The “3Hs” (Habitats, Habits, Co-in-Habitants) of the Biocultural Ethic: A “Philosophical Lens” to Address Global Changes in the Anthropocene

Abstract

Global culture, forms of governance, economic and development models have become drastically dissociated from biological and cultural diversity and their interrelationships. Global society is exposed to globally homogeneously governed life habits that tend to build globally homogeneous technological and urban habitats in the heterogeneous regions of the planet. Concurrently, these globally homogeneous habitats reinforce globally homogeneous life habits. These feedbacks between globalized habits and habitats generate processes of biocultural homogenization, which represents an overlooked dimension of global changes in the Anthropocene. Biocultural homogenization is both driver and product of complex and pervasive losses of biological and cultural diversity. We maintain that it is technically necessary and ethically imperative to reverse these losses. Toward this aim, we present the ``3Hs'' (Habitats, Habits, co-in-Habitants) conceptual framework of the biocultural ethic, which values the vital links among the diversity of life habits of distinct (human and other-than-human) co-in-habitants that share a common habitat. We offer this philosophical framework as a heuristic model for: (1) better understanding multidimensional and multi-scale processes involved in global changes; (2) designing policies that integrate biocultural diversity into ethical, political, and environmental dimensions of the contemporary technological world; and (3) orienting decision-making processes that can better assess the consequences that development policies might have for the conservation or degradation of habitats, life habits, and welfare of co-inhabitants. In this way, the 3Hs ``philosophical lens'' of the biocultural ethic can contribute to re-orienting global society toward sustainable forms of co-inhabitation amidst the rapidly changing socio-environmental scenarios of the Anthropocene.