Toward eco-justice for all - Environmental Harm: An Eco-justice Perspective - page 135

FIVE
toward eco-justice for all
introduction
A hallmark of a social harm approach is that it locates harm
fundamentally within social structures. To put it succinctly, harm is the
product of harmful societies (Pemberton, forthcoming). Not only is
much harm embedded in normal everyday practices, rarely questioned
at a conscious level, but it is preventable - alternative courses of
action are possible. While the object of analysis is different, the study
of nonhuman interests and needs (in contradistinction to the usual
social harm approach) nonetheless shares these key propositions. As
with the social harm approach, action to prevent and remedy harm
ultimately must be directed at dominant power arrangements and
toward fundamental social change.
Humans are responsible for much of the destruction of ecological
systems and animal cruelty in the world today, not to mention the
terrible things we do to each other. It is what humans do en masse that
reshapes landscapes, pollutes air, water and soil, leads to species decline
among plants and animals, and changes the contours of the atmosphere
and the level of the seas. The moral responsibility for this rests with we
humans (White, 2007).
The idea of blaming the human species, however, can be subjected
to counter-factual analysis that questions whether in fact all humans
are equally to blame (White, 2011). That is, if all humans are implicated
in the harm, then all humans must by their own 'human' nature be
destructive.Yet we know from accounts of indigenous relationships with
nature that, to take one example, some humans have lived countless years
in harmonious relationship with their local ecosystems (see Robyn,
2002). We also know that some contemporary communities in places
such as India are actively reconfiguring their relationship with nature
in ways that are ecologically sustainable and that promote biodiversity
(see Shiva, 2008). It is only at a very high level of abstraction, then,
that we can place blame on humans. The more grounded the analysis
becomes - the more reflective it is of specific groups and communities
- the more tenuous the sweep of the generalisation.