Decolonizing Nature

by William (Bill) Adams, Martin Mulligan

British imperialism was almost unparalleled in its historical and geographical reach, leaving a legacy of entrenched social transformation in nations and cultures in every part of the globe. Colonial annexation and government were based on an all-encompassing system that integrated and controlled political, economic, social and ethnic relations, and required a similar annexation and control of natural resources and nature itself. Colonial ideologies were expressed not only in the progressive exploitation of nature but also in the emerging discourses of conservation. At the start of the 21st century, the conservation of nature is of undiminished importance in post-colonial societies, yet the legacy of colonial thinking endures. What should conservation look like today, and what (indeed, whose) ideas should it be based upon? Decolonizing Nature explores the influence of the colonial legacy on contemporary conservation and on ideas about the relationships between people, polities and nature in countries and cultures that were once part of the British Empire. It locates the historical development of the theory and practice of conservation - at both the periphery and the centre - firmly within the context of this legacy, and considers its significance today. It highlights the present and future challenges to conservationists of contemporary global neo-colonialism The contributors to this volume include both academics and conservation practitioners. They provide wide-ranging and insightful perspectives on the need for, and practical ways to achieve new forms of informed ethical engagement between people and nature.

Genres: Environment

320 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2002

Reviews

[Jesse Field · Rating 2 out of 5]

In this overtly brainy and academic set of essays, researchers compare notes on the need to re-think conservation and stewardship of lands in places like South Africa, Scotland, and Australia. An overriding theme is that more communication is needed with the people and communities closest to the natural areas we intend to conserve, and they must have active roles in the stewardship practices, and these practices may have to involve commercial exploitation of the lands to the extent that the people who live on it can make their living.

In the United States, where some of the earliest conservation efforts were taken thanks to Joseph Banks and Theodore Roosevelt, ecology went hand in hand with commerce. Rational management of forests was the norm. Indigenous people and practices were walled out. Ignoring or besmearing indigenous stewardship practices did not help conservation efforts, either in the North America, or Australia, or South Africa.

Hunting is a terribly colonial activity. In South Africa, failing aristocrat whites led the hunts, and black South Africans could only be porters. Today, black South Africans from the former bandustans are sometimes given agency to manage lands, but they need more commercial powers, according to reseachers visiting the region. Programs like "Campfire" only provided limited help to the local economy; maybe they need full-time commercial impresarios to help them compete in the modern market. In the Scottish highlands, civil society might be able to bring people together to make use of the emptied-out lands that often are held by foreign owners. Some kind of cooperative partnerships are likely necessary in Australia, even though they hardly worked when it came to protecting the Great Barrier Reef, just because its the only way to connect up big patches of land as is needed for the next steps in animal and plant conservation. Australia is a very interesting case of a place that's been thoroughly invaded by all manner of beast and plant, so they should really get over any lingering sense of pristine wilderness. I guess the new ideal is mainly a mix of indigenous sense of place and global middle class aesthetics of nature, or at least that's as much as we might glean from the fraught and fussy chapters 8 and 12, on teaching sense of place in experiential learning, and on sense of place in Australian poetics. To cut through the obscurantism of these pieces, it seems advisable to conclude in the interim that there is no such concept as sense of place. Another set of descriptors should be used to replace this defunct term, and preferably one that yields actually falsifiable propositions.

In chapter three, there is some valuable argumentation that seeing the environment as a system with fragile ecological relationships is a crucial lesson we should incorporate into our education. The urban environment is not disconnected from nature; we are all ecological agents. Australia was severely damaged by British voices who wanted change the land to look more like England. (Which sounds both silly and true as we read along.) Systems thinking has been a productive boost to conservation work in Britain itself, argues chapter 12, in one of the only actually useful pieces. The bibliography here is especially valuable.

My friend K wanted me to read a different book, Decolonizing Nature: Contemporary Art and the Politics of Ecology, and I picked this one up by mistake. It's been awhile since I imbricated with such involved discourse on such a plethora of issues all of which admittedly and self-reflexively produced more questions than answers, and I found the interventions encountered at times to, while indeed engaging with a variety of social agents and perspectives of marginalized and colonized subjects, human, animal, and imagined, a bolstered trajectory toward strategies for practice would have been helpful as well. Translation: this was a lot big words for so little payoff. I think I might like the other volume better, because it is by artists, and while they are no better at writing, they do leave us pictures to look at.