Who Will Lead the Global Ecocentrism Movement?
A leaked secret letter to Russian decision-makers, translated and published here with my comments for its perceived potential to energize global leaders toward a nobler task.
Preserving Wild Nature as Russia’s National Strategy in the Emerging Planetary Architecture
According to systems analysts [1] advising U.S. intelligence agencies, humanity is currently undergoing four bifurcations, becoming almost irreversibly divided into:
(1) the poor and the super-rich,
(2) the psychologically stable and unstable,
(3) those who use or do not use artificial intelligence, and
(4) techno- and ecocentrists.
The fourth bifurcation separates the technocentrists—those who believe that all problems of civilization can be solved within the framework of technological progress, which has historically disregarded natural ecosystems—from the ecocentrists, who have realized that the complexity of living nature far exceeds that of modern civilization, and that further development of civilization, including scientific and technological progress, along the path of biospheric destruction is impossible.
Ecocentrism, which acknowledges the complexity of living systems, implies a higher level of organization of the scientific and technological process than technocentrism [2].
Unlike ordered inanimate objects, living systems possess such a degree of complexity that their spontaneous emergence is impossible; they can appear only as copies of previously existing living forms. This replication of life forms has continued on Earth without interruption for four billion years.
[The following clarification of the above paragraph was provided in the comments: “The reference is meant to be about the unlikelihood of life arising again from inanimate matter here on earth (as opposed to life forms evolving from life that emerged 4 billion years ago and continue to survive from that original emergence).” It was also correctly pointed out that organisms are not exact copies of their parents. — AM]
Life, therefore, is a process whose organizational complexity is sufficient to maintain the conditions necessary for its own continuation. The complexity of life reflects the complexity of the task of sustaining an environment suitable for living.
From these premises follows an unambiguous conclusion: the destruction of natural ecosystems leads to the irreversible destabilization of the environment and climate — a process that cannot be prevented or corrected by technological means.
It is no coincidence that, despite all the achievements of scientific and technological progress, our success in maintaining conditions suitable for life remains practically non-existent: freshwater reserves are being depleted, soils are degrading, food quality is declining, and the composition of the atmosphere is moving beyond the range favorable for normal human cognitive functioning [3].
[That “no coincidence” captures the essential difference between technocentrists and ecocentrists. The former still believe that sufficient investment in the right technologies will eventually resolve the environmental crisis, even as natural ecosystems remain neglected and left to degrade on the margins of civilization’s highway of progress. The latter have realized that an environment suitable for life cannot exist without life-supporting ecosystems — it is prohibited by the laws of nature, just as perpetual motion machines are. For ecocentrists, the failure of Biosphere-2 is as inevitable and instructive as the failure to build another perpetuum mobile. Technocentrists would simply try again. — AM].
Appreciating the complexity of living systems is difficult without direct contact with wild nature. In the modern urbanized civilization, in many regions, such contact, and, consequently, ecocentrism, has become the privilege of a small minority who have reached the higher levels of Maslow’s pyramid [4].
In Russia, which has preserved uniquely extensive areas of wild nature and traditions of personal interaction with the natural world through its dacha culture, ecocentrism is implicitly present in the consciousness and life philosophy of a large part of the population. This circumstance gives the country, in principle, the capacity to choose unconventional and hardly predictable—at least for technocentrists—paths of development in an increasingly chaotic world.
It was in Russia that the interdisciplinary concept of biotic regulation of the environment [5] was developed, which makes it possible to quantitatively assess the stabilizing impact of natural ecosystems on the environment and climate. The principal distinguishing feature of natural ecosystems is their capacity for self-recovery following disturbances that do not exceed the threshold of stability. [The biotic pump concept, which describes the biotic regulation of the continental water cycle, is currently being advanced through a Brazilian–Russian collaboration — a symbolic partnership between the planetary regions that hold the largest share of intact ecosystems. (This is not to overlook other important international efforts and collaborators who have been working on this topic.) — AM]
Dacha of Prof. Victor Gorshkov, author of the concept of biotic regulation of the environment
The preservation of Russia’s wild nature as a national strategy addresses the following objectives:
Stabilization of climate and environment on a Eurasian scale, including the water cycle and atmospheric moisture transport.
Creation of a new international image — that of a global leader and hub of ecocentrism — with the potential to attract significant resources from ecocentrists worldwide [6].
Counteracting destructive efforts at Russia’s dehumanization through global leadership in the noble cause of conserving natural ecosystems.
Assisting China in developing and implementing the principles of an eco-civilization.
Since China’s natural ecosystems have been almost completely destroyed, the country has found itself trapped in technocentrism. However, the escalating environmental degradation is forcing China to search for new paths for progress. [It is also worth noting that a substantial part of the Chinese population continues to work the land as peasants, thereby maintaining at least minimal contact with life-support systems — in contrast to many other developed countries, where mechanized agriculture has reduced the number of farmers to a negligible proportion, further debilitating ecocentric thinking. — AM]
Russian natural forests play a key role in the continental transport of atmospheric moisture [7], providing a significant share of its inflow to China, Central Asia, and other regions [8]. Logging of natural forests in Russia by Chinese businesses destabilizes these flows and contributes to increasing aridity and water cycle instabilities across vast areas of Eurasia, including China itself, where the remaining forests are already under strict protection.
Russia urgently needs to introduce a similar moratorium on the exploitation of natural forests north of 58° N latitude. [Frankly, this is in the interest of all people on Earth, even if they have not yet come to that realization. — AM]
Strategic environmental cooperation with international partners, including dialogue at the level of heads of state, could provide the necessary funding to withdraw Russia’s intact forests entirely from economic use and preserve them for future generations as a natural heritage of global significance [9].
Notes
[1] Nate Hagens, The Quadruple Bifurcation.
[2] A clear example of a technocentric approach to a complex problem is the belief that climate stability is determined by a single variable — the global mean surface temperature.
[3] Bardi U., Bierwirth P., Huang K.-W., McIntyre J. (2025) Carbon dioxide as a pollutant: the risks on human health and the stability of the biosphere. Environmental Science: Advances 4, 1364-1372. https://doi.org/10.1039/D5VA00017C
[4] Since contact with wild nature promotes human physical and psychological well-being, ecocentrism also implies a higher degree of psychological resilience among its adherents, cf. the second bifurcation. [So ecocentrists worldwide possess both wealth and health, a valuable global resource indeed! — AM]
[5] Gorshkov V.G. (1995) Physical and biological bases of life stability. Man, biota, environment. Berlin: Springer.
[6] The European Union is now seeking to capitalize on the substantial ecocentrists’ resources through its Rewilding Strategy. However, since little natural wilderness remains in Western Europe and its restoration takes centuries, Russia currently holds enormous, yet largely unrealized, advantages in this field [But every success is to be wished to our European neighbors in their vital pursuit of nature restoration. The broader our collective protective actions become, the greater our shared chances for a positive global outcome. — AM]. The United States recently had a chance at ideological leadership with the formulation of the proforestation concept, but with the likely adoption of the Fix Our Forests Act—which shortsightedly promotes the exploitation of protected forests—it will be set back for a long time.
[7] Makarieva A.M., Gorshkov V.G. (2007) Biotic pump of atmospheric moisture as driver of the hydrological cycle on land. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences 11, 1013-1033. https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-11-1013-2007
[8] Van der Ent, R. J., Savenije, H. H., Schaefli, B., & Steele‐Dunne, S. C. (2010). Origin and fate of atmospheric moisture over continents. Water Resources Research, 46(9). https://doi.org/10.1029/2010WR009127
[9] Makarieva, A. M., Nefiodov, A. V., Morozov, V. E., Aleynikov, A. A., & Vasilov, R. G. (2020). Science in the vanguard of rethinking the role of forests in the third millennium. Forest Science Issues, 3, 1-25. https://doi.org/10.31509/2658-607x-2020-3-3-1-25
Yes! Canada also has the capacity to choose ecocentrism. This would complement and strengthen Russia’s endeavors.
Next year marks 40 years since Chornobyl (former Soviet Union)….the horrible disaster that killed people and wildlife, and drove communities from their homes, schools and business in an instant, leaving nature to fail or recover on its own. With the absence of humans the forests returned and wildlife took back the urban infrastructure where people once lived, worked, and played. Radiation it seems if far less dangerous to nature than Homo sapiens!! Pripyat, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union lived on to become what some scientists say is the best example of rewilding anywhere on the planet.
Now this leaked letter from Russia talks about leading a global ecocentrism movement, a plan for intentional protection of nature…. rather than accidental recovery from collapse.
After all the horrors, Chornobyl now shows what happens when ecocentrism arrives because humans leave in response to catastrophe. There are so many important lessons to learn from what happened and is happening there.
My own work sits in the space between the intentional and the accidental, where intentional design and unintentional collapse are a gnats whisker away from each other.