Loving Nature: The Emotional Dimensions of Ecological Peacebuilding

Abstract

While the mainstream environmental discourse seems to have taken a technocratic turn during recent years and promotes shallow ecological solutions which often fail to address underlying emotions as drivers for structural and cultural violence, there is also plenty of evidence of emerging research that offers a broader, more holistic perspective and puts the emotional/affective component—some call it love of nature—at its centre. This essay explores how the experience of ‘loving nature’ has been conceptualized in some of the literature pertaining to cultural ecology so far and how these experiences translate (or do not translate) into different daily practices that are conducive to ecological peacebuilding and ultimately a ‘happy planet’. Drawing on the work of anthropologist Kay Milton, one of the core questions becomes: is it a mere coincidence who is actively engaged and concerned with the well-being of nature and who might be more or less indifferent to the current ecological degradation? Loving (or at least respecting) nature and acting accordingly appears to be a prerequisite for love between humans at this point in time. The current global ecological degradation reminds us that focusing on human-human aspects of love alone tends to neglect the simple fact that we are destroying what gives us life—while being proud of our loving behavior towards other human beings. This essay highlights why it might be important to broaden current anthropocentric models of love and shift to an ecological model of loving, how practices of resistance and complicity are embedded in an emotional field, why some sort of value coordinate system for ‘sustainable loves’ might be needed in the global north and the importance of embodiment/embodied emotions for our capacity to experience love or feel cut off from love.