What is the Ecological Justice Research Stream?
by Hannah Yu-Pearson
December 2024
“Working towards ecological justice is an acknowledgement that the existing systems and the epistemologies that are born from them do not hold the pathways or tools to health nor justice.”
How do we use the term ecological?
Ecology is the study of the relationships between living organisms and their environments, including the systems that shape and inform them. When we use the term ecological we refer to the inherently interconnected and interdependent nature of life. These links are not abstract or ideological, but tangible and embedded within us and our relationships. Our understanding of ecology is not only the relationships within the natural environment, ecology is also the social, political, economic and cultural systems that were formed from histories of extractivism and domination.
Through this research stream we will seek to reveal, practice and work within these relationships from pollution, environmental degradation, violence, displacement, to move from observation to healing pathways, for example where the life and health of Air is intrinsic to our freedom (Air is Kin), where we learn alongside the Bitter Potato, and where we explore the gut-brain axis and its expression of the history of our bodies through time and place. This research stream holds the scales of spatialised health injustices on the neighbourhood level to elemental and planetary dysregulation as manifested in the human body.
We understand health, justice and ultimately liberation to be ecological, and therefore wish to create a framework under which we can illuminate and heal within these relationships.
Ecological justice is building upon our definition of ecological health -
Ecological models of health, similar to Indigenous models, situates health as a balanced interplay between Nature and individual with emphasis on human health acting reciprocally with planetary health (source 1, source 2, source 3). Taking an ecological approach to health necessitates the idea that the state of health is the result of a constant negotiation between the human and their environment.
- https://www.urbanhealthcouncil.com/living-encyclopedia/ecological-health
What lies behind Ecological Justice?
Working towards ecological justice is an acknowledgement that the existing systems and the epistemologies that are born from them do not hold the pathways or tools to health nor justice. Within Traditional Ecological Knowledges (TEK) lie pathways towards Ecological Justice because they are rooted in a dynamic observation of relationality. Traditional Ecological Knowledges are the aggregation and continual evolution of Knowledges that belong to Indigenous and Land-Kinned Peoples that are rooted in Kinship, mutualistic symbiosis, relationality, and reciprocity.
What TEKs rooted around the world tend to have in common is that they are defined as knowledge and practices that are experiential, relational and intentionally adaptive. These knowledge systems are diachronic and qualitative in nature, meaning they are based on memory, change, continuous observation and lived experience over time and generations. These knowledges are rooted in a cohesive, internally consistent world view and cannot be extrapolated from the people that hold the knowledge.
We at Centric Lab work alongside TEK holders and do not seek to reduce, emulate or transplant specific knowledges. We are however guided by these principles around time, relationality, observation and lived expertise across our work.
What does this look like?
Considering the factor of time means we will inevitably observe change, this will then expand the understanding of players and roles, relationships and dynamics. If we were to look at the built environment, we would seek to look at the epistemological roots behind the logic of the legal and policy landscape, which could in some instances be about a land market that is largely privatised and competitive which underlies relations and therefore decisions. To attempt to reform policy without addressing the relationship we have to and around Land will not meaningfully heal the harm that the existing relationship has caused. The same goes for Air and Water pollution and so on.
Within a policy and project delivery landscape, an Ecological Justice approach would seek to work with lived expertise and adequately consider longer term impacts and relationships that emerge from an intervention. This approach would advocate for bottom up lived expertise not only at the design processes, but resourcing around implementation too. This could take the form of community driven impact assessments (CHIAT) as a tool for advocating for solidarity.
Expanding the time we are working in makes the interconnections become apparent, therefore strategy becomes more ecological, relational and lies at a different point of departure or access. When asking what is shaping the interaction and relationship, and what are the conditions? we can move towards how changing the conditions changes the relationship, and therefore changing the relationship changes the process and outcome. This is an approach that can span research, interviews, workshops, facilitation, intervention etc. It is for every scale of relationship.
How do we move towards Ecological Justice?
Just as health justice does not seek to operate in existing models of health, ecological justice does not seek to operate within dominant narratives and solutions to climate change, pollution and degradation. We work with principles to build and strengthen the tools and infrastructures necessary for this journey.
We begin the practice of observation over time through listening, storytelling, embodiment, and knowledge in action through advocacy and solidarity. And we seek to uplift and make visible relationships and wisdoms that are already existing. The principle of Kinship means rooted in relationality. This requires an understanding of how and where our relationships, analysis and strategy operate within coercion, separation and domination, rather than mutuality and reciprocity. Relationships come with responsibility (ability to respond) and responsive relationships require agency and therefore knowledge, capacity, skills, and tools. We move towards Ecological Justice when we situate ourselves in these connections (beyond only human to Land, element and more than human kin) and understand how they are shaped and our role within that.