Ecocultures

Blueprints for Sustainable Communities

Steffen Böhm, Zareen Pervez Bharucha, Jules Pretty

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780415812856
• eBook ISBN: 9781135083038
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Ecology
• Index: Biological Sciences

The world faces a 'perfect storm' of social and ecological stresses, including climate change, habitat loss, resource degradation and social, economic and cultural change. In order to cope with these, communities are struggling to transition to sustainable ways of living that improve well-being and increase resilience. This book demonstrates how communities in both developed and developing countries are already taking action to maintain or build resilient and sustainable lifestyles. These communities, here designated as 'Ecocultures', are exemplars of the art and science of sustainable living. Though they form a diverse group, they organise themselves around several common organising principles including an ethic of care for nature, a respect for community, high ecological knowledge, and a desire to maintain and improve personal and social wellbeing.

Case studies from both developed and developing countries including Australia, Brazil, Finland, Greenland, India, Indonesia, South Africa, UK and USA, show how, based on these principles, communities have been able to increase social, ecological and personal wellbeing and resilience. They also address how other more mainstream communities are beginning to transition to more sustainable, resilient alternatives. Some examples also illustrate the decline of ecocultures in the face of economic pressures, globalisation and climate change. Theoretical chapters examine the barriers and bridges to wider application of these examples. Overall, the volume describes how ecocultures can provide the global community with important lessons for a wider transition to sustainability and will show how we can redefine our personal and collective futures around these principles.

Part I Established ecocultures

DOI: 10.4324/9780203068472-1

1 Ecocultures

Towards sustainable ways of living

Steffen Böhm, Zareen Pervez Bharucha and Jules Pretty

DOI: 10.4324/9780203068472-2

On Christmas Eve 1968, from high above the Earth in lunar orbit, American astronauts Frank Borman and William Anders added image number AS8-14-2383 to NASA’s catalogue. It went on to become one of the most iconic photographs of all time. ‘Earthrise’ shows our planet rising above the empty lunar landscape, back-dropped by the cold emptiness of space. The dull brown of the lunar surface and the pitch dark of space dominate most of the image. But at the centre, Planet Earth glows with colour and the patterns of life. Oceans, swirling clouds and landmasses all crowd the arc of planet that hangs above the lunar horizon.

It is home.

Viewed thus from space, it became plainly obvious that life, and all that supports it, is quite distinctly bounded within the thin layers of water, land and air that form our biosphere. Perhaps unsurprisingly, ‘Earthrise’ is widely regarded as one of the catalysts for the modern environmental movement, compelling us to recognize our fundamental dependence on our planet amid a seemingly empty universe.

Forty years later, a quite different set of images shows our world in a very different way. In 2011, Canadian scientist Felix Pharand-Deschenes put together a composite image of the Earth, showing major road and rail networks, transmission lines and underwater cables superimposed over a satellite image of cities lit up at night. These pictures show our world’s roads and railways, electricity lines, shipping lanes and air-traffic (Globaïa, 2013). This ‘cartography of the Anthropocene’ is a different take on life on Earth than what was captured in Earthrise. Instead of foregrounding ‘spaceship Earth’, these newer images highlight the buzz of human life in our world. Our species is everywhere: trading, talking and travelling all over the planet. If Earthrise showed us our one home, Pharand-Deschenes shows us what we are doing there.

To put it in the form now ubiquitous in environmental scholarship and activism, Pharand-Deschenes’s images represent the Anthropocene: a time in the planet’s history when human influence predominates.

The term ‘Anthropocene’ was coined by atmospheric scientist Paul Crutzen and ecologist Eugene Stoermer in an article in Global Change Magazine. Here, they described the transformation of the biosphere and observed:

Considering these and many other major and still growing impacts of human activities on earth and atmosphere, and at all, including global, scales, it seems to us more than appropriate to emphasize the central role of mankind in geology and ecology by proposing to use the term ‘anthropocene’ for the current geological epoch.

(Crutzen and Stoermer, 2000)

Though the advent of industrial modernity is part of a much longer historical process stretching back to the post-Roman re-emergence of Europe (Braudel, 1981), for the purposes of defining the first signs of biosphere-wide change, Crutzen and Stoermer locate the start of the Anthropocene in the late eighteenth century, coinciding with the invention of Watt’s steam engine. The first planet-wide, tangible footprints of human activity on Earth, such as altered concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases and changed biotic assemblages in lakes, have been found to date from this time.

As might strike anyone looking at the Pharand-Deschenes images, we argue that underlying the physical manifestations of the ‘Anthropocene’ is a global convergence – by choice, necessity or force – on a particular ideal of prosperity. Around the world, economic globalization has led to the seemingly unstoppable spread of a culture of material consumption, fuelled by (and in turn fuelling) economic growth, as measured in GDP. The pattern, scale and pace of this growth are unprecedented in human history. By extension, its escalating human footprint on the planet is now unmistakable and it is no coincidence that the emergence of the ‘Anthropocene’ has overlapped with the rise of the economic system that we call ‘capitalism’. It is undeniable that this system has led to unprecedented material prosperity for many millions and has also catalyzed the expression of some of our most deeply cherished values – of tolerance, democracy and the rights of the individual. But it is by no means a sustainable way to live, nor does it guarantee human health and well-being. Both people and planet are suffering as a result of its unintended consequences, including global climate change, resource depletion, land degradation, biodiversity loss, socioeconomic instability and poor public health.

But alternatives exist. Though the railways, roads, cables and blazing cities of Pharand-Deschenes’s images appear to have covered the Earth, there are millions of people who continue to live in ways that explicitly link social and ecological well-being, and, in doing so, ensure relative sustainability and adaptability. Rural, land-based societies provide one such class of alternatives. Here, people live directly off the land and sea: hunters, gatherers, fisherfolk, peasants and farmers organize their communities around different values and stories than those guiding the Anthropocene. These are the values and stories that we examine in this book.

At a time when the global dominance of varieties of neoliberal capitalism seems inevitable, even as its impacts for nature and society are increasingly called into question, these alternative visions of human society offer hope that we can live sustainably and navigate this period of great social-ecological change. There is no single way, we learn, in which to organize society. There are many different visions of well-being and prosperity beyond the simple measures of economic growth. Where these visions are cherished and allowed to become manifest, communities enjoy high levels of well-being and resilience through periods of inevitable change. Where these visions are dismantled by other modes of ‘development’, both people and planet suffer. Sadly, these ‘alternative’ lifestyles are often dismissed as either archaic or unattainable. Instead, we argue that they are both desirable and viable starting points for a global transition to sustainable living.

Whether in long-established or emerging communities, these ways of living nurture the social and cultural relationships people have with each other, their connection to the land and the natural environment, as well as their economic independence and resilience. We argue that such lifestyles are well placed to engage positively with a transition to sustainability, while retaining personal and communal experiences of happiness and well-being. We call such communities ‘ecocultures’.

There exists a continuum of such ‘ecocultural’ living.

Some 300 million people belong to indigenous or tribal societies (Lee and Daly, 1999). Of these, some 100 communities around the world are ‘uncontacted’, in the sense of choosing not to participate in mainstream or dominant society, even though they may be aware of other communities and ways of life. Relatively more ‘integrated’ into the dominant global society are rural communities of farmers and fishermen living off the land and sea. La Via Campesina, the international peasant movement, represents about 200 million peasants and small-scale farmers globally. All these communities have land-based livelihoods, built upon a rich compendium of knowledge on how to live relatively sustainably on the land over time. Such ways of living may seem entirely alien to those of us who live and work within the ‘hyper-developed’ and increasingly urban world, and it is certainly true that such traditional, land-based lifestyles should not necessarily be romanticized as exemplars of sustainability or human well-being. Yet it is indisputable that, to varying extents and in different ways, traditional, land-based societies demonstrate an excellence in living lightly on the land, sustaining its gifts over many generations, and actively nurturing a deeply felt, personal connection to nature which is thought to enhance both personal and community well-being. In these societies, culture supports a vision of the ‘good life’ on the land through spiritual beliefs and practices, rich ecological knowledge and sophisticated rules for resource management and resource sharing.

While these ways of life imply an actively nurtured, reciprocal relationship between ecology and society, our global consumer society, by contrast, restricts itself to viewing nature as source (of resources) and sink (for wastes). Resourcing such a culture has meant changing the biosphere in new, fundamental and, some have argued, irreversible ways (MEA, 2005; Rockström et al., 2009; Pretty, 2013). Recognizing this, many individuals and communities, particularly those who have already gone through the cycle of ‘hyper-development’, are intentionally setting up new modes of living. Integrated to various degrees in dominant society, these ‘alternative’ communities of Transition Towns, ecovillages and communes attempt to reconnect people and landscapes. There are now thousands of ecovillages as well as Transition Town initiatives around the world, where people strive to live in human-scale communities, characterized by human, environmental, economic and spiritual co-existence (Böhm, 2014; Hawken, 2007; Litfin, 2013).

In this book, we reflect on the lessons offered by these ways of living, for the long work of transition to sustainability, resilience and well-being. Such transitions are not only desirable and required; they are well under way around the world in countless communities, initiatives and projects. These ‘green shoots’ offer a positive vision of what is possible when we nurture the connections between people and planet.

In what follows, we briefly review the global polycrisis of unsustainability – composed of a number of interlocking global challenges coming together in a ‘perfect storm’ (Godfray et al., 2010b) that threatens continued life on Earth. We then examine the implications of current ways of life for human well-being. Increasing attention to this concept, especially in the developed world (Dolan et al., 2008), rests on the recognition that, rather than depending on GDP growth for well-being, there needs to be increasing attention to the central components of well-being, including good health, social cohesion and vibrant landscapes. We then describe our conception of ‘ecocultures’ and conclude the chapter with a summary of the various cases presented in this book.

The global polycrisis of unsustainability

The notion that human beings have a responsibility to tread lightly on the Earth is old wisdom. Folklore and traditional knowledge is replete with injunctions against greed and warnings against misusing the land (Pilgrim and Pretty, 2010; Pretty, 2011; Sahlins, 1972). The most recent substantial break from this kind of caution can be traced to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when, during the European Enlightenment, humanity began to be viewed as a thing apart from nature, and capable, through reason and intellect, of modifying the world to suit its own ends. This thinking, subsequently manifested in the world’s first wave of industrial revolutions and the rise of capitalism in England, underlies the current Anthropocene and its impacts.

Alongside a particular view of nature, as something to be tamed, improved by human ingenuity and harnessed for human needs, the Enlightenment also put forward a particular praxis of social, economic and resource ‘management’, which ‘accordingly with the demands of efficacy, technological feasibility of economic performance, and “management” of a huge and expanding “world system”’, was concerned with simplifying and rationalizing life itself (Dussel, 2013). Such a system of management – whether of nature, peoples or places – was primarily concerned with building the material prosperity and political capital of small, but technologically advanced, European nations. In order to do so, the places, lifestyles and landscapes of the world were viewed mainly in terms of their material, physical and financial contribution, often excluding from consideration ‘many valid variables (cultural, anthropologic, ethical, political, religious variables)’ (Dussel, 2013).

This simplified worldview locked into place a paradigm of economically rational, techno-centric governance that is still quite evident across the world today. It conditions how we think about the task of governance itself – as a means to bring about the ideal envisaged by the European Enlightenment. Any other state of being is regarded as anachronistic, primitive and amenable to ‘improvement’ (Escobar, 1992). From this thinking sprang the industrial revolutions, the rise of European colonialism, and the vision of capitalist development that continues to dominate globally today.

This worldview is expanded and kept in place by a powerful discursive system involving the marketing of ‘development’ (Böhm and Brei, 2008), encouraging continuous economic growth (as measured in GDP) fuelled by the over-consumption of material and cultural products and services (Pretty, 2013). The rise of the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) countries, as well as many other middle-income countries, shows that across the world there is now a growing global convergence on this quite specific vision and practice of ‘development’ – modelled after the urbanized and industrialized world of high-income countries.

Yet, as Misoczky and Böhm (2013) argue with reference to Latin America, this ‘faith in the myth of development’ in the developing world is primarily fuelled by the expansion of extractive industries: high-tonnage, open-pit mining and oil and gas drilling, as well as monoculture agribusiness. For example, a close examination of the recent economic development of Brazil reveals that it is increasingly dependent on the extractive industries (Böhm et al., 2012). The large-scale expansion of soya plantations and other models of industrial agribusiness are responsible for a growing share in the exports of the country, leaving behind a devastating impact on the Brazilian people and ecosystems, particularly the retreating Amazon forest. Unsurprisingly, there are many popular struggles against such a narrow hegemony of ‘development’ in Latin America as well as many other parts of the world, as people’s livelihoods and the ecosystems they depend on are threatened. But as these industries are thought to represent and implement ‘development’, challenging them is exceptionally difficult. As Esteva (2000) has put it, no other concept has been as influential in our modern world as that of ‘development’ – at once signifying a supposedly universal human aspiration, an imperative and connoting a particular mode of social organization built through continual material progress and capital accumulation.

However, multiple fields of scholarship and activism have long attempted to mount a challenge to the universalist and universalizing conception of material progress gained through industrial modes of development. From the very early years of the Industrial Revolution, there have been critiques of human mismanagement of nature and our increasingly devastating impact on Earth. In 1864, George Perkins Marsh wrote the seminal Man and Nature: Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action. Here, he observed how human activity had already ‘done much to mould the form of the earth’s surface’ (Marsh, 1864). Marsh conceded that such ‘moulding’ was necessary for the spread of civilization, but the sight of desecrated landscapes impelled him to observe that ‘man has too long forgotten that the earth was given to him for usufruct alone, not for consumption, still less for profligate waste.’

Marsh’s observations were certainly unique at the time. It was difficult to believe that human influence could be as pernicious as he described. His observations, however, are well vindicated today (...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Authors
• Acknowledgements
• Part I Established ecocultures
• 1 Ecocultures: towards sustainable ways of living
• 2 Maritime ecocultures: Bajau communities of Eastern Indonesia
• 3 Ice fishing cultures of North Karelia, Finland: the case of Puruvesi winter seining
• 4 Environmental knowledge in motion: the ingenuity and perseverance of hunters in North Greenland
• 5 Resilience and returning to country: Rainforest Aboriginal people of the Wet Tropics of Queensland, Australia
• 6 Changing with the seasons: how Himalayan communities cope with climate change
• Part II Emerging ecocultures
• 7 ‘Distant music of the future’: lessons from Lynedoch EcoVillage, Stellenbosch, South Africa
• 8 Social-ecological resilience at São José Ecovillage, South Brazil
• 9 The evolution of Eco Detroit
• 10 Bristol Green Doors: promoting home energy retrofitting, combatting climate change
• 11 Living ecocultures of the Great Transition
• Part III The future for ecocultures
• 12 Ecocultures of Transition: new, traditional and alternative ways of living in the ‘adjacent possible’
• 13 Ecocultural assemblages in the urbanizing global South
• 14 Ecocultures: lessons learnt and paths into the future
• References
• Index