Ecology, Soils, and the Left

An Ecosocial Approach

Kenneth A. Loparo, Salvatore Engel-Di Mauro

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781137358219
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137350138
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Philosophy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Soil degradation is real and global, even if the evidence is not so easy to glean. Degradation poses comparable risks to greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation, and nonhuman animal extinctions. Few have noticed soil degradation as the problem it has become, except most indigenous peoples in their struggles for survival.

CHAPTER 1

MUTED EVERYDAY DISASTERS

A most subtle scourge is menacing the world, the sort that threatens and deceives all at once. This is the scourge of soil degradation. Its sheer existence undermines many lives, yet it is tough to discern, shrouded as it is in tales of untold scarcities and dissembled as it is by a fog of recycled scarecrows. This shrouding and dissembling, the politics of soil degradation, is what amplifies the subtlety of its often gradual and nearly imperceptible nature. Yet the ambiguity belies its menacing power, which is juxtaposed with actually existing or potential devastation, with imponderables effaced by sensationalism. Paradoxically, many of those decrying both the inadequate attention to soils and their degradation contribute to perpetuating what they decry, for they decry not the social relations of power that undergird the scourge. On the other hand, when it comes to soils, leftists¹ have been mostly on the inattentive camp or have borrowed uncritically from the scarecrow-mongers. Traversing the fog and deciphering the tales requires research on biophysical processes, where leftists rarely tread, and critical appraisal of research on biophysical processes, where leftists have excelled. There are a number of incentives to undergo this double task of research and critique of research. One is to contribute to overcoming the reckless disinterest in and the overshadowing effects of scholarly fastidiousness over nuance and another is to resist the corollaries of depoliticizing environmental sensationalism (like catastrophism or “peak soil”) and technocratic scientism (like blaming soil degradation on population growth).

The disinterest, though, seems the norm. For many in capitalist societies, including most leftists, soil stimulates no particular reaction. It may perhaps when it gets in the house, on our hands or clothes. Then, it is usually referred to as dirt or as a state of being soiled. And soiled is not usually something one aspires to become. Referring to soil as dirt is perhaps unsurprising, given that large numbers of people are now hardly steeped in direct contact with soils as previous generations were. What is interesting is that soil becomes dirt—a disruptor of hygienic norms—precisely when it is detached from itself. Dirt is also soil that is out of place, in the mainstream imaginary. In this, lay or, more precisely, unsystematic understandings of dirt converge with scientific ones about soil displacement, at least superficially. There is awareness that something is wrong when soil is out of place. Yet when soil sticks to our bodies, clothes, or vehicles, the immediate reaction is not usually about how the physical integrity of a soil has been affected, but about cleanliness.

This in itself is not necessarily a capitalist phenomenon, but it feeds into it. The way soils are made perceptible to people involves connotations beyond something being dirty, out of place. A whole way of life is evoked by soils. Not so long ago, an overwhelming majority of people survived or thrived by living off the land, which is often used as a metonym for soil. Dependence on soils was a palpable, everyday, common experience, and remains so for a decreasing multitude worldwide. This other meaning of soil, as a source of sustenance, remains, even if less commonly acknowledged. But soil acquires negative symbolic value when most people’s economic prospects are removed from its life-enabling contributions. Many leftists know this outcome all too well, as well as its social foundations, but are themselves largely distanced from many of our nonhuman sources of existence, like soils.

A statement in a recent special report on cities in The Economist even glorifies this historically socialized remoteness: “It was in the city that man was liberated from the tyranny of the soil” (The Economist 2007, 4). In such a worldview, with its not so accidentally sexist language, our connection to soils, standing in for the work of procuring food, is like a chain that can be and has been broken to humanity’s benefit. By implication, living from the soil is like visiting a museum exhibiting life in the arduous, grimy agrarian past, from which the industrialized and urbanized have been freed. The hundreds of millions still living off the land deserve our pity and the utmost effort at their emancipation. The other hundreds of millions eking out an existence in the squalor of mega-cities should be considered the lucky beneficiaries of the progress urbanization offers. Let us praise our savior, the capitalist city! So perhaps it is because of its connotations of dirt and toil that soil is not a focus of much political ferment worldwide, like global warming is or tropical rainforest destruction used to be.

Extremists’ delusions aside, our links to soils cannot be severed without compromising our existence. Soils, as intrinsic parts of largely land-based ecosystems, provide us with the most basic means to sustain ourselves, including the purification and cycling of major sources of water. Every year, they enable the proliferation of all sorts of organisms, many of them directly and indirectly crucial to our lives.² This is besides establishing the conditions for the human production of millions of tons of food and fiber. Most life on land would therefore not even exist without soils and, indeed, neither would we. We all depend on soils for our very survival because, at a minimum, we all have to drink water and eat. And without functioning soils, those basic resources are endangered. So, what a strange idea it is to celebrate freedom from something without which we die. In the kind of society in which I live, most people are so removed from the realities of what sustains life that they can delude themselves into thinking about freedom in terms of abandoning what we depend on. Such is the lived disconnect—the alienation, as Marx famously put it—between people in capitalist societies and key ecological processes from which they draw sustenance.

There is, then, an inescapable biophysical necessity that binds us to soils. Our being rests on ensuring that soils contribute to our benefit, like breathable air and drinkable water. But our ecologically contingent being is always also a function of what happens in society. The freedom alluded to by ideologues such as those represented in The Economist is the sort of freedom that excludes most people. As Mies and Shiva succinctly put it, “Freedom within the realm of necessity can be universalized to all; freedom from necessity can be available to only a few” (Mies and Shiva 1993, 8; italics in original). The notion of liberation from the tyranny of the soil is a worldview of the privileged, those in a position to consume massive quantities of resources from all over the planet, which means forcing most others in the world to labor so that a few may reap the greatest benefits from the use of soils. The privileged need not understand the necessary relationship between people and soils, except superficially (as when using soil erosion problems to kick people off the land) or when it matters to maintaining their own privileges.

Soil degradation processes are therefore mostly quieted disasters in present-day capitalist societies, but not catastrophic in the sense envisaged in much environmentalism, and largely misconstrued by soil scientists or experts with respect to their causation.³ They are subtle scourges not just because they are usually difficult to sense (barring phenomena like landslides), but also because they have become socially downplayed if not altogether suppressed from the everyday. Soil degradation is the outcome of social relations that enable some to have the luxury of being unaware of soil degradation problems or to have the power of dictating when soils are degraded. It is the same outcome that compels many to have no access to soils or to use soils carelessly. These are, in other words, processes of alienation from soils by way of a historical development of both concrete, if not compulsory, distancing and ideological severance. Some soil scientists object to attitudes represented in The Economist and see them as resulting from detachment from nature.

Paradoxically, even as our dependence on the soil has increased, most of us have become physically and emotionally detached from it. Many people in so-called “developed” countries spend their lives in the artificial environment of a city, insulated from direct exposure to nature, and some city-bred children may now assume as a matter of course that food originates in supermarkets. Detachment has bred ignorance, and out of ignorance has come the delusion that our civilization has risen above nature and has set itself free of nature’s constraints.

(Hillel 2008, 5)

If for the moment one can leave aside the in-itself alienating society– nature dichotomy in the notion of cities as “artificial environment,” there is in these words a potential convergence with Marx’s insights on capitalist alienation and therefore a possibility for critical sensibility. It is a possibility that is consistently dashed by scientists’ own ideological tenets and political commitments to objectivist science, to neutralism in the face of oppressive social relations, and so forth. Soil scientists who discern the ecological repercussions of the contradictions of the society in which they live are the same who see only an undifferentiated humanity as the culprit, even as they are ostensibly capable of perceiving social differentiation (e.g., “developed” and “undeveloped” societies). Theirs is the self-exalting technocratic flipside of the same privileged or capitalistic worldview. In the technocratic version, the experts are the heroes who will save us ignorant masses from self-delusion and help save our “civilization” from the death throes of soil degradation. It is rare to find soils scientists with even minimal understanding that such contradictions are intrinsic to a capitalist mode of production (if they are even familiar with that term). This depicts a state of affairs that finds its corollary within ill-informed leftist anti-capitalist movements and writings, as will be discussed. The quiet scourge is therefore not just a wider social one. Real existing soil degradation problems may be made into quiet catastrophes by social means (including within the anti-capitalist left), but there is more to soil degradation than what happens in society.

Much of what unfolds in soils is difficult to sense because it is inaccessible until one digs. The surface of a soil often does not represent what goes on beneath, with the bustle of activities by innumerable and largely still unidentified micro-organisms and the constant movements and transformations, both gradual and immediate, of gases, water, and materials. The problem of not sensing all this is not just the result of detachment from nature, which is the only aspect most concerned soil scientists seem willing to consider. What soil scientists generally miss or fail to investigate (they are hardly alone in this) are the historical and current social relations that make such detachment possible and persistent—the forced expulsions of people from land on which they subsist, with massacres and genocides, misogynistic and racist violence, militarily forced displacement, colonization, and other forms of coercion that reverberate across generations. This is what fundamentally demarcates leftist analysis of soil degradation from that of technocrats. There is, however, an unfortunate propensity on the left to focus on the social relations at the expense of what soil scientists have excelled at studying, the soils themselves. Our interactions with soils are also related to what soils are and the way they develop independently of us. This latter aspect can be said of environmental degradation more broadly, since environmental change occurs also independently of people.

Stated otherwise, soil degradation is comprised of combined ecological processes, among which are social ones. They tend to be silent as a consequence of processes that are both social (e.g., ideological distancing) and biophysical (e.g., soil resilience). It is a tendency that is disrupted every now and then by changes in soils that are destructive to people. This can be illustrated by heavy metals contaminating crops when some key soil characteristics (like pH) change, crop failures abetted by declines in soil nutrient availability, or soil creep undermining housing structures. Changes in society bring about other possibilities to counter the tendency for soil degradation to be a quiet catastrophe. This happens when some organize their lives in ways that enable heightened awareness, such as through the introduction and spread of urban community gardens. It can also occur when ruling classes pursue policies that raise business or state dependence on agricultural exports. At such points, soil quality can even take center stage.

SOILS, HUMAN IMPACT, AND POLITICAL STRUGGLES

To illustrate the existence of the quiet (but occasionally and temporarily loud) scourge in the lived and imaginary worlds of capitalism, I do not have to venture far and I dare say neither does the reader. The town where I live is adorned by orchards, especially apple orchards, making for an inviting, seasonally verdant, and multicolored floral landscape. But adornments can deceive. The orchards in this place called New Paltz are the sort of managed woods that have been doused for decades with chlorinated biocides and associated heavy metals, leaving a long-lasting legacy of contamination of soils and possibly water. Each time there is an initiative to build a shopping mall, roadways, or housing complex, the specter of the past comes alive with fears of mobilizing dormant poisons or of discovering a life-menacing reality in what seems at first glance to be a safe, tranquil place (Heitzman, Smith, and Duffy 2011; Parisio et al. 2009; Steinberg 1995; Town of New Paltz 2010).

Recently, a large construction firm joined the local college administration to convince the local government to turn an old abandoned orchard into a college residence. Town hall meetings were convened to invite interested parties to voice concerns, as legally required, and various technical impact assessment reports were made available to the public. There is much at stake financially, for the construction company, the college administration, and the private consulting companies hired for the assessments and building process. Emphasis is laid, as typical of such public displays of capitalist democracy, on the great advantages that will be brought to students and faculty in securing housing close to the college and on the environmental benefits of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from car-dependent commuters. The problems of attracting more students, of housing availability, and of air pollution are all happily met by a single project.

But dark forces lurk below ground. According to one of the consulting firms’ findings, the soil on which the residential area is to be built retains worrisome levels of 4,4 DDT and dieldrin, as well as high amounts of arsenic (Ecosystem Strategies, Inc. 2012). Aside from this, the overall assessment of the site was deemed positive, with reservations from a few local inhabitants and students, and in spite of concerns raised by a hydrogeology consultant about groundwater availability and quality (Miller Hydrologic Incorporated 2012). A new sewage treatment plant was part of the plan, even though one nearby already exists, and more water would be pumped from municipal water sources. The objections discussed were related to water supply and treatment issues, impacts on other species, drains on local government and property owners’ finances (by way of payment of an amount to be agreed with the local government in lieu of taxes), the exclusion of poorer students who cannot afford the new lodging, among other social and ecological effects.

The soil contamination aspect exemplifies the politics of environmental issues. The moment one starts looking for and examine more closely the different social and ecological aspects involved in soil contamination, the clearer it is that it cannot be treated as solely a technical issue, as implied in what in the United States is termed “environmental impact assessment.” In fact, the assessment, presented as a technical report, was hiding some disconcerting assumptions about what counts as relevant knowledge and even what kind of activities should be allowed on the premises. The impact assessment consultants biased the soil sampling toward minimum contaminant detectability, excluded most heavy metals from lab analysis, selected less stringent critical values for acceptable contaminant levels, and ignored some basic dust dispersal issues.

The soil sampling procedure was limited to the first 6–8 cm of depth and concentrated along the drip lines of the trees. This was presented as standard procedure, but it is nevertheless a most curious way of looking for information. Tree roots reach much greater depths than that and so create tunnels for potential contaminant percolation below the sampling depth. Trees are also sprayed with insecticides as they grow so that what is currently the drip line does not reflect all the drip lines of the past, as the tree was growing. Contaminant movement is hardly confined to drip from the top of a canopy. Contaminants can also descend along a tree stem and collect at the bottom of a tree, close to the trunk. These avenues of movement for contaminant-bearing water on and from trees and into soils are well known (Pritchett and Fisher 1987). Not only were entire areas systematically skipped from sampling, but tests only included arsenic, lead, and mercury, leaving out heavy metals like copper, which is often found in fungicides, often featured in the panoply of agrochemicals applied in orchards.

In the interpretive part of the analysis, the consultants conveniently omitted the much more stringent “Unrestricted NYSDEC SCO” standards, opting instead to include only the Residential version. This selectivity cannot but go unnoticed by the majority of locals, who are unfamiliar with such documentation or how to interpret it. But by using the critical limits set for residential land use, the consultants effectively imposed a policy decision on what kinds of activities would be permitted. For example, establishing a garden to grow food, which is of interest to many students, is foreclosed as an option. If the contaminant limits used had been for unrestricted use, the developer would be forced to decontaminate the site so as to enable other uses besides conventionally defined residential use, an official definition that also presumes that people do not grow food where they reside. In this manner, they were able to reassure the public that the levels of lead found on the site are to be regarded as safe.

Finally, the consultants considered contaminant-bearing dust heaved up through construction work as if it were innocuous to the health of future residents and as if it would remain largely within the building site. Their view of the health of future residents explicitly assumes that only adults would live in the housing units. This is a rather unlikely outcome, as both faculty and students may have children. Just as gratuitous is the assumption of adults having no sensitivity to the contaminants to which they could be exposed. For the dust diffusion aspect, there was no analysis of wind patterns to determine where exposure and accumulation risks could occur elsewhere in other areas. There was little basis for the consultants’ assumption that contaminant-bearing dust will be confined to the project site.

This example of official practices in assessing environmental problems brings out many of the social and ecological issues that tend to be hidden from view in discussions about environmental degradation. By ensuring a largely positive outcome in the environmental impact assessment, such diligent misapplication of technical skill systematically narrowed the kind of information available for public discussion in favor of those whose interests were served by the residential const...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Series Editor’s Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Muted Everyday Disasters
• 2. Soils and Their Classification: Ecological Processes and Social Struggles
• 3. Soil Properties and the Political Aspects of Soil Quality
• 4. Soil Degradation: Overview and Critique
• 5. Capitalism-Friendly Explanations of Soil Degradation
• 6. Leftist Alternatives and Failures
• 7. Toward an Eco-Social Approach to Environmental Degradation
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index