Environmental Management: Social Science Fundamentals Unit 3 Weekly Assignment

Environmental Management: Social Science Fundamentals Unit 3 Weekly AssignmentJoshelyn Paredes (Student ID: 3450737)

Richard Grove provides a historical lesson in the failure of a conservation policy. Due to persistent attempts to improve and develop the island of St. Helena as a colonial profit-making plantation economy, dependent on an intensive and unsustainable agriculture permitted by the use of slave labour, consequences such as rapid deforestation, firewood shortage, drought, soil erosion, endangered species and disease risks were rapidly seen. Failure of governors to carry out early attempts to protect the existing woodland and legislate properly, companys failure to intervene more effectively, and settlers failure to take early measures to halt the overuse of resources resulted in a foreseeable and irreversible environmental decline and deterioration. The case of St Helena had a main role in the history of environmental ideas as a documented site of environmental decline where men despoiled an erstwhile Garden of Eden in only one generation.

On the other hand, Rachel Carson, mother of the modern environmental movement, achieved a successful campaign when she argued that uncontrolled and unexamined pesticide usage, specifically DTT, over urban areas was not only harming and even killing animals, but also threatening human life. Her attempts to halt the chemical spraying were focused on preserving the environment but ultimately led to the protection of the social well-being and their economy. Her legacy prompted the beginning of a new era in terms of environmental policies and regulations. Carson realized human beings are just one part of the environment and everything we do affects the environment greatly or even irreversibly and consequently affects us. Fifty years later, humankind is challenged more than ever before to demonstrate our mastery, not over nature but over ourselves.

Meredith Burgmann points out another successful campaign: the Green Bans movement, which were first conducted in Australia by the NSWBLF and represented an entirely home-grown contribution to international environmental politics and radical practice. The unions guiding principle was the social responsibility of labour which led to an environmental activism. It is precisely because the green ban movement constituted a subaltern counterpublic mobilized by social-movement unionism that it was challenging, popular and extremely effective. A linkage between environmentalists and a progressive trade union movement brought an interconnection between a politically radical and a militantly economistic aspect. The success of the green bans has continuing implications for green political practice today and in the future.

Boltons article, clearly written in the wake of the Green Bans, focus on the environmental activism, and he emphasizes that developers and environmentalists could reach satisfactory agreements based neither on total destruction nor on a total freezing of activity and change. By exemplifying with the process of protection of heritage areas, the author points out how the green bans movement created a heightened consciousness of environmental issues outside NSW. However, he also challenges the effectiveness of the campaign against the pressures for economic development and the preservation of jobs.

Finally, there is a permanent conflict between those who exploit a country to serve preconceived economic goals and imported attitudes of mind, and those who sought to create a civilization where human use of resources was compatible with a sense of identity with the land. The moment when both sides could work together to pursue one single goal will be the moment when social and environmental management will have achieved its goal.REFERENCES

Grove, Richard. Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and the Origins of Environmentalism. Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1995, Ch. 3: pp. 95-129. Carson, Rachel. Silent Spring. Boston: 1962, chapter 9: Rivers of Death Burgmann, Meredith. Green Bans, Red Union: Environmental Activism and the New South Wales Builders Labourers Federation. UNSW Press, 1998, Ch. 1: pp. 3-11. Bolton, G. Spoils and Spoilers: A History of Australians shaping their environment: pp.164-168.