In our work with dialogue at the Centre for Ecological Economics and Ethics (CEEE), based at the Nord University Business School, Norway, we focus on communicative processes as a value inherent to ‘living societies’. This stands in contrast to the instrumental value of dialogue in the ‘smart city’ concept, where conversation is often in service of designing technology and services for the future. Our goal is to develop arenas for conversation and to inspire processes that connect individuals in society and connect society to nature. In so doing, we wish to develop a collaborative economy that balances human needs with nature’s ‘source and sink’ capacity – the efect of habitat quality on population growth or decline. To make this goal as clear as possible, we refer to the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the goals expressed in the Earth Charter. Both declarations make it evident that the principles of sustainability, justice, and peace are all interconnected. According to the systems view of life, all living systems interact cognitively with their environment in ways that are determined by their own internal organisation. In the human realm, “these cognitive interactions involve consciousness and culture, and in particular a sense of ethics” (Capra and Jakobsen 2017, p. 842).
top of page
bottom of page