The Ecology of Action

by Camila Montecinos (*)

On September 11, 1973, Chileans awoke in the midst of a coup d'état. This signalled the beginning of an era marked by death, from which we have yet to recover. A long tradition of striving for social rights and justice, the product of continuous social struggles, was killed systematically and without mercy. Much of our artistic and intellectual capacity died in the process. Chile's great poet Pablo Neruda died of cancer accelerated by sadness. More than 3,000 fellow citizens also died, assassinated by torture, executions and fake confrontations with the military.

Since that September 11, Chile has been considered a pioneer in the merciless application of the wild capitalism that is progressively surrounding us. And it has possibly been one of the leaders in the inauguration of a new era characterised by death - physical and symbolic - which has plagued our planet ever since.

Beginning in the 1970s, political, military, academic and intellectual authorities began to inform us of a variety of sudden deaths. First we were told that class struggle had died. Then we learned of the death of ideologies. Soon after, labor unions, revolutions and the welfare state passed away. Next, it was History's turn to disappear, followed by utopia. According to some, local and national economies have already died. And it seems as though we now await the last breath of nation states.

Something mysteriously contagious must have caused these deaths because simultaneously a series of previously universally accepted social values disappeared . Social and economic rights (health, education, food, job security), solidarity ethics, public spaces, and social control of usury all died. That these values were not strong to begin with might explain why they were so vulnerable to this epidemic. But soon some much more important values began to die, such as the sanctity of life, the free circulation of knowledge, and the right to dissent.

Agriculture, biodiversity, and the rural world have not been exempted from this epidemic. In these cases the loss has been painfully material. Thousands of small farmers and their families disappear each year, along with their diverse production systems, crop varieties, animal breeds, and locally important plant species. Simultaneously, incalculable biological resources are being destroyed. The spiritual and inmaterial world has not had better luck: local and traditional knowledge systems are caught in the crossfire of privatisation and the obsession for modernisation; indigenous territorial rights are prisoners to national sovereignty and hostages to various forms of prospecting initiatives; and many cultures and religions struggle with all their might to escape museum embalming parlours.

It is in this death-ridden context that we are expected to live and act. The past 30 years have been characterised by a series of profound changes, accelerating in the last decade. So much so that social struggles have increasingly focused on working and fighting against while the necessary component of working and fighting for has progressively vanished over time. It seems that we no longer centre our efforts on building a future, but rather, focus on resistance in order to avoid a worse fate. What is sad and paradoxical about this is that dissent against the empty promises of global capitalism is growing. Why is it then that most initiatives to either resist or construct alternatives seem to have come to no good?

Finding our place in the ecosystem

Edgardo Morin proposes the concept of “ecology of action”. He asserts that “Here is where the notion of the ecology of action intervenes. The moment an individual undertakes an action, whatever it may be, it starts to escape her/his intentions. The action enters a universe of interaction and it is finally the environment that takes possession over it, possibly changing its course into one contrary to the original intention.”

Morin's metaphor is extremely powerful. Into what systems are our actions “escaping us”? The answer to this question is a strong call to observe caution when assessing assessing the effects of what we do. After twenty years of rampant privatisation, the loss of our rights, and large failures in our attempts to infuse some sort of ethics and social responsibility into what is called society's ‘development,' not to take a critical look at the results of what we are doing is dangerously arrogant.

We are part of a broader ecosystem in which we are expected to behave as a monoculture: an endless landscape of homogenous, disciplined, predictable and easily exploitable individuals. We are part of an environment in which the basic dynamics imposed on us are expropriation, privatisation, and the concentration of resources and sources of wealth and welfare. In this environment where everything is being privatised, the only things being socialised – shared publicly – are social and environmental costs, and the status quo will be maintained at any cost. It should not be surprising then, that a large part of our efforts in recent decades have been absorbed, digested, co-opted, re-cycled, and spat back into the environment in a functional role, serving to feed systemic tendencies, especially those that lead to expropriation and privatization. A most recent example is that of the Farmers' Rights article found in the Food and Agriculture Organisation's (FAO's) Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources: all threatening content was neutralised. Farmers were reduced to mere seed producers and the possibility was left open that farmers could be forced to pay a fee, or a royalty, should they decide to impose conditions on access to the seeds they produce. Article 8j) of the Biodiversity Convention contains plenty of similar distortions. While the concepts expressed in this agreement serve as the basis for many important arguments opposing bioprospecting initiatives, their interpretation has also served to legitimise bioprospecting, facilitate the expropriation of local resources, and create profound tensions and divisions within small farming communities and among indigenous peoples.

These are only two cases in a sea of examples. It is precisely because of this sea of reversals of our goals that we can no longer take refuge in our intentions. Whether we want to or not, we need to take a critical look at our achievements, and look for processes that permit real impacts once our actions “escape” into an environment which devours them.

Morin's metaphor seems to hold four implicit inferences that can assist us in this endeavour. The first is that we can no longer inject our actions into processes that the system itself has identified as necessary for its operation. It is time, for example, that we recognise summit meetings for what they are: mechanisms that undermine all formal channels of citizens' political representation and governance, centralise decisions in the hands of delegates who do not respond to any form of social control (but rather, respond exclusively to their respective executive powers), and use the presence of a few members of civil society to legitimise a fundamentally non-democratic process. Moreover, an important part of the official channels of participation allocated to civil society members have served to identify, distract, neutralise, and/or counteract sources of dissent. In other words, it is time that “participation” be stripped of its guise of neutrality, as “technology” was long ago. It must be understood for what it is: a political process that responds to the political realities and objectives of those who design and impel it.

The recent Social Summit meetings in Porto Alegre were an attempt to fight against this trend. There, we observed different expressions of social movements as they defined objectives, topics of discussion and action plans. They became a fresh wind, creative and encouraging in a social landscape that had appeared to lack alternatives. Yet, the Porto Alegre Summit offers more invitations than answers. Whether we like it or not, it is still a summit, and it can only carry out its catalyst role if what is discussed, built, or shared there reflects processes initiated at the grass-roots or local levels. A social summit can not be the motor for change, only a reflection of decentralised and insubordinate multiple social actions. The most stimulating aspect about the Porto Alegre Summit was that it clearly signaled a search for new channels and alternatives. What made our hopes strong is that this search involves multiple paths and actors. The most urgent task is that it is reinforced at local and regional levels.

A new process

A second corollary is that we need to focus on those processes that can effectively alter the physiology of the system. Objectives such as de-concentration, decentralisation, social control of social and economic processes, and the expansion of public and collective spaces are pivotal elements to the course we are pursuing. These are, unquestionably, daunting challenges. For example, the concentration of power that we are witnessing today is not only a concentration of wealth and commercial flows, but of practically all forms of power that strongly influence decision-making processes, resource management, the creation and socialization of knowledge, as well as many other processes that determine production systems, life-styles and cultural expressions. We are therefore talking of multiculturalism, (not just interculturalism), a need that goes far beyond the “participatory” processes in education or research we can currently witness. We are talking about promoting totally different and diverse forms of building knowledge, along with multiple, locally-based technological, productive and normative processes.

Efforts to achieve these goals are under way. Today, hundreds of rural and indigenous communities are working systematically towards reviving their own processes of knowledge creation, land management, and biodiversity development and conservation. Fast and extensive advances have been made (or at least made visible) through new forms of collective experiences in the areas of local control over production systems, seed maintenance, and exchange systems. What was considered “absurd” or “demagogical” ten years ago, has now shown to be possible many times over.

The multiplication of similar processes and the creation, or recuperation, of political, social and cultural frameworks which can reinforce these and other processes of autonomy and social control is part of what is left to do. Because we are part of a society where rights continue to be reduced and restricted to the right to expropriate, appropriate, and exploit, the recuperation, construction or reconstruction of a different concept of rights is probably one of the most pressing tasks. We can not go on arguing whether the answer is benefit sharing, sui generis rights, or the defensive interruptions of all resource and knowledge flows, as doing so only reinforces our contribution to privatisation and concentration frameworks. The history of humankind has shown that all processes of harmonious social coexistence are built upon the notion of reciprocity; upon collective rights and norms that do not constitute property rights. In this context, rights to utilise and enjoy are linked to clearly-defined responsibilities and duties. Better yet, in spite of the devastating legal frameworks imposed today by the World Trade Organisation, the Free Trade Agreements and other international agreements, still a vast majority of humankind continues to believe that collective rights are fundamental. This perception should be the basis for questioning current laws, regulations and legal frameworks, and for responding to the biased, unilateral and mutilating vision of neoliberalism.

The creation of different systemic physiologies demands that we understand the operation of social systems as a coherent whole. We are reminded once again that the problems facing biodiversity are the same as those faced by small-scale farmers, local economies, rural and indigenous cultures, human and social rights, the effective participation of civil society, peoples' rights to self-determination and ... the list goes on and on. Thus, challenging these problems, demands that our actions be interconnected and our analysis comprehensive.

Broaden and deepen involvement

None of the above will be effective unless efforts made are rooted in daily life, are consistent, and increasingly involve wider sectors of society. This is Morin's third corollary. Even the most disturbing action will not have an impact on the system if it takes place as an isolated event. This is an old lesson that led to the establishment of many formal and informal NGO networks. Now we need to progress from NGO networks to larger and more diverse social movement networks. Progress in this area was observed at the Porto Alegre Summit, Brazil's rejection of genetically modified crops, the Via Campesina campaigns, and in the struggles of indigenous movements. But we still have a long way to go, and the learning process ahead of us is difficult. How can we encourage and participate in social movements that are rooted locally and in daily acts? What role should we, NGOs, play while we are still learning that NGOs are not a social movement, but merely one of many actors?

Imagination and utopia

Morin's fourth corollary is the need to create autopoiesis, the capacity of systems to generate and re-generate themselves. A system will continue to change when it is able to generate changes that reinforce the change. This implies that if we do not change the mental landscape, we will fail at changing the social and physical landscape of which we form a part. This, again, is an old lesson. We have participated in many successful educational, capacity building and conscience raising efforts. Today we must contribute to the insubordination and diversification of our imaginations. We must aim for the creation of mental landscapes that permit us to repopulating of the world with that which has been considered dead by decree along with the new that will necessarily emerge. Is it really so that utopias are dead? Well then, let's build new ones

But perhaps the most liberating aspect of Morin's vision is that he reminds us that in an ecosystem, species do not live or die either by authoritarian decree or by a verdict handed down by a specialist. In the reigning monoculture, the entire world is considered to be a weed or a wild species: seemingly marginal, and apparently nonviable or useless. Yet, everything in it continues on: surviving, evolving, creating, repopulating and enriching the world when the right conditions are created, when we are able to undiscipline ourselves, when we learn to see what has been denied, and when, along with the necessary resistance, we also dare to build without asking for illegitimate permission.

For all of the above, I declare myself “ecosystemic,” according to Morin's definition of the term – until someone finds a better name for the ungovernable desire to exercise the right to build a life, rather than spend a lifetime resisting the future.

Reference for this article: Montecinos C, 2002, The ecology of action, Seedling, July 2002, GRAIN Publications

Website link: www.grain.org/seedling/seed-02-07-3-en.cfm

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