Indigenous Resource Managers Can Be Our Teachers
The current (August) National Geographic features the land and water management practices of American Indian tribes. The article, Reviving Native Lands, notes that, "Those whose lands were once taken from them...are setting an example for how to steward the environment." The many references to the sacred landscape that the tribes are stewarding constitute a rare reference, in the mainstream press, of the connection between spiritual values and sustainable management. A similar theme is echoed in the summer Newsletter of Wildearth Guardians under the title "The Option of Restraint - Heeding the Wisdom of the Endangered Species Act." The message is that we shouldn't be complacent about species threatened with extinction, but should take active measures to protect their habitat to allow their survival. What? Change our behavior? Compromise the principles of the American Dream?
Dennis Meadows, whom Baby Boomers may recall was the lead author of the 1972 landmark report, Limits to Growth, was in town a few weeks ago (hosted by the Santa Fe Institute), conveying a similar message about needing to curb our enthusiasm for material things. Our use of resources is critically unsustainable and our behaviors will be forced to change within the next decade. It's not a matter of our preference, or our choice, but of the physical limits of our rapidly deteriorating ecosystem. Click here to see the 90 minute presentation.
I felt that Meadows was unduly pessimistic, but I must confess that the tea leaves aren't very promising either. The same week that the UN passed a resolution declaring the human right to safe and clean drinking water, Survival International reported on the plight of Bushmen in Botswana being denied the right to drill wells on their ancestral lands, the same lands where tourists relax in the ecolodge swimming pool.
Can we save ourselves from falling off the logarithmic curves (which Dennis Meadows likes to show us) of over-exploitation of our planet's abundant but finite resources? Won't economics save us by incentivizing conservation? I do hold out this hope; in fact, I depend on it. But I just read a disturbing article by Sian Sullivan in the journal, Radical Anthropology, entitled, "Green capitalism, and the cultural poverty of constructing nature as service provider." It's a mouthful, but the gist of it is that we deceive ourselves by thinking of Nature as just a very large and complicated business enterprise. Remember how thinking of Nature as a machine got us into a lot of trouble? The corporate metaphor is just as dangerous. Nature is Nature and we need to behave in ways that fit in with her program. This is what indigenous resource managers can teach us. When Nature is seen as sacred, and also sick, the need for restoration is a no-brainer that does not require policy debates or cost benefit analysis. [For more on this topic, see the WaterCulture.org webpage on Values and Ethics].
Dennis Meadows showing why we should probably start changing our behavior...
Dennis Meadows, whom Baby Boomers may recall was the lead author of the 1972 landmark report, Limits to Growth, was in town a few weeks ago (hosted by the Santa Fe Institute), conveying a similar message about needing to curb our enthusiasm for material things. Our use of resources is critically unsustainable and our behaviors will be forced to change within the next decade. It's not a matter of our preference, or our choice, but of the physical limits of our rapidly deteriorating ecosystem. Click here to see the 90 minute presentation.
I felt that Meadows was unduly pessimistic, but I must confess that the tea leaves aren't very promising either. The same week that the UN passed a resolution declaring the human right to safe and clean drinking water, Survival International reported on the plight of Bushmen in Botswana being denied the right to drill wells on their ancestral lands, the same lands where tourists relax in the ecolodge swimming pool.
Can we save ourselves from falling off the logarithmic curves (which Dennis Meadows likes to show us) of over-exploitation of our planet's abundant but finite resources? Won't economics save us by incentivizing conservation? I do hold out this hope; in fact, I depend on it. But I just read a disturbing article by Sian Sullivan in the journal, Radical Anthropology, entitled, "Green capitalism, and the cultural poverty of constructing nature as service provider." It's a mouthful, but the gist of it is that we deceive ourselves by thinking of Nature as just a very large and complicated business enterprise. Remember how thinking of Nature as a machine got us into a lot of trouble? The corporate metaphor is just as dangerous. Nature is Nature and we need to behave in ways that fit in with her program. This is what indigenous resource managers can teach us. When Nature is seen as sacred, and also sick, the need for restoration is a no-brainer that does not require policy debates or cost benefit analysis. [For more on this topic, see the WaterCulture.org webpage on Values and Ethics].
Dennis Meadows showing why we should probably start changing our behavior...
Posted by Dave Groenfeldt at 2 Aug 2010, 7:54 PM 
Categories: Indigenous Water Management
Tags: Bushmen Tribal Resource Management Right to Water Limits to Growth Green Capitalism Endangered Species Act Wildearth Guardians
Categories: Indigenous Water Management
Tags: Bushmen Tribal Resource Management Right to Water Limits to Growth Green Capitalism Endangered Species Act Wildearth Guardians
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