Ecosophy 4.0:

Towards a programmed preservation of wetlands

Anna Paola Bossi

Confronted to seemingly irreversible changes where ecosystemic perturbations are but the visible impacts of an even vaster transformation, a revision to the notion of ecology now appears more urgent than ever. Félix Guattari, in his 1989’s book Les trois écologies, introduced the concept of écosophie as a call to integrate an ethico-political, as well as an aesthetic dimension to our understanding of what should be a global ecology. If the Greek etymology of the term écosophie refers to the "wisdom of inhabiting" (la sagesse de l’habiter), how should we rearticulate the new, updated meaning of this notion, now that decades of progressive degradation of our ecosystems have brought the Anthropocene era all the while information technologies have undergone an exponential evolution to the point where they are now affecting all aspects of both human and non-human life on this planet? 

The "resource region" of Abitibi-Témiscamingue, where the impacts of anthropic activities related to the mining industry, agriculture, hydroelectricity production, and forestry have severely disturbed the territory, impoverished biodiversity and polluted entire ecosystems, is therein approached as the site of an experimentation where relationships between leading-edge technologies, humans and non-humans are rearticulated in order to ensure the preservation and regeneration of damaged milieus. This project will focus on the wetlands of Abitibi-Témiscamingue, an area which, similarly to the boreal forest, contributes greatly to the absorption of carbon and azote emissions. To the extent that technological advances now facilitate the monitoring of entire ecosystems and the analysis of both vegetal and animal behaviors, can we seize and leverage these digital tools to achieve some form of a programmed conservation of these ecosystems? What kinds of architectural solution could, admitting a deliberate yet measured use of technology, favor a properly ecosophic management of this territory?