INTEGRAL ECOLOGICAL THINKING

Integral ecology is an emerging holistic inquiry into human-environment relations. The word "integral" suggests that ecology is relevant to the full range of human knowledge and action (all human endeavors should be ecologized), and that it draws upon the whole spectrum of human inquiry, including objective, subjective and intersubjective experiences.

Integral ecology explores new approaches that go beyond reductionism in understanding whole systems. These new approaches cultivate intuition, sensory experience and ethics as well as rational thought as a way of understanding the world and our place in it. Central to integral ecology's approach is a concern for changing patterns of human behavior that have become an imminent danger to the health of the Earth's life supporting systems, and the cultivation of new forms of human experience and action that are more harmoniously aligned with the natural world.