EST-200, Cultural Ecology, Review for Final

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EST-200, Cultural Ecology, Review for Final

• Dr. Betty Faust
• SUNY ESF

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NEW OPTIONS

• Ecojustice
• Biophysical economics
• Sustainable development
• Community based conservation work
• Alternative livelihoods for rural residents

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Biosphere Planning

• Parks - natural protected areas - no people?
• Commercial, intensive agriculture
• sustainable?
• Cattle? Pigs? Chickens?
• Western Dichotomies - nature vs. culture
• Indigenous integration? Cycles?

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More Biosphere Planning
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Urban Planning

• Concentrate people
• Save nature
• Green cities?
• Effects on biosphere?
• Externalities
• sewage
• food
• water

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Seas - world ocean

• Over-fishing - modern technologies on boats
• Aqua culture - damage to mangroves and reefs
• Coral reefs - whitening, sick
• Sea turtles, whales - tumors (concentrate
  contaminants)

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Atmosphere

• Holes in ozone layer, global warming
• Natural variations in climate over time
• sunspots
• earth orbit
• Average global temperature
• wind patterns, rainfall
• ocean temperatures

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Solutions?

• Carbon credits - reforesting, protecting
• Indigenous knowledge science
• Sustainable management of resources
• histories of use
• monitoring
• compensation to native managers
• DECENTRALIZATION

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Globalization

• National governments vs. local communities and
  their environment
• National governments vs. International
  organizations - United Nations, World Bank,
  Global Environmental Facility, International
  Union for the Conservation of Nature, CITES, Rio,
  Johannesburg, etc.

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Force or Incentives

• Wars over resources, ethnicities vs. nations
• oil
• water
• soil
• forests
• TRAGEDY of the Commons?
• Traditions plus
• New forms of local administration
• Incentives

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The Plumed Serpent

• Stages
• traditional way of life, how we do things
• progress, buying new things, learning new ways
• assessment
• what have we lost?

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Losses

• Social \
• teen-agers, alcohol, drugs, rape, pregnancies
• wife beating, violent fights, alcoholism
• divorces, children suffering, grandparents as
  buffer
• moving out, searching for jobs - lack of local
  resources, poor prices for products

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LOSSES

• Resources - ecosystem services
• timber, animals - for sale
• wood for household use, furniture, building
• rainfall patterns affected by deforestation
• soil gradually declining in fertility
• smaller yards for producing food - pop. growth
• few animals to hunt

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Cognitive-symbolic losses

• Ritual symbolism
• New - media images, political slogans
• Earth as island floating in space
• Slogans - Thing globally, act locally
• Old - Plumed serpent in ritual context
• order of time and space, sex-gender, generations,
  fertility of soil and humans
• connections, cycles, living lightly

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Recommendation

• Working with the elders to rescue the local
  eco-history, traditional management strategies,
  knowledge of ecosystem, weather cycles, etc.
• Documenting the new elements
• Analyzing what information they need about long
  term consequences, alternatives.

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ACTIONS

• Visits to other communities, seeing is believing
  what can happen
• Trying alternatives with them
• Teaching monitoring skills
• Educating leaders community with AV materials
• Livelihood protection - alternatives