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Visions for Sustainability, No 19 (2023)

Visions for Sustainability, No 17 (2022)

As we have often stated, the issues and editorials prefacing Visions for Sustainability have endeavoured to contribute to humanity’s dialogue with nature (Prigogine & Stengers, 1984). Dialogue (dia: “through” – logos: “word” or “signifier”) is described by Bohm (1996) as “a stream of meaning flowing among and through and between us” (p. 6). The stream of meaning that creates the flow of humanity’s dialogue has always been shaped by the evolution of human language and the way in which “we human beings exist and operate as human beings as we operate in language: languaging is our manner of living as human beings” (Maturana, 2002, p.27). Moreover, the sustainability of life itself depends on language as a means of creating the flow, the exchange and the processing of information that enable the biological processes that are vital for all living organisms. Life as biolanguaging Indeed, languaging is not only our way of living as human beings. Nor is the “stream of meaning […] between us” a flow existing only between us as human beings, but rather between us as all living organisms and the biosphere we inhabit together. All life exists and operates as Biolongua-ing, seen as a complex flow of information between interconnected living organisms, a biodialoguing involving a multiplicity of signifiers that goes way beyond the words of human language. An increasing body of research – more commonly referred to in terms of biocommunication (Gordon & Seckback, 2017) – has reached the conclusion that operating through biolanguaging involves processes of predicting, interpreting, decision-making, coordinating and organizing based on interaction and information processing. This process encompasses dialoguing between abiotic and biotic elements, animals, plants, fungi, eukaryotes, akaryotes and viruses, and can involve interorganismic (interspecific and intraspecific) languaging or intraorganismic (intercellular or intracellular) languaging. Human languaging as our manner of living is thus an infinitesimally small part of biolanguaging as all living organisms’ manner of living. Humanity’s dialogue with nature is dwarfed by the immensity of life’s dialogue with nature and across the vast spectrum of life there are innumerable ways of languaging that are inevitably very different from those of human languages. In terms of why, how and what languaging takes place, such a multiplicity is potentially infinite within the n-dimensional linguistic hyperspace of life. Moreover, even within human languages, there are vast numbers of language families and individual varieties that are largely incomprehensible to users of other languages. Human language is a biocultural evolutionary system and in our multilingual world every single language is a particular example of the immense diversity that such a system can generate. Within the vast spectrum of human multilingual diversity, each language has a special way of creating the processes of sense-making and the intricate texture of meanings by which its users live (Dodman, 2014). Language comes from the land At the same time, operating in language is a highly complex and often contradictory process of context-dependent meaning building, since language is “both the constricting horizon and the energising atmosphere within and by which all human activity must be understood (Said 1975, p.284). Language both conditions our courses of action and our way of understanding that action. While, as our energising atmosphere, language has the meaning potential to enable infinite processes of signification, as our constricting horizon, language inevitably creates a setting that limits these processes. Indeed, “where we are is in a sentence” (Spicer, 1975, p. 175), both in terms of the particular lexicogrammatical features of a given language that furnish us with our cognitive tools and of how this confines all our vision and action within certain frames of reference. Moreover, increasing language mortality, together with the consequent loss of diversity and spread of uniformity, risks creating tunnel vision and inflexibility, an incapacity to adapt and a reduced potential for life. The inability on the part of any living organism to understand and use the information contained within the composite flow of biolanguaging is an evolutionary disability. All our attempts both to proceed with and understand the flow of meaning that constitutes our dialogue – and to put it in the context of the dialogue of all other living organisms – risk being hampered by the limits of the very human languaging on which we depend. Important conditions for continuing our dialogue must be recognizing those limits and developing awareness of what they imply, endeavouring to realize more fully the energizing horizon of human meaning potential and ensuring that we take into account an overall biolanguaging perspective. An important point of departure for this enterprise would profitably be that which is often expressed by users of many indigenous languages from various continents, “language comes from the land […] Words are given to us by the land […] the land needs words, the land speaks for us, and we use language for this. Words make things happen — make us alive” (Turner, 2010, p. 16). Rediscovering this bond with the oikos as the place where life can “take place” is essential in order put human languaging within the stream of meaning of biolanguaging. The emergence of new trajectories According to the WHO (2021), 2020 was “a year that changed the world”. Going into detailed discussion of what is meant by such a statement is quite beyond the scope of this editorial, but we could say that the Covid-19 pandemic will come to be seen as a watershed, the characteristics and extent of which still remains to be defined. During the emergency (e-mergere: “come to the surface”, “let what was hidden be seen”), all the fragility of humanity’s current dominant structures and trajectories has indeed re-emerged, not merely as direct social, economic and political consequences of the global spread of a virus, but, more importantly, as an outcome of our inability to understand information. If an important part of the function of information in living systems (Rohr, 2014) is interpreting it within its environment, using it to make predictions and adapt to changing circumstances, then we have clearly been unable to do so. The WHO document concentrates on (the lack of) preparedness and response strategies in the face of a pandemic, and at the same time there have been notable achievements on the part of healthcare systems and the scientific community in terms of diagnostics and treatment, as well as the development of vaccines. The point, however, is to understand causes and not just to react to consequences, mitigate risks that ensue from the environmental perturbations for which we are often largely responsible, take action to enable equitable and effective participation in preventative action as well as access to treatments and vaccines. Any consideration of what changes and how it changes must necessarily start from asking to what extent the emergency has produced conditions that are favourable for re-thinking (thereby re-languaging) in order to extend the breadth and depth of our dialogue with nature, provided that discourse takes account of each of these conditions. The concept of resilience has come to be used ever more frequently. In this respect, it is essential that we bear in mind that resilience “is not only about being persistent or robust to disturbance. It is also about the opportunities that disturbance opens up in terms of recombination of evolved structures and processes, renewal of the system and emergence of new trajectories” (Folke, 2006). Exploring the meaning potential of “ecological” There has recently been widespread talk of the need for an ecological transition. The way in which this term is often used seems, however, to ignore the fact that ecology is the study of the interactions between living organisms and their physical environment. Since these interactions are constant and unceasing, this means that from the very birth of life on Earth our biosphere has always been characterized by transition (transire = to go across), both a process of changing or a period of changing from one state or condition to another. Life is ongoing ecological transition and biolanguaging can be seen both as existing and operating as living organisms and as exercising the specific ecological roles this entails. Moreover, what we have come to call the Anthropocene has already produced potentially one of the most devastating period of ecological transition Earth has ever known. Our constant striving for what is apparent progress in every sphere of our lives has actually produced a massive reduction in our ways of being and exploring the meaning potential of language. The point therefore is what kind of ecological transition can we play a part in, paradoxically undoing that for which we have been responsible during a brief, but increasingly aberrant period of our existence in which we have forgotten that the exercise of an ecological role must be within a defined niche constituted by specific conditions, resources and interactions, and increasingly treated the entire biosphere as an unlimited resourcesphere to manipulate and exploit, unaware or heedless of the range of potential ecological transitions we have impeded by our emphasis on a “growth-based” model of living. In defining our role, we must always remember to recognize our responsibilities and act accordingly, assuming a way of being founded on humility and thereby shedding the terrible hubris of our belief that we can engineer solutions based exclusively on new human technologies and in particular the spread of artificial intelligence. Indeed, as Crawford (2021) puts it, artificial intelligence is neither artificial nor intelligent and is often based on environmental degradation. It is produced from natural resources, involving, for example, the labour exploitation of lithium mining, and requires people to perform the data extraction tasks that render the systems apparently autonomous. Our dialogue with nature depends on how we construe our relationship to nature. Artificial intelligence is not the basis of a different relationship, nor is it the answer to how we can be a part of (not the sole player in) a new ecological transition, since it is essentially built perpetuating the same kinds of human and resource exploitation. We must understand how nature has all that is necessary to promote a process of dynamic equilibrium of which we are a more or less significant part and develop ways of re-entering into harmony with that process. Since the term ecological is descriptive and not prescriptive, we need to question how we conceptualize ecological processes in terms of predicting, interpreting, decision-making, coordinating and organizing based on interaction and information processing, and understand how our human languaging can guide our action on the basis of this awareness. Humility and marvel An important point of departure for such an ecological transition could perhaps be that of developing greater concern for concepts such as ecoliteracy and ecojustice. Both are relatively recent developments within human languaging and can in no way be adequately treated here. If, however, we take a basic principle of ecoliteracy to be awareness of our interconnectedness and kinship with all life (Young Brown, 2021), then all our languaging should be based on the humility that such a recognition engenders and consequent marvel (mirari = “look intensely, with attention, with surprise, with wonder, with admiration”). From this point of view, what is normally the object of our perception and subsequent action becomes a subject in the interaction between the observer and the observed and renders the dialogue a two-way flow of information. The observed becomes the source and the initiator of perception and acts upon the observer. This way of construing ourselves as part of nature could feed directly into the concept of ecojustice, whereby we recuperate the idea of justice as a harmonious relationship that is common to many and various philosophical traditions. Justice is a human concept we have tended to apply exclusively to ourselves but which we would be well advised to extend to nature, seen as what gives rise to our biosphere, an inhabitable environment in which life can emerge and reside. Nature itself is not concerned with justice, but rather with dynamic equilibrium and adaptability, but, since we are able to conceptualize such an idea and consider it a pillar of democracy, we should apply it to the entire biosphere, simply because this would be just, or harmonious. Otherwise, our dialogue with nature will always be hypocritical and we will remain unable to understand that the value of non-human life cannot be judged on the basis of its usefulness for human purposes. Perspectives on human beings and nature Each of the papers published in this issue consider the relationship between human beings and nature from different perspectives. Kopnina et al. examine various aspects of ecodemocracy and ask how capable democratic societies are of addressing environmental challenges. They are concerned with what ecodemocracy could look like in practice, and in particular with what is needed to secure democratic legitimacy for policy measures to benefit nonhuman species. In this respect, they investigate a possible approach in the form of a mandate for proxy eco-representation similar to civil rights through continuous affirmative action, while considering other approaches and what are the limitations and possibilities of each approach for nature representation. Di Carmine and Berto offer an environmental psychology perspective on the benefits of contact with nature with particular reference to atypical children with Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). They examine how environments can be capable of restoring depleted resources such as attention and consider the scientific evidence that exposure to nature offers attentional recovery as explained by Attention Restoration Theory. Colombo et al. present a study of wildflowers in Italian urban settings and people’s preferences as regards the rich diversity of wildflowers. They look at how preference for wildflowers may be affected by the way the issue is presented, and also whether an individual’s connection to nature affects preference for wildflowers. Asim et al. look at how working and living environments may be restorative and mitigate psychological problems at the source. Their main focus in this paper is on the strategies and developments of Biophilic design with respect to therapy and restoration, in order to achieve sustainability in terms of quality of life within the immediate built environment. Paukku argues that sustainability is most often defined through three dimensions: environmental, economic, and social. Looking a Finnish legislation, he considers how environmental sustainability is often pursued directly, whereas the other two are pursued indirectly or not at all, depending on the way in which sustainability itself is defined. He concludes that it is better to pursue separate policy goals that promote individual aspects of sustainability within specific laws. Dodman’s review of The Disappearance of Butterflies, by Josef Reichholf, shows how the author offers a series of fascinating insights into the biology, the physics and the chemistry of Lepidoptera, including their remarkable adaptive capacities in the face of eco-systemic transformations. At the same time, he also considers how Reichholf poses a range of provoking questions concerning the multiple, interwoven facets of living organism and human trajectories and the question of assuming responsibility for taking action when those trajectories become either threatening or threatened. Next year’s words Clearly, if our dialogue is with nature, then a key aspect of any process of re-languaging concerns the way or ways in which we define nature and ourselves as part of it, how we understand it and our role within it, how we interact with it and all the abiotic and biotic elements that compose it. As Ducarme & Cuvet (2020) put it: “nature” is not such an easy word, and it actually fits the definition of an abstract concept, hence a mental construction rather than a concrete notion, which is situated both historically and geographically, and needs definition in context […]. [Moreover], the word “nature” does not always have a translation in other languages or can embody different meanings within a language (pp. 1-2). This editorial has been an attempt to examine some features of the current historical context and contribute to a new mental construction based on re-languaging our dialogue with nature. If languaging is our way of being and our current way of being is largely unsustainable, then we must at least consider the extent to which our current way of languaging is therefore unsustainable. Perhaps we will really be able to talk about a year that changed the world if a different and more sustainable voice emerges for our dialogue. As Eliot (1942) puts it: For last year's words belong to last year's language And next year's words await another voice. And to make an end is to make a beginning. References Bohm, D. (1999) On Learning. Routledge. Crawford, K. (2021) Atlas of AI. Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence. Yale University Press. Dodman, M. (2014). Language, multilingualism, bicultural diversity and sustainability. In Visions for Sustainability, 2, pp. 11-20. https://www.ojs.unito.it/index.php/visions/article/view/1424/1256 Ducarme, F. & Cuvet, D. (2020) What does ‘nature’ mean? Palgrave Communications, 6:14 https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-020-0390-y | www.nature.com/palcomms Eliot, T.S. (1942) Little Gidding. Norton Folke, C. (2006). Resilience: The emergence of a perspective for social–ecological systems analyses. Global Environmental Change, 16.3 pp. 253-267 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2006.04.002 Gordon, R. & Seckback, J. (eds.) (2017) Biocommunication. Sign-Mediated Interactions between Cells and Organisms. World Scientific. https://doi.org/10.1142/q0013 Maturana, H. (2002) Autopoiesis, Structural Coupling and Cognition, in Cybernetics and Human Knowing, 9: 3-4 Prigogine, I., Stengers, I., (1984) Order out of Chaos. Man’s New Dialogue with Nature. Bantam Books Rohr, D.A. (2014) Theory of Life as Information-Based Interpretation of Selecting Environments. Biosemiotics 7 pp. 429–446 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12304-014-9201-4 Said, E., (1975) Beginnings. Intention and Method. John Hopkins University Press. Spicer, J. (1975) A Textbook of Poetry, in Blaser, R. (ed.) The Collected Books of Jack Spicer. Black Sparrow Press. Turner, A. (2012) in House of Representatives Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs Inquiry into Language Learning in Indigenous Communities, Our Land Our Languages, Chapter 2, p. 10. https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/House_of_Representatives_Committees?url=/atsia/languages2/report.htm World Health Organization. (‎2021)‎. Looking back at a year that changed the world: WHO’s response to COVID-19, 22 January 2021. World Health Organization. https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/340321. Young Brown, M. (2021) Psychosynthesis, Ecopsychology, and The Work That Connects. https://mollyyoungbrown.com/what-is-psychosynthesis-ecopsychology-systems-thinking/ecopsychology/, Visions for Sustainability, Vol 15 (2021)

One of the emergent trends in the sustainable energy transition is the development of distributed power generation. In Europe, it is estimated that up half of citizens of the European Union (EU) could be energy self-sufficient, potentially supplying 45% of Europe’s final energy demand by 2050 (Kampman, et al., 2016). While there are many challenges with a move towards more distributed, citizen-led energy projects, they are nevertheless supported and promoted by the EU in the RED II (EU Renewable Energy Directive as part of the 2016 “Clean Energy of all Europeans” initiative, directive 2018/2001/EU), which secures the right for citizens and communities to produce, store, consume and sell renewable energy, and other rights such as consumer’s protection or access to all energy markets directly or through third parties. Socially, this often takes the form of community energy projects in the form of collective action initiatives (CAI). CAIs, which include energy cooperatives, prosumer networks, and other citizen-led energy projects, are examples of social innovation (Gregg, et al., 2020) in how they organize and gain power through a social movement mechanism. Social innovation is the development of activities and services to meet a social need, and social innovations are primarily social in both their ends and their means. Among other things, energy CAIs are typically characterized by a focus on the community, open and voluntary participation, democratic governance, and autonomy and independence (ICA, 2021). The social benefits of energy CAIs include: developing local economies, addressing energy poverty, raising awareness about sustainable energy, promoting energy justice, giving a voice to the community, developing local skills and promoting social cohesion. Current research on CAIs explores how they are defined and the different ownership structures (Gorroño-Albizu, 2019), and how they mobilize and attain power (Gregg et al., 2020). Other research traces the history of their development within specific contexts or geographical areas, and how they influence or are influenced by national energy policies (Wierling et al., 2018). Still other research uses the lens of organizational and institutional theory to understand the historical development of energy CAIs (Mey and Diesendorf, 2018).

Visions for Sustainability, No 13 (2020)

Visions for Sustainability, No 12 (2019) with Special Section "Slow Tech"

Visions for Sustainability, No 10 (2018)

The challenge: \ud * Technological progress and changes in energy supply are not sufficient for a transition to a low-carbon energy system; demand also needs to be considered. Energy efficiency and reducing total consumption - the topics of this bibliography - are typical elements of a demand side approach. \ud * The uptake of energy efficient technologies, and understanding how we might use less energy, represent big challenges for researchers, policymakers, practitioners and end-users themselves. \ud The aim: \ud * European energy policy has so far mainly relied on research from Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines. Energy-related Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) have been significantly underrepresented. This bibliography aims to discuss different disciplinary perspectives on energy efficiency and using less and to demonstrate their relevance for energy policy. \ud Coverage: \ud * A major focus of this bibliography is on behaviour and behavioural change. The bibliography highlights the diversity of end-users and their needs, the impacts they experience, abilities, as well as the range of sites where energy is consumed. \ud * It also looks at how SSH research addresses more structural elements of demand - such as markets, institutions, and policy - and how these interact. \ud Key findings: \ud * There is no such thing as a one size fits all approach; different disciplines frame the problems of energy efficiency and using less differently, and do not always agree. Economics is very highly represented in research about energy efficiency, closely followed by Sociology. Other disciplines such as Urban Studies and Industrial Design are slowly becoming part of the work. \ud * Most disciplines focus mainly on mainstream types of users and use. Fewer studies focus on the exceptions - deviants, others, non-users or energy poor, excessive users - or low-energy practices such as sleep, music making or sports. \ud * Electricity is the main focus of most social science research on energy use and efficiency, possibly due to a focus on monitoring savings which is more difficult for gas and energy for hot water use. \ud * There is an overrepresentation of work on feedback devices and smart meters, in contrast to more everyday technologies such as water heaters or washing machines. Several studies urge for more study of this everyday material culture because it strongly shapes how users can engage in using less or using more efficiently; some technologies are simply built to have high energy use. \ud * Less research is done on the responsibility of stakeholders (other than the end-user) for the energy transition, especially the market. It is argued that markets are not neutral or depoliticised, but bear responsibility for the energy transition too. \ud * Dominant areas of research include: a focus on the gap between awareness and actual energy behaviour action; and rebound effects, which may arise when increased energy efficiency leads to lower costs for energy which in turn may lead to increased energy consumption. \ud * New areas of research include new demand side initiatives, services/business models and markets such as peer-to-peer, DIY, and community approaches to engagement. \ud * Most demand side approaches in the policy domain focus on cost reduction, education and communication. Insights from Social Sciences such as Sociology, Anthropology, Urban studies, Ethics, and Science and Technology Studies see less uptake in the policy domain.

“Truly, I live in dark times!”. In the poetry of Bertolt Brecht, reviewed in the fifth article of this issue as a powerful voice decrying the unsustainability of the human actions that characterized his era, living in “dark times” is a recurring theme. We might consider the term equally appropriate to describe the negative forces at work in our current period. The widespread global poverty and injustice, the large-scale migration crises, the atrocious violence perpetrated both by so-called fundamentalist terrorists and those who vow to combat them, the demagogic populist movements, the aggressive protectionist nationalisms, all combine to produce a frightening international scenario. At the same time, the startling combination of ignorance and arrogance resulting, for example, in denial of climate science – for one of the US President’s advisers (presumably utterly oblivious to the irony of his statement) climate change is a “manufactured crisis”, while another can blithely assert “I would not agree that [carbon dioxide] is a primary contributor to the global warming that we see” – renders with absolute clarity the immense difficulties encountered in creating the necessary conditions for any one of a number of essential sustainability transitions. In the light of all this, we have, however, no option but to continue our commitment to dialogue and reciprocal exchange, as stated in the original aims of this journal, to build connections between different visions and logical levels, creating interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary perspectives. In this respect, all of the articles published in this issue deal with the relationships between actions and impacts, awareness and accountability, understanding, resolving and reporting issues, current and new paradigms, combining aspects of visual arts, literature and science, psychology and sociology, ecology and economics, ethics and technology. Together they unite theoretical, research and educational visions we hope can make a significant contribution to humanity’s dialogue with nature and itself. Art Teachers’ Education for Environmental Awareness. What is Hidden in Nature that we have never Seen or Heard?), by Ásthildur B. Jónsdóttir, offers a particular vision of the role of education in promoting awareness, attitudes and actions that put sustainability at the heart of every aspect of the human enterprise. The author’s emphasis is on considering what kind of knowledge and experience should be provided by teacher education in order to enable future teachers to play such a role. The article describes a project developed in the Reykjavik Botanical Garden and involving student teachers of art and pupils who work together. The project is built on a participatory pedagogy which includes critical place-based learning in learner-directed settings and harnessing tacit knowledge to this end. It is argued that teachers with an increasing sense of self-efficacy and action competence will be better able to help pupils make choices and undertake courses of action based on sustainability. The author examines the complementary roles of art and science in the building of knowledge and how both must be based on leaners’ direct engagement with their surroundings in order to stimulate their dialogue with their fellow learners and with nature and provide the vital ingredients of play, passion, participation and pertinence. Nonviolent Conflict Transformation and Peace Journalism is a translation from the original Italian of a paper by Nanni (Giovanni) Salio, written as an introduction to a collection of essays, testimonies and experiences, in which the author summarises his lifelong exploration and practice of nonviolence within the context of the analysis and resolution of conflict and links this to the important role that can be played by peace journalism. Starting from Gandhi’s belief that conflict should be seen as an occasion for dialogue and the discovery of common ground, the article examines ways of transforming aggression into a positive and non-destructive creative force for building sustainable trajectories via nonviolent thoughts, words and actions, together with the crucial importance of education and training of professionals who work in this field. A significant role in this shift can be played by peace journalism, in terms of the responsibilities exercised both by editors and journalists concerning choices about what to report and how to report it. Such choices can enable us to go beyond the confines of much mainstream, or even war-oriented, journalism that tends to limit and determine understanding within simplistic schemes of reference such as good and evil, right and wrong or them and us, in order to promote equality at the level of building and sharing knowledge and place empathy and solidarity as a sustainable basis for dialogue between people and with their environments. In On the Use of Life Cycle Assessment to Improve Agronomists’ Knowledge and Skills toward Sustainable Agricultural Systems, Cerutti et. al. examine a specific aspect of the quantitative measurements and calculations of environmental impacts in agronomics in which “in general terms, sustainability is perceived from two very different points of view: sustainability as practices, such as reducing food miles, buying organic, consuming less meat, etc., or sustainability as metrics, involving the quantification of the environmental performance of a system through the application and comparison of sustainability assessment indicators”. The approach proposed is based on Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) – which permits a quantitative description of a variety of features linked with production, (e.g. distribution, consumption, and waste treatment) that contribute to the determination of the environmental impact of a given product. The authors argue that by enabling university students to carry out LCA, they are not merely being introduced to technical facts, but also given the chance to achieve higher levels of awareness of the complexity of agricultural and food systems and of the importance of a critical appraisal of a variety of qualitative and quantitative analytical methods to evaluate their impact. Both the need to go beyond the perspectives of single disciplines and that of providing students with a variety of approaches to learning – from statistical analysis to open discussion of the data made available and from case studies to engaging students in discussion tackling open questions – are considered vital for promoting awareness of ways of accounting for environmental sustainability. In The Challenge of ICT Long-Term Sustainability, Norberto Patrignani considers various aspects of the all-pervasive extension of information and communication technology within the perspective of the interdependent evolution of technologies and societies, the types, scales and, in particular, rates of technological innovation and its impact on people and environments. He argues for the urgent need to establish a new design paradigm based on criteria such as recyclability, repairability, minimization of material and power consumption and zero-waste. The paradox of acceleration of all our processes of communication, production and consumption, largely due to inexorable developments and applications of ICT, is that it creates unsustainable trajectories for human beings and their environments. Far from enabling us to have more time to engage in useful human activity as a result of the increased speed of each of our processes, acceleration unrelentingly leads to rhythms that are untenable in the context of respecting the limits of human beings and the planet they inhabit. What is necessary is an approach based on Slow Tech in order to achieve a gradual transition towards the wise production, use and disposal of ICT. In Humanity and Nature, Warfare and Exploitation in Bertolt Brecht’s Poetry, Enzo Ferrara and Martin Dodman look at how already in the first half of the nineteenth century Brecht’s work was a precursor of many of the themes today considered central in sustainability literature. Long before many branches of natural, economic and social sciences began to examine the unsustainable consequences of indiscriminate exploitation of natural resources and uncontrolled production and consumption processes, the German poet offered a devastating analysis of how all forms of possession, dominance and manipulation for satisfying the greed of individuals or groups, including that of warfare, are inextricably linked as human impulses that are both destructive and unbearable. Brecht’s poems bear witness to the limits and paradoxes of the endeavours of those who struggle against the forces of evil and destruction and constantly underline how our only hope for salvation is through dialogue designed to help us build and maintain common discourses and communities of values. Particularly striking is the repeated sense of responsibility toward future generations and the reiterated plea asking those generations to not judge too harshly our failures and shortcomings. “Think of us with clemency”., Visions for Sustainability, No 7 (2017)