Path 2 of 2: New e-concept
This reminds me of terra nullius, a legal concept used by Cook to justify the colonisation of Australia for George III, citing the Aboriginal people were uncivilised (nla.gov.au). This notion, however, was in direct opposition to the instruction given by James Douglas, 14th Earl of Morton and President of the Royal Society, which funded Cook's expedition: “[The Aboriginal people] are the natural, and in the strictest sense of the word, the legal possessors of the several Regions they inhabit.” Here, Douglas, refused to let Cook to objectify the native, acknowledged them as human, rather than as part of nature; whereas Cook saw fit to do it to please the king. So Cook saw them precisely as part of "nature," free for all. Perhaps if there was a meaningful dialogue – connecting man and "nature" – between Cook and the Aboriginal people, the course of history could have been different.
Such a dialogue is needed now in our ecosystem before the realisation of the Anthropocene. At present, both Morton's ecomimesis and Boes and Marshall's ecodiegeis are not dialogues; they are monologues. Ecomimesis is a human construct to mimic nature; it does not talk to nature. Likewise, ecodiegesis is a narrative constructed by nature, but man can choose to ignore it. What we need is a two way communication, a dialogue, between human and nature. .
To achieve this, I would like to propose a new e-concept called Lingua eco-homo-franca – lingua echofranca for short. Although the latter has the carries the risk of reducing "dialogue" to mere "echo." But echo is perfectly suitable if it provides the desirable result. I will use the Australian Regent Honeyeater as an example to show how lingua echofranca works.
Australian Regent Honeyeater is an endangered species. There were only a few hundred sightings in the Blue Mountains and the Northern Tablelands. They are so rare that many males fail to sing their species-specific expressive songs to attract females. They are learning wacky songs of others' instead. Such a loss of song culture may be a precursor of extinction; a prelude to their requiem. But luckily, help is at hand. Conservationists at Toranga Zoo are teaching young chicks to sing by playing songs through loudspeakers. This epitomises lingua echofranca at work: Honeyeaters inform us of their trouble; we respond in action to reteach them their songs (click here for video). May they thrive have many children!