WHY IS REGENERATING HUMAN-ECOWEB
SYMBIOSIS CRUCIAL?

It is urgent

Billions of human beings across the world are suffering as a result of ever-increasing extractivism. This suffering takes the form of food insecurity, oppression, violence, impoverishment, climate crisis, inequitable access to resources, water scarcity, forced displacement, loss of identity and culture, disenfranchisement, and environmental degradation. Unless there is a fundamental change in the systems enabling and perpetuating this extractivism, both we humans and the biodiverse ecowebs we rely on for our survival will be irreversibly injured, and possibly annihilated.

The extractivist system is becoming increasingly entrenched

A new system of amassing wealth for small groups of shareholders (corporations) was developed in Europe at least four centuries ago, taking the form of government-sanctioned exploitation of humans and ecowebs through the use of ‘legal’ tools, like charters and the doctrine of discovery. In this system, European monarchs granted to small companies of European men — for a share of the profits — exclusive rights to:

  • trade across entire continental regions,
  • exploit — in an unbridled manner — vast tracts of land and water already under the stewardship of Indigenous peoples, and
  • own, control, and dispossess human beings.

This government-backed corporate extractivism that — within a short period of time — subjugated nearly all of the world’s Indigenous peoples and the biodiverse ecowebs they thrived in for millennia still persists today. Not only does it persist, but it is fiercely protected and promoted through a system of laws, economic prescriptions, and governing structures (legal-economic-governance system) that is imposed on almost all of the world’s peoples through autocratic global institutions.

Human communities must regenerate and re-integrate into ecowebs

Systemic extractivism has caused human communities to be disconnected from the biodiverse ancestral ecowebs they preserved for thousands of years through sophisticated regenerative knowledge, technologies, and practices. This disconnection — resulting from forced human displacement and ecoweb destruction — has in turn devastated the self-sufficiency, self-reliance, identity, and culture of communities and compelled them to become increasingly dependent on corporate commodities and influence, thus perpetuating and deepening the cycle of extractivism and suffering. The only way to end this cycle is to restore human-ecoweb symbiosis through the regeneration — by Indigenous, tribal, and migrant/settler communities alike — of systems that nurture and sustain, rather than extract and eradicate.

DEFINITIONS

DEFINITIONS

The large variety of living beings existing today because each evolved upon successfully adapting to a particular niche of our planet containing other living beings and non-living (abiotic) components (e.g., water, minerals, air, rocks)
A legal entity that is separate and distinct from its human owners, affording it protections and privileges not afforded to humans; generally, a for-profit corporation’s primary objective is to amass wealth (generate profits) for its owners
An interconnected network of diverse living beings and non-living (abiotic) components (e.g., water, minerals, air, rocks) that have evolved together over time in a particular niche of our planet and are thus mutually beneficial to and dependent on each other (symbiotic)
A human being who strives to live symbiotically with other humans, non-human living beings, and non-living (abiotic) components (e.g., water, minerals, air, rocks) of ecowebs
The process of exploiting human resources — such as labor and knowledge — and non-human ecoweb resources — such as minerals, water, plants, and animals — in a manner that does not replenish but instead atrophies and destroys
Rooted in the principle of optimizing the wellbeing of all members of a human community and/or ecoweb
To restore, revitalize, generate, and/or nurture in a way that leads to symbiotic health and wellbeing
Mutually beneficial interconnectivity and interdependence
The interaction and collaboration between two or more entities that produces an effect greater than the sum of their separate effects