Implications of the Biocultural Ethic for Earth Stewardship - Earth Stewardship: Linking Ecology and Ethics in Theory and Practice - page 131

agents that are mostly responsible for current socio-environmental problems,
can signifi cantly contribute to orient clearer collaborative and supportive ways
for a responsible and inter-cultural Earth stewardship.
(2) Regarding stewardship and other cultural habits, the biocultural ethic's
conceptual framework adds clarity to the Earth Stewardship Initiative in two
complementary directions: (a) better understanding and valuing a plethora of
sustainable ecological worldviews and practices, and (b) better identifying that
the main cultural habit driving global environmental impact is the growth in
consumption rates and affl uence. In its current style and magnitude, the con-
sumerist habit has a very recent history (triggered after World War II), and is
affordable to only a small fraction of the world population (Ortiz and Cummins
2011 ). Religious, philosophical, and Amerindian ethics criticize this consumer-
ist habit, because it does not contribute to a fl ourishing life of those who have
too much nor of those who have too little. Those who are irrelevant to plutono-
mies today, “the rest,” represent the vast majority of human and other-than-
human beings, and they are not passive victims or objects; instead, they are
active subjects with beauty, creativity, dignity, and solidarity. To transform reduc-
tionist, individualist, and selfi sh behaviors and values embedded in prevailing,
hegemonic, narrow economic discourses, the biocultural ethic fosters inter-
cultural dialogues and practices, based on partnerships among the majority of
overlooked, heterogeneous, rich cultural traditions and communities of Earth
stewards. Toward this aim philosophers can act as translators and initiators. In
terms of environmental philosopher Irene Klaver:
Translating various concerns along multiple perspectives opens up new situations and
affords us the freedom of ongoing new beginnings. It is crucial to an understanding of the
various viewpoints, positions, places and experiences of others. Environmental philosophy
enlarges the category of the “other” beyond human beings. It enlarges ethics in the direction
of ethos, resonating with “habitat,” “inhabitants,” and “habits” (Rozzi et al. 2008 ). It ques-
tions certain mentalities and provokes and evokes different modes of knowledge and experi-
ence, to enhance cultural imagination into environmental imagination. (Klaver 2013 , p. 91)
Philosophers contribute to “pluralizing” human natures. This plural understand-
ing of human natures fosters intercultural forms of Earth stewardship at multiple
scales by including the diversity of Earth stewards, their cultural habits and lan-
guages, interacting in complex and often non-linear ways in the context of
diverse local realities confronted with increasingly prevailing global discourses
and forms of governance. The biocultural ethic recovers the archaic meaning of
the Greek term ethos, and interprets it ecologically in terms of “habitats” and
“habits” of communities of human and other-than-human co-inhabitants (Rozzi
2013 ). By conducting comparative ethical analyses of (i) pre-Socratic and other
non-mainstream Western philosophies, (ii) Amerindian and other non-Western
ecological worldviews, and (iii) contemporary ecological-evolutionary sciences,
it introduces into Earth stewardship an intercultural philosophical language that
broadens the prevailing spectrum of normative ethics that emphasize
utilitarianism and deontology, or more recently virtue ethics (see Bina and Vaz
2011 ; Jax et al. 2013 ). The biocultural ethic asserts values, virtues, and forms of