ENVS10001 Lecture Notes - Ecocentrism, Geodiversity, Anthropocentrism
26 May 2018
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ENVS10001 – Putri Shafira 2018
156
WEEK 6 – COUPLED HUMAN & NATURAL SYSTEMS
Tuesday, April 10th 2018
From Lecture 11: People and Landscape by Dr. Michael Santhanam-Martin
Learning outcomes
1. What are some of the different images or paradigms of thought that people hold
concerning the relationship between people and nature?
“anthropocentrism” and “ecocentrism”
2. How can these paradigms influence beliefs, attitudes and practices?
3. How do these paradigms relate to land management policy?
External Sources:
From https://mahb.stanford.edu/blog/statement-ecocentrism/
1. Anthropocentrism = regarding humankind as the central or most important element of
existence, especially as opposed to God or animals; sees individual humans and the
human species as more valuable than all other organisms.
2. Ecocentrism = another term for biocentrism, the broadest or worldviews, but there are
related worldviews.
3. Biocentrism is the ethics that sees inherent value to all living things.
So Ecocentrism goes beyond biocentrism by including environmental systems as wholes,
and their abiotic aspects. Also, it goes beyond zoocentrism which seeing value in animals on
account of explicitly including flora and the ecological contexts for organisms.
Therefore, ecocentrism is the umbrella of biocentrism and zoocentrism, because all three of
these worldviews value the nonhuman, with ecocentrism having widest vision.
Life relies on geological processes and geomorphology to sustain it and that ‘geodiversity’
also has intrinsic value, the broader term ‘ecocentrism’ seems most appropriate.
Relationship between human and nature: People exist within nature.
ENVS10001 – Putri Shafira 2018
157
Introductory example: Moonee Ponds creek and Korean Creek
We can create creek into drainage. Other example, free flowing creek with path lands in
Seoul, South Korea. Model creek in Seoul is completely engineered and designed, more natural.
The way we think of the environment and nature impact on policy and practice in society.
Case Study: The Barmah-Millewa Forest
ENVS10001 – Putri Shafira 2018
158
The landscape of The Barmah-Millewa Forest, crosses the border between Victoria and
New South Wales. Law and policy of the landscape in the cross border of Victoria, the role of the
Victorian government in this landscape. This is the largest river red gum forest in the world and
it is the Ramsar listed wetland.
Ramsar is a town in Iran and the environmental scientist held the meeting in there and
decided the wetlands such important part of the natural world that need globally extra protection.
The Ramsar list contains the names of wetlands area around the world that considered to be global
significant and Barmah-Millewa is one of them.
The formation of the wetland:
25,000 to 30,000 year ago, a geological events happened, plate tectonics and landscape processes,
creating the uplift events, the chunk of rocks, blocked the flow of the river, and then made new
courses to the north and south of that geological uplift feature which is called the Barmah chunk.
The geological event re-created the landscape conditions of the formation of this river red gum
forest and extensive wetlands.
Wetlands are inherently highly biodiversity and highly productive part of the landscape,
because they combined a lot of edge effect, between the water and land, that tend to be highly
biodiversity and highly productive in a landscape in an ecosystem sense.
Document Summary
Week 6 coupled human & natural systems. From lecture 11: people and landscape by dr. michael santhanam-martin. So ecocentrism goes beyond biocentrism by including environmental systems as wholes, and their abiotic aspects. Also, it goes beyond zoocentrism which seeing value in animals on account of explicitly including flora and the ecological contexts for organisms. Therefore, ecocentrism is the umbrella of biocentrism and zoocentrism, because all three of these worldviews value the nonhuman, with ecocentrism having widest vision. Life relies on geological processes and geomorphology to sustain it and that geodiversity" also has intrinsic value, the broader term ecocentrism" seems most appropriate. Relationship between human and nature: people exist within nature. Introductory example: moonee ponds creek and korean creek. Other example, free flowing creek with path lands in. Model creek in seoul is completely engineered and designed, more natural. The way we think of the environment and nature impact on policy and practice in society.
