"[Chaia Heller] presents us with a distinction between need and desire. The ecology of need is related to production, consumption, and reproduction. It includes the usual subject matter of scientific ecology and such social issues as resource depletion, poverty, pollution, and global warming. It is objective, quantitative, and linear. When we are dealing with the ecology of need, we are usually dealing with win-lose, zero-sum systems.
The ecology of need is contrasted with the ecology of desire -- the erotic, sensual aspect of our relationship with nature and with each other. Desire is qualitative, subjective, and non-linear. We can satisfy our erotic desires without limiting the opportunities of other beings to satisfy theirs. Desire is cooperative and social, concerned with relationships rather than objects. Social desires usually lead to win-win, non-zero-sum systems. The discourse of environmentalism needs to include both ecologies. To focus only on the ecology of need is to miss the aesthetic, sensual, and spiritual qualities of nature; to focus only on the ecology of desire is to lapse into romanticism.
[...]
She shows that desire is largely interpersonal -- its satisfaction almost always involves other people -- and is best characterized as the 'socio-erotic'. Desire is modified by culture and learning. The important point, though, is that desire, like need, cannot be denied or wished away. She presents us with five forms of social desire. The first is sensual desire, the desire to know and make connection with our environment. This sensory desire is the basis of all forms of eroticism and sensory enjoyment in both human and biological communities. Associative desire is the desire to know others, the basis of all mutualism and communications in both human cultures and natural ecosystems. Differentiative desire is the desire towards self-knowledge and knowledge of the world. Developmental desire is the desire to become everything we are capable of becoming. Oppositional desire is the innate sense of justice; the desire that leads to resistance to all forms of oppression. All these desires together make up the socio-erotic -- a fundamental quality of humans in society."
John Scull, from "Art and Money - Desire and Need" (review of Chaia Heller's book Ecology of Everyday Life: Rethinking the Desire for Nature)
