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Anthropology and the Environment
March 1999
Ed Liebow, Contributing Editor
Urbanism, history, and policy are featured this month. First is a piece linking historical ecology in the humid urban tropics to contemporary issues of environmental resource preservation and conservation. Also, we note a new interdisciplinary program in sustainable cities from the University of Southern California.
The April 1 deadline for the Annual Meeting program is approaching rapidly. If you are seeking Section sponsorship for an organized session you should be (if you have not already been) in contact with Alx Dark (alxdark@altavista.net; 206/264-8217), this year's Section Program Editor.
Due South: Learning from the Urban Experience in the Humid Tropics
By Elizabeth Graham (York U and Royal Ontario Museum, egraham@yorku.ca)
(Excerpted from a paper presented in the 1998 Annual Meeting Presidential Symposium organized by Anabel Ford (UC-Santa Barbara), "Save the Rainforest? The Last Terrestrial Frontier Population and Conservation Past Present Future")
One focus of my research is the long-term environmental transformation brought about by pre-industrial urban populations in the humid tropics. Evidence suggests that transformative processes in Precolumbian America, at least, led inadvertently to increases in the extent of cultivable land and to vegetational succession that resulted in increasing biodiversity. This perspective bears on the key issue raised in policy circles of whether there can be any resolution of the conflicting priorities of conservation efforts and the agricultural needs of expanding populations.
The concept of "conservation" in the North has been played out most forcefully in the creation of wilderness or wildlife (p)reserves, which can include cultural resources. In the case with which I am involved in Belize, the Lamanai Reserve where I am working is predominantly an archaeological reserve, but it includes the tracts of forest that surround the ruins and has therefore become a haven for a range of animals whose habitats are being destroyed. In this case, and in others like it, the establishment of a reserve is one kind of solution in halting the advancement of deforestation. Yet the future of such reserves remains insecure where land pressures are high, and in this sense the concept of a wilderness or forest reserve reflects a cultural dichotomy that may be rooted in Old World historical relationships between humans and grazing animals (Melville 1994) that have precluded the development of an alternative dynamic between people and trees. How can forest continuity be assured in contexts other than preservation? In the alternative context of resource conservation, for example, forests are "resources" in the sense that they represent Nature as a source of life and landscape that should be preserved to enrich the human experience - read "tourism." In the way medieval kings restricted access to forests to preserve game resources, forest preserves now serve as resources for tourism.
Still, the concept of a preserve is a stop-gap measure in the sense that it arises from the perception of a threat to resources. The question is: Can resources be conserved before "conserving resources" becomes an issue? Do human-environmental relationships ever include interactions that complement and/or mitigate what we would call resource depletion? My research suggests that cultural practices that developed or evolved for reasons completely outside of explicit conservation concepts are those that most effectively conserve resources.
I do not mean to imply that the ancient Maya, for example, did not conserve land or water. There is some evidence to indicate that urban traditions of the humid tropics, partly because of tropical growth and decay cycles, have not conceptually divided masonry or "stone" space from green space so radically and assuredly as have urban traditions of the North, with the concomitant that both "stone" and "green" spaces were intensively managed environments. There is other evidence, however, derived from my own research, to suggest that tropical forests and forest biodiversity do not owe their existence to deliberate management so much as to cultural side-effects. Excavations indicate that a range of cultural practices - such as the management of waste, the discard of local industry by-products, construction practices, burial of the dead, re-use of construction debris, and the practice of building abandonment - contributed to soil formation processes in such a way as to improve soil quality over the long term, and by way of this improvement, to affect vegetational succession and thereby foster biodiversity. These are the forces that I think were operative in the evolution of tropical urbanism, so that tracts of forest and increasing biodiversity resulted from aspects of urbanization, but were the effects of cultural practices that lay outside of any concepts of either conservation or even forest resource management that might have existed. I am in the process of developing methods to study these phenomena, and essential to the process is rejection of the dichotomy of "nature vs. culture". I am looking at the chemistry and morphology of the masonry built environment (in which culture becomes nature) at the same time that I exclude nothing, not even natural stands of vegetation or forests or coral reefs, from examination for an anthropogenic imprint (in which, of course, nature becomes culture).
What directions might be taken at this juncture, then, to increase our understanding of the ways in which natural and cultural resource use can be sustained? First, agencies must begin to consider that resource or wildlife conservation as a policy, although essential as a stop-gap measure, may not be as effective in preserving resource availability over the long term as are cultural practices that produce resource conservation as a side-effect. Second, in terms of research directions, we should look for cultural practices, past and present, that have served to conserve resources or to improve the environment as indirect effects of other priorities and practices. Third, outside of our research, we should consider taking personal responsibility to effect change. In my own case, I have undertaken a cooperative venture with hotel entrepreneurs that combines archaeology, teaching, and eco-tourism with the idea of long-term conservation of forests, wildlife, and cultural resources. The hotel has developed a range of priorities to minimize deleterious environmental impact, including avoidance of air-conditioning and minimal use of pesticides. Employment and training opportunities are open at all levels to local nationals. The hotel infrastructure is non-hierarchical, which fosters lively interaction, intensive discussions, and maximizes the learning environment for support staff, archaeologists, ecologists, entrepreneurs, teachers, guides, tourists, and school children.
Whether we succeed - or indeed, what constitutes success - remains to be seen. I hope I have succeeded here, in any case, in stimulating discussion and debate so that we can move more rapidly toward resolving the environmental issues brought forward by recent re-examination of the research record.
Reference:
Melville, Elinor G.K. 1994. A Plague of Sheep: Environmental Consequences of the Conquest of Mexico. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
New Sustainable Cities Program at the University of Southern California
The U Southern California Environmental Sciences, Policy and Engineering Sustainable Cities Program is a new multidisciplinary doctoral training program funded by the National Science Foundation. It is a campus-wide collaborative that brings together multiple disciplines involved in environmental research, policy and management around the theme of building sustainable cities for the 21st century. The Sustainable Cities Program offers doctoral students a unique opportunity to approach environmental problems from a multifaceted perspective, transcending conventional confines of disciplinary specialization. As a result, doctoral students will acquire a profound understanding of how collaborative, interdisciplinary, policy-relevant research on major environmental problems should be conducted.
The Environmental Sciences, Policy and Engineering Sustainable Cities Program is a two-year program, integrated into doctoral program requirements, involving course work and participation in faculty collaborative research projects. Participating faculty come from the natural and social sciences, engineering, medicine, planning, policy and management. Collaborative faculty projects are built on linkages to major decision-makers and stakeholders, and results will have implications for public policy in the region and beyond. PhD students admitted to the Sustainable Cities Program can expect to receive two-year Fellowships ($15,000) awarded on a competitive basis. In addition they will receive cost-of-education allowances and a modest research support fund. All Sustainable City Program students must also be admitted to a USC doctoral degree program in their field of specialization.
For more information, please see <http://www.usc.edu>, call 213/740-7832 or contact either of the Program's Co-Directors - Joseph Devinny (Devinny@usc.edu) or Jennifer Wolch (Wolch@usc.edu) - for additional information.
Send your Section news items to Ed Liebow (liebow@policycenter.com, 206/675-1002; fax: 206/675-1005). And check the Anthropology/Environment web site regularly: <http://travel.to/anthenv>