Enhancing Sustainability with Native Ecology Perspectives

There are many questions posed by various academics that seek to understand the human relationship with the environment. The reason for such questions has emerged in line with several environmental issues and future uncertainties, raising whether human beings as a species, is inherently unsustainable and self-destructive. Just consider Easter Island where the Polynesian travellers constructed one of the most advanced societies from a limited resource base and available technology, but pressure on the environment from these demands lead to the demise of the society. Easter Island strikingly examples a society dependent on their environment and the consequences of irreversibly damaging the environment.

How did, in such a short span of human history, culture transform into an over-consuming, exploitative and dominating community living in a state of non-sustainability? As the ecological crisis has worsened it seems the roots of non-sustainability are influenced by human perspectives which continue to be ingrained by culture, politics and neoclassical economic theory. Thus, exclusive of personal responsibility, the masses are in a way coerced into a consumer culture dissociated from the origins of many goods. Take for instance the chicken that has been killed, cleaned, packaged, transported and presented in a way that it no longer looks like a chicken from the farm.

Perhaps it is traditional cultures that can offer some insight into human behaviour by showing that humans are capable of not only living within ecological limits absent of waste, but also appreciate and respect nature represented as a living and nurturing entity. The Earth provides life and human survival is dependent on nature’s well-being, this is universally acknowledged by indigenous peoples from all corners of the world. These perspectives can be appreciated and provide valuable knowledge for ways to live sustainably that can be integrated into sustainable solutions.

Society needs to recognise that simple living can be good and this does not mean living like a cave man. There appears to be a fear of reversion to living simply, perhaps because there is a deep connection between goods and services with personal identity and status that living with less would be like a kind of death. Shouldn’t we have this type of affinity with nature instead? In order to live more sustainably we, and our relationship with nature, need to be re-defined and this can be aided by a native ecology perspective.