When discussing the issue of deforestation, I tend to believe more of the populist discourse, that it is a serious global issue. Though, rather than the small farmers and land managers being the problem, with slash and burn uses of the land, the force causing the issue is likely transnational interests and logging companies that finance and fuel their operation.
Indigenous forest dwellers are forced to abandon their environment or possibly in a vicious massacre, they do not. "There are over 300 million indigenous people in about 5000 groups in more than 70 countries"(http://www.fao.org/docrep/w1033e/w1033e09.htm). Very interesting how they are able to get what they need from the forest, without, or with very little impact to their surroundings.
I wanted to mention that the dissertation was very interesting. I did not have very much knowledge about how the people in Mongolia adapted to the weather there. The zud sounds like a scary time of year, not only for the animals, but also for the people. I wonder in the future, maybe 20 years, if cattle will be as important as it is now or if something new will develop in this area? It was really sad to see the animals all huddled together, especially when it is clear they did not survive. I also wanted to also agree that the Jon Stewart clip was really funny!
Thanks for coming to the defense, Jessica! Wikipedia definition of zud, for those who didn't make it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zud.
ReplyDeleteYou say in this blog post that you tend to "believe"--or we could also say "support"--the populist discourses. This brings up a good point. All of us, including political ecologists who work hard to uncover other people's biases, have our own biases. However, when we recognize complexity in environmental challenges (e.g. if we include things like transnational interests, structural inequalities, etc., in our analyses), we are slightly less at the mercy of discourses and biases.
There certainly are a number of native peoples left, and some had a relatively benign influence on the environment. But for the most part there were major impacts on surrounding landscapes that define our understanding of the current ecology. For example, natives built a lot of fires and many grasslands around the world have been anthropogenically dependent for thousands of years. In fact a lot of grassland and savannah restoration is all about "returning the native influence" back into the system.
ReplyDeleteThere's severe erosion evidence from several tribal irrigation strategies, examples like Easter island and the Mayan empire. One (extreme) theory postulates that native populations in the Americas had modified the landscape so dramatically that when those populations were decimated by European diseases there was a surge in reforestation and carbon sequestration so large that it ushered in the little iceage.
I agree with you when you say that indigenous people have little impact on the environment. From my perspective, this is because these people have a relationship with nature, live in nature and understand the earth. (Like Native Americans.) I also believe that big companies that fuel the practices of deforestation are truly the cause of our environmental problems. I really do think that if it wasn't for big businesses deforestation would be less of a problem.
ReplyDeleteIf indigenous people have had little impact on the environment, it is only because of a wilderness construct that excludes them to an insulting degree. The noble savage, simple animistic hunter gatherer, nature's gentlemen, uncorrupted by the evils of civilization. So Idealized in his primitiveness that we choose to completely ignore the complexity and diversity of their civilizations and the sophisticated agriculture, aggressive hunting techniques, and permanent settlements that have been built for thousands of years.
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