SOCIAL ECOLOGY IS SOCIAL REFORM

Economic Unions across the world must support sustainable futures.

Economic Unions  must pursue a Social Ecology Manifesto.

Humans and all other organisms function in the biosphere: the blogosphere;  the atmosphere; the lithosphere; the troposphere; and the hydrosphere.
Ecology is the scientific study of the relations of living organisms with each other and their surroundings in the biosphere. Ecologists are biologists who describe and analyse the biosphere with a view to explain the evolution of organisms, how they have adapted to survive, and offer explanations of their behaviours.
Social Ecologists analyse the impact of human actions upon the biosphere, and offer explanations about the relations between the environment, and all organic species.

Social Ecology is reflexive and normative, offering prescriptions and manifestos about how humans ought to behave in relation to the environment, other species, and all extended ecological communities, so as to ensure their mutual co-existence.

It evaluates evidence so as to devise social, moral, philosophical, economic, ecological, environmental manifestos in order to identify the principles, policies, and actions that are necessary to protect the environment and enable the survival of all ecological communities in the biosphere in the future.

‘Social Ecology’ is best regarded as a social science. Social ecological manifestos should be available to  any organization, government, or group; from a dictatorship, or a plutocracy, or a parliament, or a corporation, or a local authority, or a municipality, to any political party.

Nevertheless, for some reason or other, Social Ecology has become associated with particular politics such as anarchy; libertarian municipalism; direct democracy; inclusive democracy; or communalism, or even communism, to the exclusion of all others. I suggest that there is no valid reason why Social Ecology has been so completely tied to these  political perspectives. In fact, to do so has led it into a dead end! 

  Today, most organisations are hierarchies. Nation States are plutocracies …even those parading as democracies. All states and corporations are actively involved in capitalism, and state socialism has failed. Most people in the world live in large cities with little sense of community.  Most people, that is 6.5billion out of 7.2billion, are poor and uneducated, struggling to survive.

Does all this mean that there is no place for Social Ecology? On the contrary, it is most important that all these groups pay attention to, and enact, a Social Ecology manifesto.

We must be actively concerned with protecting the environment, nature, blogosphere, biosphere; and learning how to organize our societies so that we can thrive where there are  limited demands and no growth. The recent European elections witnessed the emergence of Nationalist politics, and the emphasis on growth, and the associated employment of local people to the exclusion of immigrants. The electorate was returning to right wing politics and rejecting the manifesto of the European Union. The MEPs have forgotten about the need to negotiate, persuade, discuss issues with their electorate .The European Union must commit itself to a Social Ecology Manifesto.

Humans have walked the earth for less than 200,000 years - a relatively short time in comparison to the existence of the biosphere. From 7000BC to 2014AD, humans have grown more numerous, and developed tools and processes to enable them to reconstruct the environments in the biosphere. It is true that they suffer from the catastrophes of nature: solar flares, earthquakes, volcanoes, typhoons, tornadoes, cyclones, monsoons, ice and snow storms, floods, forest and grass fires, and diseases like malaria, but are better able to protect themselves and predict the events.

After 1800AD, humans began to manufacture tools of mass construction and destruction which enabled them to mine coal, iron ore, limestone; cut down trees by the thousand; grow wheat, corn, barley, rye, rice on thousands of acres - in fact, to completely transform the biosphere; or to be more precise, to completely destroy nature!

As a result of these endeavors the global population of humans has risen to 6.87 billion, reaching 7.2 billion, May. 2014; and is predicted to rise to 9 billion by 2050, in response to the more efficient use of water and the creation of new plants for food.

As a result of their industrial activities, humans have become a threat to the survival of all living organisms. Human communities are no longer committed to the mutual coexistence of living organisms. They are actively involved in the destruction of other living organisms so as to ensure the survival of ‘homo sapiens’. Nevertheless, in the near future, some humans will face extinction because of the lack of drinking water; and others will suffer from pollution, and global warming.

Many writers have argued that in order to make an impact on water shortages and world pollution, all societies will have to work together. If the world is to survive as an 'eco-system' and be sustainable, we will all have to act together. Every individual and every government will have to agree to take specified actions designed to reduce pollution and  global warming. The peoples and all other organisms of the world form an extended ecological community within complex networks, and humans must pay attention to their interdependence if they are to survive. ‘Development, Conservation and Environmentalism’ mean that we should all share the resources of the globe so that we all achieve a satisfactory sustainable standard of life. It means caring and sharing.  The nature of our interdependence is such that the greed of some brings about the hunger of others. In order to secure the greatest happiness of the greatest number, we must act in consideration of all others. The warnings are all around us from scientists, activists, and, increasingly, from our personal experiences of climate catastrophes with flooding, droughts , forest fires, tornadoes, hurricanes,  species extinction, and other natural disasters.

Social Ecology indicates that in order to protect the environment, and expect a sustainable future, we must make different choices and alter our behaviour,  our lifestyles, our economics, our notions of self; our cultural filters, our priorities, our morality. These changes will require us all to analyse our mindscapes, our cultural filters. Roszak (1973) argues that what is important in the examination of  people’s mindscape is not what they articulately know or say they believe. What matters is something deeper; the feel of the world around them, the sense of reality, that   spontaneously discriminates between  knowledge and fantasy .Pepper (1989)  states that: It is of prime importance for us to study the real and tangible physical environment, how different groups and individuals perceive that environment and the nature of the ecologically, socially and culturally based presuppositions which colour these perceptions, or as some express it, the cultural filter. This means that we have to think and act, locally and globally. Concern for the environment, conservation, development, and ecology are not only about nature, they are calling for social changes: the development of a social ecology, according to which we realize that we are interdependent and connected to each other, as part of complex networks in the biosphere.

Social Ecology is
the study of human behavior in the biosphere;

concerned with Development, Conservation, Environmentalism, Sustainability, and Subsistence, in order to foster extended ecological communities in the biosphere.

It will study political systems, and economic issues in the municipality, the city, the factory when they challenge the viability of the biosphere;
the identification and analysis of the problems caused by human behavior in the biosphere;
the development of solutions to the problems caused by human behavior in the biosphere;
the formulation of social practices that will ensure that humans live in mutual coexistence with all living organisms;
the formulation of social policies and practices designed to allow all humans to survive and thrive in relation to all living organisms;
the development of systems of governance, [social, political, economic] that will enable human communities to take decisions that promote the mutual co-existence of all living organisms in the biosphere;
the study of the ways in which humans exist in cooperation with each other, and with other species, for their mutual benefit as an extended ecological community.
the study of biological entities, with various traits, that choose different, unpredictable behaviors in order to adapt, evolve, survive, in the face of threats to their survival.
will be concerned with behaviors and systems in the municipality, the city, and factory, as aspects of humans in the biosphere;
Social Ecologists will study human behavior and climate change;

the emission of pollutants and gases;

the exploitation and destruction of forests, and grasslands;

the exploitation and mining of oils, ores and minerals;

the destruction of species.

They will formulate policies and practices to help conserve the biosphere.

They will identify alternative systems of economy and politics in order to ensure that humans live in mutual coexistence with all living organisms.
Social ecologists recognize the role of humans in the destruction of the environment and the consequences of capitalist  enterprise to the exploitation of natural resources.

They propose policies and practices that preserve the environment, and do 
not poison the biosphere.

They draw our attention to the facts that ‘we’ are responsible for the pollution of nature.

They urge  governments to move towards a sustainable economy based on subsistence, conservation and preservation.

They devise  models of a steady state economy which will stabilize consumption and growth. They emphasize the need to ‘care and share’, and for communities to provide welfare for the benefit of all by redistributing wealth.
Such a manifesto would lead to significant social change whether it was adopted by local or central government, direct or participatory democracy, hierarchical or non-hierarchical organizations.
To be relevant to our present lives, it has to be available to all organizations, bureaucracies and democracies.