Biocultural ethics: Integrating ecological observation and ecological co-habitation in the web of life on Earth

Background/Question/Methods

Observation and Life on Earth a dual philosophical challenge: epistemological and ethical. Epistemological, because ecological observations arise from the interactions between the culture of the observer (her/his language, concepts, perceptual instruments) and the biophysical reality of the observed phenomena. Ethical, because the perception that the observer has about the observed cohabitants influences the type of cohabitation relationships established by the observer with the community of human and other-than-human cohabitants that form part of the ecosystems that host all of them. Today, two types of barriers limit severely an integral perception of biological and cultural diversity. First, physical barriers due to the fact that most people live in cities, which leaves out of every day experience that observation of most biological diversity in their native habitats. Second, conceptual barriers due to the fact that the diversity of languages, worldviews and life habits embedded in them is being lost so rapidly, that we are currently witnessing a linguicide.  Observation and ecology help overcoming the former barriers.

Results/Conclusions

I illustrate the former conceptual framework with the case study of the high floristic diversity of the Magellanic sub-Antarctic ecoregion, which remained invisible until the end of the 20^th century. The prevailing framework of the “lenses” to assess biodiversity during the 1980s and 1990s included almost exclusively vertebrate animals and vascular plants. The grid of these pigeonholed lenses was not fit to detect the richness of biophysical reality of the sub-Antarctic ecoregion; hence, it was classified as a biodiversity poor subpolar region. It was necessary to have a field observational experience to trigger a change in the lenses, which implied the inclusion of non-vascular plants into the conceptual framework to assess biodiversity in order to discover that at the southern end of the Americas, < 0.01% of the planetary land surface hosts > 5% of the bryophyte species, and > 50% of them are endemic. New cultural lenses allowed the observation of a previously invisible biophysical reality. A second challenge was to communicate the discovered sub-Antarctic biodiversity. This demanded the composition of a new language and concepts to communicate the peculiarities of the austral biodiversity. Field experiences, however, do not only involve observation, but also relationships of living together in non-habitual habitats with different human and other-than-human living beings. This experience of cohabitation stimulates the observer to attentively integrate biocultural and biophysical realities, to research and respect the “otherness” and diversity of Life on Earth.