Words as stones for a geoethical glossary

Abstract

This essay is the full paper version of authors’ intervention during the webinar Geoethics without borders. Transdisciplinary visions for sustainability, held in October 13^th 2022. The concept of geoethics, initially associated to environmental, social and economic issues inherent to exploration and exploitation of georesources, has turned over the last few years on an educational and political dimension, in order to be introduced outside the geoscience community and to improve the way humans interact responsibly with the Earth’s system. Inspired by the call-for-commitment for a pedagogical and political project towards future sustainable societies made by Peppoloni and Di Capua, as well as by the Bohle’s idea of relating geoethical thinking with the political philosophy, this paper aims to enlarge the geoethical glossary, connecting geoethics to some key terms of ecological philosophy and analyzing the contribution that the related theories can give, with a view to building an educational and political proposal in accordance with the principles of geoethics. The three terms we propose are Haraway’s response-ability, Barad’s intra-action and Ingold’s correspondence. To move beyond the theoretical framework and orient toward educational practices, we suggest in conclusion to consider, alongside the three adjectives outlined by Peppoloni and Di Capua (inclusive, participatory and proactive), the so-called "3-Ts" of environmental education (transformative, transgressive and transdisciplinary) and also a new triad of adjectives (ecological, aesthetic and ecumenical), rooted in the theories we have analyzed.