On March 25, Asoka Bandarage gave a presentation at the Sri Lankan National Trust entitled “Paradigm Shift: Global and Local Ecosocial Challenges.” You can read a description below and watch the full talk here.
While humanity has achieved incredible technological and material growth, ecosystems and human communities are collapsing due largely to that very advancement. The challenge before us is not the acceleration of competitive, economic and technological growth and the creation of a ‘post- nature’, ‘post-human’ world but a fundamental transformation to a balanced path of social and psychological development. This presentation will explore the worldview of domination underlying the contemporary market and technological paradigm and the worldview of partnership that would underlie an alternative ecological paradigm. Drawing upon the presenter’s book, Sustainability and Well-Being: The Middle Path to Environment, Society and the Economy (Palgrave MacMillan), this presentation will seek to provide an integrated ecosocial approach defining sustainability as simultaneously constituting the well-being of the human species and that of the natural world.
Drawing from a wide range of information and academic disciplines, the presentation will provide an overview of the fundamental shift in consciousness, public policy and social action needed for ecological and social protection at both the global and the local Sri Lankan levels.
