Je m'en souviens, c'était une victoire si importante pour l'écologie !

Question

The Cambridge dictionary of English defines "ecology" as: the relationship of living things to their environment and to each other, or the scientific study of this.

In English you cannot have a "victory for ecology" - ecology is either an ecosystem or an academic discipline. So does the French word "écologie" have a wider meaning, or is it being used rather loosely here? Apologies for pedantry.

Edit: also: "[the NGO] which works to protect the marine environment and species" is translated as "[l’ONG] qui travaille à la protection de l’environnement et des espèces marines". I couldn’t see how to apply one adjective to two nouns of different gender without radically altering the sentence structure, but the French answer seems to apply it only to the species?

Céline Pickard · Accepted Answer

Bonjour Anne,
Regarding your query about "[the NGO] which works to protect the marine environment and species" being translated as "[l’ONG] qui travaille à la protection de l’environnement et des espèces marines": logivally, it should be "marins" as the adjective applies to both words and "le masculin l'emporte sur le féminin". But in practice, it is not the case here: the last word is feminine singular and the adjective will take the singular feminine form too or it sounds off. However, thanks to you, we have added both "marins" and "sous-marins" as alternative options.
I hope this is helpful.
Bonne journée !

Jim Jones · Answer

Bonjour Anne D
https://dictionnaire.lerobert.com/definition/ecologie
 
You may find the piece above helpful.
Bonne journée
Jim

Anne Davies · Answer

Thanks Jim, that’s useful. Clearly the French word has a broader political meaning than the English one. If someone could comment on the grammar question as well?