Thinking%20Through%20The%20Environment

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Thinking Through The Environment

• Ramachandra Guha and Social Ecology

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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

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Guha in XIM library

• Nature Culture Imperialism Arnold
• Ecology And Equity The Use And Abuse Of Nature
  In Contemporary India Gadgil
• Institutions Inequalities Essays In Honour Of
  Andre Beteille Jonathan Parry
• Varieties Of Environmentalism Essays North And
  South Martinez Alier
• Social Ecology edited
• How Much Should A Person Consume ? Thinking
  Through The Environment

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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.
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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

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Why the Village Movement?

• Careful husbanding of natural resources within
  the rural economy
• Critique of Govts 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.

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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 Vohras 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.

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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

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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
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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.

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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
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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
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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

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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.

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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.

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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

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Guhas 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?