The International Network for the Study of Spirituality (INSS)
Wednesday 17 May Session 3 – 10.30-12.15
Room TL 245 Chair: Dr Paul Clogher
Symposium: Towards a homo-ecologicus system of human governance
“The Law as a governing tool in shifting the narrative from
homo-economicus to homo-ecologicus.”
– Dr Saintier Séverine saintiers@cardiff.ac.uk, School of Law & Politics, Cardiff University, UK
– Alexandra Pimor apimor@earthlaw.org Earth Law Centre
– Anthony Zelle tzelle@earthlaw.org Earth Law Center, USA
The symposium will hold a space for critical reflection on the ethical, consciousness and spiritual implications of legal practice, development, mechanisms and innovations in this period of ecological polycrises and political uncertainties. Nature, understood both as biotic communities of interacting and co-dependent entities, and as a biotic environmental landscapes and resources, is increasingly being afforded legal rights. From this Eurocentric perspective, Nature is separate from humanity.
The rights of Nature are recognised for their intrinsic ecological value, as well as for Nature’s role on the (emotional, physical, therapeutic, psychological and spiritual) health and well-being of those affected by its degradation or eradication.
In spite of this broadened recognition of the value of Nature, western human communities (and India and China and Indonesia, no?) remain predominantly guided by an entrenched economic worldview. Values, systems, and ensuing choices are based on an economic spirituality and thus geared towards individual efficiency and profit as homo economicus. Environmental law and related tools still fail to address the root causes of the global crisis (Boyd), which stem primarily from human activity. Overpopulation, overconsumption, deforestation, pollution, intensive farming and agriculture are behavioural illustrations of the systemic, insensitive, extractive, wasteful and destructive spirituality enabled by legal systems that are underpinned by the belief that humanity rules the natural world (Capra & Mattei).
A fundamental shift towards a homo-ecologicus approach and ecological balance is needed and requires our global society to adopt an emergent system of governance being dreamt up within a new spirituality and collective consciousness. The root cause for ecological balance will be the radical transformation in humanity’s collective consciousness towards a society based a more inclusive, socially and ecological spirituality, that itself demands an ethical and radical institutional shift (Heldeweg & Saintier). Although Spirituality and collective consciousness are crucial elements of this radical transformation, their part into the discussion is not yet put to the fore.
This symposium aims to remedy this gap and discuss ways in which human legal constructs, systems and mechanisms can incorporate Spirituality and collective consciousness as framework elements in our discussion on eco-governance development to promoting a new narrative for a homo-ecologicus system of human governance.