The Congress proposes a more defined and committed area within the broad territory of Environmental Humanities, taking charge of harsh realities and seeking concrete paths for a biospheric humanism that contributes to lay the foundations of a regenerative and truly sustainable civilization.
For years, a space for collective reflection (and an academic area) has been consolidating under the label of Environmental Humanities. What, then, should this new label of “Ecological Humanities” be introduced for? Is it a mere pruritus for academic differentiation? In our opinion, this is not the case. We believe that the severity of the ecological-social crisis is so great and the insufficiency of the responses that industrial societies have been providing is so manifest, that it is necessary to go beyond the proposals made by the Environmental Humanities, although the steps that have been taken along this path seem valuable to us. We are aware of the enormous difficulties that we face, and we take seriously the ecological-social emergency situation (not only climatic emergency) and the prospects of civilizational collapse. But we cannot throw in the towel: although the possibility of an egalitarian, conscious and quickly degrowth turns out to be remote (taking into account the relations of force and systemic inertia that exist today), we believe that only this path would make it possible to avoid the worst of the catastrophic course of events that we see coming today. Thus, we convened an International Congress on May 22, 23 and 24, 2023 that proposes a more defined and committed area within the broad territory of Environmental Humanities, taking charge of harsh realities and seeking concrete paths for a biospheric humanism that contributes to lay the foundations of a regenerative and truly sustainable civilization.
