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Anthropology and the Environment
November 1996
(C.J.Stevens, contributing editor)
Section Activities at the Annual Meeting
The Section's 5 reviewed volunteer sessions and 1 invited session were reviewed in the October AN. More detailed reviews can be found in the abstracts and in the program available at the meeting. The final program is available on the AAA Web page. Members are invited to attend and participate in dialogue at these sessions as well as at the scheduled Open Forum on November 22 (Friday), which is to be followed by a cash bar. This is a particularly good opportunity to meet fellow members and discuss issues of interest to environmental anthropologists.
A Word about the PESO
The Political Ecology Society will be holding its annual meeting in association with the Society for Applied Anthropology at the Madison-Renaissance Hotel in Seattle, WA, March 9-13, 1997. Political ecology illustrates the processes by which power shapes the environment. If we are to promote sustainable development in every policy domain and realm of application, we not only need methods that give life to the numbers, but must examine critically how the distribution of power illuminates social transformation. The PESO 1997 meeting will be dedicated to disciplinary (goal directed) reflection how the political ecological perspective and the methods of the approach may be used to effect change, not only in human/resource relations but also in the relations of power that prescribe resource management and distribution. Session and paper abstracts were to be sent to Kimberly Grimes by October 1, 1996, for organization into the SfAA program. For additional information at this later date, contact Grimes at kgrimes@prodigy.com or 302-539-6335. Information can also be obtained from the SfAA web page at http://www.telepath.com/sfaa/sfaa97/.
The Political Ecology Society has established The Robert McNetting Prize of $500 for the best article published in the Journal of Political Ecology. The 1996 Prize was awarded to Donna Winslow (U Ottawa) for her piece, "Indépendence, Savoir Aborigène et Environnement en Nouvelle-Calédonie." The prize will be awarded to Winslow at the 1997 meeting in Seattle.
Anthropological Research in Human/Environmental Relations
Catherine Tucker has been investigating ongoing transformations in the use and management of communal forests in a community in western Honduras. Taking a political ecology perspective, the research explores the linkages between local, national and international processes that have shaped historical and current forest use patterns. Low population density, a relatively homogenous population, the pattern of subsistence agriculture, minimal state interference, and limited interaction with national markets apparently contributed to the viability of common property management and the survival of communal forests into the present. The local context has changed in recent decades with population growth, socioeconomic differentiation related to market penetration, and state policies that encourage privatization of communal property. Domination by the state forestry development institution (COHDEFOR) during the 1970s and 1980s led to logging, forest degradation and disruption of traditional forms of forest management. A majority of the population eventually organized to oust COHDEFOR and prohibit market-oriented timber exploitation on communal lands, but forest management has suffered a number of shortcomings in the aftermath of COHDEFOR's departure. National legislation, international market forces, and economic development initiatives favor the transformation of forests to agricultural fields for export crops, while the growing population demands land for subsistence agriculture. The local situation reveals a gradual transformation of communal forests into private usufruct holdings, but a segment of the population is advocating better protection of communal forests and enforcement of local ordinances to restrict privatization. Similar to other studies of common property systems, this research indicates that state interference and opposition can undermine communal forms of management. Within this community, the people's recent success stopping timber extraction nevertheless indicates a potential to defend their common forests. For further information, e-mail tucker@indiana.edu.
Another example of recently completed political ecological dissertation research is that done by Charlie Stevens (Demography, UC-Berkeley) who investigated the sustainability of differing agricultural management techniques in the Kingdom of Tonga. These Polynesian farmers had maintained a highly productive agroforestry system for approximately 3,000 years before recently introduced market crop production threatened the regenerative capacity of their agricultural production. The subsistence activity of the pre-contact Tongan farmers had been geared toward maximized production of a farinaceous agricultural system imported to the islands by the initial colonizers around 1700 BC. The evidence suggests that the pressures to intensify agricultural production stemmed from the demands of an autocratic social hierarchy that demanded sustainable but maximized production of crops, particularly yams (Dioscorea alata), which were presented at elaborate ceremonies called inasi and subsequently distributed along kinship lines.
Farmer strategies included maintenance of crop biodiversity, limited tillage, managed fallow periods of 5 years or greater duration, and limiting plantings of yams to twice annually (the climate could have allowed for three separate plantings). Despite the social pressures to maximize production, the system remained productive for a significant period of time. Alterations of the environment were extensive as the Lapita settlers (the original Polynesians) transformed a natural ecology into a highly productive cultural ecology.
Recent attempts by the Tongan government to improve negative balance of trade accounts and the material desires of smallholder agriculturalists have encouraged the adoption of monocrop production of squash for the Japanese market. The export of squash since 1987 has returned higher balance of trade payments than had ever been recorded in this small island state. The requirements of successful squash production demand the addition of expensive petroleum based inputs such as fertilizers, mildewcides, and a variety of toxic pesticides (eg, Malathion). Land preparation in the form of plowing and disking two to 8 acres of the customary 8 acre agricultural allotments may pose the greatest hazard to the agroecology of the islands, however. Plowing has been shown to significantly decrease soil structural fertility, effectively prevent the regrowth of deciduous plants, and encourage the infiltration of allotments by Guinea grass (Panicum maximus). Grass fallow systems return soils to a lower fertility than do fallows of mixed wooded plant species, and the soils on the island of Tongatapu--once considered some of the most fertile volcanic soils on the globe--are threatened with rapid leaching of soil nutrients and, more important, destruction of soil structural fertility.
To test whether the new productive techniques are, in fact, less sustainable than "traditional" forms of land management, soil samples were collected from 59 parcels of land with differing production histories. While declines in soil chemical fertility were masked by the addition of phosphate fertilizers and the addition of urea, soils analyses showed significant and rapid declines in soil structural fertility. The most telling differences between soil structural fertility of unplowed allotments and that of plowed and monocropped allotments were in the measures of total nitrogen, pH, organic carbon, and Olsen phosphorous. All these measures pertain to soil structural fertility, the capacity of the soil to hold moisture and make nutrients available to plants in the form of cations on the surface of individual grains of clay. The soil fertility analyses demonstrated that the differences in these parameters between parcels of land with differing management histories were statistically significant (P = 3D0.011, P = 3D0.042, P = 3D0.014, P = 3D0.036 respectively), and suggest that the form of monocrop production introduced into the islands will likely have substantial and negative long term consequences.
A past attempt at market crop production of this nature in Tongan was a banana marketing scheme which had all the markings of a typical boom and bust scenario. After respectable returns in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the banana scheme went bust around 1989 and shows no signs of resurrection. The early banana production include the cutting down of the last remnants of old forest growth on Tongatapu to construct the shooks needed to ship the banana crop to New Zealand. In that scheme, Tongan smallholders sent their old growth forest to New Zealand. Now they seem to be sending their soil fertility to Japan.
For additional information or comments contact stevens@demog.berkeley.edu.
Call for Research Reports or Other Information
I would be pleased to submit, as part of the A&E Section News, research reports such as these by Catherine Tucker and my own research. Presenting the findings of our research in this venue would foster increased communication among the membership and enhance further interdisciplinary research in the area of human/resource interaction and the ecological consequences of human productive activity on planetary resources.