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Anthropology and the Environment
December 1999
Ed Liebow, Contributing Editor
This month's column features two bits of business news. First is a summary of the Section's Annual Business Meeting held in Chicago in November. And second is a summary of the US national budget for environmental and natural resources programs. The federal budget negotiations were not completed until nearly two months into the new fiscal year that began on October 1, and appropriations for the Interior Department, a key resource management agency, were central to the partisan debate that delayed the FY-2000 budget's passage.
Annual Business Meeting Summary
November 19, 1999 - Chicago
Introductions:
Outgoing Section President Carole Crumley welcomed the 40 people in attendance, and introduced recently elected board members Melissa Johnson (Southwestern U) and Sandra Crismon (Georgia). President-elect Bonnie McCay (Rutgers) could not attend, but sent her greetings. Crumley also thanked 1999 Program Chair Alx Dark for his organizing efforts.
Rappaport Student Paper Prize:
The review committee (Susan Lees [Hunter C] and Peter Castro [Syracuse]) decided to split the award this year between two papers, one based on fieldwork and the other on library research. The fieldwork-based award goes to Loretta Ann Cormier (Tulane) for her paper "Monkey as Food, Monkey as Child: Symbolic Cannibalism of the Guaja of Maranhao, Brazil." The library research award goes to Marsha Brofka (Illinois), whose paper is entitled "A Place for Class In Environmental Discourse." Students interested in submitting manuscripts for this year's competition should follow the style guidelines of Human Ecology and send three copies to Section President Pete Brosius (Georgia).
Publications:
Ed Liebow announced that the special issue of Culture and Agriculture jointly produced with the A&E section will be available in late January. A copy of this special issue, edited by Priscilla Weeks (Env Inst of Houston) will be sent to all A&E members. The Section's Board has discussed various options for publishing a periodical as a service to the membership, and for the time being has decided to invest in further development of the Section's web site
Crumley also announced that AltaMira Press has offered a contract to publish a volume, Anthropology Faces the Environmental Issues, based on the Section's inaugural symposium. Publication can be expected around September, 2000.
EANTH-L: The Environmental Anthropology List-Server:
Christian Turner (Georgia) has seamlessly assumed the role of list-owner, and a number of substantive threads have surfaced in recent months' discussions. We will post some administrative advice for participants, including instructions on how to set administrative options as well as suggestions for reducing the volume of duplicative material.
Initiatives: Resource Guide
Christian Turner is also coordinating the work of compiling a guide to programs and concentrations in ecological and environmental anthropology. This Guide will probably be published online, where it can be updated regularly. A questionnaire will be mailed out shortly to query colleges and universities about their training resources in anthropology and the environment.
Initiatives: Global Ecology Project
Pete Brosius described the Global Ecology Project, a video production that initially aimed to raise the visibility of ecological specialists in anthropology, modeled after the Anthropologists At Work video produced by NAPA. The project's vision has since expanded to include a series of 9 videos, the first of which will focus specifically on anthropologists. The remaining pieces in the series will each have a topical focus, but the roles taken by anthropologists will also be featured. The aim is to have the series broadcast on the Public Broadcasting Service network. Seed money was provided by the Section, the University of Georgia's Office of International Education, and by the rock band REM. The total production budget is more than $300,000. The Georgia Center for Continuing Education has agreed to make a substantial in-kind contribution of production facilities, and a funding proposal has recently been submitted to the US Environmental Protection Agency. An illustrious international advisory board has been assembled, professional screenwriter Wendy Mericle (who has a degree in anthropology) has been recruited, and award-winning actor Peter Coyote has agreed to narrate the series.
Treasurer's Report
Crumley presented the Treasurer's report on behalf of Tom McGovern. Current membership is about 420. The 2000 budget is projected at about $14,000, but previous restrictions on accumulating fund balances have been lifted, making it possible for the Section to honor its commitment to support the AAA Minority Fellowship program and communications activities that had been placed on hold.
The Section's Board has voted to recommend an increase in annual dues to $25 for regular members. Student dues will remain $15. This increase would allow the Section to generate a fund balance to invest in worthy projects, including a more concentrated effort in public policy and outreach. Pete Brosius said that he will be soliciting expressions of interest in this effort shortly.
Announcements - Call For Papers
Section members are invited to submit proposals for invited sessions, panels, or workshops addressing the theme of the 2000 annual meeting, The Public Face of Anthropology. Events that bring together participants from academic, policy, and activist settings are especially encouraged. Krista Harper (U Mass-Amherst) is the Section's Program Chair for the San Francisco meeting. Send her suggestions for invited sessions, panels, and workshops by email <kharper@anthro.umass.edu> or by phone (413) 545-0696.
Joan Mencher (CUNY; jmencher@mail.gc.cuny.edu) announced that she would like to organize a session for next year's meeting in San Francisco, "Who Will Play God in the 21st Century?" This is intended to be a symposium on the environmental and social effects of biotechnology.
Luisa Maffi (Northwestern, maffi@NWU.EDU) also suggested a symposium on conservation issues, with key conversationists invited to complement the perspectives offered by anthropologists.
Turning Over a New Leaf
Crumley's last official act as Section President was to hand a green leaf cluster to in-coming President Pete Brosius. Brosius thanked Crumley for her dedicated service, and said he hoped he would live up to the expectations that have been created. Brosius emphasized, with reinforcement by Board Member Tom Sheridan, that the Section needs to be able to develop its ability to rapidly mobilize expert responses when environmental issues emerge. In addition to publicly projecting key concepts of environmental anthropology through such efforts as the video series, the public policy efforts will be a top priority, Brosius said.
Environmental Programs In The Fy-2000 Federal Budget
Compiled from information provided by the US Congress, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Environmental News Service)
More than seven weeks into the new federal fiscal year, the US Congress finally completed its spending package, including an impressive number of pro-environmental concessions and conservation funding initiatives. The package includes 13 separate pieces of legislation. Almost $15 billion has been authorized in natural resources spending and an extension on wind energy tax credits.
The Clinton administration won a number of battles, including more money for Western land acquisition, tighter hard rock mining regulations, and an annual source of conservation funding. To balance the nearly $6 billion in spending that the Democrats wrested from the Republican controlled Congress, the administration was forced to accept a 0.38 percent across-the-board funding cut for all federal agencies. However, the administration succeeded in allowing each agency to make its own decisions about where to cut spending.
The Interior Department budget provides $255 million for resource stewardship in the National Park System, $26 million more than in fiscal year 1999, but $12 million less than the Park Service had requested for this year. According to the National Park Service, nationwide natural and cultural resource protection needs alone approach $1 billion. The total FY-2000 operational budget for the park system is $1.4 billion.
The FY-2000 budget does include additional funding for the acquisition of parkland threatened by commercial development. In addition, White House negotiators were able to remove several anti-parks riders that had been added to the bill without open congressional debate. For example, the original bill tried to delay efforts to restore natural quiet at the Grand Canyon and to continue damaging livestock grazing in Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area in Washington state. But the compromise bill still blocks efforts by the Interior Department to prohibit destructive lead mining near the Ozark National Scenic Riverway.
Energy and Environmental Protection Agency budgets received appropriations at or near the amounts requested. The Energy Department's overall budget, the largest segment of which goes for cleaning up former weapons production facilities, includes more than $20 million in environmental health studies. EPA's budget, which amounts to more than $7 billion, includes key provisions for a climate change technology initiative, strengthening partnerships with Indian tribal governments, and water quality protection along the US-Mexican border.
Interior, Energy, and Environmental Protection Agency budgets are not the only places with environmental appropriations. Agriculture includes social science research and applications in its extension services and within the Forest Service. The Department of Commerce includes the National Marine Fisheries Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Commerce appropriations will support Pacific Northwest salmon recovery efforts, including habitat restoration, research and stock enhancement. At the recommendation of the National Science Board, environmental research, education and scientific assessment is becoming one of the highest priorities of the National Science Foundation. Accordingly, the National Science Foundation will sponsor more than $60 million in Arctic research activities. NSF will also sponsor nearly $50 million in FY-2000 activities under the agency-wide initiative in Biocomplexity in the Environment, which will support interdisciplinary efforts that: span temporal and spatial scales, consider multiple levels of biological organization, cross conceptual boundaries, use contemporary technologies, and link research to environmental decision-making.
Budget compromise among special interest groups has been elevated to an art form in recent years, and many observers feel that the FY-2000 budget's environmental provisions, while substantial, still leave room for considerable improvement. The pattern the negotiations seem to have followed was one of legislative proposals filled with anti-environmental riders, drawing a response to strike these proposed amendments. The net effect, however, was to see a great deal of effort spent fighting an agenda cast in negative terms, with the opportunity to set a more far-sighted pro-environment agenda deferred in all likelihood until after the election-year legislative session is complete.
Send your Section news items to Ed Liebow (liebow@policycenter.com, tel: 206/675-1002; fax: 206/675-1005). And check the award-winning Anthropology/Environment web site regularly: http://travel.to/anthenv