When
SPEAKER: Vicente L.Lopes (Professor of Environmental Studies at Texas State University)
DATE: Wednesday, February 19, 2014
TIME: 3:00-4:00 pm
LOCATION: Marley Building, Room 230
ABSTRACT:
The purpose of this presentation is to introduce the emerging practice of civic ecology, a community-based systems response to a growing sense that the contemporary interlocked social-ecological crises are as much a problem of
human thought and behavior as they are about identifying carrying capacities and CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. Starting with everyday experience, civic ecology recognizes that positive change will depend upon the extent to
which individual citizens and their communities understand, are committed to, and share, a set of purposes and moral and ecological principles. Shared purposes and principles, however, cannot be handed down from above but must
be developed from the bottom-up through community-based inquiry and ecological citizenship. The presentation concludes with a brief description of a civic ecology project in a small urbanizing watershed in south-central Texas.