Learning and co-producing bio-knowledge in times of crisis, transformations, climate change, and water scarcityAbstract
This article addresses the issue of new strategies and modalities of producing collective knowledge, intercommunicating experiences of traditional local knowledge linked to the understanding and adaptation of the regulations of natural systems with knowledge and technologies from the findings produced by the scientific and academic spheres. The central objective is to seek interdependencies, alliances, and transformative potentials among diverse knowledges and understandings, which contribute to finding sustainable, democratic, equitable, and quality-of-life solutions to the multi-crisis that affects modern society and planet Earth. The article also warns of the tensions and contradictory trends that generally accompany crises and hinder society’s progress in a democratic sense, with equity, social inclusion, better quality of life and protection of nature. Advancing along paths of socio-ecological sustainability is a great epochal challenge.
Keywords: Knowledge; communities; transformations; climate; water; democracy; nature
Resumo
Este artigo aborda a questão das novas estratégias e modalidades de produção de conhecimento coletivo, intercomunicando experiências de conhecimento local tradicional vinculadas à compreensão e adaptação às regulamentações dos sistemas naturais, com conhecimentos e tecnologias oriundos das descobertas produzidas pelas esferas científica e acadêmica. O objetivo central é buscar interdependências, alianças e potenciais transformadores entre diferentes saberes e entendimentos, que contribuam para encontrar soluções sustentáveis, democráticas, equitativas e de qualidade de vida para a multi-crise que afeta a sociedade moderna e o planeta Terra. O artigo também alerta para as tensões e tendências contraditórias que geralmente acompanham as crises e dificultam o progresso da sociedade em um sentido democrático, com equidade, inclusão social, melhor qualidade de vida e proteção da natureza. Avançar em caminhos de sustentabilidade socioecológica é um grande desafio para a nossa época.
Palavras-chave: Conhecimento; comunidades; transformações; clima; água; democracia; natureza
Resumen
El presente artículo se ocupa del tema de las nuevas estrategias y modalidades de producir conocimientos colectivos, intercomunicando experiencias de saberes locales tradicionales, vinculados al entendimiento y adaptación de las regulaciones de los sistemas naturales, con conocimientos y tecnologías provenientes de los hallazgos producidos por el medio científico y académico. El objetivo central es buscar interdependencias, alianzas y potencialidades transformadoras entre saberes y conocimientos diversos, que contribuyan a encontrar soluciones sustentables, democráticas, equitativas y de calidad de vida a la multicrisis que afecta a la sociedad moderna y al planeta Tierra. El artículo advierte también sobre las tensiones y tendencias contradictorias que, por lo general, acompañan las crisis y dificultan los avances de la sociedad en un sentido democrático, con equidad, inclusión social, mejor calidad de vida y protección de la naturaleza. Avanzar por caminos de sustentabilidad socioecológica representa un gran desafío epocal.
Palavras clave: Saberes; comunidades; transformaciones; clima; agua; democracia; naturaleza
Crises, uncertainties, and opportunities
Modern society is currently affected by multiple crises. The solutions to these structural crises are not clearly visible. Contradictory forces and tendencies struggle to prevail: on the one hand, regressive extreme right-wing neopopulism that seeks to go backward with anti-liberal, anti-democratic, and anti-environmental authoritarian strategies, and, on the other, progressive - left and center - forces that seek to transform modern society, with more equality, justice, liberty, democracy, and environmental protection and better quality of life. Amid the political tensions and conflicts, there are local/regional communities with their practices, experiences and knowledge fighting with their own strength to move forward. Thus, the term uncertainty is used to refer to the uncertain situation that awaits the world in the future (Morin, 2020: 54).
As often occurs during crises, alternative approaches also emerge, which consider crises an opportunity to drive transformations inspired by new conceptions of and perspectives on development. Thus, we maintain that the responses to the multi-crisis will probably come from the revalorization and resignification of socio-ecological experiences and knowledge of communities and their community self-management practices - for example, of water resources or their way of organizing community life in their territories - in combination with scientific knowledge and new technologies. It will be possible to intercommunicate the historical experiences of localities, partly fragmented and impacted by globalizing modernization processes, with resilient defossilized energy to open new possibilities for human life and protection of the seriously threatened planet Earth. Meanwhile, scientific research should connect with the ecological knowledge of local communities to defend human and natural life.
In this regard, Edgar Morin argues in his book Let’s Change Lanes:
“Crisis in a society triggers two contradictory processes. The first stimulates imagination and creativity in search of new solutions. The second can translate into the attempt to return to a previous stability or aim for a providential salvation… The initiatives that demand a new policy multiply and expand, while the powerful lobbies pressure the government and the media to return to the previous order” (Morin, 2020: 33-34).
“Finally, the planetary consciousness spontaneously arrives at the idea of Homeland Earth: here are we tiny humans, in a tiny layer of life that surrounds the tiny planet lost in the vastness of the universe. This planet, however, is a world, our world. This planet is at the same time our house and garden.
“Let’s say it again: becoming conscious of the community of shared global destiny should be the key event of our century. It is undoubtedly the most powerful message of the crisis of 2020 (pandemic). We are in solidarity on this planet and with this planet. We are anthropobiophysical beings, children of Earth. It is our Homeland Earth (Morin, 2020: 102).
Precisely this critical reality - of tensions, conflicts, and contradictory tendencies - that modern society and the planet are experiencing also affects their colonizing policies and cultures, reinforced by the globalizing neoliberal model. This reality invites us to rethink the modalities of debating the consequences of the model and to venture into new modalities of open and participatory understanding and collaborative action, and of relinking different types of socioecological knowledge, experiences, and practices regarding human collaboration and interspecies coexistence.
Dialogues: experiences in intercommunication of knowledge and bio-knowledge in times of multi-crisis
In this context, dialogues can be a colloquial modality that allows intercommunication of diverse local understandings, practices, and knowledges with knowledge produced by research that generally circulate in a parallel manner, disconnected. Dialogues can contribute to learning and co-producing bio-knowledge in open spaces for inter-dialogues on diverse, resilient human experiences capable of driving emancipatory changes in society and its communities.
Thus, the education divisions of INFoD Argentina, UNICEF, and FLACSO promote dialogues as democratic modalities to improve teaching and learning processes in educational establishments:
“Dialogues have the central objective of problematizing aspects linked to decisions on teaching and learning, to place them in dialogue with the teaching practices developed before and during the pandemic…” (Nora Solari, Dialogues for secondary-level teachers and trainers, September 3, 2021).
“At UNICEF we support the development of these dialogues centered on promoting more and better learning opportunities within the framework of the actions that we promote through the initiative PLaNEA, New School for Adolescents. The purpose is to expand reflection in the current context and add tools to transform regular secondary school and guarantee better conditions for teaching, learning and well-being” (Cora Steinberg, Dialogues for secondary-level teachers and trainers, September 3, 2021).
These UNICEF dialogues can be applied to different experiences to critically explore the visual weaves and textures of the complex socio-ecological-cultural reality and the co-production of knowledge as a support for the development of one’s own individual and collective personality.
Now, to put these concepts into practice, we must look back at the regional territorial reality. The worst impacts of neoliberal extractivist capitalism occur in local communities, in the lives of their inhabitants. Localities are plundered, deprived of their natural resources and traditional cultures. Indeed, many localities suffer from the predation of their ecosystems, cultures, and community ways of life due to the intervention in their territories of big businesses. They feel abandoned by the state, struggling to survive amid poverty, helplessness, and hopelessness, with high levels of conflict, insecurity, and violence. Millions of people are obligated to migrate to escape poverty, the lack of decent work, or political repression, as is currently happening in Central America and many countries and regions affected by multiple crises. Without good schools, with high illiteracy and school dropout levels, without public services and often without drinking water. According to the World Health Organization, water scarcity affects 4 in 10 people globally. Thousands of people each year die of diseases caused by consumption of unsafe or contaminated water or unhealthy food; 18% of the world population does not have access to a sanitation network. Around 1,000 children each day die due to lack of drinking water (Esther Camuñas, April 12, 2016. Fundación EROSKI Consumer). Water scarcity will worsen in the near future as a consequence of global climate change, the disastrous effects of which will increase diseases and conflicts over control of water, a precious non-renewable resource. The precarious reality of water resources also affects Latin American countries and necessitates their protection and public regulation as a common good and human right.
Amid the crisis, many communities have become aware of their critical situation and fight to protect their natural goods, cultures, and ways of human coexistence, and with nature. This is observed especially in indigenous communities, as well as in traditional local and rural communities. These good experiences find close allies among young people, especially women, members of NGOs, and academics committed to society. A true renewal and generational and cultural changes are occurring, propelled by new values and visions. They constitute part of the transition process from a model in crisis to a new one. Local communities have long-standing traditions of productive, community, cultural, and ecological life. They know their natural and social environments very well. They know their ecosystem properties and services, they are creative, they care for natural resources such as water and water resources. In Chile, for example, diverse local economy experiences are emerging. Among young professionals, sustainable entrepreneurship initiatives are emerging, including in recycling and organic food production, ventures that seek to solve social and environmental problems (B companies), and support sustainable family agriculture and the local circular economy. Art is also present in many places as a means of expressing their inhabitants’ own emerging subjectivities and existential desires for a better quality of life and social coexistence.
These experiences have occurred in many places and manifest in different spheres of human activity and its natural environments:
“Local practices, knowledge, and experiences in water governance and solving diverse socio-ecological problems that affect modern society represent important spaces for community management of social coexistence and co-production of goods and knowledge, but for them to be truly effective and persist into the future they require the support of local and state institutions.”
“Postulating the socio-ecological transformation inspired by common goods and biocultural diversity as a philosophy to confront the multiple crises we are living through involves proposing a paradigm shift, moving from the one that has prevailed since the beginning of the Anthropocene industrial era. Resignification and revalorization of universal, ancient traditional cultures…, of the ancestral cultures of pre-Columbian civilizations… that developed under the concept of symbiosis and understood the interrelationships among diverse species not as a struggle for domination of some over others… By contrast, symbiosis understands interdependence as an alliance of species of mutual vital benefit” (Rojas, J. 2021: 22-23).
In this sense, it is also interesting to consider the knowledge articulation experience between the Federal University of Southern Bahia (UFSB) and the Teia dos Povos (Tela de los Pueblos), which is responsible for analyzing the intercommunication between knowledge and traditional actions of communities. , social movements and academic knowledge, in a decolonizing and emancipating sense of public education and communities that are built with greater levels of autonomy (Pimentel, Spensy Kmitta et al. 2022).
Joint institutions and local knowledge in collaborative action
To provide examples of some experiences, I will analyze a positive interaction of the Centro Tecnológico Universitario Danlí, a regional campus of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Honduras (UNAH-TEC), which organized a dialogue entitled Global Crises, Local Solutions (February 17, 2023). I was invited, along with Gunhild Hansen-Rojas, an education expert from the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ), to begin the dialogue with an introductory lecture. I spoke of general problems and their historical global contexts with regional impacts. Also participating in the dialogue were teachers, students, researchers, mayors of neighboring communities, and representative of the Association of Municipalities of the North of El Paraíso (MANORPA, for its acronym in Spanish). Their event was held in Danlí (“Water Mountain”), a city and municipality in the El Paraíso Department of Honduras. I stressed the “need to value what we have locally in terms of nature, collective production, and ecosystems, ecosystem functions such as forests, water, productive soil, and air and value the quality of life of their inhabitants” (La Tribuna, March 4, 2023). Meanwhile, MANORPA Executive Director Jaime Córdova stated that the preservation of natural resources “is a matter to seriously reflect on because we have been thinking that solutions to the problems will come from elsewhere.” He added, “we must look for knowledge, in this case, through academia, to look for solutions from our localities, within our municipalities, and, therefore, moving forward will be difficult due to the issue of research, reflection, and applying its solutions…, there is much to do on the matter of climate change, corruption, health, education issues, but here we must not politicize, and look for alliances with academia.” “MANORPA currently has alliances with the Universidad de Catacamas, with two diploma courses on sustainable agriculture that we are going to develop; coffee with the UNAH-TEC to train women and technical teams from municipalities…the municipalities are going to be able to develop with local solutions” (La Tribuna, March 4, 2023). Other actors also expressed their opinions in the dialogue, including local teachers and local journalists, TV, and the local press. This activity was combined with visits to Coffee Quality Control laboratory. The culmination of the activity was the visit to the enterprise of a technician and Danlí Campus/UNAH graduate, a rural coffee farm with diversified agricultural plantations in the Lomas Limpias community, specifically Jacaleapa. Coffee is the main product of Honduras, especially high-quality coffee that is grown organically at high elevations (from 1,500 to 2,000 meters above sea level).
This experience demonstrates the effectiveness of alliances among scientific-technological activities of a regional university center (UNAH-TEC-Danlí), local institutions (Association of Municipalities of the North of El Paraíso), and local agricultural communities (Lomas Limpias) that interact, putting their knowledge in service of ecosystem preservation, local production, and improving the quality of life of the local population. Certainly, it is known that the localities and the country, Honduras, present problems in various areas: economic, social (high poverty and inequality levels), political (institutional continuity problems, corruption), ecological (predation of resources and environmental problems), ethnic, gender, migration, etc. Nonetheless, as in every country and region, there are positive trends in local and regional communities, lasting over time, supported by local institutions (municipalities) and university centers. They represent, without a doubt, true hopes for new times and a better future for inhabitants, regions, and the country.
It bears highlighting that in many countries there are important local/regional initiatives with a sense of self-sustainability, which have historically produced lasting socio-productive rapprochements and alliances that serve as good, replicable, guiding examples in the search for models of overcoming crises. This is precisely the case with Danlí-UNAH-TEC-Danlí-Association of Municipalities of the North of El Paraíso, which we visited and described here. These are local experiences that, to be consolidated over time, require greater public and scientific support, and probably also require integration with neighboring communities that share the same socio-ecological reality.
Learning from experiences of indigenous communities
Indigenous communities have long and rich experience in production of knowledge based on their community life and coexistence with other species that live in and with nature. In this sense, Gladys Tzul Tzul, from Guatemala, refers to indigenous communal government systems:
“I understand indigenous communal government systems as the plural weaves of men and women who create historical-social relationships that have a body, strength, and contents in a concrete space: communal territories that produce government structures to share, defend, and recover the material means for the reproduction of human and domestic and non-domestic animal life” (Gladys Tzul Tzul, 2019: 172).
The policies of Latin American governments have historically disregarded or ignored these important experiences in organization of the sociocultural life of indigenous communities. Colonization subjected them to its system of dispossession and domination, and the capitalist system has tried to destroy them by considering them “backward,” not modern, expanding its production and exploitation systems into their territories. Despite these destructive attacks, community practices, knowledge, and experiences regarding the production of life still subsist in different territories of Latin America, as described in the book Producing the Common, cited above.
In this same regard, Elisa Loncon, in her work Azmapu, explaining the contributions of philosophy and traditions, states:
“For Mapuche communities it is crucial to respect the genes mapu küpalme, the itxofill mogen, and all the beings that exist here, both physical and spiritual, because in this way the balance of nature and Mother Earth is maintained. Therefore, there is a relationship of respect between the Mapuches and all of nature: with rivers, forests, hills, animals, plants, insects, lakes, clouds, rain, and wind. And of respect with the cycles of the Sun and Moon on the cosmic level of Mother Earth in her interaction with the stars. It is a respect toward all beings and entities of nature that participate in the ecological balance in their material and spiritual, physical, and energetic existence.
For the Mapuche people, people are linked to nature, both to ecological biodiversity and to the gen, or spiritual owners, of the territories. People, families, and communities perform ceremonies to practice respect and reciprocity with nature and its spiritual powers, with the purpose of maintaining ecological balances, as in the case of sowing, harvesting, in the seasons with their rainy seasons in winter and sunny in summer. They are ceremonies that have always known (that is their knowledge, their science, their “logos”) that it is fundamental for life on Earth to respect and protect the balances of nature. Thus, there can be cyclical abundance in the cycles in which Earth rests and regenerates (and there is austerity or scarcity) and in which Earth brings fruit and food (and there is abundance)” (Elisa Loncon, 2023: 80-81).
These ethnic experiences from different regions and histories demonstrate the sense and importance of life in community, with oneself and with nature, knowing, living together, and respecting its natural laws and cycles, in which the human being is embedded.
Meanwhile, in his work La Civilización Azteca, the anthropologist Georg Vaillant explains the importance of agricultural activity in the life and development of Mesoamerican and Andean communities:
“In the New World there were two centers of intense agricultural development: Mesoamerica and the Andean region, which represent the highest peaks of social and material culture of the American Indian.
The development of agriculture achieved, in America as everywhere, the liberation of man from the incessant search for food. Its continuous supply, that could be increased through the cultivation of new lands, allowed population growth. The precarious balance that nature maintained between the population and food abundance became more stable, and man enjoyed hours of leisure to invent techniques and develop rules of social conduct. It became possible to support communities large enough for the individual to specialize according to his ability and for the community to carry out public works, such as irrigation systems and temples” (Vaillant, Georg: 2018: 17-18).
Coinciding in this regard are the reflections and arguments of Ximena Dávila and Humberto Maturana, who have also deeply studied human coexistence, knowledge, and interactions with nature:
“When we speak of society, what we want is to refer to a way of living together in a human community where people coordinate their feelings, actions, and emotions in an encounter of coexistence against a background of mutual respect. This last condition is not always achieved - and from that rupture great tragedies often arise - but it is a fundamental condition: there is no social coexistence if there is no desire to live together in reciprocal respect, in collaborative coexistence of those who constitute community life.
“The natural world can be our great teacher. The natural world is not chaotic, it is harmonic, it is we who disturb it… If we want to preserve harmony with the natural world, we cannot continue to invade it, increasing the temperature of the planet, altering its water flows, and reproducing without control; that is the path that turns us into a plague. The natural world is not a resource, it is our ecological sphere. Perhaps that is the most important thing for us to learn and understand” (Ximena Dávila and Humberto Maturana, 2021:23-36).
In this reflective sense, dialogues can be instances of socio-ecological discussions and reflections to revalorize and redefine human coexistence and orient us toward an interspecies coexistence: our ecological habitat. Dialogues are open, democratic, collaborative, decolonizing, and emancipatory spaces that integrate visions with a sense of common good through inclusive and integrative discussions in which different actors participate, with their experiences, histories, and epistemologies, in equal rights and common interests.
Dialogues represent a renovation knowledge production that combines, via discussion, the traditional wisdom of the way of producing and living together in interdependence with nature, in coexistence of mutuality, along with the findings of new knowledge produced by research, for the benefit of quality of life and protection of the planet.
Meanwhile, human coexistence in the territory and tense interrelationships with nature haves traversed various periods, cultures, conflicts, civilizations, and frontiers, as we will see below.
The frontiers of development: challenges of adaptation
Heather Heying and Bret Weinstein, prominent evolutionary biologists, have researched the complex topic of human evolution, investigating the patterns employed by ancient societies, their capacities and tools for development and adaptation, and the limits encountered, as well as the problems and challenges that modern society faces to continue developing. It is innovative work to reflect on. Studying ancient cultures and their historical trajectories - from hunter-gatherers to the present day - the authors pose the big question: How do we adapt to modern life?
“Humans thrive in almost every terrestrial habitat on Earth. We are a broadly generalist species, with highly specialized individuals, who have shape-shifted and niche-shifted into nearly every environment on the planet. This has meant interacting with frontiers, over and over and over again. Here we describe three types of historical frontiers: geographic, technological, and transfer of resource. Then we will propose a fourth.
“Geographic frontiers are what we tend to think of when frontiers are invoked: the vast unspoiled vistas, the abundant yet uncounted resources. All of the New World - North and South America, the Caribbean, and every island near the coasts - was a vast geographic frontier for the Beringians. The frontier of the New World was fractal, so the descendants of the first Americans discovered even more: to the Ahwahneechee Indians, Yosemite Valley was a geographic frontier. To the Taino, the Caribbean was a geographic frontier. To the Selk´nam people of far southern Chile, Tierra del Fuego was a geographic frontier.
“Technological frontiers are moments when innovation allows a human population to make more, or do more, or grow more, than they did before the innovation occurred. Every human culture that has terraced hillsides, decreasing runoff and increasing crop production, was confronting technological frontiers-from the Inca in the Andes to the Malagay on the haut plateau of Madagascar. The first farmers in China, Mesopotamia, and Mesoamerica were doing so, and the first ceramicists-who dug clay, formed it into useful shapes, and fired it in coals-were doing it as well.
“Finally, there are transfer of resource frontiers. Unlike geographic and technological frontiers, transfer of resource frontiers are inherently a form of theft. When people from the Old World came across the Atlantic and landed in the New World, they may have imagined that they had stumbled upon a vast geographic frontier, but they hadn’t. In 1491, the New World is estimated to have had between fifty million and one hundred million people in it, with uncountable distinct cultures and languages. Some people were living in city-states, among astronomers, craftsmen, and scribes; others as hunter-gatherers” (Heying, H., and Weinstein, B. 2022: 293).
Now, to interconnect past and present cultures the authors conduct a study of their evolutions, and strategies of development, organization, production, and life in community: of the niches, lineages, food, dreams, medicine, agricultural production, education, works of art, family relationships cultural expressions, and levels of consciousness. A central topic in the work consists of the adaptation strategies employed by societies to face new problems and challenges, always present when moving from one frontier to another. To refer to the weakening and decay of an epochal cultural system, they use the concept of “senescence of civilization,” the tendency to weaken with age: “It is antagonistic pleiotropy, the propensity of selection to favor heritable traits that provide early life benefits even when they carry inevitable late life costs.” This phenomenon is explained by the fact that “selection sees the early life benefits much more clearly, as individuals will often reproduce and die before the harms have time to fully manifest.” And regarding the senescence of civilization, they argue in analogous terms: “Our economic and political system, in combination with our desire for growth in the moment, inflicts policies and behaviors that don’t seem crazy at first, not at all, and yet they too often turn out to be not only bad for us and the planet, but also irreversible” (Heying, H., and Weinstein, B. 2022: 296-297). This thesis could be applied to fossil fuel-based growth policies and the infinite growth policy of neoliberalism, which have caused serious environmental problems and climate change, resulting in a geological transformation of planet Earth.
The authors provide the example of the culture of the Maya, who had their own enlightenment and civilization, long before Europe:
“The Mayan civilization was spread widely across the Yucatán peninsula, extending south through modern Belize and Guatemala, and just barely dipping into Honduras. The Maya were dominant in these landscapes for twenty-five hundred years, but they were not monolithic, and their successes waxed and waned over both time and space.”
“The Maya were intensive agriculturalists who farmed on poor tropical soils but managed to maintain soil fertility for a remarkably long time through successful land management. They dealt with the hilly slopes that were ubiquitous through much of their range with at least six types of terracing systems. They used complex reservoirs to conserve water during annual dry seasons, and during less predictable, longer dry spells.” (Heying, H., and Weinstein, B. 2022: 300-301).
“The durability of the Maya suggests that the potential exists for conscious, directed enlightenment, in which we take ownership of our own evolutionary state. Like the Maya, we moderns need to find ways to flatten the boom-bust cycle that has plagued all populations across time. We hypothesize that the Maya did this by creating a mechanism for not turning excess resources into more people, or ephemeral things; instead, they invested in giant public works projects. Many of these public works projects are visible today as temples, as pyramids. They grew them like onions, building more layers in times of abundance. In years of plenty, we posit, when excess food could easily have been turned into more people, which would have expanded the population, making hunger and conflict inevitable in lean years, the Maya instead turned the extra food into pyramids, or into bigger pyramids. They created glorious and useful public spaces, enjoyable by all, and when agricultural boom years inevitably ceded to bust years, the temples required no nourishment, and the population could withstand the leaner times” (Heying, H., and Weinstein, B. 2022: 301-302).
According to the authors, Western civilization, which has lasted as long as the Maya, and which is in crisis and decline, requires “a new steady state, an Evolutionarily Stable Strategy. We need to find the fourth frontier.” Doing so requires overcoming obstacles and forces that impede this qualitative leap. One of the main obstacles is the “obsession with growth,” but also the lack of a sustainable development alternative to overcome the crisis:
“We are in the throes of a sustainability crisis. One thing or another will take us out. It might be climate change, or a Carrington Event, or a nuclear exchange set in motion by wealth inequality, a refugee crisis, or revolution, to name just a few of the awfully real possibilities. We are hurtling toward destruction. We must, therefore, with full consciousness, embark on something dangerous. We must seek the next frontier: the event horizon, beyond which we cannot see, from which we cannot return, but through which may be our salvation” (Heying, H., and Weinstein, B. 2022: 312).
The fourth frontier means: “to find ways to flatten the boom-bust cycle that has plagued all populations across time.” To see the limits revealed by the “event horizon” underway, present through extreme events such as global climate change and water scarcity. In this sense, the work of Heying and Weinstein invites us to reflect on and learn from the past to create a new culture and consciousness that stabilize life on the planet in a lasting and sustainable way. In truth, there is no other alternative.
Crystallized imagination, interruptions, and cognitive footprint
To complement the arguments of Heying and Weinstein, and other authors, let us look at the ideas of physicist César Hidalgo, an expert on big data who has performed studies on the historical role of information in the development of society. He calls his innovative concept “crystallized imagination”:
“So it is the accumulation of information and of our ability to process information that defines the arrow of growth encompassing the physical, the biological, the social, and the economic, and which extends from the origin of the universe to our modern economy. It is the growth of information that unifies the emergence of life with the growth of economies, and the emergence of complexity with the origins of wealth.
“Yet the growth of information is uneven, not just in the universe but on our planet. It takes places in pockets with the capacity to beget and store information. Cities, firms, and teams are the embodiment of the pockets where our species accumulates the capacity to produce information (Hidalgo, 2017: 21).
“Thinking about products as crystals of imagination helps us understand the importance of the source of the information that is embodied in a product. Complex products are not just arrangements of atoms that perform functions; rather, they are ordered arrangements of atoms that originated as imagination… We crystallize imagination when we write, cook, and doodle…” (Hidalgo, 2017: 80).
“The physical embodiment of information is the blood of our society. Objects and messages connect us, allowing us to push the growth of information even further. For tens of thousands of years, we have embodied information in solid objects, from arrows and spears to espresso machines and jetliners. More recently, we have learned to embody information in photons transmitted by our cellphones and wireless routers. Yet, what is most amazing about the information that we embody is not the physicality of the encasing but the mental genesis of the information that we encase. Humans do not simply deposit information in our environment, we crystallize imagination” (Hidalgo, 2017: 194).
For Hidalgo, the goods produced by human communities constitute an accumulation of information and knowledge. For thousands of years, information has accumulated in produced goods. Certainly, there are gaps and differences, accumulated information inequalities in different human societies and communities, which manifest in development levels. For example, natural resource-exporting countries accumulate limited information about the resources. They could add information via research, innovation, and value-added production.
In most Latin American countries, including Chile, there has not been continuity in the historical accumulation of information. There have been interruptions, breaks, and ruptures. For example, in Chile, the military dictatorship (1973) intervened and closed universities, deindustrialized the country, repressed, exiled, and dismissed academics, fired workers, closed media outlets, and prohibited the circulation of anti-regime ideas. It attempted to “refound” the country, break with its history, and put an end to its productive, cultural, political, and social advances. Fifty years after the coup, the country has made considerable democratic advances. Authoritarian systems and wars caused interruptions and breaks in the process of information and knowledge accumulation, forcing the country to start over and search for lost historical meaning. These historical interruptions have occurred in most Latin American and Caribbean countries and in other parts of the world.
In any case, countries have a historic and cognitive footprint, which is not erased by authoritarian measures. Thus, for example, Chile has reestablished democracy, fighting to establish a social and environmental state and a new democratic constitutional order. Democracy is part of the historical footprint of the country, built by different generations. Countries have a history related to their identities, built in inhabited territories in ecosystems through the actions of their social, political, cultural, ethnic, and gender actors. This footprint is dynamic and is modified over time by the actions of new generations and global transformations.
In this sense, passage from one frontier to another is influenced by information and bio-knowledge accumulation and the historical footprint.
History of conflicts and plundering
The fourth or fifth frontier is probably global climate change and its destructive impacts on biodiversity and threats to quality of life and existence, especially of the most vulnerable population on planet Earth. In truth, if a fifth frontier existed, it would be represented by planet Earth itself, due to the evidence that nature is at its limits of survival, in danger of collapsing. This extreme situation has been caused by the obsession with growth and the overexploitation of natural and human resources brought about by the capitalism of the Anthropocene Era.
Furthermore, it is necessary to recognize that evolutionary processes and accumulated information and knowledge have been shot through by major conflicts, occupations of territories, violent appropriation of natural resources, destruction or the rendering invisible of works, knowledge, and productive and cultural practices of communities and indigenous peoples. This reality is valid for and applicable to the crossing and geographic, technological, and resource transfer/theft frontiers, and will surely accompany current frontiers and those yet to come. Violence and undue appropriations have accompanied socio-eco-territorial colonization processes undertaken by dominant groups or classes during the passage from one frontier to another. And colonizing history continues today, with new tools and technologies - such as digitization and artificial intelligence - with new empires and new invasion strategies.
However, these trends face new subjectivities, consciousnesses, cultures, initiatives, leadership, and emancipatory citizen movements that strive to advance with new socio-ecological visions and practices.
Urgency of climate change and a development paradigm shift
The multiple crises that affect modern society and planet Earth, the maximum expression of which is global climate change, demand a citizen and public consciousness that leads to sustainability.
The transition towards Sustainability is a complex process that involves confronting with determination and planning the permanent increase in post-industrial greenhouse gases (GHG). To mitigate the effects of climate change, of a geological nature, in the Anthropocene Era, authors from the Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil, led by Israel Lacerda de Araujo, propose applying carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. That could contribute to solving the climate challenge. The methodology consists of carrying out a literary review of CCS and geological data. The result of the methodology shows that human activity in terms of GHG has been a vector to define the Anthropocene as a geological era, and has generated political concerns and international climate agreements, which promote legal, institutional and regulatory improvements to face the challenges of implementation of carbon capture and storage (Israel Lacerda de Araujo et al. 2022). This methodology can be used by the private sector and promoted by public policies of the different governments of the Planet.
Relevant in this context are the warnings of António Guterres at the opening of the Glasgow climate summit, COP 26, drawing the attention of world leaders to the increase in CO² emissions and the danger of surpassing the 1.5 C global warming limit:
“We are digging our own graves… Enough of treating nature like a toilet. Enough of burning and drilling and mining our way deeper” (António Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General, El País, November 2, 2021).
Guterres stated that “there is a deficit of credibility” due to the fact that many members “promote that neutrality without a clear path to reducing their greenhouse gases this decade” (R. De Miguel / M. Planelles, El País, November 2, 2021). He declared: There is very little time to act.
Indeed, time is very short to confront the geological-planetary-climate-water and social crisis underway. A paradigm shift is required. A shift in attitude, culture, story, and values. A shift from the instrumental and individualist rationality that has dominated the modern age. It is necessary to recover and revalidate the best of human traditions, institutions, creativity, innovations, knowledge, practices, understandings, technologies, coexistences, and cultures, cultivated by different peoples and communities throughout the history of humanity. In this sense, we all must contribute to progressively advance in a democratic, equitable, inclusive, and plural manner toward an alliance of human coexistence with respect for nature.
Added to the crises and uncertainties are the threats of quickly progressing artificial intelligence, which have been analyzed by various authors, including the historian Harari: “A new regime in the 21st century will have much more powerful tools. So the consequences could be far more disastrous…” (Harari, La Nación, April 23, 2023). For Harari, the independence of artificial intelligence is among the most novel issues; he suggests: “We need to understand that AI is the first technology in history that can make decisions by itself. It can make decisions about its own usage. It can also make decisions about you and me. This is not a future prediction. This is already happening.” Recently and paradoxically, even the main producers of artificial intelligence warned of this, speaking out against the lack of regulation of AI and its negative consequences. In general, the threats of AI are thought to be: unemployment, disinformation, creation and use of algorithms that manipulate information and public and citizen opinion, social manipulation and weakening, and control of large technology companies. The main threat of artificial intelligence: that it could become a new form of domination of human life. However, artificial intelligence could also represent a qualitative step toward new modalities of coexistence, conflict resolution, and development, as has historically occurred with other technological revolutions.
Overcoming the multi-crisis requires collective and individual efforts, innovation, political renewal, a new culture, and strengthening of education, adapted to changing times. Thus, universities, institutes, and research groups, as well as educational establishments, can play an important active and innovating role in the process of seeking a sustainable future. It requires intercommunication and dialogues to find the good and human in one’s own lived history, in the practices and traditions of communities and regions; in accumulated bio-knowledge; in research conducted; in productive and populated territories; in democratic cultures and institutions; in human and social liberties and rights; in the evolution and development of ideas and professions in university institutions; in the socio-institutional and ecological footprints that have accompanied the development of communities and societies. Present in the decolonizing and emancipatory efforts, forged historically by each country, community, and society, still present and renewed by new generations, which also strive to live, develop and be happy in the only habitat we have: planet Earth.
Acknowledgements
I thank the Water Research Center for Agriculture and Mining (CRHIAM/ANID/FONDAP 15130015/ANID/FONDAP/1523A0001), Universidad de Concepción, for the support and sponsorship of the research carried out and the publication of this article.
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Publication Dates
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Publication in this collection
20 Dec 2024 -
Date of issue
2024
History
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Received
12 June 2024 -
Accepted
26 June 2024
