Society and Exploitation Through Nature

Martin Phillips, Tim Mighall

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781138408517
• eBook ISBN: 9781317889335
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

Society and Exploitation Through Nature offers an integrated approach to the environment, linking the philosophical, social and physical sciences to environmental problems and issues. The text covers three main themes; exploitation of nature and society; the limits of exploitation through sustainability and managing environmental problems. These themes are illustrated throughout the book with global case studies.

Chapter 1
Themes in the Study of Society and Nature

1.1 Introduction

Notions of environment and nature and their relationship to contemporary and future societies are subjects of considerable interest, concern and debate at the present moment. Unsurprisingly therefore a whole host of publications has emerged addressing these issues, including many student textbooks. So why did we feel the need to write another? Generally it stemmed from a feeling that two approaches dominate presentations of environmental issues. First, a large number of textbooks tackle the environment from broadly physical science and managerial perspectives: they adopt what Unwin (1992), drawing on the work of Habermas (1978), characterises as an ‘empirical-analytical’ approach to nature. Nature is seen as a distinct, material, entity which: i) is separate from, although affected by, society; ii) operates through sets of universal processes; and iii) can, at least potentially, be understood and manipulated by people. The textbooks adopting this perspective focus on describing the processes that create environmental resources or problems for society and outlining instances whereby these resources and/or problems are managed or mismanaged (e.g. see Mannion, 1991b, 1998; Pickering and Owen, 1994; Kemp, 1994 and O’Riordan, 1995a). The second approach may be seen as broadly social scientific and also more philosophical, in that it seeks to identify how people think about and interact with what they consider to be nature. Much of this work is quite historical in character, highlighting how concepts of‘what is nature?’ vary over time (e.g see Pepper, 1984; and also from a less historical perspective Simmons, 1993a; 1997). Such writing is also, at times, couched in quite abstract levels of argument (e.g. see Pepper, 1993; Smith, 1984). Although we feel that both these sorts of books have their value, and indeed as will become apparent we have made extensive use of them in writing this one, we also feel that there is a need to link together the philosophical, the social science and physical science perspectives. In doing so we have tried to write in a manner that is accessible to first-year undergraduates studying geography, environmental studies and science, and others interested in the issues of society and nature and their interconnections and interactions.

In this book one particular linkage between the social and the natural will be explored, that of ‘social exploitation’. We have consciously avoided structuring the book on an issue by issue basis but have instead sought to look for some commonalities and develop some critical lines that draw philosophical distinctions and concepts into the discussion of particular case studies. In this first chapter the philosophical argument surrounding the concepts of society, nature and exploitation will be discussed. Subsequent chapters will explore: i) how the exploitative relationship between society and nature may have changed over time; ii) whether this relationship is facing problems of sustainability in the contemporary world; iii) whether is it possible to manage this relationship to overcome or alleviate the problems it is creating; iv) why this relationship is established and who benefits from it; and v) whether it is possible to have alternative relationships between society and nature.

1.2 Society and nature: the meanings behind the terms

Terms like nature and society, although frequently used, are highly complex. Soper (1995, p. 1) begins her book, What is nature?, by observing that the term nature is ‘at once both very familiar and extremely elusive’. She claims it is an idea that people employ with ‘such ease and regularity’ that at times it appears as if people have ‘some “natural” access to its intelligibility’, and yet it is also seen to be a concept ‘so various and comprehensive in its use as to defy … definition’. Some people have nevertheless tried, with Lovejoy (1935), for instance, isolating 66 different senses of the term ‘nature’ or ‘natural’. Furthermore, as Neil Smith (1984) has remarked, the term ‘nature’ not only includes a whole variety of meanings, but many of these meanings are contradictory to others. Hence:

Nature is material and it is spiritual, it is given and made, pure and undefiled; nature is order and it is disorder, sublime and secular, dominated and victorious; it is totality and a series of parts, women and object, organism and machine. Nature is the gift of God and it is the product of its own evolution; it is a universal outside history and is also the product of history, accidental and designed, wilderness and garden (Smith, 1984, p. 2).

Smith suggests, however, that it is possible to resolve all these definitions and contradictions into two basic viewpoints. According to the first viewpoint nature is ‘external’ to human activity: it is the realm of objects that lie outside human activity. This concept, for instance, is embodied in the notion of ‘natural landscapes’ as being landscapes unaffected by human activity.

The second, and sometimes related, conception of nature is as an ‘inherent state’. Objects and processes are said to have an ‘inherent and essential quality’ (Williams, 1980, p. 68). This conception of nature as an inherent state is built upon two other notions. First, nature is seen as being universal: that is objects and processes are said to behave in a particular and unchanging way. For instance, if someone says that it is in the ‘nature’ of people to be selfish or greedy, or kind and considerate, it implies that this is a universal characteristic of people: all people everywhere and throughout human history have had this characteristic. Seen in this light the concept of nature is profoundly ‘ahistorical’: it implies that, at least in essence, things do not change through history. A second assumption of the notion of nature as ‘inherent state’ is that of ‘one dimensionality’: objects and processes are seen to have a single basic character or ‘essence’. Diversity is reduced to a single characteristic: that of nature. Indeed, the concept of nature is frequently used as a vehicle for generalisation: hence, for instance, people talk not only of ‘human nature’ and ‘animal nature’, but also frequently argue that the two can be reduced to each other: both people and animal in a sense share a common ‘nature’.

One or other (or both) of the two basic notions of nature, as an ‘external object’ and as an ‘inherent state’, can be said to underlie most of the individual definitions of nature you are likely to find. However, both these notions of nature have been heavily criticised. The notion of ‘external nature’, for instance, has been criticised from at least three directions. First, it has been argued that even the most extreme wilderness areas have been affected by human activity: Antarctica, for example, sometimes portrayed as the last wilderness, is being changed by direct and indirect human activity (see Box 1.1). The notion of external nature has also been challenged by ‘evolutionary’ and ‘ecological’ theories that see humankind as part of nature. Charles Darwin’s Origin of species, for example, both implied that humans were descended from animals and argued that they were conditioned by similar circumstances of existence, such as the ‘struggle for existence’ and the ‘survival of the fittest’ (see Livingstone, 1992). Third, it has been argued that technological developments have meant that people have become in a sense less human, in that there are blurred boundaries between the human and non-human (see Box 1.2).

Box 1.1 Antarctica - a place of external nature?

As Dodds (1996, p. 63) has commented, by the middle of the twentieth century Antarctica had become one of ‘the last “exciting blank spaces”’ in the world. It was the only continent that, as Dodds puts it, ‘remained largely beyond the measurements, classifications, and naming practices of European science’ (p. 66). It was by the mid-twentieth century certainly a place of European and neo-European exploration, but it was then, and is still now, a place that had been neither totally walked over nor completely claimed by some sovereign power. Even today approximately a quarter of the continent has not been claimed by nation state or international group, largely as a consequence of the Antarctic Treaty, which came into force in 1961 and froze claims for sovereignty as they were at that point. The treaty also maintained that the continent should ‘for ever be used exclusively for peaceful purposes only’, and should not become either ‘the scene or object of international discord’ nor a place to conduct nuclear explosions or used for the disposal of nuclear wastes (Antarctic Treaty, 1959). In 1991 a Protocol on Environmental Protection was added to the treaty (Antarctic Treaty, 1991b). The protocol designated Antarctica as ‘a natural reserve’ and in the meeting at which the protocol was drawn up it was argued that ‘Antarctica is the largest unspoiled continent on Earth’ (Antarctic Treaty Consultative Committee, 1991). In these international agreements, and also in more everyday ‘geographical imaginations’, Antarctica is seen as a place of ‘pristine nature’, that is a place lying beyond human activity and influence.

The Antarctic Treaty and the Protocol on Environmental Protection have not only seen Antarctica as a place of pristine nature but also actively sought to limit human activity so as to maintain this status. It is, however, questionable as to whether this has been achieved. The Antarctic Treaty, for example, applied itself to the land area, ‘including all ice shelves’, that lay south of 60 degrees south latitude. However, it explicitly excluded itself from ‘the exercise of rights… with regard to the high seas within that area’ (Antarctic Treaty, 1959, Article VI). The seas of Antarctica are, however, highly rich in nutrients and support a high level of plant and invertebrate animal life, which in turn act as food for considerable numbers of fish, birds and mammals. Early Antarctic explorers often sought to exploit commercially elements of Antarctic nature, for example by hunting seals, whales and penguins for their skins, blubber and oil respectively (Walton and Morris, 1990). By the early twentieth century considerable numbers of British and Norwegian ships were in Antarctic waters hunting for whales, largely as a consequence of having exhausted whale stocks in the Atlantic Ocean. These whaling ships were then joined by Japanese, German and Russian ships. However, by the 1930s catches of the world’s largest whale, the blue whale, had started to decline due to over-hunting, followed by catches of fin, sei and humpback whales (Smith and Greene, 1991). In the 1960s attention turned to fish and krill, although once again there has been the suggestion of over-exploitation leading to declining catches (see Walton and Morris, 1990). At least part of the nature of the Antarctic, its oceans, has hence clearly come under the influence of human activity.

It is not only the sealife of the Antarctic that has been seen as an exploitative resource. In the 1970s attention turned in a period of ‘oil crisis’ to consider whether there might be oil and natural gas reserves in Antarctica. A number of exploratory studies have been undertaken, albeit with rather differing interpretations about the extent of potential stocks (see Beck, 1990; Walton and Morris, 1990). A similar story can also be told with regard to mineral resources, with some studies arguing that there is clear potential for the commercial exploitation of high-value minerals such as plutonium. In 1980 negotiations started amongst members of the Antarctic Treaty to establish a system to regulate mineral activity in the Antarctic. There was, however, considerable disagreement about both how mineral activity should be regulated and, increasingly in the late 1980s and early 1990s, about whether any mineral exploitation should be allowed. In 1989 the governments of Argentina, New Zealand, the United States of America, the United Kingdom and Uruguay favoured ‘environmentally regulated’ commercial exploitation of Antarctic mineral resources, while the Australian and French governments favoured a complete ban on mineral exploitation (MacKenzie and Joyce, 1990). Although a Convention on the Regulation of Antarctic Mineral Activities (Antarctic Treaty, 1991a) was drawn up, the signatories of the Antarctic Treaty chose to adopt the Protocol on Environmental Protection which prohibited ‘[a]ny activity relating to mineral resources, other than scientific research’ (Antarctic Treaty, 1991b). While this protocol may be seen to have put a considerable break on human activity, three caveats need to be made.

First, as quoted above, the Protocol explicitly excludes mineral activity related to scientific research from its regulation. There have been a steadily growing number of research bases established in Antarctica, many of them conducting geological drilling and excavation. It has come to be recognised that this activity is affecting the Antarctic environment, not only through transforming local topographies but also through the release of pollutants into wider environments. Scientific research activity often draws on a considerable amount of mechanised technology, ranging from drilling machines, through to snow-cats, skidoos, helicopters and aeroplanes. These all emit substances into the local environment, not least oxides of nitrogen, carbon and sulphur. Scientific research activity also involves people, who require the provision of accommodation, lighting, heating and food, and who also produce waste products. Human activity and the provision of the means to sustain it clearly transforms local areas from ‘pristine nature’ and the disposal of waste can have quite widespread environmental impacts. In research bases waste material is flown or shipped out for disposal beyond Antarctica.

A second important feature of the Protocol is that it explicitly allows another human activity to occur in Antarctica, namely tourism. Tourism has grown considerably in Antarctica over the 1980s and 1990s (see Wace, 1990), it being estimated that during the 1991–2 summer season some 6,200 tourists visited Antarctica, compared to some 2,000 a decade earlier (Carvallo, 1994). Tourist visits to Antarctica make much of it being a pristine, wilderness area, away from society. With the growth of tourism, however, come the similar environmental impacts of pollution and environmental transformation as outlined with respect to scientific research. In 1988, for instance, an Argentinian tour boat ran aground spilling some 250,000 gallons of fuel into the Antarctic Ocean. Tourism clearly has a greater potential to expand into a mass activity than does scientific research, and as a result the extent of its impact on the nature of the Antarctic could be much more marked.

A third point to make about human activity and the Antarctic is that so far we have largely been concentrating on human activity within Antartica. However, it has also become clear that Antarctica has been impacted considerably by human activities occurring elsewhere in the globe. Most notably, it was in the atmosphere above the Antarctic icesheets that so-called ‘ozone holes’ were first recognised. Ozone is a molecular form of oxygen (0₃) that is formed in the upper atmosphere but that can quickly be destroyed by small quantities of other chemicals such as oxides of nitrogen, hydrogen and chlorine (see Chapter 3 for more information on this). In the Antarctic the level of ozone would ‘naturally’ vary seasonally, related to the formation during the winter months of a vortex of cold air that both prevents ozone-laden air from moving in from lower latitudes and also leads to the formation of large clouds of ice particles (known as polar stratospheric clouds) that release ozone-destroying gases when they melt in the Antarctic spring (again see Chapter 3 for more detail). Each year the level of ozone would fall slightly from a summer peak in November to a spring low in September. However, in the late 1970s a number of researchers began to report that ozone levels were falling to significantly lower levels and were remaining at low levels for much longer (see Figure B1.1). It was argued that this was in large part due to the human activity, and in particular the use of chlorofluorocarbons (or CFCs) within industrial products such as aerosols, plastics and coolants in refrigerators and air-conditioning systems. Attention was also drawn to the release of methane and nitrous oxides from an expanding world agriculture. Although produced beyond the borders of Antarctica, the ozone-destroying gases appear to have been spread by the ‘natural’ processes of atmospheric circulation into th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Publisher’s Acknowledgements
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of plates
• List of boxes
• List of box figures
• List of box tables and box plates
• Chapter 1 Themes in the study of society and nature
• Chapter 2 Stories of exploitation
• Chapter 3 Limits to exploitation? Problems of the contemporary global environment
• Chapter 4 Managing problems in the environment
• Chapter 5 Environmental problems in social context
• Chapter 6 Alternative relations between society and nature
• Chapter 7 Conclusion
• References
• Index