VIII. Earth Earns: An Open CoCreative Earthropocene to Astropocene PediaVerse

C. An Earthropocene Era: Pedia Sapience Achieves a Unified, Peaceful, BioHome with an Ecosmic Project

Visvanathan, Nalini, et al, eds. The Women, Gender, and Development Reader. London: Zed Books, 1997. A sourcebook which runs from theory to practice, with an emphasis on emerging areas where women are particularly disenfranchised and brutalized. For one example, Vandana Shiva advises a new appreciation of the cosmic feminine principle of creative life as a way to overcome rampant destruction.

Voda, Mihal, et al. Geosystems’ Pathways to the Future of Sustainability. Nature Scientific Reports. 9/14446, 2019. An appropriate collaboration across four continents of computational geographers from Dimitrie Cantemir University, Romania, University of Nairobi, Wuhan University, and California State University broach a proposal for a global facility whose Google Earth apps can be accessed on tablet devices so as to achieve and record instant visualizations of close and wide scope. By this capability, streaming evaluation and management of bioregion ecosystem health or lack thereof can be constantly surveyed.

The world’s future development depends on effective human-computer linkages. From local to global, the virtual illustrations of a geographical, integrative place have to emphasize a peoples‘ place on our round Earth. Human values and social networks are now empowered by the unlimited creativity of smartphone applications. Our Geosystem grounded theory envisions that the sustainable management of natural resources requires that poorer communities have full access to the new technological advances. This paper will attempt to show the effectiveness of Geomedia techniques in the identification, evaluation, and valorization processes for the benefit of local inhabitants. This present methodology uses smartphone apps, Google Earth environmental datasets, Global Positioning Systems, and WebGIS for an assessment of regions throughout the world. (Abstract edits)

Wals, Arjen, ed. Social Learning: Towards a Sustainable World. Wageningen, Netherlands: Wageningen Academic Publishers, 2007. Some 53 authors from six continents engage the Principles, Perspectives, and Praxis of how we might converse and act together, talk and walk, to achieve the imperative of healthy, prosperous, and diverse, communities everywhere.

In short, the argument stresses the need for a seismic shift, from the still dominant underpinnings of modernism, through and beyond the inroads of deconstructive postmodernism, and towards a relational, ecological or participative consciousness appropriate to the deeply interconnected world that we have created. (Stephen Sterling, 63)

Waltner-Toews, David, et al, eds. The Ecosystem Approach: Complexity, Uncertainty, and Management for Sustainability. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. This volume edited by Canadian naturalists first introduces nonlinear theories, especially far-from-equilibrium, self-organizing, complex adaptive systems that distinguish environments of flora and fauna, so to provide novel guidance for their practical application. Local case studies by a global array of authors with topics such as Agrosystem Health in the Central Highlands of Kenya, Rehabilitation of the Cooum River in Chennai, India, and Food, Floods, and Farming in the Peruvian Amazon are then documented, which also draw on indigenous lore. For example, New Zealand ecologist Charlotte Helen Sunde shows how a consideration of the Whanganui River as a dynamic, intricate ecosystem, in much accord with Maori traditions, can illume its sustainable flow vs. its exploitation and loss due to invasive power projects. From the insights of Raimundo Panikkar, she shows how a once and future indigenous “witness” or holistic continuity with fluid nature can counter the mechanical reductions of consumptive development.

Wandeto, John and Birgitta Dresp-Langley. Explainable Self-Organizing Artificial Intelligence Captures Landscape Changes Correlated with Human Impact Data.. arXiv:2405.09547. Dedan Kimathi University of Technology, Kenya and CNRS, Strasbourg University computational AI scholars (search BDL) post a frontier example of how novel machine neural learning methods can serve and benefit land environmental policies in developing countries. In addition, we note still another instance of a self-making agencies even in algorithmic software

Novel methods of analysis are needed to help advance our understanding of the intricate interplay between landscape changes, population dynamics, and sustainable development. Self-organized machine learning has been highly successful in the analysis of visual data the human expert eye may not see. Thus, subtle but significant changes in images of trends in natural or urban landscapes may remain undetected. Capturing such evidence as early on can make critical information readily available to citizens, professionals and policymakers. Here, we use unsupervised Artificial Intelligence (AI) that exploits principles of self-organized biological visual learning for the analysis of imaging time series. This method is combined with the statistical analysis of demographic data to reveal human impacts. (Excerpt)

Wang, Rusong, et al. Understanding Eco-Complexity: Social-Economic-Natural Complex Ecosystem Approach. Ecological Complexity. 8/1, 2011. Chinese Academy of Sciences, Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, (Wang and Feng Li) and University of California, Riverside, Ecological Complexity and Modeling Laboratory, (Larry Li) provide a unique perspective upon ecological remediation, worth a special notice. Within their Asian milieu, it is advised that valued guidance can be availed from the abiding principles that grace ancient Chinese natural philosophy, as founded on harmonious relations between heaven and universe, earth and resource, human and society. This primordial wisdom teaches, for example, Yin-Yang as complementary balance, a similar Zhong Yong dialectic, Feng Shui ecoscape design, Wuxing theory of the five movements of organic networks, and so on.

But in contrast, such an independent, edifying nature escapes Western analysis. In our reigning mechanical model, no actual creation exists in and of which people have a filial presence and purpose, we seem to even lack the mental capacity to imagine this. As a result, the very idea is excluded and ridiculed in an indifferent material multiverse. As my 1994 article in Environmental Ethics (search Fabel) worried about years ago, we will not be able to achieve a living, sustainable earth in such a dead, pointless universe.

Weiming, Tu. The Ecological Turn in New Confucian Humanism. Daedalus. 130/4, 2001. In a special edition on religion and ecology, this essay by the Harvard University scholar (search) is a good capsule of his thought as a vital way forward via Asian wisdom to heal and sustain an Earth community. As his many writings convey, it is an “anthropocosmic vision” (see also this site section) of a familial trinity of heaven, Earth and humanity. In contrast to a western inability to get an effective act together, in denial of any greater reality, this perennial tradition abides a numinous milieu with its own organic, procreative propensities. By these lights can be availed a dynamic dance of gender complementaries so as to live lightly, sensibility, respectfully in a personal, relational, and global milieu.

The Confucian worldview, rooted in earth, body, family, and community, is not a passive acceptance of the physical, biological, social, and political constraints of the human condition. Rather, it is dictated by an ethic of responsibility informed by a transcendent vision. We do not become "spiritual" by departing from or transcending above our earth, body, family, and community, but by working through them. Indeed, our daily life is not merely secular but a response to a cosmological decree. Since the Mandate of Heaven that enjoins us to take part in the great enterprise of cosmic transformation is implicit in our nature, we are Heaven's partners. (245)

Wessel, Gregory and Jeffrey Greenberg, eds. Geoscience for the Public Good and Global Development: Toward a Sustainable Future. Boulder, CO: Geological Society of America, 2016. A dedicated volume from initial encouragements onto such aspects as Mineral and Energy Resources, Waste Management, Hazard Reduction, Water Resources, and Urban Development. An opening chapter is Geoethics: Ethical, Social, and Cultural Values.

Westbroek, Peter. Taming Gaia: The History of the Dutch Lowlands as an Analogy to Global Change. Schneider, Stephen, et al, eds. Scientists Debate Gaia. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2004. The senior ecologist contends that informed human intervention is indeed necessary to achieve a sustainable biosphere, that nature left alone will not do this. A case in point is cited as the stabilization and restored fertility of the land and seascape around the town of Nieuwkoop.

The biggest problem standing in the way of taming Gaia may be in the coordination of the global human community. Humanity will not stand a chance as long as it remains divided by differences of culture, wealth, and resources. (220

Westra, Laura, et al, eds. Reconciling Human Existence with Ecological Integrity: Science, Ethics, Economics and Law. London: Routledge, 2008. The editors are University of Windsor emeritus philosopher Laura Westra, Klaus Bosselmann, University of Auckland environmental lawyer, and Richard Westra, Pukyong National University political economist. This significant volume is a 15 year report upon, and essays in support of, the work of Global Ecological Integrity Group. Founded by Laura Westra in 1992, as its website www.globalecointegrity.net advises, is dedicated to “Sustaining Global Ecological Integrity and Human Health Through Science, Ethics and the Law.” The endeavor includes some 250 scholars with many publications and annual conferences to its credit. Five parts grace the volume: Foundations of Ecological Integrity, Ecological Integrity and Biological Integrity, Ecological Integrity and Environmental Justice, Ecological Integrity, Climate Change and Energy, and Future Policy Path for Ecological Integrity. Typical topics are Global Public Good and Governance, Indigenous Rights, Water Wisdom, and a Sacred Covenant with Nature. To pick a paper, we could cite “Confounding Integrity: Humanity as a Dissipative Structure” by University of British Columbia ecologist William Rees.

Worldwatch, Institute. Vital Signs 2003. New York: Norton, 2003. This volume and the annual State of the World series by these folks are some of the best sources for insightful essays and real information on topics from Agriculture to Waste Disposal.

Xu, Yipeng, et al. Revive, Restore, Revitalize: An Eco-economic Methodology for Maasai Mara. arXiv:2309.07165. We enter this surely global endeavor by University of Nottingham Ningbo China scholars as a good example of how the latest mathematical sciences can effectively be fed back and applied to remediate and improve conditions everywhere. Its Keywords are Agent-based Model, TOPSIS, Entropy Weight Method, Swarm Algorithm, Fitness Proportional Selection, Differential Equation, Monte Carlo Methods. If disparate nations can ever hold to the recent G20 Summit theme of One Earth, Family, Future, an actual Earthropocene sustainability might be achieved.

The Maasai Mara in Kenya, renowned for its biodiversity, is witnessing ecosystem degradation and species endangerment due to intensified human activities. Here we introduce a dynamic system harmonizing ecological and human priorities. Our agent-based model employs the metabolic rate-mass relationship for animal energy dynamics, logistic curves for animal growth, individual interactions for food web simulation, and human impacts. Algorithms like fitness proportional selection and particle swarm mimic organism preferences for resources. We classified the policy impacts into three categories: Environmental Preservation, Economic Prosperity, and Holistic Development. By applying these policy groupings to our ecosystem model, we tracked the effects on the intricate animal-human-resource dynamics. (Excerpt)

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