Implications of the Biocultural Ethic for Earth Stewardship - Earth Stewardship: Linking Ecology and Ethics in Theory and Practice - page 126

differentiation of social from anti-social conduct. These are two defi nitions of
one thing” (Leopold 1949 , p. 202). The incorporation of the concept of ethical
limits into cultural habits and socio-environmental policies is a second neces-
sary condition for implementing Earth stewardship.
(c) In the political realm, the ethical imperative indicated by Aldo Leopold “to cor-
rect anti-social behaviors toward socially appropriate ones” coincides with a
central concept of Aristotle. The ancient Greeks called idiōtēs people whose
behavior put personal interests above the collective interests of the citizens of
the Greek polis (or nation-state). Aristotle was relentless about the need to pun-
ish those idiōtēs , or idiots in order to sustain a democratic regime. Only if the
idiots paid their fi nes, served their sentences, and corrected their unbalanced
self-interested behavior, could they remain in the polis as citizens. If they did
not, then the idiots were exiled. Aristotle affi rmed that they should lose their
citizenship because the polis could not be sustained in the presence of people
taking only privileges but not respecting their obligations as citizens. The resto-
ration of the judicial system capacity to sanction exacerbated, self-absorbed,
individualism (such as the idiōtēs by Aristotle) is a third necessary condition for
implementing an Earth stewardship.
Under a plutocratic regime (national and international), nation-states and citi-
zens often do not have the ability to sanction violators of environmental, economic
and social laws. Colombian sociologist Isaías Tabasura-Acuña ( 2006 ) discussed this
problem in the case of the confl ict between the U'wa and Oxy (see Box 8.2 , in this
volume), and many other Latin American and other regional cases could be men-
tioned. To enforce penalties on those that cause environmental and social damage,
it is necessary to change the plutocratic regime. In turn, the change from plutocracy
to democracy would favor the enforcement of national and international environ-
mental regulations, as well as agreements of co-responsibility for the management
of hotspots of biological and cultural diversity that are critical for the sustainability
of life at local and global scales (see Chaps. 2 , 3 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 27 , and 28 in this volume).
The biocultural ethic extends the community of citizens beyond the Aristotelian
polis , and the modern nation-state, to include all human beings, involving diverse
genders, languages, and human societies, as well as considering the well-being of
all other living beings that constitute communities of co-inhabitants.
Through our analysis of stewardship versus plutonomy , we can conclude that
Western philosophical and theological traditions, Amerindian ecological knowledge
and practices - ancestral and contemporary - as well as ecological sciences provide a
basis for restoring the concept of limits to the prevailing global economic system. This
is essential in order to overcome the current indifference of plutonomy to ecological,
social, and ethical boundaries within which economic activity unfolds. In conse-
quence, to open novel biocultural pathways toward Earth stewardship and sustain-
able co-inhabitation, it is essential that the prevailing economic system be amended
so that it ceases to be indifferent to the well-being of the majority of human and other-
than-human living beings .