Derek Gladwin and Kedrick James. Becoming Ecological: Navigating Language and Meaning for Our Planet’s Future. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2026).
It may sound surprising, but climate change isn’t just about rising temperatures. More fundamentally, it signals the unravelling of the very ecological systems that sustain life on this planet. Extreme weather, biodiversity loss, water scarcity, displacement, and social unrest are no longer distant projections. They are present realities.
We are living in what thinkers like Timothy Morton and Elizabeth Kolbert have described as an “age of mass extinction.” That phrase alone reshapes perception. It invites us to step back and see ourselves not simply as observers of ecological collapse, but as participants within a planetary transformation.
Despite the context we find ourselves in, this book doesn’t set out to catalogue catastrophe or highlight any number of possible outcomes to our demise. There are already many books that do that all too well. Instead, we offer an unusual blueprint for change.
This is not a typical ecological book in that sense. It doesn’t focus on defining ecology, sustainability, or climate science, though those themes are certainly present. Instead, it asks a different question: what does it mean to be ecological?
“More than simply knowing about ecological systems, the greater invitation is to live in attunement with them. In this, there’s an opportunity to witness and engage with ecological life as an ongoing process of becoming.”
More than simply knowing about ecological systems, the greater invitation is to live in attunement with them. In this, there’s an opportunity to witness and engage with ecological life as an ongoing process of becoming.
This difference — between observing facts and inhabiting concerns — echoes the distinction made by philosopher and sociologist Bruno Latour between “matters of fact” and “matters of concern.” While facts inform us, concerns involve us. This book leans toward matters of concern, as it explores how ecological transformation is shaped not only by data, but by meaning, and how meaning is formed through language.
At first glance, language, and the ecosystems of discourse it’s embedded in, may seem like an unusual focus for a book about ecological life. But language is far more than a tool for communication. It is a dynamic force that shapes perception, constructs identities, and guides action.
Language helps establish environmental norms and values. It moulds ecological identities. In English-speaking contexts, dominant environmental discourse has often reflected Western assumptions about “nature” as resource or property. Elsewhere, many communities have long spoken of land as kin, as living presence, as relationship. These linguistic differences reveal deeper differences in worldview.
This is why language can also be contentious: because it’s ambiguous and paradoxical. It influences social conflict as much as it encourages cooperation. Words are not harmless. They construct categories, boundaries, hierarchies, openings, and imaginations.
We refer to this dynamic interplay as discursive ecologies — the evolving relationships among language, meaning, and ecology. Discursive ecologies recognize that talking, thinking, and acting ecologically are intertwined processes. The way we speak about the world shapes how we inhabit it.
This concept runs throughout the book. It appears in stories, metaphors, and examples that explore how ecological awareness grows not only through knowledge, but through shifts in discourse. Becoming ecological means recognizing that interdependence is always in process. Life is process and movement, much like language and meaning. It involves participating consciously in the dialogue that shapes our collective future.
Words create ecological worlds.
And still, environmental discourse may not “solve” every crisis we face. That’s not the point. But it does change how we approach the many ruptures around us, and how we live with and through them. And sometimes, as this book explores, that shift in approach and in perspective is where transformation begins and might just take root.
Feature Image: “studies” by Kalense Kid is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
Derek Gladwin and Kedrick James