Environmental Justice vs. Nature Protection

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Environmental Justice vs.Nature Protection
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The Winding Road Incorporating Social Justice
and Human Rights into Protected Areas

• Crystal L. Fortwangler

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Primary Forms of Biodiversity Protection

1. National Park Model
2. Regional Approaches
3. Community-Based Conservation
4. Private Acquisition

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The Yellowstone Model
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Biosphere Reserves

• Established by the United Nations Educational,
  Scientific and Cultural Organizations (UNESCO)
  Programme on Man and the Biosphere beginning in
  1971.
• http//www.unesco.org/mabdb/bios1-2.htm

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Biodiversity Protection in Practice Problems

• Forced removal of local people to create
  protected areas.
• Torture and intimidation of local people to
  enforce protection policies.
• Restricting local peoples access to natural
  resources.
• Excluding local people from participating in
  decision-making and management of local protected
  areas.

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Biodiversity Protection in Practice Problems

• Failure to actually protect biodiversity because
  local people exploit natural resources, kill
  animals and plants, encroach upon habitat, and/or
  denude or destroy habitat.
• Worries that local people will put their own
  interests above the goal of protecting local
  biodiversity.
• Worries that local people will make bad
  management decisions about how to protect natural
  areas.
• Ironically, attempting to protect biodiversity
  might hasten its demise.

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Feeding People vs. Saving Nature (1996)Holmes
Rolston III

• If persons widely demonstrate that they value
  many other worthwhile things over feeding the
  hungry (Christmas gifts, college educations,
  symphony concerts),
• And if developed countries, to protect what they
  value, post national boundaries across which the
  poor may not cross (immigration laws),
• And if there is unequal and unjust distribution
  of wealth, and if just redistribution to
  alleviate poverty is refused,
• And if one-fifth of the world continues to
  consume four-fifths of the production of goods
  and four-fifths consumes one-fifth,
• And if escalating birthrates continue so that
  there are no real gains in alleviating poverty,
  only larger numbers of poor in the next
  generation,
• And if low productivity on domesticated lands
  continues, and if the natural lands to be
  sacrificed are likely to be low in productivity,
• And if significant natural values are at stake,
  including extinctions of species,
• Then one out not always to feed people first, but
  rather one ought to sometimes save nature.

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Nature as Community The Convergence of
Environment and Social Justice

• Giovanna Di Chiro
• Because mainstream environmental groups (MEGs)
  have focused so heavily on wilderness
  preservation and protecting endangered species,
  and have focused so little on urban and rural
  environmental problems, MEGs have contributed to
  the continued environmental injustices suffered
  by marginalized urban and rural peoples.
• MEGs advocate top-down nature management at the
  expense of local communities, and MEGs contribute
  to participatory, recognition, and identity
  injustice.
• MEGs perpetuate past colonial injustices by
  alienating people from nature.
• With their focus on protecting nature
  (wilderness) and species out there in the wild,
  MEGs deny human-nature relationships.

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U.S. Wilderness Act of 1964

• Introduced in Congress in 1956 and rewritten 65
  times until it passed in 1964.
• Created the National Wilderness Preservation
  System (NWPS) with 54 wilderness areas (9.1
  million acres).
• Set a precedent for subsequent wilderness acts.
• http//www.wilderness.net/index.cfm?fuseNWPS

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Section 2c of the Wilderness Act of 1964

• A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where
  man and his works dominate the landscape, is
  hereby recognized as an area where the earth and
  its community of life are untrammeled by man,
  where man himself is a visitor who does not
  remain. An area of wilderness is further defined
  to mean in this chapter an area of undeveloped
  Federal land retaining its primeval character and
  influence, without permanent improvements or
  human habitation, which is protected and managed
  so as to preserve its natural conditions and
  which (1) generally appears to have been affected
  primarily by the forces of nature, with the
  imprint of man's work substantially unnoticeable
  (2) has outstanding opportunities for solitude or
  a primitive and unconfined type of recreation
  (3) has at least five thousand acres of land or
  is of sufficient size as to make practicable its
  preservation and use in an unimpaired condition
  and (4) may also contain ecological, geological,
  or other features of scientific, educational,
  scenic, or historical value.

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Wilderness Under Attack

• Some members of the Environmental Justice
  Movement openly criticize wilderness for
• Being racist, ethnocentric, colonialist, and
  elitist.
• Putting nonhuman nature above people and
  sacrificing human interests to preserve
  wilderness.
• Begin celebrated as a fiction or a place that
  really doesnt exist.

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No Wilderness Argument

• 1. The concept of wilderness denotes an area
  that exists independent of human cultures.
• 2. To say that an area exists independent of
  human cultures is to say that it is uninhabited
  and/or untrammeled by people and has been such in
  the past.
• 3. New interpretations of both old and new
  empirical evidence strongly suggest that no areas
  of the United States were uninhabited and/or
  untrammeled by people prior to current wilderness
  designation.
• 4. No current wilderness areas (de facto or
  legally designated) satisfy criteria required to
  qualify as wilderness.
• Conclusion Thus, there are no real wilderness
  areas in the United States. When viewed as a
  set, the category of wilderness has no members.

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Moral Argument Against Wilderness Preservation

• 1. Wilderness areasareas that are empty of
  people and their developmentswere created by
  Euroamericans who intentionally killed and
  removed Native American Indians from landscapes.
• 2. Killing and removing Native American Indians
  from landscapes was morally wrong.
• Conclusion Thus, because wilderness areas were
  created by morally wrong actions, the
  preservation of wilderness today is morally wrong.

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Ethnocentric Argument Against Wilderness

• 1. The idea of wilderness is largely a product
  of European and Euroamerican ethnic cultures.
• 2. Wilderness preservation, as informed by this
  idea, is largely practiced only by people of
  European ancestry.
• 3. The practice of wilderness preservation
  largely has ignored the presence of non-European
  descended peoples, such as Native American
  Indians.
• 4. To ignore non-European descended peoples is
  wrong.
• 5. Ethnocentrism is morally wrong.
• Conclusion Thus, the practice of wilderness
  preservation and the idea of wilderness are
  ethnocentric, and because of this they are
  morally wrong.

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Values Argument Against Wilderness Preservation
(Elitism Argument)

• 1. Wilderness preservation historically has been
  justified by appealing to the aesthetic,
  religious/spiritual, recreational, and symbolic
  values of wilderness for people.
• 2. Only people in privileged positions of
  economic, social, and/or political power
  historically have been able to appreciate these
  values.
• 3. Because most people have never been in
  privileged positions of economic, social, and/or
  political power, most people have never been able
  to appreciate the values of wilderness.
• 4. Further, many people who have not been in
  these privileged positions of power have needed
  to use wilderness resources in order to make a
  living in an economic sense.
• Conclusion Thus, wilderness preservation is
  elitist. It is justified by appealing to values
  that are not available to most people. Further,
  protecting wilderness harms people economically.

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Social Constructivist Argument Against Wilderness

• 1. In order for the concept of wilderness to
  make sense, it must connote the idea of nature as
  existing independent of human cultures.
• 2. The concept of wilderness thus presupposes
  that a meaningful conceptual distinction can be
  made between human cultures and nonhuman nature.
• 3. Because wilderness and nature, like all other
  concepts, are human social constructions
  (concepts invented by social groups of people),
  it is problematic to say that wilderness exists
  independent from human cultures. That is,
  because the ideas of nature and wilderness are
  socially constructed, there are no non-socially
  constructed natural areas that exist independent
  of human cultures.
• What the concept of wilderness connotesthe idea
  of nature as existing independent of human
  culturesis non-existent.