Matías Mastrangelo*

@Latinoamérica21

The ecological crisis that the world is going through is largely the result of individualistic behaviors that do not take into account the well-being of society as a whole. From companies that use agrochemicals that pollute soil and water, to real estate speculators that clear forests to speculate on the price of land, to fishing companies that do not respect quotas and closed zones, there are many examples of decisions that degrade the environment.

Although there is more and more information that shows the consequences of these behaviors, the degradation of nature continues and is accelerating. Because? One possible answer is that we are not attacking the root of the problem. As a society we continue to implement superficial solutions instead of seeking deep change.

Sustainability research and management has focused attention on ecological processes, economic markets, social structures and political dynamics. In other words, he focused on factors that are part of people’s “outer reality” and neglected and ignored the profound influence and transformative capacity of people’s “inner life”: their emotions, values, beliefs, and identities.

Our degree of individual connection with nature, both physically and psychologically, strongly influences the way society affects the environment. Despite the clear trend, we are only recently beginning to scientifically prove the loss of connection with nature on a global scale and its consequences. For example, disconnection from nature denies us benefits for health and general well-being, in addition to blocking emotions, attitudes and positive actions in caring for the environment.

Some practices outside academia, such as religions, have paid much more attention to the influence of people’s “inner lives” on sustainability than the same sciences devoted to this discipline. Pope Francis, for example, points out in his encyclical Praise yes, that “the ecological crisis is a call for deep inner conversion”. Similarly, in his Ethics for the New Millennium, the Dalai Lama suggests that paying more attention to our inner lives would lead to greater happiness and lay the foundation for building a more ethical and sustainable global community.

Dimensions of people’s “inner life” have been neglected by sustainability science partly because researchers cannot approach them from traditional science, that is, as if they were independent of the subject of study. Exploring and managing the connection between emotions, values, beliefs, identity and environmental action requires observing and monitoring one’s own inner life in an honest and committed way. Only then can we reflect on the “why” of our behavior and identify “who” is promoting sustainability and who is not.

Because the sustainability sciences have failed to take into account the deep connection between the “inner life” of people and the impact of their actions, many policies designed do not seek to replace the values ​​that underlie environmental problems. Many of them even include them in their strategies. An example of this is tax incentives to promote “green” or “sustainable” products, such as electric cars. These policies implicitly appeal to greed and materialism to change consumer behavior.

However, apart from the shortcomings of science dedicated to the study of sustainability, there are signs of change on the horizon that point to a more comprehensive and explicit approach to the “inner reality” of people in search of points of influence capable of promoting a transition towards deep and lasting sustainability.

More and more researchers point out that the transition towards sustainability requires not only knowledge about how socio-ecological systems work and what they should be like to be sustainable, but also more knowledge about how to direct these systems towards more desirable states. For example, we need to understand whether policies will succeed in reversing the loss of biodiversity in time by promoting changes in the values ​​that people have about their relationship with wildlife (from dominance to mutualism) or whether they should intervene directly on behaviors that affect wildlife, nature (for example, encouraging restoration of degraded ecosystems).

It is this kind of transformative knowledge that is shared and promoted in spaces such as Congress of research and innovation for sustainability (SRI) to be held in June in Panama City. There, an attempt will be made to generate commitment between sustainability researchers and managers in order to better understand, not only transformation processes, but also how they can be activated.

If we think that environmental problems like biodiversity loss and climate change are “outside” of us, we will fail to discover and use the powerful solutions we have “within” us. (OR)

* Matías Mastrangelo is a biologist and PhD in environmental science from Victoria University in Wellington (New Zealand). Assistant researcher at the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research (conicet), Argentina.