Abstract

To rectify unsustainable environmental footprints it is essential to better assess the carrying capacity of heterogeneous habitats, contrasting life habits that influence environmental impacts, and human inhabitants that are most responsible for these impacts. In order to undertake this task, and to foster planetary sustainability in the midst of the vortex of socio-environmental changes in our twenty-first century, we urgently need to forge more informed and respectful forms of dialogue between different socio-cultural groups, and between local and global discourses. To foster intercultural dialogues that incorporate both the biophysical and the cultural heterogeneity of the planet, we offer the perspective of the biocultural ethic. Its central concept relies on the vital links between (i) the well-being and identity of the co-inhabitants (humans and other-than-humans); (ii) their life habits; and (iii) the habitats where they take place (Rozzi 2012a). This formal proposal of the “3Hs” (co-inhabitants, habits, and habitats) offers a conceptual framework to analyze, from a biocultural viewpoint, the worldviews of cultures from different geographic regions, historical periods, and/or socio-environmental contexts, and provides a methodological approach to undertaking three tasks that contribute to favoring sustainable geographies.