50452 (Accessed: 26 August 2022). Dixon, C. (2016) The ‘Othering’ of Africa and Its Diasporas in Western Museum Practices. PhDThesis.UniversityofSheffield.Availableat:https://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/17065/ (Accessed: 26 August 2022). Fancourt D. and Finn S. (2019) What Is the Evidence on the Role of the Arts in Improving Health and Well-Being? A Scoping Review. Health Evidence Network synthesis report 67.Copenhagen:WHORegionalOfficeforEurope2019.Availableat:https://apps.who. int/iris/handle/10665/329834 (Accessed: 26 August 2022). Fialho, O. (2019) ‘What is literature for? The role of transformative reading’, Cogent Arts & Humanities, 6, pp. 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/23311983.2019.1692532 Hall, S. (2008) ‘Un-settling ’the Heritage’, Re-imagining the post-nation. Whose heritage?’ Third Text, 13(49), pp. 3–13. https://doi.org/10.1080/09528829908576818 Holmes, J. (2021) ‘Writing the cow: Poetry, activism, and the texts of meat’, in White, J. and Whitlock, G. (eds.) Life Writing in the Anthropocene. New York: Routledge, pp. 228–241. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77973-3 Järvensivu, P. and Toivanen, T. (2018) ‘Miten järjestää työ ja työllisyys ekologisen jälleenrakennuksen aikakaudella?’, in Suoranta, A. and Leinikki, S. (eds.) Rapautuvan palkkatyön yhteiskunta. Tampere: Vastapaino, pp. 44–61. Kallio, G. (2018) The Visible Hands: An Ethnographic Inquiry into the Emergence of Food Collectives as a Social Practice for Exchange. Aalto University publication series Doctoral dissertations, 170/2018. Available at: https://aaltodoc.aalto.fi/handle/123456789/34034 (Accessed: 26 August 2022). Karkulehto, S. et al.(2020)‘Reconfiguringhuman,nonhumanandposthuman:Striving for more ethical cohabitation’, in Karkulehto, S., Koistinen, A.-K., and Varis, E. (eds.) Reconfiguring Human, Nonhuman and Posthuman in Literature and Culture. New York: Routledge, pp. 1–19. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429243042 Keen, S. (2007) Empathy and the Novel. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kimmerer, R.W. (2020) Braiding Sweetgrass. Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. London: Penguin Books.
250 Valtteri A. Aaltonen et al. et al., 2016). According to UNESCO (2017), learning about sustainability must preparestudentsandlearnersofallagestofindsolutionsforthechallengesof today and the future. Education should be transformative and should allow citizens to make informed decisions and take individual as well as collective action to change our societies and care for the planet. The third phase is the era after the World Summit for Sustainable Development that took place in Johannesburg in 2002. This event served as the impetus for the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005–2014), which emphasized lifelong learning and spurred initiatives worldwide. That project was followed by the UN Global Action Programme (2015–2019), which aimed to intensify the initiatives of Education for Sustainable Development and set Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a framework adopted by the UN in 2015 which, in addition to providing general guidance for sustainable change, places an explicit focus on the quality of and conditions for education (SDG 4) (Bianchi, 2020, p. 11). Currently, the UN Global Action Programme is being followed up by UNESCO’s Education for Sustainable Development as part of its 2030 programme, which aims to bring about the personal and societal transformation that is needed to achieve sustainable development worldwide (Bianchi, 2020; UNESCO, 2022). Sustainable development and sustainability are ubiquitously present in educational policy discourse, but it is not always clear what these terms mean. Bianchi (2020, p. 10) sums up the recent policy focus on sustainable development and sustainability as follows: Sustainability and sustainable development are often used interchangeably, despitetheirconceptualdifference.InreferencetotheUNESCOdefinitions, sustainability is best described as a long-term goal, such as attaining a more sustainable world; while sustainable development, like the term suggests, refers to the many processes and pathways to achieve development. The “take-home message” of Bianchi is that it makes a difference whether we discuss sustainability or sustainable development, and that this choice has consequences for education. As indicated by Matero and Arffman (see Chapter 7), the concept of sustainable development has been interpreted in different ways during its relatively short history, depending on the context in which it is used. However, often it has been connected to the idea of continuous economic growth, especially by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the EuropeanUnion.Economicgrowthasapolicygoalisdifficulttoalignwithplanetary well-being as it has been previously linked to overconsumption of materials, ecosystem destruction, inequality in human societies, and the general destruction of life on Earth (see Kortetmäki et al., 2021). Hence, the concept of sustainable development too can be regarded as a direct heir of the Enlightenment tradition and the belief in human progress based on instrumental rationality.
Education for planetary well-being 251 Sustainable development-related frameworks are globally influential in the fieldofeducationtotheextentthattheycanevenbereferredtoasaparadigm, delineatingthesetofconceptsandbeliefsthatprefigurepublicdebateduringa particular period of time. The ambiguity of sustainable development can be seen in the ambivalence surrounding how the concept is interpreted and used by different scholars. Therefore, some educational researchers consciously avoid using the term sustainable development or are sceptical of the concept of sustainability. However, there are also approaches that use the word sustainability but still want to distinguish themselves from the idea of continuous growth implied by the concept ofsustainabledevelopment.Furtherstill,therearesomeframeworksinthefieldof education that make no reference at all to either of these concepts (e.g., Bianchi, 2020; Connelly, 2007; Jickling and Wals, 2008; Snaza et al., 2014). Next,webrieflyintroducesomewell-knownandcommonlyusedframeworks as alternatives to the prevailing sustainable development paradigm, that is, alternatives that support the idea of education for planetary well-being. The concept of sustainability as education,asdefinedbyStephenSterling(2001,2010)and Arjen Wals (2006, 2015), who are among the earliest and most central authors representing the move, called for holistic behavioural change and transformative learning. Sterling’s (2001) original distinction between sustainability as education and education for sustainable development highlights that the latter was framed to raise awareness without challenging the existing institutions and status quo. Sustainability as education, instead, requires a profound change in one’s worldview, switching from a dualistic, hierarchical worldview to systems understanding and relational sustainability competences. Global Citizenship Education Otherwise (Andreotti, 2015; Stein and Andreotti, 2021) criticizes the framework of the taken-for-granted Eurocentric knowledge system in regard to how, for example, Sustainable Development Goals are framed and understood as global goals by the United Nations. The education for global citizenship promotes the transition from a singular universal belief or knowledge to an approach of listening and including counternarratives on knowledge in the curriculum. In this approach, education is viewed as a dialogue that considers diverse historical, political, and knowledge foundations (Andreotti, 2015). In the Nordic countries, the concept of eco-social education (or eco-social Bildung)isoneofthemoreinfluentialcurrentframeworksthatcallsfortransformation by stressing the acute need for prioritizing diversity of life on Earth in the value system. Eco-social education has been part of the public debate for more than a decade, and it is explicitly mentioned, for example, in the national core curriculum of Finland (Finnish National Board of Education, 2014; Halinen, 2018; Lehtonen, Salonen and Cantell, 2018). Eco-social education emphasizes ecology, takes climate crises seriously, and considers planetary boundaries (Rockström et al., 2009) instead of the economy as the basis for social and economic well-being (Salonen and Konkka, 2015).
252 Valtteri A. Aaltonen et al. Ecojustice education (Martusewicz, Edmundson and Lupinacci, 2011, p. 9) highlights “the necessary interdependent relationship of humans with the land, air, water, and other species with whom we share this planet”. Ecojustice education calls for critical awareness of the unequal power dynamics related to binaries (e.g., men/ women, white/other, European/other, culture/nature, reason/emotion, science/local), indigenous knowledges, and how these inequalities are sustained across different languages and means of communication. The theoretical foundations of ecojustice education include ecofeminism and neo-agrarianism, with a shared dedication to a feminist ethic of care for ecological social justice and posthumanism (ibid.). Other examples of approaches that avoid using the term “sustainable development” are environmental education, in its advanced mode, (Reid et al., 2021) and the hybrid concept of environmental and sustainability education (Wals, Weakland and Corcoran, 2017). Both of these can be regarded as taking a critical stance toward anthropocentrism. Additionally, we acknowledge that critical approaches to human-centred education have also been raised by posthumanist writers (e.g., Morris, 2015; Snaza et al., 2014). Overall, posthuman education has wider perspectives in its critic of humanism in education, such as colonialism and complex relations not only between humans and nonhuman animals, but also technology. Criticism of anthropocentrism can be seen as a distinguishing factor according to which education for sustainability can be divided into two different types of approaches: Weak and strong (Connelly, 2007). The weak form is associated with continuous technological development and economic growth, or, at best, so-called ecological modernization (ibid.,p.270)emphasizingefficiencyinenergyuseand recycling of materials. The weak approach also includes an assumption about sustainable development benefitting all humanity, but, in reality, the approach accepts drastic inequalities between different human communities, such as the division between the global North and global South. Education for sustainability in the strong sense, in contrast, could be translated as eco-socialism (ibid.) with an emphasis on a just transition toward the well-being of all life on Earth, which aligns well with the concept of planetary well-being. Based on the review above, we conclude that our concept of education for planetary well-being builds on the ideas raised by many of the current frameworks. In many respects, education for planetary well-being agrees with the mentioned frameworks; it advocates non-anthropocentric and posthumanist thinking as well as sustainability in the strong sense. However, it is more explicit in instilling the educational approach with the encompassing idea of planetary well-being as a state in which all organisms, including humans, can realize their typical characteristics and capacities. Dialogue as an ontological and pedagogical principle Our conceptualization of education for planetary well-being is rooted in a dialogic relationship between humans and other lifeforms on Earth, one in which it is assumed that human well-being is built in dialogue with the rest of nature.
Education for planetary well-being 253 Dialoguecanbeidentifiedimplicitlyinmanyofthecurrentframeworks,suchasin sustainability as education, global citizenship education otherwise, and ecojustice education. In education for planetary well-being, however, the dialogical way of being is central and explicitly present, drawing from Buber’s (2004) dialogical philosophy and posthumanism (Braidotti, 2013, 2019). The opposite of a dialogical relationship is a monologic (and an instrumental) relationship. The monological relationship is based on the aforementioned dualistic assumption that nature is understood as an object separate from humans and as an instrument for human well-being. In a dialogical relationship, humans are viewed as one of the species living in a given ecological niche of the Earth system and as largely dependent on and connected to different ecosystems and various forms of life on Earth. It is only through the interaction of species in and between ecosystems, including human societies, that well-being occurs (see Kortetmäki et al., 2021, p. 3). The dialogic approach provides an ontological basis for the concept of education for planetary well-being. As an ontological principle, dialogue can be regarded as a human way of being where the relations between beings are more fundamental than the beings themselves and where the ethical aspect of these relations is emphasized. Beings are understood to be constructed through these relationships, which are characterized by interconnectedness, diversity, and respect for alterity. The nature of this ontological “in-betweenness” has been aptly described by Martin Buber (2004) as two basic modes of existing, representable as word-pairs: I–it and I–Thou. According to Buber, the monological I–it relationship is characterized by the experience of a detached object and a concept of oneself as an isolated subject of experience that definesanotherbeingaccordingtoone’sinterests.AccordingtoBuber,onecanbe truly human only in a dialogical relation between I and Thou, where the other is encounteredopenlywithoutanyrestrictingclassification.Hence,asatrue“other”, Thou has an inherent value. Applied to the planetary well-being concept, this means that both humans and the rest of nature have an absolute value, or rather, that human dignity is best realized through the recognition of the dignity of nature. In this case, human beings are not seen as separate from the rest of the world, but as embodied being who coexists through senses and affects. These ideas of co-existence and interdependence are also typical of posthumanism. For example, Braidotti (2019) calls to become aware of human embodiment and accountability to the way one affects and is affected in the dynamic web of human and nonhuman relations. Education for planetary well-being requires dialogic consideration and an empathic understanding of other species’ needs also in the pedagogical practice. Dialogical practice is a way of learning new, posthuman, and even planetary ways to relate to other species (see Davies and Renshaw, 2020; Saur and Sidorkin, 2018). However,theneedsofdifferentspeciesareoftenconflictingandevokechallenging ethical questions that should be acknowledged and discussed (Valtonen, 2022). Posthumanism offers a view of pedagogy that emphasizes a critical awareness
254 Valtteri A. Aaltonen et al. of the highly unequal power relations between humans and Earth’s “others” and embodied and sentient being (Braidotti, 2019). Participation in a collective dialogic practice is a moral phenomenon focused on the nature of our identity and existence as humans (Wegerif, Mercer and Major, 2020) and on how we are connected to the well-being of the whole planet. Dialogue as pedagogical practice is based on the collaborative construction of knowledge through interaction between learner and teacher. The dialogical principle is an alternative to monological teaching’s mere transmission of knowledge from a teacher to a learner. In dialogical teaching, learners are not regarded as objects of a teacher but rather as active subjects of knowledge construction. In this sense, one could say that education for planetary well-being is essentially based on constructivist learning (Tynjälä and Gijbels, 2012). According to Alexander (2020), dialogic talk is understood to be collective, affirmative,andreciprocal.Thismeansthatlearnersandteachersaddresslearning tasks together and are able to express their ideas. It is also crucially important to listen to others and profoundly explore alternative viewpoints. Ideally, dialogue is deliberative, cumulative, and purposeful. Based on dialogue, something new emerges. However, this does not mean that learning goals cannot be set in dialogic teaching. Quite the opposite, dialogical learning can be structured towards a specificlearningoutcome.Inthecontextofplanetarywell-being,thedialogueshould focus on personal meaning-making, emphasizing strong sustainability, planetary boundaries, and social justice. Dialogical teaching in terms of education for planetary well-being calls for humility and empathetic openness to alterity in our human way of relating to all life on Earth. Dialogue thus enables transformative learning instead of a socialization to current practices and belief systems: It promotes a structural shift in the basic premises of thought, feeling, and action that can fundamentally alter the human way of being in the world (Mezirow, 1994; O’Sullivan, Morrell and O’Connor, 2002; Wals, 2011). A new measure for humanity: Responsibility for planetary well-being This chapter has explored how planetary well-being appears in the context of education in relation to other frameworks, and how planetary well-being could be promoted in education through dialogue. Education for planetary well-being aligns with many of the current approaches, embracing transformative learning towards social change, aiming for humanity to live in balance with other lifeforms on Earth and within the limits of the planet. It can be viewed as the culmination of these developments, offering a new stepping stone for reaching a shared goal: The wellbeing of all inhabitants on planet Earth. The main argument of this chapter is that what is good for humans can no longer be regarded as the guiding premise for education; instead, what is good for all life
Education for planetary well-being 255 on Earth should become the new rule. Therefore, a new theorem of education for planetary well-being is introduced to replace the motto of humanism, homo mensura or human is the measure of everything. Now, in accordance with posthumanist thinking, the guiding theorem can be turned into natura mensura or nature is the measure of everything (Niiniluoto, 2015). It is evident that a shift in pedagogy is needed, away from the perspective of humanistic anthropocentrism and towards posthumanism with an emphasis on the well-being of both human and nonhuman lifeforms. Nevertheless, the transition from classical humanism to a posthumanist and planetary perspective does not mean that humans should not be the central focus of education. Humankind must reclaim its name as Homo sapiens, the wise human. Accordingly, our proposal for a basic theorem of education for planetary wellbeing is the following: Responsibility for planetary well-being is the new measure of humanity. It is worth pointing out that this theorem does not undermine human dignity, rather the opposite. By following this principle, human beings could paradoxically demonstrate their greatness by admitting their smallness before nature, or rather within nature. This new motto for humanity would be the starting point of planetary wisdom, which is a human ability that enables and promotes planetary well-being, and thus helps us to build a world worth living in. Acknowledgements The writing of this chapter has been supported by the following research funding: Academy of Finland, Wisdom in Practice project, funded under grant agreement 351238 for Hannu L.T. Heikkinen, Niina Mykrä, and Anu S. Virtanen; European Union’s Green Deal/Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme, ECF4CLIM project, funded under grant agreement 10103650 for Hannu L.T. Heikkinen, Niina Mykrä, and Anna Lehtonen; Jyväskylä University School of Business and Economics, Grant for doctoral research for Meri Löyttyniemi; Ministry of Education and Culture of Finland, KESTO project, funded under grant agreements OKM/239/523/2020 and OKM/117/523/2020 for Hannu L.T. Heikkinen and Anu S. Virtanen; Wihuri Foundation, grant for doctoral research for Valtteri A. Aaltonen. Note 1 This chapter is the result of a collective effort and intense discussions among the authors. Allauthorscontributedtotheworksignificantlyandarelistedinalphabeticalorder, exceptforthefirstandthelastauthor. References Alexander, R. (2020) A Dialogic Teaching Companion. London: Routledge. Andreotti, V. (2015) ‘Global citizenship education otherwise. Theoretical and pedagogical insights’, in Abdi, A.A., Schultz, A. and Pillay, T. (eds.) Decolonizing Global Citizenship Education. Rotterdam: Brill Sense, pp. 221–229.
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