FROM ENVIRONMENTAL VULNERABILITY TO ECOLOGICAL VULNERABILITY: THE PARADIGM TRANSITION

Abstract

The general objective of this research is to conceptually analyze, based on anthropocentric, transitional and ecocentric paradigms, given their diverse definitions and subjects, environmental and ecological vulnerabilities. For this purpose, through a deductive method, a descriptive, theoretical, and qualitative literature review was developed from direct and indirect documentary sources. As a result, the ecocentric paradigm, based on the rights of nature, broke with the anthropology of environmental vulnerability and legal monism because it considers living beings, non-living beings, and spirits as vulnerable to relationships that disharmonize the buen vivir. The analysis of vulnerability linked to the environment and nature aims to break with the limited and negative approach of its conception. It is understood that the environment and nature, in the face of their interaction with human beings, will never be invulnerable, as it is impossible to deny any form of intrinsic “fragility” and dependence on human relationships of care. This research concludes that vulnerability, despite having different meanings in each paradigm, is a shared, constitutive, and connective characteristics between the existence of human beings and nature.