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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal – Vol.7, No.6

Publication Date: June 25, 2020

DOI:10.14738/assrj.76.8445.

Yanitsky, O. N. (2020). The Ecological Wars: The Notion, Concept And Dynamics. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 7(6) 477-

488.

The Ecological Wars: The Notion, Concept And Dynamics

Oleg N. Yanitsky

Ph.D., Professor, Chief Researcher,

Federal Center of Theoretical and Applied Sociology

Russian Academy of Sciences

ABSTRACT

Drawing on a scientific literature on the Biosphere and the global SBT- structure and development, on Russian, foreign and my own

investigations of global ecological issues and environmental

movements, I came to the following conclusions. First, these issues are

both important practically and theoretically. Second, under the

ecological war I mean all kinds of harm which is caused by man to the

natural, human and complex invasion into the natural and social

ecosystems. Third, the researchers are still follow the principle ‘Firstly,

we should to cope with the after-effects of a certain disaster and then to

evaluate their immediate and far-reaching outcomes’. Four, our urgent

task is to foresee the coming disaster and to have a time to take the

preventive measures in advance. Five, I distinguish three main

archetypes of the ecological wars that I conditionally names as the

natural, social and the feedback’s wars conducted by the global SBT- system against natural, social and mixed ecosystems. Six, the time

regime of the global SBT-system functioning and of the ecological wars

is very important but still ill-investigated issues. Seven, the main

resource of any ecological war is the speed of its spreading in time and

space and transformation of natural ecosystems. Eight, the current

pandemic showed that the systemic approach, interdisciplinary and

prognostic researches are the main instruments for coping with the

ecological wars. It follows that the sociologists have to learn and widely- use these three theoretical instruments.

Keywords: Biosphere, ecological war, feedbacks, forecasting, globalization,

pandemic, SBT-structures, sociology, time regime.

WHY THE ISSUE IN QUESTION IS SO IMPORTANT?

This issue is both important practically and theoretically. Practically because as the current

pandemics as well as a set of global ecological disasters like Chernobyl, Bhopal, Three-Mile Island,

the catastrophe with the Exxon Valdes tanker and now the overflow of diesel fuel in the Norilsk city

in Russia have confirmed that the ecological wars are do existed.

I think that is now necessary to introduce the notion of the ecological wars into a scientific

circulation for the following reasons. First, there are too many notions which meaning, content and

use are uncertain (the accidents, disasters, catastrophes, calamities, etc.) that signifies the same

kind of events. Second, the above events are usually considered beyond a particular natural, social

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URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.76.8445 478

Yanitsky, O. N. (2020). The Ecological Wars: The Notion, Concept And Dynamics. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 7(6) 477-488.

or complex context. Third, many researchers follow the principle ‘We should first to coping with the

after-effects of a certain disaster and then to evaluate its immediate and far-reaching outcomes,

while our urgent task is to foresee the coming disaster and to take the preventive measures in

advance. Four, it means that recently when all is interconnected with the all the any scientist and

scholar should distinguish between the crises which periodically coming and gone and the critical

situations which have a long-term and all-embracing character. The critical situation (hereafter the

CS) is usually leads to the substantial transformations of a global organism as a whole. Five, finally

the main resource of any ecological war are the speed and tempo-rhythms of its spreading in time

and space. Six,

Under permanent global geopolitical struggle the ecological wars are becoming a very serious arm

in it because they are unseen, quiet and very quickly spreading across the world. In sum the

ecological wars are the complex arm combining scientific and technology achievements with

political pressure and propaganda. Seven, the means of the struggle against the ecological wars

should be symmetrical to its reasons, content and structure i.e. these means should have complex

character as well. Eight, as current global pandemics clearly showed, ecological wars have produced

a global turmoil irrespectively of their origin.

THE NOTION OF AN ECOLOGICAL WAR

Under the ecological war I mean all kinds of harm which is caused by natural, human and complex

disasters to the natural and social ecosystems including the global SBT-system. The ecological war

is now resulted in the abrupt transformation of all forms of natural and social life and violates a

fragile mane-nature balance.

Under such balance I mean a coexistence of the social and natural ecosystems. The regeneration by

man the earlier destroyed such ecosystems by climate changes, wars or by overexploitation of

natural resources I consider as the antithesis to the notion of ecological war. I fully realize the

conditional character of the term ‘coexistence.’ Nevertheless, this notion has resembled a current

global reality which is full of attempts made by the scientists and politicians to protect already

existing fragile balance within man-nature relationships.

To begin a more detailed analysis, we first of all should to define the conceptual frames of it within

which the notion of the ecological war has to be defined. First, a widely used notion of the biosphere

isn’t a biological organism only. The biosphere is the very complex notion which has embraced the

interrelationships of the cosmic, biological, social and technological structures and processes both

an inert and movable, relatively static and dynamic, linear and chaotic, etc. Then, in any case a global

social community is much smaller than the outer i.e. cosmic space. Theoretically speaking, this

community is capable to make a suicide but not the outer space.

Therefore, theoretically speaking the tandem like ‘man and the biosphere’ isn’t universal but it fits

to a certain period of human history only. The same is right in relation to widely used word

collocation the ‘man and his environment.’ If we imply the relationships between humanity and its

environment it’s one thing, but if we mean the relationships between the individual and his living

milieu, it’s quite another matter and so on and so forth.

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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal (ASSRJ) Vol.7, Issue 6, June-2020

After then, looking at the issue in question historically one could see that in the word collocation

the ‘man and his environment’ the man is usually considered as an active force (actor or agent)

while the ‘his environment’ is as usually more or less stable.

Maybe, in the moment, i.e. here and now such conceptualization is correct but if we speak about the

ecological wars as a modern i.e. the global phenomenon we are needed in a quite another theoretical

apparatus which fits to an ecological war which development has usually accompanied with

unintended consequences and bifurcations. The current pandemics with its unintended fluctuations

have confirmed the above statement.

Recently, the globalization represents a permanently developing and very complex process of

interactions between its natural, social and technological structures with the abovementioned

periodical unintended consequences and bifurcations. Accordingly, humanity is now living in a very

mobile and uncertain world. And therefore we still didn’t now the laws of its short-term and long- term dynamics. Prof. D. Meadows with his colleagues has introduced the notion of the ‘limits to

growth’ (Meadows at al., 1973, 1989). But the growth of what: of a global population, its productive

forces, of consuming resources or of the arms races? Or it’s going on the threat of the resource or

nuclear wars? More than that, the first book of Meadows and his colleagues has the title ‘The Global

Equilibrium.’ But such equilibrium is impossible due to a domination of market economy and tough

struggle for deficit resources and geopolitical domination. Above all, during last 35 years our world

has become qualitatively different.

To my mind, the ‘limits to growth’ principle is too wide and uncertain in order to be a starting point

of reasons of the modern ecological wars analysis. The above principle has excluded the all class of

natural disasters. We already know that the earth is a living organism but we still don’t know the

fundamental laws of its functioning and development.

Therefore, I offer to take the existence of the global (or more correct a cosmic) socio-bio-technical

system as the starting point of the ecological wars analysis. In turn it means that potentially there

are an endless number of its forms and therefore we are not able to analyze all of them. The question

arises: which of them has to be analyzed first of all? This question has no definite answer because,

as the current practice shows, there may be at least three main archetypes of the ecological wars.

MAIN ARCHETYPES OF ECOLOGICAL WARS

The first and the most understandable to all people I’ve called as the natural one. It’s going on about

the foreseeable and unintended natural disasters. The earthquakes, tornados, floods, drought as

well as the century-long climatic changes are the best-known examples.

The second one I’ve called as the social one. This archetype has usually mixt, i.e. complex structure.

If we consider a usual procedure of the move from the decision-making to a certain technical

construction which usually means an invasion in natural or built environment, we’ll see that

humans first of all mean their immediate needs and only then think about an environmental

consequence of far-going consequences of such invasion. A capitalist system and its global market

are the main drivers of such one-sided processes. Of course, there are a lot of regulative instruments

for a minimization of natural losses (laws, decrees, instructions, expertize, public hearings and other