What Could Ecosocialism Mean in New Mexico?

In Article 2 of this series, What is Ecosocialism?, we explored ecosocialism as a broad tradition of thought concerned with the relationships between people and nature, the scales at which decisions are made, the distribution of power and resources, and the role of democratic participation in shaping society’s future. We also briefly introduced Michael Löwy’s concept of Democratic Ecological Planning, which argues that communities should collectively determine priorities within ecological limits.

Those ideas may sound abstract. A natural question follows: what might they mean in practice? What could ecosocialism have to say about a place like New Mexico?

Answering that question requires beginning somewhere other than policy debates, campaign platforms, or proposed solutions. Before deciding what New Mexico’s priorities should be, we first need to understand the place itself.

New Mexico is often discussed in terms of individual issues: water, energy, housing, public lands, economic development, and many others. Yet these concerns do not exist independently of one another. They emerge within a state composed of diverse landscapes, human communities, economies, cultures, and institutions that continually influence one another. If we want to think seriously about New Mexico’s future, it helps to begin with a simpler question: What kind of place is New Mexico?

Before we can discuss New Mexico’s priorities, we first need to understand the place itself. New Mexico is more than a collection of individual issues or separate communities. It is a diverse landscape shaped by ecological systems, human communities, economies, infrastructure, and the many people and institutions that influence them. Understanding how these pieces fit together provides a foundation for thinking about the challenges, opportunities, and choices that lie ahead. The first step is to consider scale.

Many of the things that shape our lives do not stop at the boundaries of a neighborhood, city, or county. Rivers flow across jurisdictions. Wildlife moves across landscapes. Transportation networks connect communities separated by hundreds of miles. Energy systems link distant places through shared infrastructure.

The same is true of many of the challenges New Mexicans discuss today. Water shortages are not confined to a single community. Energy systems connect urban and rural areas. Housing, transportation, economic development, and public lands often affect one another in ways that extend beyond local boundaries. This does not diminish the importance of local communities. Local knowledge and local decision-making remain essential. But some questions can only be fully understood at a larger scale.

Political boundaries help us understand where governments exercise authority and where communities organize their lives. Ecological systems, however, do not necessarily follow those same boundaries. Rivers, watersheds, habitats, and ecological landscapes follow patterns that differ from county lines or municipal borders. Scale was one of the recurring themes introduced in the previous article. Different questions emerge at different scales, and the answers often look different depending on where we focus our attention.

If we want to understand New Mexico as a whole, an important question emerges: At what scale should we understand the state itself?

One way to answer that question is to look beyond political boundaries and consider how New Mexico’s landscapes are organized ecologically. New Mexico is often described as a single place. In reality, it contains a remarkable variety of climates, landscapes, plants, animals, and human communities. Snow-covered mountains, high grasslands, desert basins, river valleys, volcanic landscapes, uplands, and forests can all be found within the state’s borders.

Different parts of New Mexico experience different ecological realities. A human community in the Southern Rockies faces different opportunities and challenges than a community in the Arizona/New Mexico Plauteau or the Chihuahuan Desert. Water availability, vegetation, wildlife, land uses, and patterns of human settlement vary considerably from one region to another. Political boundaries help us understand who governs. Ecological regions help us understand how landscapes function. Both matter, but they answer different questions.

Scientists and land management agencies use the term ecoregion to describe large geographic areas that share similar environmental conditions, ecological communities, and landscape characteristics. Using this approach, the Environmental Protection Agency identifies eight Level III ecoregions and fifty-five Level IV ecoregions within New Mexico (Figure 1. Ecoregions of New Mexico, Griffith et al., 2006).

An ecoregion is not the same thing as an ecosystem. Ecoregions are larger geographic areas that contain many ecosystems. For example, the Albuquerque Basin (22m) is one of New Mexico’s Level IV ecoregions. Within it are river corridors, wetlands, grasslands, desert shrublands, agricultural lands, and urban environments, each functioning as a distinct ecosystem within the larger region. The same pattern can be found throughout the state: larger ecological regions containing many ecosystems and communities.

The same pattern is evident in New Mexico’s three DSA chapters. Albuquerque DSA, Santa Fe DSA, and Doña Ana County DSA all operate in the same state, but each exists within a different ecological setting. Albuquerque DSA operates within the Albuquerque Basin. Santa Fe DSA lies near the transition between the Arizona/New Mexico Plateau and the Southern Rockies. Doña Ana County DSA is situated within the Chihuahuan Desert.

Those differences do not determine local priorities, but they help illustrate why understanding New Mexico requires looking beyond any single landscape or community. Viewed in this way, New Mexico is less a single landscape than an ecological mosaic composed of many interconnected landscapes.

Understanding that New Mexico contains many different ecosystems leads to another question: Why do those ecosystems matter?

One answer is that ecosystems provide benefits that people and communities depend upon every day. Clean drinking water, food production, places to hunt, fish, and recreate, cultural and spiritual connections to land, and protection from floods and erosion all depend, in one way or another, upon healthy ecological systems.

These benefits are often easy to overlook because they are woven into daily life. Most people do not think about watersheds when they turn on a faucet or about soil systems when they purchase food. Yet the landscapes around us support many of the conditions that make communities possible. Scientists often refer to these benefits as ecosystem services. Others use the phrase Nature’s Contributions to People. The terminology varies, but the underlying idea is straightforward: human well-being depends upon the continued functioning of ecological systems.

Recognizing these connections encourages us to see ecosystems as more than collections of plants, animals, and physical features. They are part of the larger systems that support human life and community well-being.

That raises another question: Who depends upon these systems?

The answer, of course, is people.

Across New Mexico, communities depend upon the landscapes they inhabit in many ways. Tribal nations, rural communities, and urban communities all rely upon ecological systems in different ways. Water, food production, recreation, cultural traditions, and economic livelihoods are all connected, in one form or another, to the health and functioning of the surrounding landscapes.

This relationship is not one-sided. Communities depend upon landscapes, but they also help shape them. People build homes, grow food, manage water, establish institutions, and make decisions that influence the ecological systems around them. Many communities maintain traditions of stewardship, although those traditions often take different forms in different places. While stewardship varies from one community to another, the underlying idea is simple: people have responsibilities as well as interests regarding the landscapes they inhabit. Seen this way, people are not separate from nature. They are participants within larger ecological systems, helping shape the same landscapes upon which they depend.

Communities do not exist in isolation. We organize our lives through systems that provide housing, transportation, energy, food, public facilities, employment, and many of the necessities of daily life.

These systems are interconnected. Housing requires water and energy. Transportation affects land use. Energy systems influence landscapes and communities. Agriculture depends upon ecological conditions and water availability.

Consider what happens when a community grows. New housing may require additional water supplies, new roads, expanded energy infrastructure, and changes in land use. A decision that begins as a housing issue can quickly become a transportation, water, energy, and land-use issue.

The relationship also works in the opposite direction. Decisions about housing, transportation, energy, and economic development can alter ecological systems, affecting the landscapes and resources upon which communities depend.

As the number of interconnected systems grows, another question emerges: Who makes decisions affecting these systems?

The answer is that many different people, organizations, and institutions help shape New Mexico’s future. Tribal governments, municipalities, counties, state agencies, federal agencies, utilities, businesses, landowners, nonprofits, and community organizations all influence different parts of the larger system.

Some decisions involve water. Others involve housing, transportation, economic development, energy production, conservation, or public lands. Different actors possess different responsibilities, resources, and forms of knowledge. Each brings different experiences, responsibilities, and perspectives to the discussion.

This diversity can be a source of strength, but it can also create complexity. Decisions made by one actor may affect people, communities, or landscapes beyond their immediate area of responsibility.

The important point is not determining who has the most influence. It is recognizing that many different actors help shape the future of the places they share. Once we recognize the number of people, organizations, and institutions involved, a larger question emerges: How do all of these pieces fit together?

New Mexico contains many ecosystems organized within larger ecoregions. Communities depend upon those ecosystems while also helping shape them. Economies and infrastructure rely on ecological systems and, in turn, affect them. Decisions influencing these relationships are made by many different people, organizations, and institutions operating at different scales.

Consider a growing community facing water challenges. Ecological conditions affect water availability. Communities depend upon that water for homes, agriculture, businesses, and daily life. Infrastructure helps store and deliver it. Different organizations and institutions help manage it. Decisions made by one actor can affect many others. What appears at first to be a water issue is also connected to communities, economies, infrastructure, and decision-making.

Researchers and planners use the term “social-ecological system” to describe these interconnected relationships. The term may sound technical, but the underlying idea is simple: people and nature continuously influence one another. Viewed in this way, New Mexico is not merely a collection of separate issues or isolated places. It is an interconnected social-ecological system. Before deciding what New Mexico’s priorities should be, we first need to understand the system within which those priorities exist.

That raises the next question:What concerns emerge within this social-ecological system?

If New Mexico is understood as an interconnected social-ecological system, certain concerns become clearer. Some concerns involve water. Others involve energy, housing, transportation, public lands, environmental justice, stewardship, or economic development. These are not the only concerns that matter, nor are they presented in any particular order. They are often discussed separately, but understanding the system helps reveal how they influence one another.

Recognizing these concerns is not the same as determining priorities. Different communities may experience different challenges, possess different needs, and hold different values. A concern that appears especially important in one place may be viewed differently in another.

Consider water. Water affects homes, agriculture, energy production, economic activity, recreation, and ecological health. A conversation that begins with water often expands into discussions about many other parts of the system.

The same pattern appears elsewhere. Housing can influence transportation needs and land use. Transportation decisions can affect economic development and ecological systems. Energy choices can shape landscapes, communities, and infrastructure. Public lands can influence recreation, conservation, local economies, and cultural traditions.

Viewed through the lens of a social-ecological system, concerns that may appear separate become easier to understand as parts of a larger whole. Recognizing those connections does not tell us what to do. It simply helps us understand the landscape of concerns more clearly.

That raises another question: How should we examine these concerns?

This article began with a simple question: What might ecosocialism mean in New Mexico?

Before we can answer that question, we first need to understand the place itself. New Mexico is not simply a collection of separate issues or isolated communities. It is an interconnected social-ecological system composed of diverse landscapes, communities, economies, institutions, and ecological processes that continually influence one another.

Viewed in this way, concerns such as water, energy, housing, transportation, public lands, environmental justice, stewardship, and economic development do not exist independently. They emerge within a larger system whose components are deeply connected. Recognizing those connections does not tell us what New Mexico’s priorities should be. It does, however, help us see the landscape of concerns more clearly.

That raises an important question: How should we examine those concerns?

That is the question explored in Part 2 of What Could Ecosocialism Mean in New Mexico?

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Red Rose, any individual editor, Albuquerque DSA, the Democratic Socialists of America, or any individual therein.

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