Ecocivilization, a new stage of civilization

 

Assista no YouToube  https://youtu.be/ahdb3kHVb8U

16th Annual International Conference on Mediterranean Studies, 3-6 April 2023, Athens, Greece

Athens Institute for Education and Research

This essay wants to discuss the environmental crises, from the perspective that it is a civilizational crisis. And the project of China Ecocivilization, on the light of political philosophy.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights_ UN 1948, will be revisited from an historical and critique perspective. The UN Stockholm Conference 1972 that, for the first time, recognized and characterized the environmental crises, will be the subject of a critical review.    

I.                    

China is co-founder of the  Universal Declaration of Human Rights _ UDHR

The resolution of UN was adopted on 10 December in the year one thousand nine hundred and forty-eight (A/RES/217), drafted by J. P. Humphrey from Canada and P.C. Chang, representative of China and mediator of Asian countries, the main negotiator of the consensus of its 30 articles.

Eleanor Roosevelt enthusiastically supported her. But, US, United Kingdom, France, don’t respected the fundamental articles of UN Human Rights_ see the initial 1-5 ( one to the five articles), because was colonialist countries and gender and racial discrimination was institutionalized, and they was the social practice in the metropolis and in the colonies.

Labor rights, economic democracy, the right of nations to dispose of themselves. Self-determination and independence. Refusal of hegemonism and  a new era, of peaceful and justice …they have been elevated to the condition of fundamental human rights and, are incompatible with the political nature and evolution of liberal democracies.

However, people around the world don’t now the substance, the original document and the historical conditions where was drafted.

The propaganda of Cold War needs to subvert and distort the principles of the original UN Human Rights.

The consequence is that in the U.S. (and the West), human rights are reduced at formal civil and political rights.  But it ends there.

What Article 21 of UN Human Rights prescribes is the way to citizenship and the diversity of democratic regimes. Article 21º open the gate of new democracies and History can walk again to realize all the dreams and Human Utopias. For China, the Chinese dream, one China, beautiful China, a New Era for humankind. Consequently, the collage of Cold War propaganda linking political Human Rights with the model of liberal democracy, it is a fallacy.

Our research does a comparative study between the Constitutional text of PRC and the Declaration.  Articles (eighteen)18, 19 and 20…all of them, are saved in the Article 35 (thirty-five) of the Constitution of PRCh: “Citizens of the People’s Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration.”

On other hand, the agrarian revolution in China realized the Article 17 (seventeen) of UN Human Rights to 350 (three hundred fifty) millions of peasants.

Articles 22 to 27, establish Labor Rights, Welfare, Education and Culture. Recent China proposes at United Nations Human Rights Council enphatize that “The rights to subsistence and development are the primary, basic human rights.”

In response to the UN Vienna Declaration the Chinese government has made and carried out successive National Human Rights Action Plans, delivering the Two Assurances and Three Guarantees, for all people, in 2020. The "Two Assurances" refer to the necessary food and clothing. And the "three guarantees" refer to compulsory education, basic medical treatment, and housing security. They don’t exist in liberal democracies.

PRCh eradicated from the extreme poverty 850 M (eight five hundred million) people and achieved the higher Power Purchasing Parity. Progressively, the PRCh Constitution turn real to common people all the articles of UN Human Rights, and design the international policy of China, since the 5 principles of peaceful coexistence to The Global Security Initiative for Peace guided by the Principle of Indivisible Security. These principles are in conformity with the fundaments of peace and dignity that are expressed in the Preamble and in the articles 28º, 29º and 30 º of UN Human Rights.

We can observe a first conclusion: Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, improved in the Constitution and on the political practice the Universal Declaration of Human, and enlarged them toward the ecological socialism and EcoCivilization.

 

II. China, it is at the helm of Global governance of human rights.

 

The classic division between the West philosophy and the Oriental philosophy concerning the issue of nature will be analyzed to discovery fundamental differences and common principles and moral rules.

On the framework of political philosophy, common responsibilities of liberal democracies and socialist democracies regarding the genesis and evolution of environmental crisis, will be also analyzed and the dominant  fallacies criticized.

“Toward a new economy of heritage, on the light of ecological socialism."

To the Greek philosopher Aristoteles, only on the city-state human beings attains the supreme virtue, the wisdom.

Mencius connected moral progress with a better knowledge of nature.  And Lao Zi wrote to respect the intrinsic laws of nature and things: When the Tao is absent from the Universe, war horses are created at the door of cities.

Those principles will be reintegrated in the modern environmental philosophy. The critique of anthropocentrism, and the critique of ethnocentrism, re-thinking the concept of a sustainable country on a sustainable world.

First UN environmental conference, held in Stockholm in 1972, create new ethical imperatives: all the  Earth is a  “common house” "… man have two homelands, his own and Earth"; enlarging the concept of community, biotic and abiotic, reintegrating the human being into nature, without no privileges_ with the critique of anthropocentrism.

On the light of environmental philosophy, we could consider two dilemmatic scenarios to the modern civilization:

(1) City it is the supreme creation of human civilization.

But, according to ecology, the green scenario only exists when the city functions are an integral part of the global biosphere ecosystem. If not…

(2) The city destroys and demean the basic conditions on which dignity and human life depend.

This dark scenery is inevitable if cities are governed as something separate from its own life-support systems.

China says that the dilemma corresponds to the historical evolution of liberal democracies and the first experiences of socialism, and, in the other side, the Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, with the historical turn up to the ecological socialism and the project of ecocivilization.

The modern social citizenship, aesthetical and moral values, of the middle class, are over the influence of Environmental Philosophy and their Ethics, and, in the field of economy, are now largely redirected to the products of cultural tourism and tourism of nature, includes a new global concept about cultural landscape, rural and  urban.

The concept of urban landscape cannot be reduced to a visual direction and includes several dimensions, aesthetics, and ethics: the renaissance of the harmony with man and the cultural landscape,  embraces the tactile appeal, feeling, the kinesthetic pleasure, the natural sings, and songs of nature…

What means that every city needs to preserve and enlarge, inside the urban territory, the  biological chains, the green lungs_ woodland, wooded boundaries, hedges, thickets, wet, dry, or low-yield pastures, but also integrated watershed on a global planification, a characteristic of socialism but not of the liberal states. Because is not enough to create the conditions  to a low carbon management, it is necessaire preserve the fresh water, the healthy food and clean air.

Technological evolution of giant airplanes and navy cruces, bring to the city’s new sources of danger pollution, not well researched.

I remember Francisco Caldeira Cabral, international leader of landscape architect association: “Is time to say that if the city is essential to the organisation of society and the progress of mankind, if the industry has greatly contributed to make life easier and give you comfort, humanity's survival depends from the countryside. Because, with the sea, is the only source of food and drinking water, and the last support to an autonomous and balanced biological activity, essential to the continuation of life on Earth. Therefore, the activity of Rural society is the only one that remains obligatory, all the others being optional, whether the urban-industrial society realizes it or not.

But the essential condition are a peaceful world, a common future: because without peace, everything is lost, and first all, liberty will be lost.

III.

This research, concerning the environmental philosophy in the West, leds to establish a critical principle, the ethical responsibility face to nature and to the transformation of Kantian concept of human reason, into environmental reason, creating new philosopheme, like the concepts of  the Land Ethic and  Animal ethics, and new imperatives as “ethical imperative of dignity” and the “imperative of perpetual  peace”

Ecocivilization it is a new stage of the common development of human civilization

Ecological Socialism and Ecological Civilization are two new concepts of political philosophy, associated with the concept of New Era, that remain insufficiently studied around the world. The scientific view of development seeks a comprehensive and sustainable change of politics, economics, society, culture, and theory – a transformation of civilization. And so, the period between now and 2050 will be crucial in determining whether China can complete this transformation from traditional to eco-industrial civilization.

Western model of industrial modernization ( in the West and in USSR)  historically results in serious conflicts with the environment and natural resources in developing countries. In this sense, the ecological wisdom heritage of in Chinese civilization is an important component of the ecological civilization.

The fowling thesis can systematize the Chinese perspective of the dialectic socialism and ecological civilization: An ecological civilization is possible only with socialism. Ecological civilization represents a new humanism, without the domination of nature. Having transcended the industrial civilization, the ecological civilization represents a more advanced state of human civilization

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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