Chapter 1: Understanding Our
Environment
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Lesson 3: A Brief History of Conservation and Environmentalism
Many of our current ideas about our environment and its resources
were articulated by writers and thinkers in the past 150 years. Although
many earlier societies had negative impacts on their environments, recent
technological innovations have greatly increased our impacts. As a
consequence of these changes, different approaches have developed for
understanding and protecting our environment. We can divide conservation
history and environmental activism into at least four distinct ages:
(1) pragmatic resource conservation,
(2) moral and aesthetic nature preservation,
(3) a growing concern about health and ecological damage caused by
pollution, and
(4) global environmental citizenship.
Each era focused on different problems and each suggested a distinctive set
of solutions. These stages are not necessarily mutually exclusive, however,
parts of each persists today in the environmental movement and one person
may embrace them all simultaneously.
Resource Waste Inspired Pragmatic, Utilitarian Conservation
Many historians consider the publication of Man and Nature in 1864 by
geographer George Perkins Marsh as the wellspring of environmental
protection in North America. Marsh, who also was a lawyer, politician, and
diplomat, traveled widely around the Mediterranean as part of his diplomatic
duties in Turkey and Italy. He read widely in the classics (including Plato) and
personally observed the damage caused by the excessive grazing by goats
and sheep and by the deforesting of steep hillsides. Alarmed by the wanton
destruction and profligate waste of resources still occurring on the American
frontier in his lifetime, he warned of its ecological consequences. Largely as a
result of his book, national forest reserves were established in the United
States in 1873 to protect dwindling timber supplies and endangered
watersheds.
Among those influenced by Marsh’s warnings were President Theodore
Roosevelt and his chief conservation advisor, Clifford Pinchot. Roosevelt, who
was the leader of the populist, progressive movement, moved the Forest
Service out of the corruption-filled Interior Department into the Department
of Agriculture. Pinchot, who was the first native-born professional forester in
North America, became the founding head of this new agency. He put
resource management on an honest, rational, and scientific basis for the first
time in our history. Together with naturalists and activists such as John Muir,
William Brewster, and George Bird Grinnell, Roosevelt and Pinchot
established the framework of our national forest, park, and wildlife refuge
systems, passed game protection law, and tried to stop some of the most
flagrant abuses of the public domain.
The basis of Roosevelt’s and Pinchot’s policies was pragmatic
utilitarian conservation. They argued that the forests should be saved “not
because they are beautiful or because they shelter wild creatures of the
wilderness, but only to provide homes and jobs for people.” Resources should
be used “for the greatest good, for the greatest number for the longest time.”
“There has been a fundamental misconception,” Pinchot said, “that
conservation means nothing but husbanding of resources for future
generations. Nothing could be further from the truth. The first principle of
conservation is development and use of the natural resources now existing
on this continent for the benefit of the people who live here now. There may
be just as much waste in neglecting the development and use of certain
natural resources as there is in their destruction.” This pragmatic approach
still can be seen today in the multiple use policies of the Forest Service.
Ethical and Aesthetic Concerns Inspired the Preservation Movement
John Muir, geologist, author, and first president of the Sierra Club,
strenuously opposed Pinchot’s utilitarian approach. Muir argued that nature
deserves to exist for its own sake, regardless of its usefulness to us. Aesthetic
and spiritual values formed the core of his philosophy of nature protection.
This outlook has been called biocentric preservation because it
emphasizes the fundamental right of other organisms to exist and to pursue
their own interests. Muir wrote: “The world, we are told, was made for man. A
presumption that is totally unsupported by the facts…. Nature’s object in
making animals and plants might possibly be first of all the happiness of each
one of them…. Why ought man to value himself as more than an infinitely
small unit of the one great unit of creation?”
Muir, who was an early explorer and interpreter of the Sierra Nevada
Mountains in California, fought long and hard for establishment of Yosemite
and Kings Canyon National Parks. The National Park Service, established in
1916, was first headed by Muir’s disciple, Stephen Mather, and has always
been oriented toward preservation of nature in its purest state. It has often
been at odds with Pinchot’s utilitarian Forest Service.
In 1935, pioneering wildlife ecologist Aldo Leopold bought a small,
worn-out farm in central Wisconsin. A dilapidated chicken shack, the only
remaining building, was remodeled into a rustic cabin. Working together with
his children, Leopold planted thousands of trees in a practical experiment in
restoring the health and beauty of the land. Leopold argued for stewardship
of the land. He wrote of “the land ethic,” by which we should care for the land
because it’s the right thing to do—as well as the smart thing. “Conservation,”
he wrote, “is the positive exercise of skill and insight, not merely a negative
exercise of abstinence or caution.” The shack became a writing refuge and
became the main focus of A Sand County Almanac, a much beloved collection
of essays about our relation with nature. In it, Leopold wrote, “We abuse land
because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a
community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and
respect.”
Rising Pollution Levels Led to the Modern Environmental Movement
The undesirable effects of pollution probably have been recognized at
least as long as those of forest destruction. In 1273, King Edward I of England
threatened to hang anyone burning coal in London because of the acrid
smoke it produced. In 1661, the English diarist John Evelyn complained about
the noxious air pollution caused by coal fires and factories and suggested
that sweet-smelling trees be planted to purify city air. Increasingly dangerous
smog attacks in Britain led, in 1880, to formation of a national Fog and
Smoke Committee to combat this problem.
The tremendous industrial expansion during and after the Second
World War added a new set of concerns to the environmental agenda. Silent
Spring, written by Rachel Carson and published in 1962, awakened the public
to the threats of pollution and toxic chemicals to humans as well as other
species. The movement she engendered might be called environmentalism
because its concerns are extended to include both environmental resources
and pollution. Among the pioneers of this movement were activist David
Brower and scientist Barry Commoner. Brower, while executive director of the
Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, and the Earth Island Institute, introduced
many of the techniques of modern environmentalism, including litigation,
intervention in regulatory hearings, book and calendar publishing, and using
mass media for publicity campaigns.
Barry Commoner, like Rachel Carson, emphasized the links between
science, technology, and society. Trained as a molecular biologist, Commoner
was an early example of activist scientists, who speak out about public
hazards revealed by their research. Many of today’s efforts to curb climate
change or reduce biodiversity losses are led by scientists who raise the alarm
about environmental problems.
Environmental Quality is Tied to Social Progress
Many people today believed that the roots of the environmental
movement are elitist—promoting the interests of a wealthy minority, who can
afford to vacation in wilderness. In fact, most environmental leaders have
seen social justice and environmental equity as closely linked. Gifford
Pinchot, Teddy Roosevelt, and John Muir all strove to keep nature and
resources accessible to everyone, at a time when public lands, forests, and
waterways were increasingly controlled by a few wealthy individuals and
private corporations. The idea of national parks, one of our principal
strategies for nature conservation, is to provide public access to natural
beauty and outdoor recreation. Aldo Leopold, a founder of the Wilderness
Society, promoted ideas of land stewardship among farmers, fishers, and
hunters. Robert Marshall, also a founder of the Wilderness Society,
campaigned all his life for social and economic justice for low-income groups.
Both Rachel Carson and Barry Commoner were principally interested in
environmental health—an issue that is especially urgent for low-income,
minority, and inner-city residents. Many of these individuals grew up in
working class families, so their sympathy with social causes is not surprising.
Increasingly, environmental activists are linking environmental quality
and social progress on a global scale. One of the core concepts of modern
environmental thought is sustainable development, the idea that
economic improvement for the world’s poorest populations is possible
without devastating the environment. This idea became widely publicized
after the Earth Summit, a United Nations meeting held in Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil in 1992. The Rio meeting was a pivotal event because it brought
together many diverse groups. Environmentalists and politicians from
wealthy countries, indigenous people and workers struggling for rights and
land, and government representatives from developing countries all came
together and became more aware of their common needs.
Some of today’s leading environmental thinkers come from developing
nations, where poverty and environmental degradation together plague
hundreds of millions of people. Dr. Wangari Maathai of Kenya is a notable
example. In 1977, Dr. Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement in her
native Kenya as a way of organizing poor rural women and restoring their
environment. Beginning at a small, local scale, this organization has grown to
more than 600 grassroots networks across Kenya. They have planted more
than 30 million trees while mobilizing communities for self-determination,
justice, equity, poverty reduction, and environmental conservation. Dr.
Maathai was elected to the Kenyan Parliament and served as Assistant
Minister for Environment and Natural Resources. Her leadership has helped
bring democracy and good government to her country. In 2004, she received
the Nobel Peace Prize for her work, the first time a Nobel has been awarded
for environmental action. In her acceptance speech, she said, “Working
together, we have proven that sustainable development is possible; that
reforestation of degraded land is possible; and that exemplary governance is
possible when ordinary citizens are informed, sensitized, mobilized and
involved in direct action for their environment.
Under the leadership of a number of other brilliant and dedicated
activists and scientists, the environmental agenda was expanded in the
1960s and 1970s to include issues such as human population growth, atomic
weapons testing and atomic power, fossil fuel extraction and use, recycling,
air and water pollution, and wilderness protection. Environmentalism has
become well established on the public agenda since the first national Earth
Day in 1970. A majority of Americans now consider themselves
environmentalists, although there is considerable variation in what that term
means.
Photographs of the earth from space provide a powerful icon for the
fourth wave of ecological concern that might be called global
environmentalism. These photos remind us how small, fragile, beautiful,
and rare our home planet is. We all share a common environment at this
global scale. As our attention shifts from questions of preserving particular
landscapes or preventing pollution of a specific watershed or airshed, we
begin to worry about life-support systems of the whole planet.
A growing number of Chinese activists are part of this global
environmental movement. In 2006, Yu Xiaogang was awarded the Goldman
Prize, the world’s top honor for environmental protection. Yu was recognized
for his work on Yunan’s Lashi Lake where he brought together residents,
government officials, and entrepreneurs to protect wetland, restore fisheries,
and improve water quality. He also worked on sustainable development
programs, such as women’s schools and microcredit loans. His leadership
was instrumental in stopping plans for 13 dams on the Nu River (known as
the Salween when it crosses into Thailand and Burma). Another Goldman
Prize winner is Dai Qing, who was jailed for her book that revealed the social
and environmental costs of the Three Georges Dam on the Yangtze River.
Other global environmental leaders, Professor Muhammad Yunus of
Bangladesh, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for his microcredit loan
program at the Grameen Bank, and former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro
Harlem Brundtland, who chaired the World Commission on Environment and
Development, which coined the most widely accepted definition of
sustainability.
Lesson 4: Sustainable Development
Can we improve the lives of the world’s poor without destroying our
shared environment? A possible solution to this dilemma is sustainable
development, a term popularized by Our Common Future, the 1987 report
of the World Commission on Environment and Development, chaired by
Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland (consequently called the
Brundtland Commission). In the words of this report, sustainable
development means “meeting the needs of the present without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
Another way of saying this is that we are dependent on nature for food,
water, energy, fiber, waste disposal, and other life support services. We can’t
deplete resources or create wastes faster than nature can recycle them if we
hope to be here for the long term. Development means improving people’s
lives. Sustainable development, then, means progress in human well-being
that can be extended or prolonged over many generations rather than just a
few years. To be truly enduring, the benefits of sustainable development
must be available to all humans rather than to just the members of a
privileged group.
To many economists, it seems obvious that economic growth is the
only way to bring about a long-range transformation to more advanced and
productive societies and to provide resources to improve the lot of all people.
As former President John F. Kennedy said, “A rising tide lifts all boats.” But
economic growth is not sufficient in itself to meet all essential needs. As the
Brundtland Commission pointed out, political stability, democracy, and
equitable economic distribution are needed to ensure that the poor will get a
fair share of the benefits of greater wealth in a society. A study released in
2006 by researchers at Yale and Columbia Universities reported a significant
correlation between environmental sustainability, open political systems, and
good government. Of the 133 countries in this study, New Zealand, Sweden,
Finland, Czech Republic, and the United Kingdom held the top five places (in
that order). The United States ranked 28 th, behind countries such as Japan,
and most of Western Europe.
Can Development Be Truly Sustainable?
Many ecologists regard “sustainable” growth of any sort as impossible
in the long run because of the limits imposed by nonrenewable resources and
the capacity of the biosphere to absorb our wastes. Using ever-increasing
amounts of goods and services to make human life more comfortable,
pleasant, or agreeable must inevitably interfere with the survival of other
species and, eventually, of humans themselves in a world of fixed resources.
But, supporters of sustainable development assure us, both technology and
social organization can be managed in ways that meet essential needs and
provide long-term—but not infinite—growth within natural limits, if we use
ecological knowledge in our planning.
Indigenous People Are Important Guardians of Nature
Often at the absolute bottom of the social strata, whether in rich or
poor countries, are the indigenous or native peoples who are generally the
least powerful, most neglected groups in the world. Typically descendants of
the original inhabitants of an area taken over by more powerful outsiders,
they often are distinct from their country’s dominant language, culture
religion, and racial communities. Of the world’s nearly 6,000 recognized
cultures, 5,000 are indigenous ones that account for only about 10 percent of
the total world population. In many countries, these indigenous people are
repressed by traditional caste systems, discriminatory laws, economics, or
prejudice. Unique cultures are disappearing, along with biological diversity,
as natural habitats are destroyed to satisfy industrialized world appetites for
resources. Traditional ways of life are disrupted further by dominant Western
culture sweeping around the globe.
At least half of the world’s 6,000 languages are dying because they are
no longer taught to children. When the last few elders who still speak the
language die, so will the culture that was its origin. Lost with those cultures
will be a rich repertoire of knowledge about nature and a keen understanding
about a particular environment and a way of life.
Nonetheless, in many places, the 500 million indigenous people who
remain in traditional homelands still possess valuable ecological wisdom and
remain the guardians of little-disturbed habitats that are the refuge for rare
and endangered species and relatively undamaged ecosystems. Author Alan
During estimates that indigenous homelands harbor more biodiversity than
all the world’s nature reserves and that greater understanding of nature is
encoded in the languages, customs, and practices of native people than is
stored in the libraries of modern science. Interestingly, just 12 countries
account for 60 percent of all human languages. Seven of those are also
among the “megadiversity” countries that contain more than half of all
unique plant and animal species. Conditions that support evolution of many
unique species seem to favor development of equally diverse human cultures
as well.
Recognizing native land rights and promoting political pluralism is
often one of the best ways to safeguard ecological processes and endangered
species. As the Kuna Indians of Panama say, “Where there are forests, there
are native people, and where there are native people, there are forests.” A
few countries, such as Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Ecuador, Canada, and
Australia acknowledge indigenous title to extensive land areas.
In other countries, unfortunately, the rights of native people are
ignored. Indonesia, for instance claims ownership of nearly three-quarters of
its forest lands and all waters and offshore fishing rights, ignoring the
interests of indigenous people who have lived in these areas for millennia.
Similarly, the Philippine government claims possession of all uncultivated
land in its territory, while Cameron and Tanzania recognize no rights at all for
forest-dwelling pygmies who represent one of the world’s oldest cultures.
Holistic and Systematic View of the Environment
1. Biophysical. The prefix bio- refers to living organisms while the suffix –
physical refers to nonliving forms.
2. Sociological. Man is merely a part of the web of life. The social
dimension of the environment refers to the society he belongs to. The
social environment is the web of relationships and interactions among
human beings.
3. Economic. The earth is a one whole economic reserve. Its natural
resources have their own worth and bounds and these are dependent
on the lifestyles and cultures of the people.
4. Political environment. The political setting of the environment depends
on the laws and policies laid down by the people for the management
of their natural resources.
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Global Concern. (12th edition) pp 12-27; pp 44-46. New York: McGraw-Hill.
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1activereading.pdf
3. Ocampo, Eross S. “Country Report on Climate Change Policies, Green Jobs and Decent
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https://actrav-courses.itcilo.org/en/a352647/a352647-part-material/country-reports/
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