Reconnecting with nature: an ecofeminist view of environmental management

Current approaches to environmental management are critiqued as symptomatic of a capitalist system that rests on the appropriation and instrumental use of planetary resources. I argue that humanity needs to find different ways of relating to their co-members of the web of life. A set of ecofeminist philosophical principles is proposed on which to build that new relationship; the need to develop an ecocentric, as opposed to an anthropocentric, view whereby to be human is to be part of the more-than-human, the revaluation of epistemological frameworks to include what rationality currently denies and a focus on an ethic of care extended to the more-than-human as a moral imperative and as a call for action. These offer exciting possibilities to develop ecocentric connectivities within nature beyond the current limiting and damaging conceptions of environmental management.