The Politics of Earth Stewardship in the Uneven Anthropocene - Earth Stewardship: Linking Ecology and Ethics in Theory and Practice - page 151

Box 10.5 (continued)

otherness : non-vascular plants had a greater diversity than vascular plant
species. Moreover, the sub-Antarctic Magellanic ecoregion hosts >5 % of
the world's species of non-vascular plants. This stimulated the research
team at Omora Park to “change the lenses to assess biodiversity richness”
and focus on non-vascular plants for defi ning conservation priorities in high
latitude ecoregions (Rozzi et al. 2008 ). This change made visible an idio-
syncratic biodiversity, and provided an argument to create the UNESCO
Cape Horn Biosphere Reserve in 2005. For the fi rst time, a protected area
was designated based on the diversity of mosses, tiny organisms that had
rarely been perceived and valued in the international conservation commu-
nity. This led to a change in the language referring to mosses, and to an
awareness of interspecifi c co-inhabitation. Thus, the “miniature forests of
Cape Horn” metaphor was composed to communicate that little organisms
are co-inhabitants rather than mere “natural resources.” The fi eld activity of
ecotourism with a hand-lens (EHL) was invented to help citizens and deci-
sion makers discover the beauty, diversity and ecological importance of a
fl ora that regularly goes unnoticed (Goffi net et al. 2012 ). By observing fl o -
ristic otherness , global citizens recover the awareness of the vital pulse that
is common to mosses, humans, and all living beings. From the south of the
world, EHL summons ethical, aesthetical, and ecological values that broaden
the narrow economic lens that prevails in the relationship of global society
with nature.

Fig. 10.6 The spiral model of learning (Redrawn from Arnold et al. 1991)