Relationality, co-evolution and new ecosophies in the socio-ecological territorial project

Abstract

In the relationship between human societies and the environment, dualistic frameworks often persist, reinforcing the subordination of the latter to the former. Within the ongoing transition toward so-called “ecologically oriented” economic and social models - at least in their stated intentions - demiurgic approaches to the human–nonhuman relationship emerge. These are manifested in nostalgic tensions and aestheticizations of nature, ecological neocolonialisms, elitist appropriations of environmental values, the subjugation of environmental elements and processes to dominant economic models, and their incorporation into financial markets. Such approaches tend to reproduce - even if in different forms - the same value-extractive logics that have historically depleted territories through modernization processes, ultimately proving ineffective in addressing the pressing environmental issues of our time. Reasserting the role of the human-nonhuman relational continuum as a fundamental dimension of the reproduction of the living environment implies, in the field of territorial planning, the development of tools that enable the reconstruction of virtuous co-evolutionary processes among territorial agents, also through negentropic practices and the care of renewed social-ecological systems.