lecture 12: indigenous land use rights and local...

Lecture 12: Indigenous Land Use Rights and Local Participation

• Overview of course content

• Western ‘Deep ecology’

• A “third world critique” of deep ecology

• How to solve environmental problems

Friday, October 25, 2013

Topics






Four questions

1. What to conserve?

• Endangered species?

• Biodiversity?

• Wilderness?

• Sustainable development?


Four questions

2. Why should we conserve it?

• Because it is valuable to us (humans)?

• Because it is valuable in and of itself?


Four questions3. How to balance needs of

conservation with rights of other people

• Biodiversity protection and indigenous land use rights

• Local participation

• Future generations


Four questions

4. How to conserve?

• Making good decisions about environmental resources

• Rational decisions under risk and uncertainty


Conservation and global justice

• Ethical issues regarding the relation between wealthy and poor individuals and countries, are referred to as ‘social justice’ and ‘global justice’

• The topic of climate change also intersects with social and global justice:

• Differing responsibilities between developed and developing countries in mitigating climate change

• “intergenerational justice”: responsibility to future generations


Topics






Deep Ecology and Social Justice

• Guha, R. (1989) “Radican American Environmentalism and Wilderness Preservation: A Third World Critique”

• Deep ecology, and more generally, the American wilderness preservation movement, both misdiagnoses the nature of environmental destruction and, consequently, prescribes the wrong solution

Ramachandra Guha (1958- )


Intrinsic and Instrumental Value

• Arne Naess, “The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movement: A Summary” (1973)


Principles of Deep Ecology

• “Shallow ecology” defends conservation and preservation in terms of human-centered, or anthropocentric, goals: pollution and resource depletion. (Sustainability)

• “Central objective: The health and affluence of people in the developed countries”

• “Deep ecology” attempts to bring about profound shift in basic worldview: the interconnectedness of humans and nature and the intrinsic value of nature.

• Naess claims that deep ecology is inspired by ecological principles.


Principles of Deep Ecology

• Antidote: Attitude of veneration toward nature; respect for equal right to live and blossom

• This shift in attitude not only will improve the natural world but will enhance our quality of life (vs. alienation from nature)

• Claims to be opposed to exploitation and domination whether of nature or of people, suggesting a continuity of interests with the world’s oppressed


Deep Ecology and Social Justice

• Naess claims to be opposed to exploitation and domination whether of nature or of people, suggesting a continuity of interests with the world’s oppressed.

• Nonetheless, Naess’s original emphasis on the harmony of social and ecological interests was neglected by the movement which his philosophy spawned, Earth First!


Deep Ecology and Misanthropy

• “the best thing would be to just let the people there [Ethiopia] starve...” -Dave Foreman, founder of Earth First!, in an interview with Simply Living, an Australian magazine, in 1982


Deep Ecology and Misanthropy

• Main solution to environmental problems is a system of national parks which prevent human use or habitation

• It also emphasized population control rather than overconsumption


Topics






Three problems with ‘radical environmentalism’

1. The root of our environmental problems is not an attitude, such as thinking of nature as having only instrumental value

2. The setting aside of wilderness areas in the third world perpetuates social injustice

3. Deep ecologists claim to be inspired by ‘Eastern’ philosophies and spiritual practices of which they are largely ignorant


1. The cause of environmental problems

• The root causes of our global environmental problems are

• patterns of overconsumption by the West as well as elites in developing countries

• growing militarization of the globe (regional and global warfare)

Per capita CO2 emission (2000 data)



• Guha is trying to change the conversation topic from overpopulation and attitudes to global justice: the conflict between wealthy and poor


2. Social injustice

• The construction of national parks is problematic in a densely settled country with indigenous groups that have occupied their lands for a long time.

• Wilderness parks result in a ‘direct transfer of wealth from poor to rich’ - taking land from the poor, for the benefit of rich tourists and urban elites.

• The issue is not just displacement, but perpetuating subordination


3. Appropriation of eastern philosophies

• Deep ecology tends to come packaged in a mish-mash of eastern philosophies, and assumes that ‘eastern peoples’ enjoy a mystical affinity with nature that westerners lack

• “Orientalism” refers to romanticized and naive Western depictions of ‘the east’. These typically project upon ‘the east’ the exact opposite qualities of ‘the west’ (mind/body, consumption/asceticism, material/spiritual)


How radical is deep ecology?

• Wilderness as a ‘integral part of a consumer society’, rather than its antidote.

• “Wilderness” has the special value it does in America (as well as amongst the urban elite in the developing world) because it is seen as a ‘needed escape’ from the ‘hectic pace of civilized life’.

• In rural societies or subsistence economics, nature does not possess the same value


Topics






Reorientation of environmental focus

• Instead of deep ecology’s emphasis on intrinsic value of nature coupled with a demand for wilderness areas, we should emphasize:

1. Scaling down current consumption levels



2. Giving indigenous groups greater autonomy and control over their lands, rather than less



1. Much of the ecological destruction is perpetuated when government gives indigenous land over to corporate, public, or military use.

2. Indigenous groups often have less demanding consumption patterns than their western or urban counterparts

3. They can rely on superior knowledge of local ecology to develop sustainable lifestyles


lecture 12: indigenous land use rights and local...

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