On first thought, you might not think that “sustainability” and “ecospirituality” were related. After reading about both topics this week, I realized that not only are they related, but ecospirituality might be one of the solutions to more sustainable living.
Our Common Future by the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) says that “Ecology and economy are becoming ever more interwoven — locally, regionally, nationally, and globally — into a seamless net of causes and effects.” It goes on to discuss how the developing world feels pressure to exploit its resources for economic gain, while the industrialized world consumes the majority of those resources with no degradation to local soils. In Ecotopia, Ernest Callenbach creates a society in which people have to put in an amount of physical labor equal to the resources they plan to use. This system links ecology and economy: people can make money off of the resources they harvest, but they’re also forced to pay attention to the ecological effects of the harvest.
While reading about these issues, I was also doing some research about Pacific Rim timber trading that I thought was relevant. For years, Japan was importing its timber from other places in the Pacific Rim (including the Pacific Northwest) because they valued their own forests and found that it was cheaper to import timber than deal with tending to local plantations. I thought this was really interesting because Japanese consumers didn’t realize the effect the imports were having on the rest of the world. They were glad that they were preserving their own forests but didn’t realize the ecological damage that their economic benefit was causing the rest of the world.These days, the disconnect between cities and “nature” is so great that it’s hard for people to even fathom where the products that they use come from, or what social or environmental effect it might have elsewhere. What seemed like a great way to save money and preserve the country’s beauty overpowered the citizens’ ability to imagine the negative effects the timber imports were having on other forests.
Ecospirituality and the idea that being in touch with nature makes people value it more feeds into the whole ecology and economy disconnect. People are spending less and less time outside and more time on their devices, which alters their values and perceptions of costs and benefits. Although Ecotopia was an extreme, I do believe that more direct exposure to the ecological impacts we are making would help balance out economic issues.