Human-nature power structure – On geese conflicts and socio-economic thinking

Nature is a rich component of people’s lives and identities, yet human-nature relations are full of imbalance, injustice and contradictions. In her op-ed, Kylteri’s visiting journalist Mariela Urra Schiaffino enlightens the dominance people have over nature and ponders the role of the economic system in the play. But what do geese have to do with the show?

The narratives of our era, the Anthropocene, depict humans as the abusers of the natural equilibrium of ecosystems, illustrated by the uncontrolled expansion of human spaces, the continuous extraction and runaway pollution that progressively destroy the lives of other species and the habitats we share with them. In this narrative the power dynamics are unfairly out of balance: human-nature relations are represented by dominance and oppression. The base of the economic system by which we negotiate our interactions with the environment is based on a paradigm in which human societies and nature lay fundamentally separate from one another, hence the system denies the possibility for mutual flourishing. As external from us, undeveloped nature carries value only by what can be extracted from it or when it performs some sort of ecosystem service that enhances human livelihood – and is subject to annihilation when not conforming to our ways of living. Even initiatives that seek to protect biodiversity, such as international biodiversity treaties and mainstream conservation, reproduce this dualism when operating from within the prevailing economic paradigm. They embrace the concept of “natural capital” to calculate the price for biodiversity which can be exchanged and traded, with the conviction that the mechanisms of the market will lead the way to a “nature positive” society.

Under the neoliberal paradigm, much of nature is rendered useless as it doesn’t seem to serve any specific human purpose. It is worth realizing that this line of utilitarian thinking presents itself not only in shareholder cost-benefit analysis, but is widespread in everyday urban life too. It often comes up in the form of conflicts between people and wild animals or plants who dwell in or around cities, some of them being quite problematic. One example has called my attention and can be found all around metropolitan Helsinki, the Otaniemi campus not being an exception.

Every summer increasingly bigger flocks of wild Canada geese and Barnacle geese choose to occupy the city lawns establishing in both public and private parks and gardens, competing for space with residents and visitors who seek to enjoy the urban green areas when there is good weather. The quality of city greens, as perceived by people, are degraded when the birds feed, breed and leave a big amount of faeces in the grass that could otherwise be used for resting or sharing picnics. If approached too close, geese can even become aggressive when protecting their chicks and are known to occasionally attack people. There is a feeling of dissatisfaction among residents as they feel the birds are invading the spaces that are human by design. This is why geese are commonly seen more as pests that need to be managed than as wildlife having the right to establish themselves in the land that supports their existence. Conflicts with geese and other urban pests are common in cities all over the world, and along with the effects of the crisis of biodiversity loss, they expose the imbalances of human-nature dynamics, imbalances that are rooted in a conceptually constructed illusion of independence from our surroundings.

The base of the economic system by which we negotiate our interactions with the environment is based on a paradigm in which human societies and nature lay fundamentally separate from one another, hence the system denies the possibility for mutual flourishing.

Efforts to revert the environmental crisis often focus on the establishment of protected areas, and Europe has seen an increased number of restoration projects and protected reserves in both rural and urban settings. I am convinced that a focus on physical spaces alone will not solve all conflicts as the root causes lay much deeper, in interconnected aspects of our political-economic systems. Some species, like geese, are boundary crossers and do not recognize the validity of imposed units of geographic management. They will establish themselves in urban rewilded areas regardless of whether they are welcome or not. On the other hand, it has been brought up by many environmental researchers that an overemphasis on enclosed and protected areas only reproduces the human-nature divide as they bring about issues of social segregation and privileges linked to access. In other words, a focus on fixing physical space without considering changes in human dimensions simply reproduces the deeply rooted mental models which lead to humans feeling alienated from the rest of nature, as well as from other humans, which in short is the main cause of environmental crises.

The honks of the geese arriving from their southern winter migration along with the song of the other migrators will soon start to be heard all around Helsinki, and I can’t stop wondering about what kind of human-wildlife interactions, conflicts and solutions would rise if we chose to let nature flourish deeper into our cities instead of outside of them. I would like to imagine how our systems could be different in this scenario. But can we relate geese problems to the economic system? And how do geese conflicts relate to new forms of economic thinking?

In broad terms, the economy can be understood as the sum of actions that lead to supporting human and planetary wellbeing, and the ideologies supporting them. Economic activities are directly linked to the ways we modify the space and how we negotiate with other living entities sharing this space, be they humans, birds, or lichen. All these negotiations are embedded in the economic paradigm: they are the result of specific mindsets, thought models, and governance structures. The prevailing neoliberal paradigm bases these negotiations on the power of human dominance and the commodification of nature. Nonetheless, these notions are also recognized as the root cause of the alarming extinction rates and habitat loss. Indeed, many actors from different fields like philosophy or social science and even from indigenous cultures have recognized the responsibilities of the economic system in causing the nature crises and have started to problematize the notions that environmental action must be accompanied by a change in the economic paradigm, one where the notions of growth are replaced with the recognition of intertwined human-nature welfare.

Even if it is challenging, we should make the conscious effort of imagining a future state of coexistence.

But as nature is oppressed, visualising its state of liberation is difficult. Partly because we can’t recognize such a state has ever existed, and partly because we seem to have lost sight of the fundamental understanding of how we live in harmonious codependency with other beings. The questions that lay ahead require deep thinking exercises: How do we live with other species instead of alongside them, how do we live in a way so we truly understand our codependencies, in ways that are regenerative instead of extractive? I cannot offer answers to these questions but I recognize that in a state of freedom, nature cannot be separate from us, because we are a fundamental part of it.

Even if it is challenging, we should make the conscious effort of imagining a future state of coexistence. What would it be like? The relation to other species, like geese, has to be just, sustainable and inclusive. Human-nature negotiations should be based on multispecies flourishing, understanding the value of both human and non-human agencies, and also respecting their differences. Maybe some species need to avoid each other respectfully while others can cohabitate, for this we can rethink the city borders from intertwined geographical and socio-ecological perspectives.

These are just a few examples of how to identify change alternatives, but I am hopeful that pieces of a vision for coexistence are already coming into being from different sectors of society. They are coming in the form of new thinking coalitions willing to expand the definitions of what is valuable for us and for others. New definitions of economy relate much closer to people’s lives and include notions of care, wellbeing, multispecies coexistence and its linkages to new economic models and policies. Many have started to work around the need to make this shift happen, for instance, the Emancipatory Economy work group at Demos Helsinki (see the publication “Turning the tide: Landscape analysis on an emergent economic movement in Europe”). From these perspectives it is easier to envision more sustainable human-nature relations. As for me, I imagine a future Helsinki with more permeable nature boundaries, where interconnected networks of natural corridors benefit people and other species. There, new ways of thinking about socio-economics and the environment guide human-nature negotiation and the right of coexistence is celebrated throughout governance.

The author is a multidisciplinary designer and educator interested in exploring transformations of sustainability paradigms, especially concerning human-nature relationships. Originally from Chile, she works at the think-tank Demos Helsinki as part of the Emancipatory Economy team and she is finalizing a Master’s degree in Creative Sustainability at Aalto. Mariela is also a professional naturalist guide, wildlife photographer and outdoor educator. She has worked in the remote regions of Patagonia, Nunavik, Alaska and Antarctica aiming to inspire environmental awareness through the embodied practice of exploration.