I listened to a video where an economist was references who saw natural resources as belonging to everyone.
I completely agree. Except, typical of the eccentricities of this civilization, the economist referred to only humans when he said “everyone”.
Natural resources belong to everyone – to all of life.
Natural resources belong to this living seamless system we are all local and temporary expressions of.
They are created by and for this dynamic web of life.
Again, typical of this civilization, some may see this as naive or idealistic. What’s naive and idealistic is to see human as separate from this system, and natural resources primarily for human use. That’s short sighted, out of alignment with ecological realities, and ultimately ecocidal and suicidal.
How do we create a system that not only acknowledges that natural resources belong to all life, but protects them for the benefit of all life?
Here is a start: Protect the interests of non-human life, of the wider web of life, in law. Appoint advocates for this wider web of life. Make it enforceable and enforced.
MORE INFO
I asked ChatGPT 52. for an article on this topic, using the text above as inspiration and also to include domination vs partnership orientation, ecological footprint, global ecological overshoot, and so on, and more things we can do to create a more life-centered system. What comes out is also colored by previous conversations with the AI, including articles for the Long Journey Home project. See below.
Natural Resources Belong to Life – ChatGPT
Natural resources do not belong to humanity alone. They belong to the living Earth and the wider web of life of which we are a part. This article argues that the modern domination-oriented view of nature as property, resource, and instrument is profoundly out of alignment with ecological reality, and that a partnership-oriented, life-centered society would recognize the rights and interests of non-human life, live within ecological limits, reduce overshoot, and reshape law, economics, culture, and governance to protect the flourishing of the whole community of life.
The Human-Centered Distortion
One of the deepest distortions of domination culture is the assumption that the Earth is primarily here for human use. In modern economic language, this often appears as the idea that “natural resources” are assets for production, inputs for growth, or commodities to be allocated efficiently among people. Even when this view is softened by more humane or socially conscious instincts, it still often remains trapped within a human-centered frame. Resources are said to belong to “everyone,” but “everyone” usually means only human beings.
A More Reality-Based View
A more reality-based view begins elsewhere. Natural resources do not belong to humanity alone. They belong to the living Earth. They belong to the wider web of life that created them, sustains them, and depends on them. Forests, rivers, soils, wetlands, fisheries, grasslands, and mineral cycles are not merely stockpiles for human extraction. They are part of a living system of which we are one expression among many. They are generated through long ecological processes, embedded in relationships, and essential not just for human survival but for the flourishing of countless beings and living communities.
To say that natural resources belong to all life is not sentimental or naive. It is a more accurate description of reality than the story told by industrial modernity. Humans are not outside ecosystems, managing them from above. We are within them. We breathe because forests, oceans, and phytoplankton make breathable air possible. We eat because soil organisms, insects, pollinators, water cycles, and climatic stability make food possible. We live through a constant exchange with the more-than-human world. The idea that human beings are separate from this living system, and entitled to use it primarily for their own ends, is not realism. It is a civilizational delusion.
Domination and Partnership
This delusion is one expression of a broader domination orientation. A domination orientation tends to organize life through hierarchy, control, extraction, conquest, and the concentration of power. It assumes that value flows upward, that the strong are entitled to rule, and that what is “below” exists to serve what is “above.” This logic has shaped empires, patriarchy, colonialism, class systems, and the modern extractive economy. It also shapes the relationship between humans and the rest of nature. Forests become timber inventories. Rivers become water supply channels. Animals become units of production. Mountains become ore deposits. The living world becomes “resource.”
A partnership orientation begins from a profoundly different sensibility. It does not deny that humans use nature, because all beings depend on other beings. But it places that use within reciprocity, limits, humility, and mutual flourishing. It sees life as an interdependent community rather than a pyramid of domination. It asks not only what can be taken, but what must be protected, regenerated, and given back. It recognizes that freedom for one part of the system cannot come through the destruction of the whole. A partnership society would therefore not treat natural wealth as private loot, nor even merely as a shared human inheritance, but as something held in trust within a larger living commons.
Ecological Footprint and Overshoot
This shift is urgently needed because industrial civilization is now operating far beyond ecological limits. Humanity’s ecological footprint greatly exceeds what the Earth can regenerate on an ongoing basis. We are in a condition of global ecological overshoot: using forests faster than they regrow, drawing down groundwater faster than aquifers recharge, eroding soil faster than it forms, fishing faster than stocks recover, and dumping carbon into the atmosphere far faster than ecosystems can absorb it safely. Overshoot is not an abstraction. It is visible in climate disruption, biodiversity loss, collapsing insect populations, deforestation, dead zones in oceans, desertification, freshwater depletion, and the fraying resilience of living systems everywhere.
Ecological overshoot reveals the bankruptcy of the domination model. An economy organized around endless growth on a finite planet is not merely unjust; it is structurally irrational. It treats the biosphere as if it were an infinite warehouse and an infinite waste sink. It rewards short-term extraction over long-term health. It privatizes gains and socializes damage. It counts the liquidation of living systems as economic success. In such a system, GDP can rise while rivers die, soils thin, species disappear, and the conditions for future life deteriorate. The accounting itself is deranged.
A Life-Centered System
A life-centered system would begin by replacing this distorted accounting with ecological reality. The health of watersheds, soils, forests, pollinator populations, biodiversity, and climate stability would no longer be treated as externalities. They would be recognized as foundational wealth. The first economy is the living Earth, and every human economy exists within it. If the biosphere is degraded, all other forms of wealth become unstable or meaningless. A society that understood this would measure success less by throughput and accumulation and more by resilience, regeneration, sufficiency, equity, and the flourishing of the whole community of life.
Law, Rights, and Representation
Law would have to change accordingly. If non-human life matters, then its interests must be represented rather than merely acknowledged in rhetoric. One promising step is to protect the rights or interests of ecosystems and species in law, not as symbolic gestures but as enforceable realities. Rivers, forests, wetlands, and other living systems can be given legal standing. Guardians or advocates can be appointed to represent their interests in courts, planning processes, and public decision-making. This would not solve everything, but it would begin to correct one of the deepest biases in current legal systems: that only humans, corporations, and states count as subjects of concern, while the living world appears only as property or background.
Beyond Legal Reform
Yet legal reform alone is not enough. The deeper task is civilizational. We need to move from an extractive culture to a regenerative one. That means rethinking ownership, governance, agriculture, energy, settlement patterns, education, and the stories through which people understand their place in the world. It means shifting from domination values—control, accumulation, status, and separation—to partnership values—care, reciprocity, stewardship, participation, and belonging.
Economic and Political Transformation
At the economic level, this would include treating key ecological foundations as commons rather than commodities. Water, healthy soil, seeds, forests, fisheries, and stable climatic conditions should not be governed primarily for maximum private profit. Strong public, commons-based, and community stewardship models are needed, with clear ecological limits and long time horizons. Wealth extracted from common ecological inheritance should be heavily constrained, and where use is permitted, the burden should be on restoration, regeneration, and fair distribution.
At the political level, democracy itself needs broadening. Future generations have no vote. Non-human beings have no vote. Ecosystems have no vote. A life-centered society would develop institutions that represent the voiceless and the not-yet-born. This could include ecological ombudspeople, citizens’ assemblies focused on long-term ecological well-being, upper chambers or councils tasked with defending future generations, and legal guardians for major ecosystems. Such institutions would not replace democracy but deepen it, making it less narrowly anthropocentric and short-term.
Land, Food, and Regeneration
At the level of land use and production, we need a transition from extractive agriculture to regenerative forms of cultivation. Industrial agriculture often treats soil as a substrate, water as an input, and animals as production units. A life-centered agriculture would rebuild soil, protect water, foster biodiversity, reduce toxins, support pollinators, and create resilient local food systems. Agroecology, regenerative farming, agroforestry, ecological restoration, and food forestsall point in this direction. They are not perfect or magical solutions, but they embody a different relationship to land: one based less on domination and more on participation in living processes.
Consumption, Sufficiency, and Well-Being
At the level of everyday consumption, affluent societies in particular must confront the reality that their material demands are far beyond any fair or sustainable share of the Earth’s regenerative capacity. Ecological footprint is not only a technical measure; it is also a moral and cultural mirror. It reveals how normalized excess has become. A life-centered system would require sufficiency rather than endless consumer expansion. This does not mean universal austerity or joyless deprivation. It means distinguishing between genuine well-being and the compulsive overconsumption produced by status competition, advertising, alienation, and systems addicted to growth. In many cases, living better and living with less throughput are not opposites but allies.
Culture, Education, and Worldview
At the cultural and educational level, one of the most important shifts is to help people experience themselves as part of the larger web of life. A domination civilization educates people into separation. It tells them, in thousands of explicit and implicit ways, that humans stand apart from nature, that intelligence means control, and that progress means increasing mastery over the living world. A partnership culture would cultivate ecological literacy, emotional maturity, historical awareness, and reverence for life. It would help people understand watersheds, soil food webs, local species, seasonal cycles, and the long consequences of collective choices. It would also help them feel kinship, not only conceptually but existentially.
There is also a spiritual or philosophical shift involved. The modern extractive mindset rests in part on a failure of perception. It sees a world of separate objects rather than a communion of subjects, a field of usable things rather than a living community. A life-centered orientation does not require romanticizing nature or denying tragedy, predation, and death. It simply means recognizing that life is relational, that value does not begin with human preference, and that our intelligence is better expressed through participation than domination. The question is not whether humans will shape the Earth. We always do. The question is whether we will do so as conquerors or as responsible members of a larger living whole.
What We Can Do
What, then, can we do to move toward a more life-centered system?
We can work to establish legal rights and representation for ecosystems and species. We can support policies that protect biodiversity, restore habitats, reduce extraction, and keep essential ecological goods in the commons. We can push for economic measures that reflect real ecological costs and real ecological limits. We can support regenerative agriculture, reforestation, watershed restoration, and local food resilience. We can reduce our own ecological footprint, especially where our lifestyles are shaped by unnecessary excess. We can challenge the stories that equate well-being with accumulation. We can help build institutions that represent future generations and the more-than-human world. And we can nurture, in ourselves and our communities, a partnership orientation grounded in reciprocity, restraint, humility, and care.
Inner and Outer Change
None of this is sufficient on its own. Legal reforms without cultural change can remain shallow. Personal lifestyle changes without structural transformation can be overwhelmed by larger systems. Ecological awareness without political action can become helplessness. Political action without inner change can reproduce domination in new forms. The work is therefore both outer and inner, institutional and cultural, practical and civilizational.
The Larger Shift
The larger shift is simple to state, even if difficult to realize. Natural resources are not merely for human use. They are part of the living commons of Earth. They belong, in a deeper sense, to the whole community of life. A sane society would recognize this not as a poetic add-on but as a basic principle of law, economics, ethics, and governance.
The future depends on whether we can outgrow the domination worldview that treats life as property and move toward a partnership civilization that protects the conditions for shared flourishing. Such a civilization would not be perfect. But it would at least begin from reality: that we are not separate, that the Earth is not a warehouse, and that to defend the wider web of life is ultimately to defend ourselves.