Building Ecological Solidarity: Rewilding Practices as an Example

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

In the context of global environmental changes, this paper aims at defining the concept of ecological solidarity, the reasons for its implementation at the individual or collective levels, and takes as an example of application the practices of rewilding. Starting from bioethics and health, this paper is potentially interesting. Unfortunately, and surprisingly, the authors have ignored or forgotten many references (though easily accessible on google scholar) that already deal with ecological solidarity in the field of ecology, notably in conservation biology, environmental ethics and sustainability sciences. Consequently, I invite the authors to consult the references listed below and to rework their manuscript in order to integrate and discuss existing definitions and fields of application that have already been examined, particularly in relation to the management of protected areas in Europe, especially in France - which is, to our knowledge, the first country to have integrated the principle of ecological solidarity into its environmental protection laws as early as 2006; the concept is also used by the IPBES, particularly in the report on land use change. If this body of work is integrated and the manuscript is reshaped, I am confident in the interest of this publication. Therefore, I propose that the manuscript be reconsidered after major and extensive revision.

List of references that deal with ecological solidarity:

Chapin III F.S., 2020. Grassroots Stewardship. Sustainability Within Our Reach. OUP, NY.

Thompson J., Mathevet R., Delanoë O., Cheylan M., Gil-Fourrier C., Bonnin M., 2011. Ecological solidarity as a conceptual tool for rethinking ecological and social interdependence in conservation policy for protected areas and their surrounding landscape. Comptes Rendus de l’Académie des Sciences, serie Biologies 334 (5-6) : 412-419.

Mathevet R., Bousquet F., Raymond C.M., 2018. The stewardship concept in sustainability science and conservation biology. Biological Conservation 217: 363-370.

Mathevet R., Bousquet F., Larrère C., Larrère R., 2018. Environmental stewardships and ecological solidarity: rethinking social-ecological interdependency and responsibility. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 31(5): 605–623.

Mathevet R., Thompson J., Folke C., Chapin III F.S., 2016. Protected areas and their surrounding territory: social-ecological systems in the context of ecological solidarity. Ecological Applications 26(1): 5-16.

Mathevet R., 2012. La solidarité écologique, Ce lien qui nous oblige. Actes Sud, Paris.

Mathevet R., Thompson J., Bonnin M., 2012. La solidarité écologique : prémices d’une pensée écologique pour le XXIème siècle ? (Ecological solidarity: the beginnings of an ecological thought for the 21st century?), Ecologie & Politique 44, Presses de Sciences Po Paris, 129-138.

Mathevet R., Thompson J., Delanoë O., Cheylan M., Gil-Fourrier C., Bonnin M., 2010. La solidarité écologique: un nouveau concept pour la gestion intégrée des parcs nationaux et des territoires, (Ecological solidarity: a new concept for the integrated management of national parks and territories). Natures Sciences Sociétés 18(4) : 424-433.

Author Response

I am very grateful to Reviewer 1 for the references provided. Certainly, I did not address the concept of ecological solidarity framed by Mathevet and colleagues in relation to the management of protected areas in Europe, especially in France. I have attempted to reshape my manuscript integrating some of these references (changes marked up using the “Track Changes”).

The scope of my article is the relationship between solidarity and bioethics (with a particular focus on global health) in the context of global ecological collapse. The contributions of Mathevet et al. help to define a strategy very useful and interesting for conservation biology and political ecology in practice, but they do not directly address the effects of the ecological solidarity strategy on health. In order to not extend my manuscript so long I prefer to focus on the theoretical insights of ecological solidarity I have already provided in the early version of my manuscript. I would like to keep accurate and true to the call for papers which focuses on public health ethics.

Furthermore, the scope of ecological solidarity addressed by authors such as Mathevet is well applied in the peripheral context of protected nature reserves, which would broaden the sphere of justice, but its beneficiaries are spatially delimited. It does not address other environmental causes of injustice or key species for ecosystem regeneration that are not found in areas surrounding national parks. I believe that ecological solidarity needs to be much broader, and apply its scope to these cases as well. Thus, other recipients of ecological solidarity should be included within the moral and political concern (e.g. people affected by environmental impacts, nonhuman keystone species in danger or in vulnerable state).

My approach of ecological solidarity seeks to include more recipients by attending more circumstances in an interrelated environment-society matrix not reduced to spatial ones. In particular, I focus on those circumstances related with public and global health issues.

For this reason, in section 2, in which I present what ecological solidarity is and how we may understand it theoretically, I have only incorporated at the beginning some references to the interpretation and application of this concept in France, in order to show that the term has been worked on in the literature before, but without deepen on those contributions.

In sections 3 and 4, more dedicated to practical issues, I slightly reintroduce the previous contributions of ecological solidarity in nature reserve areas such as in France. In the section 3 I highlight the importance of a community-led approach aimed at participatory collective actions, noting that this is a valuable insight of the French environmental laws. In the section 4 I point out that rewilding could trace some of the ecological solidarity praxis applied in France if a land-sharing strategy was adopted as well, and because it has been proven to be effective in broadening citizen involvement without the sole objective of making economic profit from ecosystem services.

Reviewer 2 Report

This is an outstanding submission! While I could make quibbly comments about how to improve the argument, I would rather see the paper be accepted and contend with potential objections in forthcoming works. So, I am not going to prevent the paper from being published.

If the author is so inclined, contact Heather Battaly at the University of Connecticut who is working on the issue of solidarity and whether it is a vice. I only mention this because I wonder whether Heather's work will inform the author's future projects.

Thank you for the opportunity to consider this work for publication in the journal. 

Author Response

Thank you very much!

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

I am sorry for the delay in conducting this second evaluation. In order not to further disadvantage the author I am providing a short assessment hereafter.

The author has slightly revised his paper by integrating the suggested references. Unfortunately, I regret that he has not had or taken the time to engage in a real intellectual dialogue that could have been helpful in refining his arguments and his paper. Instead, he has chosen to swiftly take up the contributions of the added references by limiting their development to protected areas without taking up the theoretical and philosophical broadenings that are however evident in some papers especially the one published in JAGE or in the book (but not translated from French) of 2012. For example, the statement line 93-94 is mistaken and already addressed in the paper published in JAGE.

In order to find a positive outcome to this relative disappointment and because despite my frustrations and regrets I find interesting some extensions presented by the author, I propose to him some amendments to his text for a better integration/understanding of the existing literature:

He/she should replace lines 92-97 by « Beyond the concern for the expansion of protected territories and their community involvement, Mathevet and his colleagues [7] stated that « ecological solidarity is the moral and positive attitude derived from acknowledging objective social and ecological interdependencies ». They emphasized that ecological solidarity is both solidarity between people regarding the consequences of environmental changes, whether or not they are linked to human activities, and solidarity between humans and non-humans [5,7]. In order to extend their question on how we take individual and collective responsibility for the consequences of the social and ecological interdependencies (often invisible) that holds humans and non-humans together [6,7], I broaden in this article the concept of ecological solidarity by integrating it into global health concerns. »

The author should replace lines 380-386 by « In the second section I mentioned that the protection of natural areas in France was the first time ecological solidarity articulated and put into practice. Ecological solidarity takes on its full meaning when humans recognize the reciprocity of most interactions, for instance biodiversity in the core area of a national park depends for its efficient functioning of the surrounding area and human activities outside the core of the protected area (i.e. in the peripheral, transition or buffer area) can influence the biodiversity within the protected area itself. Following Mathevet et al. [7] I explained that ecological solidarity can also be manifested when responding to a concrete cause of an unjust scenario generated by environmental degradation or ecological impacts, and when it is directed at non-human subjects or recipients. »

Author Response

I am grateful to Reviewer 1 for the comments. I have implemented the two suggested changes in the manuscript to better integrate the literature of Mathevet and colleagues.