How to recover biodiversity and generate inclusion in the ruins of the Anthropocene – 10/12/2023 – Fundamental Science

This text is a continuation of the article “The science of complexity as a key to sustainability”.

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University of California anthropology professor Anna Tsing has introduced a vision of the Anthropocene that is as disturbing as it is creative. Her argument is that the present era of human dominance over natural processes corresponds to the ruins of capitalism. Get dressed en passantthe sight of Tsing would turn up the nose of would make limers and would generate a spark of indignation in the eyes of many economists. However, it is not a mere reissue of the rusty dichotomy “capitalism versus socialism” that fuels the obsession of so many.

Tsing’s metaphor advances a transdisciplinary scientific front that investigates the acceleration of human interference in ecosystems. On this front, the history of our economies and the future of their relationships with biodiversity and culture are inescapable debates.

When I examined this metaphor with my biologist’s magnifying glass, I saw that the California professor had a insight powerful that connects social scientists, natural scientists focused on species conservation and economists to value ecosystem services. This anthropological perspective takes the new science of socio-ecological networks and other approaches to the study of bioeconomies out of its comfort zone.

The ruins evoke an image of a scorched earth. Biologically, this image works. Anthropogenic landscapes are under high biological and social vulnerability, resulting from multiple economic cycles that preyed on ecosystems to generate wealth. One of the drivers of this vulnerability was deforestation that eliminated and fragmented native habitats in all Brazilian biomes, isolating biodiversity like disconnected islands in an ocean of plantations, pastures, mining areas and cities.

On biodiversity islands, the little-discussed process of defaunation – the local extinction of animals that fulfill central ecological roles, such as large herbivores, pollinators and seed dispersers – has put many ecosystems on the path to collapse.

The risk of widespread ecosystem collapse makes it urgent to implement ecological corridors to restore the biological connectivity of landscapes. Since the founding of conservation biology, this idea has been emphasized by biologist Michael Soulé (d. 2020) and many others. Tsing goes further and invokes a conception of corridors that embraces the humanities to more holistically reconnect nature, society and economy.

Integrating perspectives from the human sciences at the interface between conservation and bioeconomy is crucial, since human action continues not only to pulverize biological diversity, but to destroy sociocultural diversity in its ethnic, linguistic and artistic aspects. As a result, ways of life, economies and local knowledge associated with intact ecosystems disappear.

Biocultural homogenization, the greatest hallmark of the Anthropocene, also contributes substantially to social inequality. The counter-hegemonic science of resistance seeks to understand and manage biological and social diversity and their connectivities. This is the basis of a vision of socio-ecological networks for territorial transformation. The big question is: how to reconnect the ruins, linking species, businesses and communities to integrate ecosystems and bioeconomies based on biodiversity, inclusion and culture?

Mathematically, a socio-ecological system can be modeled as a multilayer network that describes flows of resources and services between the ecosystem and the socio-productive structure formed by public institutions, communities and companies. Wood extraction, soil nutrients transformed into agricultural products and water collected for livestock farming are examples of flows occurring in this network that connects society and nature.

The components of the socio-ecological network – plantations, pastures, forest reserves, agro-industrial areas or family farming – have different and often antagonistic objectives. Creative reconnections between processes, people and organizations that reconcile conflicts within the network can synergize ecology, economy and culture.

Currently, my group and I are using adaptive network approaches to understand how simple changes in socio-productive relationships can become catalysts for sustainability. For example, the integration of education, cooperative actions, large-scale agroecological production and payment for environmental services can quickly foster production chains based on regional biodiversity and culture, with insertion in global markets.

You insights generated by these models bring to territorial management a vision of networks in which ecosystems, socio-productive systems and rules for using resources are interconnected and co-evolve, guided by values ​​of sustainability, democracy and inclusion.

Transforming these insights into effective innovations that stimulate sustainable bioeconomies depends on extending the network perspective to governance, one of the objectives of our open science hub here in Paraíba. Network governance is institutionally polycentric and the locus where strategic public-private investments can be socially agreed to promote integrated policies, projects and enterprises. This integration depends on dialogue between academic science, traditional knowledge, social movements and multiple economic sectors. The challenge of building governance based on science, social participation and plurality of perspectives shows that the direction of our common future fundamentally depends on the reinvention of democracy.

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Rafael LG Raimundo is a professor at the Department of Engineering and Environment and coordinator of the Postgraduate Program in Ecology and Environmental Monitoring at the Federal University of Paraíba – Campus IV.

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