Implications of the Biocultural Ethic for Earth Stewardship - Earth Stewardship: Linking Ecology and Ethics in Theory and Practice - page 112

Chapter 9
Implications of the Biocultural Ethic
for Earth Stewardship
Ricardo Rozzi
Abstract The biocultural ethic affi rms the vital value of the links that have coevolved
between specifi c life habits, habitats , and communities of co-in-habitants (“3Hs”).
The conservation of habitats and access to them by communities of co-inhabitants is
the condition of possibility for the continuity of their life; it becomes an ethical
imperative that should be incorporated into development policies as a matter of eco-
social justice. The conceptual framework of the biocultural ethic recognizes that
there are numerous communities (inhabiting cities, rural, or remote areas) with cul-
tural traditions that have ethical values centered in life, sustainable practices, and low
environmental impact. It also recognizes agents that have values centered on short-
term profi t, non-sustainable practices, and disproportionately high environmental
impact. Therefore, it would be technically and ethically right to defi ne and enforce
differential responsibilities among social groups, corporations, and nations that are
contributing to the negative socio-environmental impacts that we face today. We have
now reached a state of “plutonomy” that is dividing the world into two blocs: the
wealthy 1 % of the world's population that owns 50 % of the world's wealth, and “the
rest.” To achieve Earth stewardship, this trend needs to be overcome by (i) changing
the current regime of plutocracy towards one of more participatory democracy that
ceases to be indifferent to the well-being of the majority of human and other-than-
human living beings, (ii) reorienting the current habits of plutonomy, and its associ-
ated consumerism and land-grabbing practices, towards habits of stewardship, and
(iii) broadening the prevailing perspective of ecosystem services toward an ethical
concept of sustainable co-inhabitation. By more precisely identifying the diversity of
Earth stewards, their languages, values, cultures, and practices in heterogeneous
habitats of the planet, as well as the specifi c agents that are mostly responsible for
current socio-environmental problems, the biocultural ethic can signifi cantly contrib-
ute to orient clearer collaborative and supportive ways for a responsible and inter-
cultural Earth stewardship.