Preservare un territorio insediato

Il radicamento come fonte di ecologia

Abstract

Analyzing the etymology of the term ecology, it’s possible to find a reference to the Greek words oikos, home or environment, and logos, discourse: in this sense, ecology appears as a discourse, an educated discussion about our surroundings, about our home, the very source of our dwelling. A peculiar feature of the relationship with our home is the bond that unites us to it, a bond characterized by a motion of co-belonging, a feeling of rootedness, and a special care or attention to the environment experienced in everyday life. The understanding of the bond with the places that constitute our everyday lives appears, then, as a fundamental moment of the ecological issue, both from a philosophical point of view and from an action-centered point of view. It is precisely such a connection with the land that stands as the driving force and the very source of its management and virtuous conservation of the natural realm. Through landscape preservation, driven by a feeling of rootedness and thanks to a peculiar attention to the land that hosts our existence, the emphasis placed by many intellectuals – from Ludwig Klages to Roger Scruton, to Wendell Berry, and many others – on a local dimension of the ecological problem seems to become both a practice of rootedness and a practice of environmentalism.