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• W3022152337 abstract "In 2019 Aldo Leopold's (1949) land ethic turned 70. Formulated in A Sand County Almanac, the land ethic has been called Leopold's “project for worldview remediation” (Callicott 2013). His attempt to “get the company back in step” by transforming society's “Abrahamic concept of land” into “an evolutionary–ecological worldview.” For Leopold the land ethic was an effort to right the ecological wrongs he discovered throughout a lifetime of studying the land by reconceiving our relationships with nature. Today, the Almanac is often called the bible of conservation. But, how goes it for Leopold's project for worldview remediation? Has the evolution of a nonanthropocentric land ethic been replaced by the human-centered concepts of ecosystem services, so-called new conservation (Soulé 2013), “nature's contribution for people” (Diaz et al. 2018), and “planetary boundaries” (Rockström et al. 2009)? At 70 we might recognize the Almanac for its lifetime contribution to conservation, but is it time to retire the land ethic? In the Anthropocene, perhaps the land ethic must give way to self-preservation; appeals to nonanthropocentric values may appear “sterile or dismissively quaint” (Chan et al. 2016). I argue that the land ethic remains fertile and far-reaching—still a vital source of hope for a peaceful cohabitation between Homo sapiens and the rest of nature. A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise. Leopold believed that an evolution of ethics was essential for conservation. The land ethic is grounded in ecological–evolutionary thinking (Callicott 2013), based on the premise that humans are “plain members and citizens” of the land community. Today, many concur with Leopold that a holistic worldview that recognizes the intrinsic value of nature is required for true sustainability. Over the past 70 years the land ethic has been debated, deconstructed, defamed, and defended; yet, its appeal as a normative postulate endures (SCB 2020). Although the land ethic remains popular, some question the efficacy of appealing to intrinsic natural value to justify conservation (Tallis et al. 2014; Chan et al. 2016). There is a move away from the belief that humanity can learn to love and respect ecosystems for their own sake. Some believe “social values cannot be changed for the sake of conservation” (Manfredo et al. 2017). Such thinking, however, belies what historians know about society. For example, Germany has undergone 6 major political shifts in the past century, not least a transition from fascism and racism to tolerance and liberty (Harari 2018). Similarly, ecology has shifted from value neutrality to an embrace of stewardship (Callicott 2015). The rapid growth of conservation science is itself proof that values can change. Seventy years ago Leopold was a voice in the wilderness. Today we have the Convention for Biological Diversity aiming to protect 17% of Earth's surface and new calls to protect up to 50% (Dinerstein et al. 2017). That sounds like change to me. So why celebrate the land ethic? Seventy years on, people still turn and return to A Sand County Almanac to assess their relationships with nature. Callicott (2013) awakens to “the profound potential in the evolutionary–ecological worldview for a naturalistic aesthetic and spirituality…[and]…a lifelong romance with cranes.” Rolston (1989) claims his ”inalienable right” to find a pasqueflower. I recently discovered Draba (Fig. 1), Leopold's “postscript to a hope” of spring. Like Leopold, I found the dainty white flowers thickly covering poor postglacial soils - for him in Wisconsin and for me in Sweden. Draba is a tiny but meaningful signal of renewal. Such gifts help us understand Earth's “storied achievement” (Rolston 2010) in which life and value emerge, where before there was only chemistry and physics. These values are inherent in nature—values that cranes, pasqueflowers, and Draba had long before there were humans to relate to them. Leopold “puts us in our place” (Rolston 2012), and we find ourselves “fellow voyagers with other creatures in the odyssey of evolution.” Ecology probably would have no land ethic if not for the Almanac, but there would be no Almanac if Leopold had not found a land ethic. Therein lies a paradox of ecocentrism—one must know thyself to know the world. It took Callicott (2017) 25 years to catch on to what a Japanese colleague once said about the importance of the self in ecophilosophy. The self (or the “no self” or “topos of mu”) Callicott now finds “has everything to do with” environmental ethics because when we examine ourselves, we find that the skein of relationships in which we dwell is what defines us—and conversely that we are literally nothing (no-thing) without these relationships. That these mutual interdependencies extend beyond our human-to-human relationships is science's gift from Darwin, made beautifully accessible by Leopold. Recognizing that neither individuals nor species can exist outside mutually interdependent ecological collectives, one may ultimately contemplate Earth ethics (Rolston 2012), as indeed Leopold did (Callicott 2013). Earth ethics, however, lie somewhat beyond the pale of us as individual humans—we can conceive of them perhaps, but in practice the ecosphere is too vast and complex for individuals to understand, much less affect. Thus, must all ethics be grounded in the local and personal before they expand to include the distant and the unrelated, as Darwin (1872) hypothesized about the evolution of our moral sense. “Ecological citizens need and yearn for a sense of place” (Rolston 2020). Although Leopold may have sought worldview remediation on a grand scale, he realized that Earth ethics began at “The Shack.” Much literature addresses how Leopold developed as a professional, noting that he engaged in pragmatic land-health conservation (Freyfogle & Newton 2002) and management (Norton 2015) and that this work intertwined with the philosophy developed in “The Land Ethic” (Meine 1988). Although I highlight the ecocentric perspective, no serious student considers Leopold's essay the last word, nor did he intend it to be. In the foreword to the Almanac Leopold wrote: “Such a view of land and people is, of course, subject to the blurs and distortions of personal experience and bias.” Not only ought we to expect the land ethic to evolve, but we must also recognize the myriad worldviews held by diverse cultures (Rozzi 2013) The modern environmental sciences operate with increasingly unabashed hubris—we more and more wish to believe that humans are all that really matter. With our Anthropocene and ecosystem services, we forget that Earth will abide long after humanity has exited the stage—“Nature is forever lingering...” (Rolston 2017), waiting to reclaim her own. Whether we exit via widespread ecocide or nuclear Armageddon, some forms of life will likely survive and bloom forth after the 6th mass extinction. Were we to but find a way to love and respect Earth; however, we might exit the stage with a little grace and take fewer of our fellow voyagers with us. Many believe, like Leopold, that the land ethic is the “key-log” to a sustainable future—that a more widespread recognition of nonanthropocentric value may finally break the Cartesian-dualist logjam that has held sway in Western thought since the Enlightenment (Rolston 2012). It is difficult to imagine how conservation science might have developed if Leopold and his land ethic had not existed. At the conclusion of Ecological Ethics, Curry (2011) quotes Leopold: “One of the penalties of an ecological education is one lives alone in a world of wounds.” He goes on: “It is indeed often painful, but to recognize that world and those wounds is the first step to healing. And we are far from alone.” Leopold's Almanac and land ethic are among the primary reasons that we are far from alone. May the coming generation develop their own personal relationships with the natural world while growing ever further from being alone. Happy birthday land ethic, and many happy returns! J.P. was funded by The Institution for Environmental and Life Sciences, Karlstad University. Comments of two anonymous reviewers and the handling editor greatly improved the manuscript." @default.
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• W3022152337 title "Celebrating Aldo Leopold's land ethic at 70" @default.
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