Thinking Through The Environment

Ramachandra Guha and Social Ecology

About Ram Guha

• Full-time writer based in Bangalore, has taught at the universities of Oslo, Stanford, and Yale.

• Savaging the Civilized: Verrier Elwin, His Tribals, and India; Environmentalism: A Global History; An Anthropologist Among the Marxists and Other Essays; and The Last Liberal and Other Essays.

• A Corner of a Foreign Field • Pioneered South Asian environmental history with his

first book, The Unquiet Woods: Ecological Change and Peasant Resistance in the Himalaya

• Prehistory of Community Forestry in India

Guha in XIM library

Nature Culture Imperialism – ArnoldEcology And Equity: The Use And Abuse Of Nature In

Contemporary India – GadgilInstitutions & Inequalities: Essays In Honour Of Andre

Beteille – Jonathan ParryVarieties Of Environmentalism: Essays North And South –

Martinez AlierSocial Ecology editedHow Much Should A Person Consume ?: Thinking Through

The Environment

Thinking Through the Environment

• To relate changes in social and economic life, political institutions, scientific research to the natural world in which humans are embedded – eg. Kalahandi article.

• Forging a more peaceable and sustainable relationship between humans and other species. – situating NRM within broader environmental debates

Indian Road to Sustainability

• Nobody had heard ‘environment’ when India began planned development – Agarwal

• Began with the Chipko Andolan in 1973• Prehistory of environmental ideas• Two waves of Indian environmentalism

– Pioneering and prophecy– Intellectual movement allied to popular Social

movement

Forgotten pioneers of IE

• Geddes- Oct 2. theory and practice of town planning – Cities in Evolution 1915

• Concepts of diagnostic survey – a walking tour and conservative surgery minimal disruptions to peoples habitats

• The new university for India would be primarily an agricultural one based on the notions of biology. He pleaded for a revival of a rural view of science. Life to a gardener is capable of repair, rebirth and revival.

Geddesian town planning

• Commended Indian large courtyards and narrow streets

• Preservation and maintenance of tanks and reservoirs – sanitary engineers saw them as malaria hazard, fish and duck to keep Anopheles down

• Old wells as life insurance against failure of supplies of water

• ‘Brought the rural virtue – respect for land, patience of the peasant, orderly growth more important’

Radhakamal Mukherjee

• Ecological Approach to Sociology – interconnections between human social groups and biophysical world

• Social ecology – ‘a vast and virgin field orienting social phenomena on basis of give and take between mind and region’.

• As consultant to Gwalior suggest programs for erosion control, afforestation and rotational grazing

Social Regression and Social Evolution

• Deforestation• Denudation, erosion• Single continual cropping• Silting of rivers loss of natural

drainage• Soil exhaustion• Crop destruction• Species destruction• Deficiency diseases,

contamination of wastes• Weeds in streams• Depopulation of countryside

and congestion in cities

• Protection and plantation of forests

• Tree cropping on hillsides• Scientific pasturage permanent

agriculture• Conservation of rain, river and

sub-soil water• Mircoorganisms in cropping• Ecological control of plants

and parasites• Preservation from extinction• Balance between forest,

meadowland, field and factory• Regional planning of cities and

industries

Regional balance of Man: An ecological theory of population. 1935-36.

Kumarappa – Out of Suit Into Khadi

• One day in 1929, a man came to meet Gandhi ji at the Sabarmati Ashram. Could he show Gandhi his Ph. D thesis! Gandhi read the thesis and was amazed. Here was a man who thought exactly like him. Humans are not merely wealth-producing animals. They are members of society with political, social, moral and spiritual responsibilities.

• Economy of Permanence• Economic Survey of Matar Taluka• AIVIA secretary

Why the Village Movement?

• Careful husbanding of natural resources within the rural economy

• Critique of Govt’s policy of forest management – not revenue but needs of people.

• Farsighted view on biomass shortages- organised paper versus handmade

• Lack of ecological wisdom in rural development …. Desilting of irrigation tanks– Lack of facilities for soil and water analysis in villages– Villages common lands should be taken care of

• Soil maintenance, water conservation, recycling, village forest rights, biomass budgets, protection of the artisan – still important agenda for rural reconstruction.

Indian environmentalism since Independence – the other Mandal

• ‘Development decades’ or ‘age of ecological innocence’? – rapid industrialisation, production and productivity

• 1973 Project Tiger – decline from 40000 to 2000.

• BB Vohra’s call (A Charter for the Land) for national policy and new department for environment. Later creation of DoE in 1980 and MoE in 1985.

• March 27, 1973 peasants in Mandal stop loggers on forest dept land.

Chipko and Indian environmentalism

• Authentically indigenous – self motivated peasants

• Historical and cultural associations – non violent• Articulated a truly social ecology. Not Wildlife,

land management through state. Representative of conflicts in many parts of India (this fissured land)

• Crucial role played by women• Medha Patkar and Gaura Devi

American & Indian Environmentalism

origins Post materialist / industrial soceity

Livelihood and survival

Style Social movement organisation – organised lobbying, court cases etc

Direct action, immediacy

Ideologies Outside the production process. Single issue movement

Clash over productive resources - Human rights, ethnicity, distributive justice

Two Modes of Direct Action

• Dubois and ‘Save the Stanislaus’ in 1979. New Melones Dam.

• August 1993 Medha Patkar and independent review of Sardar Sarovar

• Californian wilderness and living culture in Narmada valley. www.friendsoftheriver.org www.narmada.org

• Protection of pristine beauty, ethical responsibility … foreground questions of production and distribution within human society.

Historical Changes

• Non-Western societies– Lower technology levels and different

attitudes prevailed.• Western perspective

– Nature as adversary, something that had to be overcome.

– Pronounced man/nature dichotomy.– Attitudes towards unrestrained

exploitation of natural resources.– No sense of limits in terms of

capacity.– Often supported by religious beliefs,

particularly Christianity.– Man / nature symbiolism.

Nature

Nature

Source: Jean Rodrigue

Environmental Movements (1960s and 70s)

Rising affluence Growth of leisure and tourism (pristine environments).

Rising levels of education

Better-educated people developed greater awareness of environmental problems

Environmental organizations

Many environmental organizations founded. National Wildlife Federation (1936); United Nations Environment Programme (1972); WorldWatch (1974).

Pollution Water pollution, waste disposal and acid rain became the first widely noticed hazards

Scientific evidence

“Silent Spring” by Rachel Carson (1962) and “The Population Bomb” by Paul Ehrlich (1968)

Politics Decade when environmental issues began to become politicized. Green parties: Political parties focusing primarily on environmental issues

Environmental Retreat (1980s)

• Creation of a sustainable development ideology– Carbon Dioxide was found to cause global warming (1983).– A hole in the ozone layer was found over the Antarctic (1985).– Brundtland Report “Our Common Future”:

• Sustainable is used for the first time.• Maintenance of life support systems.• Working to reduce the threats to those systems represented by

erosion, pollution, deforestation, etc.• Preservation of genetic diversity.• Providing us with insurance for the future by guarding against the

ravages of crop diseases.• Investment for future crop-breeding or pharmaceutical

development.• Sustainable development of species and ecosystems

Environmental Retreat (1980s)

• Environmental ethics– “We have not inherited the earth from our

parents; we have borrowed it from our children.”

– Development is often viewed in materialistic terms.

– Focusing on resource utility through conservation.

– Environmentalism as an elitist attitude intended to prevent development in the South.

Environmental Globalism (1990s)• UN World Conference on Environment and Development

– Rio de Janeiro (1992):• Largest such gathering ever (100 heads of state).• Placed the environmental agenda at the center of the world

stage.• Development made possible by the end of the Cold War.• Establish “Agenda 21”, a blueprint for action.

– Europe and Japan:• World leaders in environmental affairs.

– USA:• Role of obstructionist.• Objected to any negative references concerning

consumption patterns in the developed countries.• Had the most to lose.

Environmental Movement in India

• Rethinking the idea of development philosophically but also through solutions – Water management – tanks, small dams etc– Forest management – community control– Biodiversity – national park management integrated

with indigenous knowledge– Fisheries – against trawlers and demarcation of

ocean waters• Three broad phases

– Struggles to be heard– Concerns of environment by media, institutions– Globalisation of consumer society in the 90s

Guha’s other chapters

• Three environmental Utopias• Democracy in the Forest• Authoritarianism in the Wild• Historical Social ecology of Lewis Mumford• Subaltern Social ecology of Chandi Prasad Bhatt• The Democratic Social ecology of Madhav

Gadgil• How Much Should a Person Consume?