Contemporary Environmental Crisis Research Articles

Competencias de sostenibilidad ambiental para los alumnos del CUCEA.

The objective of this work is to guide the development of competencies in environmental sustainability in the students of the cucea in order that they acquire knowledge, skills and aptitudes to generate intervention proposals in differentiated contexts within the framework of contemporary environmental crises. To achieve this objective, it is proposed to make use of the five competences applied by Evans in a university context: systems competency; critical and analytical; inter-personal and communication; creative and strategic; and transdisciplinary.

A várostervezés főpróbája : Egyetemi kampuszok tervezése

For centuries, architecture had an integral relationship with the city. Contiguous buildings defined blocks, streets, and squares—the public space of the city. Only the most important civic buildings were free-standing objects. Modern architecture reversed this, however, and anti-urban private icons replaced urban space. American universities have been one of our most original and poignant models of urban form. The point is that campus design is urban design, and urban design is the design and management of the public realm —i.e., public spaces — rather more than the private realm of individual buildings. The principles of these projects have become even more important as the contemporary environmental crisis emphasizes the value of compact urban development.

The Contribution of Religion to a More Comprehensive Environmental Education

The causes of contemporary environmental and ecological crisis are multiple and complex. This crisis cannot be resolved by science or technology alone. We need not only knowledge, economic, and technology, but also worldviews, ethos, and practices to reconnect humans, other species, and nature. A sustainable ecology relies on ideals and ways of life which include value, belief, worldview, ethical commitment, and pattern of life. The Enlightenment tradition prioritizes human sovereignty over non-human world and invokes individualism, materialism, and consumerism, which objectify, materialize, and instrumentalize the non-human world; detach human being from transcendental constraint on human desire; and seduce human being into short-term self-interested pursuit. They are the main determinants of modern way of living and the major causes of contemporary environmental and ecological crisis. Religious worldviews define the status of human in the world and the human-nature relation. Religious ethos can be biocentric and ecocentric ethics rather than self-centered ethics or materialistic worldview. Furthermore religion grounds its ethics on transcendental or sacred base and incorporates its ethical norms in the practice of everyday life, communal living, and even every spheres of human activities. Nevertheless, there are diverse religions and various models of environmental education. There are difference, even disputes, between science and religion in some aspects. In a situation of diversity there needs to be an open and inclusive public sphere and procedure of engaged mutual understanding for reaching a consensus or temporary mutual agreement concerning environmental education.

Identitarian politics, precarious sovereignty

This essay investigates the intersection among postmodern neomedievalism, environmental activism, and nostalgic Southern pastoralism in crafting the ideology of American white supremacist groups, especially the fraternity formerly known as Identity Evropa that rose to international prominence in the aftermath of Charlottesville 2017. It explores the intellectual underpinnings of Identitarianism in the work of Guillaume Faye, whose strategic deployments and polemical contortions of ‘ethnicity’ and ‘race’ both mimic and coopt academic discourse within early medieval studies; the rhetorical elision of ethnicity and race provides a convenient cover for mainstreaming pan-European white nationalism and revisionist historiography. Identitarians, by upgrading ecofascist tactics and Malthusian logic, situate themselves at the nexus of late capitalist precariat and contemporary economic, environmental, and political crises. In contrast to Hedley Bull’s neomedievalism, Faye’s New Middle Ages is an archeofuturistic racialist imperium that rejects neoliberalism’s multiracial globalization, revives fictive ancestral values, and envisions a medievalized geopolitical sanctum of whiteness.

The Designation of a Deleuzian Philosophy for Environmental Education and Its Consequences…

AbstractThe philosophy of Gilles Deleuze has become popular in recent moves to embed approaches such as the new materialist and the posthuman in environmental education. Certainly, a newfound respect for the material universe, including the comprehension of the human place in it, and the tendency to a posthuman theoretical position, are both important given the contemporary environmental crisis, named as the Anthropocene. However, this article will argue that both these philosophies do not go far enough. This is because they must retain a political, social and critical edge if they are to be effective, and this edge can be too easily disregarded in the pursuit of increased engagement with the material and everything not human. In contrast, this article will put forward a Deleuzian approach to environmental education, based on the intellectual quadrant of Spinoza-Marx-Nietzsche-Bergson (Figure 1). It will be argued that only by fully connecting these often conflicting and disparate philosophies that a workable new synthesis for environmental education and a cartography for learning can be achieved. The Deleuzian approach to environmental education will be exemplified through an analysis of current environmental practises in schools as assemblage.

Roots of Resistance and Resilience: Agroecology Tactics for Resettlement

In the current era of intensifying global migration and displacement, people face significant obstacles as they resettle and reestablish community in a new place. This reflective essay explores the process that the researchers used to study how one com­munity in El Salvador employed agroecology tac­tics for resettlement after the Salvadoran civil war and has remained rooted despite new forms of vio­lence across Central America. The authors reflect on how their relationship to the community and their role as researchers from the United States vis­iting El Salvador unearths important connec­tions between resettlement and agroecology. An approach utilizing oral histories, participant obser­vation, and situation analysis revealed the need to connect macrolevel sociological perspectives on the environment to a spiritually informed under­standing of how people relate to food systems and agriculture in everyday life. The essay highlights how cooperative agroecology tactics can contribute to people’s ability to resist the forces that create contemporary environmental, human rights and international justice crises after displacement—or confront them with resilience. Concluding insights from El Salvador are offered to inform future agroecology and food systems scholarship and practice. See the press release for this article.

Interações entre Geografia e Educação Ambiental. O Caso da Implantação da Reserva de Desenvolvimento Sustentável Mamirauá

O presente artigo é uma revisão bibliográfica que se propõe abordar interações entre os campos da ciência geográfica e da educação ambiental diante do enfrentamento da crise ambiental contemporânea, procurando evidenciar o meio ambiente como matriz do pensamento geográfico, a educação ambiental como ciência e movimento social decorrente do ambientalismo e as possíveis contribuições do saber/fazer geográfico para o campo da educação ambiental. Sob o prisma da questão do método geográfico proposto por Becker Gomes (1993), busca-se uma análise crítica acerca da proposta do desenvolvimento sustentável como um modelo logístico para ordenar o uso do território. Para tanto, é discutida a implantação da Reserva de Desenvolvimento Sustentável Mamirauá na Amazônia brasileira no final do século XX com ênfase na concepção de educação ambiental proposta para a unidade de conservação. Como resultado, evidencia-se a relevância de Mamirauá como uma experiência de gestão territorial concreta que expressa uma nova racionalidade identificada com os princípios básicos do discurso do desenvolvimento sustentável que para sua implantação se utiliza, como uma de suas estratégias, de um subprograma de educação ambiental.

Globalization and Biodiversity: Issues in Environmental Justice

Contemporary environmental crisis and disruptions in global biodiversity demands critical reflections. Technically characterized the age of globalization, the emergent social order is a networked or interconnected world of fast-paced change driven by the advances in Information and Communication Technology. The phenomenon globalization births opportunities and challenges for the diverse population of the world: growth and development and, retardation and underdevelopment. With particular reference to developing nations and poor communities, globalization disrupts ecosystems and impinges on environmental rights: rights to clean water, safe air and means of livelihood, among others. It is the aim of this paper to attempt a reflective analysis of the interplay between the phenomena globalization, biodiversity and environmental justice. Review of literature on the intents and contents of globalization generates discontentment from environmental activists and conservationists (of biodiversities and natural habitats), among others. With particular reference to generally poor and economically backward developing nations and poor communities across the globe, globalization births attendant environmental concerns - global warming, loss of biodiversity and increasing loss of environmental rights., among others. Through critical reflections the paper examines the intents and contents of the interplay between the trio of globalization, biodiversity and environmental justice with a view to seeing the implications of the underpinnings of these phenomena for sustainable development. The paper raises and seeks answers to the question: how should humanity pursue a morally sound, biodiversity-just and ecologically-balanced interconnected globe? In other words, ought biodiversity be sacrificed for an interconnected and globalised society? What are the biodiversity (or environmental) imperatives for constructing and sustaining a reasonably interconnected universe where the rights of human and non-human lives shall be protected? Is it just to globalize both the costs and burdens of globalized development? What are the necessary conditions for facilitating a global society where the environments of industrialized, post-industrialized and pre-industrialized economies shall be treated with equal respect? The paper reflectively argues: existing regional and international programmatic initiatives on environmental sustainability must be critically deepened and strengthened as part of the heuristics for constructing an ecologically just, fair and balanced global society in which developing nations and poor populations experience sustainable growth and development. The paper concludes: in the emergent global society international organizations such as the World Bank and the IMF owes it to humanity to articulate, recommend and pursue contextually-determined or nation-specific policies and frameworks for global economic stability, without having to forgo the imperatives of sustainability and environmental justice.

Investigating the Factors Affecting the Sustainable Management of Sporting Student Events Worldwide

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the factors affecting sustainable management in sporting events for students worldwide. The method of this study is a review study and has become a challenging issue due to the importance of environmental issues in the world and the role of the environment in researcher has studied and translated related articles and books on sustainable management at sporting events from 2000 to 2019. According to the findings, sustainable development is a process of change that aligns resource utilization, investment management, technological development orientation and organizational change with current and future needs. Identifying and explaining students' attitudes to the environment, as an informed and influential part of society, is an essential and important step in environmental policy making and generating awareness of the environment and its dangers and how to protect the environment. The researcher concludes that resolving the contemporary environmental crisis requires the development of student participation to preserve the environment in sporting events so that by increasing knowledge of changing values and enhancing change potential, appropriate conditions are created for solidarity and harmony between students and the environment. Be provided. The more students use information resources such as the visual media, the written, their environmental attitudes and performance in sporting events, the better environmental factors.

‘Creating an Ecological Citizenship’: Philosophical and Theological Perspectives on The Role of Contemporary Environmental Education

In its concern to evoke in its readership an appropriate response to the challenge posed by the contemporary environmental crisis, the recent papal encyclical Laudato Si': On Care for our Common Home differentiates between the task of human education, on the one hand, and the deeper and more abstract task of motivating the human will for change and action, on the other. What must take place, it asserts, is the creation of nothing less than an ‘ecological citizenship’. To describe how this might be brought about, the encyclical employs the theological language of ‘conversion’. However, the rationale for this suggestion, and the implications it would entail for the way in which educational programmes on the environment might be pursued, is developed only minimally in the encyclical itself. The objective of this article is to take up and develop this hint by offering some philosophical and theological perspectives on the idea of human motivation towards care for the environment, and by exploring the current state of affairs in environmental education in light of it. The article therefore aims to develop the encyclical's brief and unthematized suggestion regarding an ‘ecological citizenship’ in a practical and applied direction.© 2018 Trustees for Roman Catholic Purposes Registered

Kapaligiran, Etika at Negosyo

The causes of the environmental crisis are many and diverse, and so are the possible ways to handle and eventually resolve this crisis. This essay advances one of such possible ways which results from relating the following two considerations. On the one hand, a fundamental kind of cause attributed to this crisis, on a theoretical level, concerns the perspectives used to determine or weigh the value of nature for humans. The analysis of these perspectives is the primary task of environmental ethics. On the other hand, on a practical level, the usual causes of the environmental damages of great magnitude are the business acts of corporations. Corporations, for instance, are the ones extracting enormous resources from nature and likewise the ones dumping wastes into it on a large scale. These considerations give rise to the question of which theory in environmental ethics will appropriately serve as a moral guide for corporations in their dealings with the natural environment. In accordance with the type of ethical standing that can be attributed to corporations, this essay endorses a rationalist ethical perspective in the Kantian form to address the said question.
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Environmental ethics for tourism- the state of the art

PurposeEnvironmental ethics has become an established subject of philosophy in recent decades in response to the contemporary environmental crisis. This paper aims to provide an overview of the key theories and concepts and critically evaluate the extent of their application in tourism studies.Design/methodology/approachThe paper is based on a systematic literature review of published academic papers that link environmental ethics to tourism. It subsequently attempts to provide a comprehensive review of what is currently a nascent field of research enquiry to comprehend and evaluate the relevance and implications of environmental ethics for tourism. Using a theoretical ethical framework of libertarian extensionism, eco-holism and the conservation ethic, moral debates that arise from their use in tourism are analysed. As a field of academic study that presently lacks research enquiry areas for future research investigation are subsequently identified.FindingsThe paper forms a part of the “State of the Art” series and subsequently does not present empirical findings. However, through critical evaluation, it demonstrates the complexity of the application of environmental ethics to tourism through differing perspectives within the subject and when nature’s interests are juxtaposed to concerns of anthropic ethics. To develop a stronger environmental ethics amongst tourism stakeholders that recognises the intrinsic value of nature, it is recommended that ecological virtue and literacy are key elements in this process.Originality/valueThe originality of the paper rests in providing a comprehensive overview of the existing level of application of the theories of environmental ethics to tourism; the appliance of theory to debates of tourism’s environmental challenges; and identifying research directions to help fill knowledge gaps.

MODERNIDADE E CRISE AMBIENTAL

O presente artigo analisa implicações entre a modernização das sociedades e a crise ambiental, com base na Teoria Social de Jürgen Habermas, que compreende o desenvolvimento das sociedades como processo de diferenciação entre o Mundo da Vida e Sistema, mediante a aprendizagem dos sujeitos, tanto na dimensão instrumental (trabalho), quanto na dimensão comunicativa (interação), em uma perspectiva alternativa em relação à proposta de Max Weber, que prioriza em sua análise a racionalidade instrumental. Inicialmente, são analisados os conceitos de sujeito e subjetividade (racionalidade), a fim de apresentar a proposta habermasiana de uma “racionalidade comunicativa”. Na sequência, serão analisados os constructos teóricos “trabalho”, “interação”, “mundo da vida” e “sistema”, centrais na teoria social habermasiana. Por fim, serão apresentadas as ideias de Habermas sobre o desenvolvimento das sociedades em sua dupla dimensão e suas consequências para compreensão da crise ambiental contemporânea.

Biodiversity and overcoming the contemporary environmental crisis: A discussion on anthropocentric and ecosystem-based approaches to sustainable development

Talking about the biosphere equilibrium, our society has been primarily focused on discussing anthropo-centered issues such as climate, greenhouse gas concentrations, levels of environmental pollution, to name a few. Processes occurring in nature have been marginalized too often in public policy debates. However, diminishing biodiversity and ecosystems degradation are at the core of the current ecological crisis. While perusing development, too often we forget that the Earth’s condition, which enables humans to thrive, is a product of the biosphere and its ecosystems; current human livelihoods are based on ecosystem services. The paper discusses the role which the biodiversity and ecosystems discourse should be playing in shaping the development and environmental policy debate across academic, social, and policy sectors. Refs 18. Figs 4.

Time for politics

In a recent scholarly debate, the Anthropocene concept has been criticized for diverting attention from the political aspects of contemporary environmental crises, not least by way of the long timescales it implies. This article therefore takes on the matter of long-termism as an historical and political phenomenon, by applying a conceptual historical perspective. Examples are drawn from historical studies of forest politics. It is argued that conceptions of the long term, as in all concepts in political language, are historical and therefore problematic to legitimately define conclusively. However, many of the environmental crises looming in our time do indeed call for long-term perspectives. As a solution in accordance with its historical and democratic conceptual character, it is suggested that political long-termism paradoxically can and should be constantly deliberated upon and renewed in the short term. Its conceptual history can then serve two purposes: First, history can offer exempla of how long-termism can be conceptualized and institutionalized in ways that encourage continuous deliberation and reconceptualization. Second, historical conceptualizations of the long term can be drawn upon, both negatively and positively, in this continuous deliberation.

Rethinking Social Work's Interpretation of ‘Environmental Justice’: From Local to Global

This article challenges social workers to expand their understanding of the ‘person-in-environment’ perspective and become more active in addressing current environmental crises. Although social work scholars have begun to explore the relationship between social work and the natural and built environment and professional organizations mandate the integration of this content into practice and education, these goals remain unrealized, particularly in the USA. To address these issues more effectively, social work educators will need to distinguish between understanding persons in their environment and environmentalism, and between environmentalism and environmental justice. This article analyzes the emergence of the environmental justice movement in the USA and other nations and its relationship to environmental racism. It presents a case study of a local environmental justice effort to demonstrate how social workers can use their knowledge and skills to make important contributions to environmental justice and sustainability. It also discusses the potential of ‘green social work’ and transformative learning theory as tools to help social work educators better equip students to make strategic alliances across professions, disciplines, and systems to address contemporary environmental crises.

How to foster agroecological innovations? A comparison of participatory design methods

Facing contemporary environmental crisis implies fostering agroecological innovations that take into account local ecological regulations and rely on multiple stakeholders' innovation capacities. This paper draws on two fields of literature that remain unconnected so far: participatory approaches and design sciences. It proposes an analysis grid to support a reflexive analysis of cases of implementation of three participatory design methods: ComMod (Companion Modelling for concerted management of natural resources), Forage Rummy (simulation-based board game for designing farming systems) and KCP (collective design workshops to foster innovation). This analysis highlights key features of the methods in view of agroecological innovation challenges, focusing on knowledge management and organisation for exploration.

The Holy Spirit, the voices of nature and environmental prophecy

AbstractI argue for the theological plausibility of reading contemporary environmental concern as a response to the prophetic voices of nonhuman nature, and in that sense as a movement of the Holy Spirit.The literature on pneumatology and the environment tends to concentrate either on the Spirit's role in creation (and the continuities between creation and new creation) or on the ecclesial location of the Spirit's transformation of material reality. While these approaches are sound and necessary, neither appears fully to address the specific theological challenge of the contemporary environmental movement and of contemporary environmental stress, as a historical moment between humanity and nonhuman nature. Pneumatology needs to take account of the specific ways in which the environment becomes an issue for theology and society, and of the historical ‘discernment of spirits’ involved in Christian and theological responses to the environmental crisis.In an attempt to address this need, I take up the now well-developed theological claim that nonhuman nature is a subject, rather than the backdrop of salvation-history, and develop it in relation to the idea that prophecy as the work of the Spirit both reveals and realises God's history with creation. I draw on Eugene Rogers’ approach to pneumatology by exploring the non-identical repetitions of pneumatology's paradigmatic narratives, but, going beyond Rogers, I trace these repetitions in nonhuman and extra-ecclesial realities – in ‘the environment’. The main paradigmatic pneumatological narratives considered in this article are those related to prophecy, and in particular to the miraculous extension of gifts of speech and hearing; rereading these narratives in the contemporary environmental crisis leads to an account of how the ‘voices’ of nonhuman nature are heard as prophetic speech that summons response. In a final section, I turn to another paradigmatic pneumatological narrative – that of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness – and propose, in dialogue with Donald MacKinnon and others, that it offers a starting-point for theological responses to the experience of despair, loss and failure in the context of environmental concern.

Privilege and Disaster: Toward a Jewish Feminist Ethics of Climate Silence and Environmental Unknowing

����� ��� Given the unprecedented scope and stakes of contemporary environmental crisis, ethicists have raised critical questions about whether traditional religious texts can speak in a meaningful way to climate change and other environmental risks in the anthropocene. Building on the ethical urgency of the environmental justice movement, this essay offers a feminist reading of Jewish narratives from the Babylonian Talmud that centers attention on issues of power, privilege, and social inequality in the midst of disaster. Talmudic tales of the destruction of Jerusalem critique the moral oblivion of wealthy residents who failed to act in response to crisis. Articulating a Jewish feminist reconstituative ethics, the author uses these tales to trace the ethical costs of epistemologies of ignorance—the complex strategies and social processes through which privileged communities cultivate ignorance of environmental suffering, maintain social distance from environmental risk, and disown moral culpability for environmental injustice.

Alienation from Nature and Early German Romanticism

In this article I ask how fruitful the concept of alienation can be for thinking critically about the nature and causes of the contemporary environmental crisis. The concept of alienation enables us to claim that modern human beings have become alienated or estranged from nature and need to become reconciled with it. Yet reconciliation has often been understood—notably by Hegel and Marx—as the state of being ‘at-home-with-oneself-in-the-world’, in the name of which we are entitled, perhaps even obliged, to overcome anything in nature that is alien to the human mind. This approach to alienation derives ultimately from the German Idealist philosopher J. G. Fichte. I explore an alternative conception of alienation and reconciliation to be found in the work of the Early German Romantics, especially Friedrich Schlegel and Novalis. The Romantics think of reconciliation as including a dimension of alienation, in the form of an awareness that nature is greater than and exceeds the understanding of human beings, insofar as we are merely limited parts of the all-encompassing whole that is nature. I argue that this is a more fruitful approach to alienation and reconciliation than that pursued by Fichte, Hegel, and Marx.