REM 363/ENV 399 - Week 3 Environmental History

1. REM 363/ENV 399 - Week 3 Environmental History

2. Mode of adaptation and transitions • Refers to a society’s livelihoods, social & economic organization, or its ‘production system’ • Physical limits of the environment and the mode of adaptation determine the population size that can be supported by a given environment. • e.g. hunting & gathering, agriculture, industrialisation • Human societies have experienced transitions from one mode to another: • hunting & gathering → agriculture • agriculture → industrialisation

3. Modes of adaptation and population over time 6 2000 5 Hunter - gatherer Population (billions) 4 Agrarian 3 1750 2 Industrial 1 -10,000 -1000 0 1000 Year (log scale)

4. What about our relationship with the environment? • Hunter-gatherers are animists – see many biotic and physical processes as having spiritual significance, i.e. see no distinction between the spiritual and material worlds • Agrarian societies developed organised religions with various positions ranging from ‘domination of nature’ to ‘stewardship’ and the retention of varying degrees of animism • Early industrialism either ignored the environment or considered it in utilitarian terms but was concerned with ‘wise use’

5. Views of the Human-Environment Relationship • Primitivism (hunter-gatherer) • Jean-Jacques Rousseau and ‘the noble savage’ • John Muir’s wilderness preservation ethic, national parks • Arne Naess and ‘deep ecology’ • Agrarianism (agrarian) • ‘Back to the land’ movement: Gandhi in India, Jefferson in U.S. • Scientific Industrialism (industrial) • Conservation and ‘wise use’ based on scientific knowledge Source: Guha and Martinez-Alier (1997)

6. Primitivism Evil  The plough, technology Key words  unspoiled nature, interspecies equity Policy  go back to stage 1, drastically reduce population Hunter-gatherer Agrarian Industrial Environmental and Social goodness time After Guha and Martinez-Alier (1997)

7. Agrarianism Evil  Industrialism, consumerism Key words  appropriate technology, back to the land Policy  go back to stage 2 Hunter-gatherer Agrarian Industrial Environmental and Social goodness time After Guha and Martinez-Alier (1997)

8. Scientific Industrialism Evil  Illiterate peasantry (non-experts) Key words  Efficiency, sustained production, science Policy  Leave it to the experts Hunter-gatherer Agrarian Industrial Halting progress of science and technology Environmental and Social goodness time After Guha and Martinez-Alier (1997)

9. Early studies of human impact on the environment • … to indicate the character and, approximately, the extent of the changes produced by human action in the physical conditions of the globe we inhabit; to point out the dangers of imprudence and the necessity of caution in all operations which, on a large scale, interfere with the spontaneous arrangements of the organic or the inorganic world; to suggest the possibility and the importance of the restoration of disturbed harmonies and the material improvement of waste and exhausted regions; and, incidentally, to illustrate the doctrine, that man is, in both kind and degree, a power of a higher order than any of the other forms of animated life … Source: Marsh 1864; p3 From 1969 to 1987, there were 17 major studies of the global environmental impact of humans …

10. Biosphere change and lessons learned (Kates et al. 1990) • Human-induced environmental change is enormous and accounts for the greatest share of all historic environmental change • Most global-scale impacts of human-induced change are quite recent, especially those related to biogeochemical flows in the biosphere • There’s been a shift from agricultural transformation of the earth’s surface to industrial extraction of materials and energy to a mix of these and more advanced transformations • Rate of change in impact has been slowing for some biosphere components (e.g. population), while others are accelerating • Overall, earth’s transformation is not evenly spread; instead, it varies greatly between regions • Difficult to forge a global consensus on action because of differing perspectives from region to region • Forces of change include population growth, technological capacity and socio-cultural organization but are not well understood; no universal theory

11. Human forces of environmental change Formal regulation Market adjustment Social regulation Driving forces Population Technology Social values & norms Mitigating forces Environmental change Socio-political & economic structure Human agency Human behaviour Kates et al. (1990)

12. Sustainable Development … the way forward? • Sustainable development is development that: "meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs". • [Source: Our Common Future, World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987, p8] • or “maintaining the capacity of the joint economy-environment system to continue to satisfy the needs and desires of humans for a long time into the future” • [Source: Ecological Economics, Common and Stagl, 2005, p8) • Is this a new paradigm ??