Ecological civilization, put forward after the contemporary global ecological crisis, witnesses a new stage and vision of human civilization following primitive civilization, agricultural civilization, and industrial civilization. As an emerging value, the core ideology of ecological civilization integrates nature as a whole with life and interworth, projected to come true the sustainable development and intergrowth with new relationships between humanity and nature, humanity and humanity, and humanity and society to the extent permitted by nature.
Globally, different regions and countries share various cognition and construction of ecological civilization due to differences in natural resources, ethnic habits and ideologies. From an academic perspective, ecological civilization is the most inclusive and intersectional discipline to concentrate on the interaction between humanity and nature, enriching environmental philosophy, environmental ethics, environmental law, ecological economics, environmental management, environmental science and ecology. The multi-dimensional study differs from neither the thinking “put people first” of humanities and social sciences, nor the idea of “take nature as the sole” of natural sciences.
As an indispensable participant, contributor and leader establishing a global ecological civilization, China has always emphasized on the importance of reaching global consensus and advocating the sharing of experience on ecological civilization. The Institute of Ecological Civilization, Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, as a Chinese research institution, hopes to utilize the international open-access journal Ecological Civilization to tell their own ecological civiliza-tion stories by more scholars from all over the world and to share how they construct their own ecological civilization academic system and discourse system. It is because the cross-integration advocated by ecological civilization does not simply involve mechanical integration of several disciplines, but arises from the intrinsic demand for the development of scientific research. The demand derives from the unscientific divisions of disciplines which conceals the fact that all the disciplines are interacting.
Therefore, we hope to build a discourse platform based on ecological civilization to bridge extensive and in-depth discussions among relevant disciplines, especially environmental philosophy, environmental economics, environmental law and environmental management. High-level original research articles and timely reviews on the latest research results of global environmental issues including climate change, pollution control, ecological conservation, climate change and energy low-carbon development, are especially welcomed. In particular, we embrace the deep crossover and innovation of relevant disciplines to form an extraordinary ecological civilization methodology. We expect that the self-realization of this methodology will trigger a new disciplinary revolution unlocking a future that shields science from becoming unchal-lenged dogma so that all researchers can exert themselves.
Based on the major theoretical and practical problems blocking the global ecological civilization, we believe that this journal will actively promote the cross-integration of multiple disciplines, realize the innovation and development of interdisciplinary methodology. Let’s move together strengthen exchanges and dialogues among countries all over the world, seek fairness and justice in global environmental governance, strive to resolve the global ecological crisis and be the brains to promote the common development for all mankind.
Areas of particular interest include, but are not limited to:
• Thought and Theoretical Explanation of Ecological Civilization
• Ecological Perspective: A Country Comparative Approach
• Global Environmental Governance Objectives and Country Studies
• Innovation and Development of Ecological Environment Governance
• Methodology of Interdisciplinary Ecological Civilization
• Hot Issues of Ecological Environment
• Energy and Low-carbon Development
• Exploration and Contention
