Ecology and Empowerment

How can we improve our ecological actions?

And how can we strengthen the populations most affected by ecological crises to claim their rights, and work together to tackle these crises? How, and why, should ecology and empowerment be linked when it comes to issues of solidarity in general, and international solidarity in particular?

Contributors from seven countries have attempted to provide some answers to these questions in Ecology and Empowerment, a new book coordinated by the F3E network.

By providing a platform for these contributions, the F3E network has sought to showcase a diversity of approaches, which are linked by their articulation of ecological issues and social justice.

A collective creative process

To produce the book, F3E brought together 13 people from a variety of backgrounds: researchers, development practitioners from NGOs, consultants, and activists from Indigenous organisations. Contributors came from France, Cameroon, Guatemala, Colombia, Chile, India and Spain.

For almost a year, the authors exchanged their points of view and confronted their ideas. Then, they started writing.

This process was designed to encourage exchange. It allowed each contributor to shed their usual ways of thinking and welcome approaches or viewpoints they may have been unfamiliar with.

The first step was exploring the relationship between ecology and empowerment in as diverse a way as possible. The aim was to overcome reductionist summaries of reality, avoid ethnocentrism and encourage connections between academics and international solidarity practitioners.

The contributors came to realise that it was impossible to consider ecology without acknowledging people’s capacity to act and interact in their areas and environments, within their organisations and on an individual and collective level.

Ecology and Empowerment’s three focus areas

The first area of focus relates to empowerment and individual and collective emancipation. You will find three articles on this topic:

• Ecofeminism and people power with intersecting proposals in Barcelona, by Blanca Bayas Fernández
• Horizontality, Dignity, Humanity: Promoting dignity and fighting racism by developing a host farmer network, by the A4 collective
•  Inclusive leadership of women farmers: Lessons from drought-prone districts in Maharashtra, India, by Naseem Shaikh, Jiji Sebastian and Ratna Mathur

The second area tackles ecological governance and the management of common goods. This inspired the following articles:

• Empowering women: A collective contribution to social and ecological justice in the mining sector in sub-Saharan Africa, by Georgine Kengne Djeutane
• Water struggles in Chile: the experience of the Movement to Protect Access to Water, Land, and the Environment (Modatima), by Manuela Royo Letelier
• Food commons: Driving the ecological transition of urban food systems through social control, local governance, and ecofeminism, by Sergi Escribano

The third area addresses interdependencies, the decolonisation of knowledge and the construction of new narratives. The articles exploring this topic are:

• The experience of Ixil University in Guatemala, by Elena Brito Herrer (on the Maya Ixil people’s current and ancestral ecological knowledge)
• Climate inequalities and responsibilities: let’s take collective action! by Zoé Bouahom and Guillaume Quelin
• A political ecology of difference: Towards a new model of human development based on the diversity of Afro-descendants and indigenous peoples, Colombia, by Diego Escobar Diaz

Addressing these three components, or major challenges, enabled us to approach the issues in a dialogue of knowledges. All types of knowledge were valued without any presumption of hierarchy between them.

Mutual enrichment, active listening and adaptability     

The next step involved building a community of peers: a group of people determined to cultivate a common interest and build a space of trust where the words of each and every person enriched the collective language. The aim was for each voice to find its place and for everyone’s language to be expressed.

With the aim of mutual enrichment, the exchanges were built on the power of active listening, and on paying particular attention to maintaining a good relational ecology (known as cuidados or care). During online meetings, we took care to leave room for silence, music, eye contact and a range of collective intelligence dynamics which encouraged collaboration at a distance.

The third step was setting up a flexible and educational working method, capable of adapting to the constraints of everyone’s timetables, whatever the demands on their life and wherever they were based.

The final recommendations were jointly developed by contributors and participants during a one-day workshop on the theme of ecology and empowerment, organised by F3E at the end of 2023.

Each author’s writing style has been respected to honour the diversity of contributors. The authors were also invited to contribute to each other’s articles in order to continue the dialogue between their respective experiences.

To make this work accessible to more people, the contributors produced audio files in French, Spanish and English.  You can listen to their testimonies here.

Interested in learning more? Read Ecology and Empowerment for free here.