The Dictionary of Human Geography (55 page)

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Authors: Michael Watts

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environmental history
Environmental his tories reflect a basic desire to understand the relations between people and nature through time. Over the years, scholars have approached this broad and important topic from several disciplines. Anthropologists conducted ethno graphic studies of the ways in which particular peoples conceived of, utilized and interacted with the natural (and supernatural) world. Archaeologists seekingthe origins ofdomestica tion explored the earliest relations among people, plants andaniMALs. Ecologists and other scientists sought to understand how human actions affected natural systems. Students of mythology, reLigion, and Law traced expres sions of human attitudes towards and concern for nature inmedieval and Mesopotamian times. And after generations of philosophers had pondered the ways in which individuals living in different epochs conceived of the natural world, some among them came, late in the twentieth century, to argue against the very idea that ?nature? and ?society? are separate, distinct entities. In general, however, historians and geographers have led scholarship in this area. (NEW PARAGRAPH) In a manner reflected epigrammatically in the title of Marjorie Nicolson?s book, Mountain gloom and mountain glory (1959), historians such as Keith Thomas (1996 [1983]) and Roderick Nash (1967) traced changes in the ways that individuals and societies regarded nature or wiLderness through the centuries. Others, including William Cronon (1983), Timothy Silver (1990) and Richard White (1980), considered what Landscapes reflected of human endeavours, or found, with Mart Stewart (1996) and Harold Innis (1927), fruit ful topics for enquiry in the ways in which eco nomic deveLopment rested, in considerable degree, upon the natural endowments (that people thought of as resources) of particular territories. Geographers long held the study of human environment relations to be one of the central ?traditions?? of their field, and many of those with ecological and historical inclin ations wrote at some length about the mutual shaping of lands and lives over time. In France, Paul Vidal de la Blache (1926), Albert Demangeon (1942) and Jean Brunhes (1952) all pursued investigations along these lines, and were among the giants of human geog raphy early in the twentieth century. In the UK, some of the leading exponents of the devel oping subject, including Emrys Jones (1951 2, 1956), Estyn Evans (1960) and Harold (NEW PARAGRAPH) J. Fleure (1951), were primarily interested in the relations between human societies and the natural environment (see also Langton, 1988). And in the USA, Clarence Glacken produced a classic work, Traces on the Rhodian shore: nature and culture in Western thoughtfrom ancient times to the end of the eighteenth century (1967), while Carl Ortwin Sauer, one of the convenors of the 1955 symposium on ?Man?s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth?, led the study of human induced landscape changes (Sauer, 1963a [1925]; Thomas, 1996 [1983]; Kenzer, 1986: see berkeLey schooL). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Still,thecharacterizationofaparticularfieldof enquiry as ?environmental history? is relatively new. By common North American assessments, it dates back to the rise of the environmentaL movement in the 1960s. There is merit in this view. As popular interest in environmental ques tions climbed, the spate ofhistorical scholarship on the relations between people and nature through time particularly in the USA reached new heights. In addition, the parallelismbetween the coinage ?environmental history? and public anxieties about ?environmental issues? which waxed and waned, but often seemed to be rooted in past practices (even if these were relatively recent) served, brilliantly, to draw attention to the field. Quickly, the phrase ?environmental his tory? was adopted as a euphonious and readily understood label for a widely diverse and rapidly expanding body of work, even as it served to veil regional, national and disciplinary differences in emphases, origins and approaches to the study of human environment relations. The field is now too large and varied to be encompassed in any single assessment, although a number of scholars have attempted to limn its developing dimensions (see, e.g., White, 1985; McNeill, 2003; Evenden and Wynn, 2009). (NEW PARAGRAPH) From the mid 1970s onwards, there were challenges to the dominant (American centred) construction of the field. Three among these warrant brief notice. English educated Richard Grove took issue with the common tendency, given particular substance by David Lowenthal, to identify the ?Versatile Vermonter? George Perkins Marsh as the fountainhead of the conservation movement, arguing in Green imperialism (1995) that awareness of human induced environmental changes long predated Marsh?s work and was sharpened by observation of the effects of colonial expansion on ?tropical island Edens? (Lowenthal, 1958, 2000; Marsh, 1965 [1864]; Grove, 1995).In 1989, the Indian scholar Ramachandra Guha offered an import ant ?Third world critique? of American envi ronmentalists? fascination with wilderness preservation and their embrace of deep ecoL ogy. Arguing against the anthropocentric/ bio centric distinction that marked current thinking on these matters, Guha (1989) insisted that efforts to extend wilderness protection world wide had many harmful consequences for indi genous peoples, and urged environmentalists to place ?a far greater emphasis on equity and the integration of ecological concerns with liveli hood and work?. Meanwhile, anthropologists and geographers working on questions of deveLopment and underdeveLopment in the global south coined the term political ecoL ogy to describe their interest in the linkages between political economy and cuLturaL ecoLogy (broadly, the relations between human societies and their natural environ ments). Political ecology is a broad church that has attracted many geographers including, for example, Karl Zimmerer (Zimmerer and Bassett, 2003), Paul Robbins (2004), Roderick Neumann (2005) and Philip Stott (Stott and Sullivan, 2000), amongst others for whom contemporary issues were more pressing than historical enquiry, sensu strictu, but many reached into the past to understand current circumstances, and the Journal of Political Ecology, established in 1994, promised ?Case Studies in History and Society? in its subtitle. (NEW PARAGRAPH) All of this made for something of an identity crisis in environmental history. A decade after Australian historical geographer Joe Powell suggested that the field reflected its practi tioners? collective will to believe in the field, American historian of scieNce Harriet Ritvo described it as ?an unevenly spreading blob? (Powell, 1996; Ritvo, 2005). Responding to such challenges and seeking to define their enterprise, several environmental historians found order in diversity. According to one prominent American authority, environmental history proceeds on three levels. The first documents ?the structure and distribution of natural environments of the past?. The second ?focuses on productive technology as it inter acts with the environment?. The third is concerned with the ?patterns of human per ception, ideology and value? and the ways in which they have worked in ?reorganizing and recreating the surface of the planet? (Worster, 1990b). Another specialist claims that envir onmental historians ?study how people have lived in the natural systems of the planet . . . how they have perceived nature [and how] they have reshaped it to suit their own idea of good living? (Warren, 2003). A third American scholar differentiates environmental histories by the extent of their concern with material, cultural/intellectual or political mat ters (McNeill, 2003). Studies of the first type focus upon ?changes in biological and physical environments, and how these changes have affected human societies?. Cultural/intellec tual environmental history is concerned with ?representations and images of nature in arts and letters?, and political environmental his tory examines ?law and state policy as it relates to the natural world?. In a rather different vein, the English geographer Ian Simmons has given shape to his own form of environmental history in a number of sweeping book length essays (Simmons, 1993, 1997, 2001). (NEW PARAGRAPH) chaos THeory and post structuraLism have also contributed to the (re)definition of environmental history. Thanks in part to the contributions of geographers such as David Demeritt (1994b, 1998, 2001a), Bruce Braun (2003), Noel Castree (1995) and Braun and Castree together (Braun and Castree, 1998; Castree and Braun, 2001), a field that rested, at its inception, upon a particular conception of scientific ecoLogy (predicated on notions of stability and climax vegetation complexes), and upon a dichotomized view of nature and culture, has been forced, in recent years, to grapple with the question of ?which nature and which conceptions of science should be brought in? (Asdal, 2003: but see also, and more importantly, Worster, 1990a; Cronon, (NEW PARAGRAPH) . At the same time, a new awareness of the relations between knowledge and powEr (and an associated concern with questions of ethics and social justice) has rendered less satisfying the once common declensionist nar ratives of environmental despoilation attrib uted to capitaList greed or human hubris. All of this has greatly complicated the stories that environmental historians tell. The field is broad and diffuse. It is also inherently inter disciplinary, and many of its practitioners are interested in providing perspective upon and contributing understanding to contemporary debates about human use of the Earth. Thus the field forms ?a locus for exploration and intellectual adventure?, offering humans a spirited, reflexive understanding of themselves and their world (Weiner, 2005). gw (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Cronon (1991); Evenden and Wynn (2009); Langton (1988); McNeill (2003); Worster (1983); Wynn (2007). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
Environmental Impact Assessment
A pro (NEW PARAGRAPH) cess of systematically identifying and assessing anticipated environmental impacts prior to a proposed project, policy, programme or plan being implemented. The identification of significant negative impacts may prevent the proposal (which is usually a project) from going ahead. This is very unusual. More likely, it results in the modification of the original pro posal, or the introduction of measures to ameli orate the anticipated negative environmental impacts. A proposal may generate positive environmental impacts, particularly if the site is already severely degraded, and these must be considered in the process. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) was introduced in the USA in 1969 under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). It is now a legal requirement in many countries, provinces/states and in some cities. International institutions such as the World Bank and international aid agencies also require an EIA process on particular develop ment proposals. Initially, assessments were limited to federal departments in the USA, but EIA has expanded to include provincial/ state and private development proposals, and developed from environmental protection to include sustainable development, a concept that emerged after EIA began. (NEW PARAGRAPH) There are numerous definitions of EIA. One succinct definition is ?an assessment of the impact of a planned activity on the envir onment? (in Glasson, Therivel and Chadwick, 2005, p. 4). The terminology varies between countries, and often causes confusion. For example, in some places EIA is simply known as ?Impact Assessment?, because it is broader than a narrow definition of the phys ical environment. Elsewhere it is known as Environmental Assessment (EA) because of the perceived negative connotations of ?impact?. In the USA, an EA is a preliminary study undertaken within the EIA process to identify the likelihood of significant impacts, which then require the preparation of a full EIS (Burris and Canter, 1997). (NEW PARAGRAPH) The process of EIA has become standard ized and incorporated into planning and development processes in many countries. Under some legislative frameworks, the EIA document may be required to address issues such as sustainable development, biodiversity, social impacts and economic considerations. There are also legal requirements for public participation. Some jurisdictions include Social Impact Assessment (SIA) within EIA, while in other places it is a separate activity (see Glasson, Therivel and Chadwick, 2005; Thomas and Elliot, 2005). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Environmental Impact Assessment is some times seen as an important process that pre vents the worst aspects of proposals from being implemented. It does not necessarily guarantee high quality development. In con trast, other people perceive the process to be a way of legitimizing controversial development proposals. In their view, it does very little to maintain environmental quality. They argue that many of the key decisions have already been taken at the policy level, and that the individual character of EIA often fails to consider the cumulative impacts of each development. In some locations these con cerns are partly being addressed by Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) at the policy and programme level (see Caratti, Dalkmann and Jiliberto, 2004) and Cumulative Impact Assessment (CIA). Glasson, Therivel and Chadwick (2005) and others advocate that an Integrated Environmental Assessment (IEA) addresses all of these considerations. pm (NEW PARAGRAPH)
environmental justice
The right of everyone to enjoy and benefit from a safe and healthy environment, regardless of race, class, gender or ethnicity. More specifically, environmental justice is a social movement that takes social justice and environmental politics as funda mentally inseparable. The movement has many divergent roots, such as the labour struggles of Cesar Chavez and Delores Huerta, and their crusade against the use of pesticides, in the 1960s; the community based struggles of Lois Gibbs and others that arose from the dumping of toxic chemicals in lower middle class neigh bourhoods at Love Canal, New York, in the 1970s; and in the responses of various offshoots of the civil rights movement to placing of toxic waste dumps, most famously in Warren County, North Carolina, in the early 1980s. Others contend that the most accurate date for the founding of the North American environ mental justice movement is 1492. Whenever its origins, the movement currently stresses three major tenets. First, it gives attention to unequal exposure to hazards through specific policies and practices that intentionally or unintention ally discriminate against individuals, groups or communities based on race, ethnicity, class or gender (Bullard, 1994). Second, it has become more broadly attentive nationally and inter nationally to the ways in which these same communities are differentially denied access to and control over both resources and decision making processes by institutions, corpor ations and individuals both in the USA and abroad (Neumann, 1998). Third, it has (NEW PARAGRAPH) become engaged in cuLturaL poLitics involv ing the very framing of the key terms of the debate (acceptable risk, waste, race and envir onmental health) that conditions the political possibilities of the struggle for environmental justice (Fortun, 2001). The movement is known for its creative, engaged activism, its deep commitment to grassroots approaches to social change and its irreverence towards bureaucracy in action. jk (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Cole and Foster (2001); Peet and Watts (2003); Pulido and Pena (1998); United Church of Christ (1987). (NEW PARAGRAPH)

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