Decolonizing Environmental Discourses: Challenging Environmental Values through Indigenous Ecological Knowledge

This doctoral thesis is a study of environmental values, also addressed as values of nature, or natural values. The point of departure of my research is situated within the philosophical field of environmental ethics, which is a branch of applied ethics that emerged in the 1970s. Nonetheless, it also includes other disciplines, such as environmental aesthetics, Indigenous studies, and decolonial theory, as well as various interdisciplinary collaborations, which broadly revolve around the theme of environmental values.
One of the premises of this doctoral dissertation is that some Western cultures are understood as ‘colonial’ since they reproduce colonial discourses and practices. This means that they endorse binary power structures—subject (active)/object (passive), superior/inferior, dominant/subjugated divisions, etc.—and that they focus strongly on economic profit in the name of increasing power and wealth. They also refer persistently to the validity of Western sciences as the only truth upon which they validate Western criteria for academic performances, and they perpetrate the arrogance of interpreting non-Western cultures, traditions, and knowledges through Western metrics and lenses. In this context, the process of decolonization concerns environmental academic debates and theoretical environmental discourses, and it develops in various steps.
The first of the two arguments upon which this doctoral dissertation is based is the pluralistic argument, in which I criticize the value monism in nature valuation, exemplified by the mainstream neoclassical economic valuation of nature. I offer a critical analysis of the privileged position of economic environmental valuation based on the logic of ‘betterness’—meaning more convincing theories as well as better results, which are easier to consider in the environmental decision-making structure, which revolves around Western standards. This chain of reasoning reproduces ‘colonial discourses and practices’ that identify the ‘colonizers’, meaning those who promote the prevalent economic assessment of nature as better and superior. In specific, I address and criticize the privileged position held by the economic value of nature in the current capitalist society, vis-à-vis other non-economic values, as an example of value discrimination that privileges the dominant wealthy and capitalist class.
I instead propose supporting a value pluralism framework, as a more balanced theoretical structure, where I display other types of values, which I call ‘non-economic’ values (NEV) of nature. Those are a set of values, different than the economic one, through which it is possible to value nature from several angles, instead of only one perspective. Many environmental NEV exist, but in this thesis I address the moral, the aesthetic as well as the ecological value of nature.
The discussion on NEV, even though of utmost importance, remains in the Western realm. Only the introduction of Indigenous traditional ecological knowledge (TEK)—and especially Sami Indigenous people TEK—allows a decolonial step to properly decolonize environmental ethics. This is the foundation of the second argument of this study, which I call the ‘decolonial argument’. It advances the introduction of Indigenous TEK and their environmental views, next to NEV, to offer alternative angles to the Western dominant economic environmental assessment, as well as to the Western non-economic valuation of nature. Indigenous TEK is a type of situated knowledge system, broadly concerning the interrelation with nature. Indigenous TEK is ontologically and epistemologically different from the dominant Western knowledge system. Precisely these diversities make it an optimal point of departure for initiating the decolonization process of Western environmental discourses, through which we can deconstruct Western colonial structures of powers.
In conclusion, decolonizing theoretical environmental discourses within environmental ethics means analyzing the hegemonic and long-lasting attention of Western standards and points of refences, as well as to deconstruct and de-centre Western power structures. This process will help to uncover and tackle the social injustices that colonial patterns perpetrate. My decolonial critique of environmental discourses aims, on the one hand, at revealing and dismantling colonial power structures such as the Western philosophical and epistemological supremacy within academia. On the other hand, it seeks to create alternative conversations and ‘counter-discourses’ that are more inclusive of what has been left out, such as non-economic values of nature, and Indigenous knowledge systems that focus on the relationship both with the land and with all the entities that exist in nature.