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Conclusion

Daniel G. Williams

in Ethnicity and Cultural Authority: From Arnold to Du Bois

This concluding chapter reviews the discussions of the previous chapters, looking at the conservationist ethnic movements that challenged the idea of common national cultures in the United States and ... More

This concluding chapter reviews the discussions of the previous chapters, looking at the conservationist ethnic movements that challenged the idea of common national cultures in the United States and the United Kingdom. It determines that Matthew Arnold and William Dean Howells's writings contain the resources for the renegotiation of the conception of ‘culture’ found in the writings of W. E. B. Du Bois and W. B. Yeats.Less

The Living River

Andrew Needham

in Power Lines: Phoenix and the Making of the Modern Southwest

This chapter addresses how The New York Times challenged the long-held claims of Arizona officials that their state was entitled to a portion of the Colorado River by rights, a claim recently upheld ... More

This chapter addresses how The New York Times challenged the long-held claims of Arizona officials that their state was entitled to a portion of the Colorado River by rights, a claim recently upheld by the Supreme Court. The paper also argued that Arizona's attempt to realize those claims endangered the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon itself. Transforming the flowing energy of water into flowing electricity, the Times suggested, was not in the national interest. Such critiques of Arizona's growth emerged in the wake of the Interior Department's development of the Pacific Southwest Water Plan, a plan designed in 1963 to realize Arizona's Colorado River claims. The critiques emerged from several different conservationist groups, but most powerfully from the Sierra Club, which was gradually changing the description of its politics from “conservation” to “environmentalism” and assuming a far more public voice in disputes over the proper use of public lands.Less

Of Trespassers and Trash

Rita Barnard

in Apartheid and Beyond: South African Writers and the Politics of Place

Of all South African novels, Nadine Gordimer's The Conservationist is the most deeply rooted in the nation's master narrative about land: a stirring, half-myth story of colonial dispossession and ... More

Of all South African novels, Nadine Gordimer's The Conservationist is the most deeply rooted in the nation's master narrative about land: a stirring, half-myth story of colonial dispossession and restitution. This investment is manifested if we read the novel in New Historicist fashion, by putting it side by side with a revealing minor document of the period from which it arises. The Conservationist remains Gordimer's most brilliant achievement and brings into play some themes significant to any investigation of the politics of place in South Africa. In 1974, the very year of the novel's publication and the prime point of apartheid's “dynamic third decade,” the Farmers' Association of Ladysmith in Natal wrote a letter to officials of the apartheid government asking them to give full priority in their so-called Resettlement Program to the elimination of a certain “black spot,” the freehold settlement of Roosboom just south of the town.Less

Were People Traditionally Conservationists?

Jean‐Marie Baland and Jean‐Philippe Platteau

in Halting Degradation of Natural Resources: Is There a Role for Rural Communities?

This chapter analyses resource management by traditional rural communities. It argues that traditional rural communities are not inherently conservationists despite their ability to perceive and ... More

This chapter analyses resource management by traditional rural communities. It argues that traditional rural communities are not inherently conservationists despite their ability to perceive and solve distributive problems in the use of natural resources. They have been less efficient in preventing the depletion/degradation of common property resources because they view their natural environment and their relations with it differently from people in modern, rationalist societies.Less

Natural Resources and Economic Growth: Towards a Definition of Sustainability

Jean‐Marie Baland and Jean‐Philippe Platteau

in Halting Degradation of Natural Resources: Is There a Role for Rural Communities?

This chapter presents a rationale for a conservationist policy, but argues against the preservation of all renewable natural resources. Production becomes more sensitive to resource degradation the ... More

This chapter presents a rationale for a conservationist policy, but argues against the preservation of all renewable natural resources. Production becomes more sensitive to resource degradation the more fragile the resource base. When conservation investments are less effective, the adoption of shut-down practices will be optimal for resource users, and the lower long-run (steady-state) stock of the resources becomes even under conservation practices.Less

The Married Bohemian

Bradley J. Birzer

in Russell Kirk: American Conservative

Chapter 10 looks at Kirk as a father, husband, teacher, mentor, storyteller, and Roman Catholic. In particular, it focuses on his near saintlike charity without discrimination of any form.

Introduction: A New Dawning for Giant Pandas?

Donald Lindburg and Karen Baragona

in Giant Pandas: Biology and Conservation

This book is the proceedings of the Panda 2000 conference, an event that brought together scientists and conservationists selected as participants on the basis of the skill and cogency of their ... More

This book is the proceedings of the Panda 2000 conference, an event that brought together scientists and conservationists selected as participants on the basis of the skill and cogency of their efforts. Although the panda's future is still far from certain, sweeping changes in China's environmental policies allows us to hope that we may be witnessing a sea change in the way panda conservation is accomplished. There are three intertwined strands emerging in the renewed interest in giant pandas: (1) the surmounting of cultural and language differences in communication about the species, (2) the wedding of governmental authority and resources to programmatic proposals for setting goals, and (3) the significance of organismic biology in shaping those proposals. The work presented in this book derives from scientists with a strong conservation ethic and conservationists with a keen appreciation of the importance of science to their work.Less

The ‘Wild’, the Market, and the Native: Indigenous People Face New Forms of Global Colonization

Marcia Langton

in Globalization, Globalism, Environments, and Environmentalism: Consciousness of Connections

Indigenous and traditional peoples world-wide are facing a crisis, one that supersedes that inflicted on indigenous peoples during the imperial age. Just as in the ... More

Indigenous and traditional peoples world-wide are facing a crisis, one that supersedes that inflicted on indigenous peoples during the imperial age. Just as in the last 500 years, imperialism caused the encapsulation of indigenous societies within the new settler nation-states and their subjection to colonial political formations, loss of territory and jurisdiction, so have the globalizing market and the post-industrial/technological complex brought about another phase of profound change for these societies. The further encapsulation of indigenous societies by the global complex, to which nation-state formations are themselves subservient, has resulted in continuing loss of territory as a result of large-scale developments, urban postcolonial population expansion, and ongoing colonization of the natural world by the market. This last point is illustrated, for example, by the bioprospecting and patenting of life forms and biota by new genetic and chemical engineering industries (see Posey, this volume). Coincidental with the new colonization is the crisis of biodiversity loss; a critical issue for indigenous peoples, particularly hunting and gathering societies. The massive loss of biota through extinction events, loss of territory and species habitats, and environmental degradation, together with conservationist limitation of indigenous harvesting, constitute significant threats to indigenous ways of life. While aboriginal rights to wildlife are restricted to ‘non-commercial’ use, the pressures increase for indigenous peoples to forge unique economic niches to maintain their ways of life. Of particular importance is the vexed issue of aboriginal entitlements to commercial benefits from the utilization of wildlife arising both from developing standards of traditional resource rights and from customary proprietary interests. The new threats to indigenous life-ways in the era of the globalizing market have been brought about by the increasing commodification of features of the natural world, putting at risk the very survival of ancient societies that are directly dependent on the state of their natural environment. For instance, already in June 1978, Inupiat leader Eben Hopson, then founding Chairman of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference and spokesperson for the Alaska Whaling Commission, appealed to the London press corps for understanding and support in the legal recognition of Inuit rights: ‘We Inuit are hunters. There aren’t many subsistence hunting societies left in the world, but our Inuit circumpolar community is one of them.’ Less

Back to Nature

Benjamin Heber Johnson

in Escaping the Dark, Gray City: Fear and Hope in Progressive-Era Conservation

This chapter demonstrates how conservationists pursued their central goal—a material balance and psychic renewal with a nature they thought endangered—in private lives as well as public actions. In a ... More

This chapter demonstrates how conservationists pursued their central goal—a material balance and psychic renewal with a nature they thought endangered—in private lives as well as public actions. In a time when the built world had grown so complicated and consuming as to alienate many from the natural world, conservationists sought a “return to nature” in outdoor recreation, the study of nature in schools, literature, and domestic architecture. Conservation was as much about cultural change as it was an economic doctrine or a set of policies. Like conservation politics, conservation culture was aimed at escaping the artificiality and destructiveness of industrial life. By returning to nature, conservationists hoped that Americans would revitalize themselves and deepen their appreciation of the environment.Less

Fighting for Conservation

Benjamin Heber Johnson

in Escaping the Dark, Gray City: Fear and Hope in Progressive-Era Conservation

This chapter looks at how conservationists seemed more and more optimistic about their influence and accomplishments. By 1910, it had become common for conservationists to use the word “movement” in ... More

This chapter looks at how conservationists seemed more and more optimistic about their influence and accomplishments. By 1910, it had become common for conservationists to use the word “movement” in both their public announcements and, unselfconsciously, in their private correspondence. The word “movement” clearly conveyed the idea that conservation involved a wide range of policies, attracted a diverse set of passionate supporters, and was converting the dubious and inspiring the apathetic. In national politics, conservation reached its height during the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt (1901–9). With the help of his trusted adviser Gifford Pinchot, Roosevelt made conservation one of his leading causes.Less

Fighting over Conservation

Benjamin Heber Johnson

in Escaping the Dark, Gray City: Fear and Hope in Progressive-Era Conservation

This chapter highlights the split between Gifford Pinchot and Horace McFarland, showing how it wrecked any hopes that conservationists could benefit from a broad-based national organization that ... More

This chapter highlights the split between Gifford Pinchot and Horace McFarland, showing how it wrecked any hopes that conservationists could benefit from a broad-based national organization that would press for material and aesthetic measures in cities, suburbs, and the countryside. But it was only one of many splits between conservationists. The demographic and ideological heterogeneity that endowed conservation with so much of its appeal and reach also pitted different kinds of conservationists against one another, fragmenting and ultimately weakening the movement. Ironically, the considerable political victories of the early twentieth century—metropolitan park systems, federal bureaucracies, and an extensive domain in the West for conservation—exacerbated this divisiveness, since conservationists had gained something worth fighting over.Less

Fighting Against Conservation

Benjamin Heber Johnson

in Escaping the Dark, Gray City: Fear and Hope in Progressive-Era Conservation

This chapter examines how the optimism of conservationists led them to underestimate the challenges their movement faced. Allocating more control to the federal government in the name of ... More

This chapter examines how the optimism of conservationists led them to underestimate the challenges their movement faced. Allocating more control to the federal government in the name of environmental necessity provoked powerful opposition from those whose economic interests were threatened, those who doubted that pressing environmental problems existed at all, and those who objected in principle to the more muscular state called into being by Progressives. Moreover, because a wide range of rural Americans continued to hunt, fish, gather, log, and farm in the new parks and forests, the conservation state often criminalized their ways of making a living. While some of the resistance was conducted through formal politics, it also gave rise to widespread community-supported lawbreaking, violence against conservation officers, and arson and sabotage.Less

Taken and Delivered: The Chattooga River

Christopher J. Manganiello

in Southern Water, Southern Power: How the Politics of Cheap Energy and Water Scarcity Shaped a Region

This chapter discusses how a coalition of postwar southerners reevaluated those old supply solutions to the region's water problems—dams and reservoirs—and moved in a completely different direction. ... More

This chapter discusses how a coalition of postwar southerners reevaluated those old supply solutions to the region's water problems—dams and reservoirs—and moved in a completely different direction. Like allies around the nation, the Sun Belt's countryside conservationists thought dams and river structures were the problems and not the solutions. For these activists, the Wild and Scenic Chattooga River solved a new problem. In a region that lacked significant free-flowing rivers, the Chattooga's new designation illustrated a new relationship between southern water and southern power. Author John Lane described his personal Chattooga experiences in order to demonstrate why the river attracts people and what the river delivers to those who know and use it today. Bearing Lane's context in mind, one must remember that in the end, the Chattooga River was consciously left wild and brought to the national whitewater boating and environmental community for preservation.Less

The Lure of the Garden

Eric Freyfogle

in Why Conservation Is Failing and How It Can Regain Ground

This chapter focuses on different aspects of the garden view of land. The tend-the-garden line of thought, in contrast, has come from conservationists who believe their cause has gone astray in its ... More

This chapter focuses on different aspects of the garden view of land. The tend-the-garden line of thought, in contrast, has come from conservationists who believe their cause has gone astray in its ethics, aesthetics, and overreliance on ecological science. A good way to probe this line of thought, seeing what it contains and gauging its strengths, is to compare Pollan's Second Nature with a 1939 essay by Aldo Leopold, The Farmer as a Conservationist. Leopold's ecological message made the work of conservation more difficult because it required landowners to understand their farms as integrated ecosystems. They had to learn to spot evidence of malfunctioning so they could act to correct it. Leopold envisioned a landscape in which people made room for other life forms.Less

Conclusion

Peter M. R. Stirk

in A History of Military Occupation from 1792 to 1914

This concludes that military occupation must be understood in terms of its dual nature, that is, its combination of a normative or legal dimension, the occupant’s possession of authority but not ... More

This concludes that military occupation must be understood in terms of its dual nature, that is, its combination of a normative or legal dimension, the occupant’s possession of authority but not sovereignty, and a set of more empirical phenomena, the factual qualities that stand behind government by the occupant. It emphasises that some of the standard assumptions about occupation in the long nineteenth century, most notably the centrality of the ‘conservationist’ principle are dubious, that it was rather the proximity of conquest that was central. Similarly, non-belligerent occupation and multilateral occupation are often presumed to be innovations of the twentieth century but both were important features of the long nineteenth century. It also emphasises two other key features of the record of military occupation: the frustration it entailed and the recurrent failure to learn from the experience of occupation.Less

Introduction

Shaun Spiers

in How to Build Houses and Save the Countryside

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE). CPRE's 43 country branches and 100-odd district groups aim to direct development to places where it ... More

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE). CPRE's 43 country branches and 100-odd district groups aim to direct development to places where it will harm the countryside least and benefit it most. This was also the aim of the men and women who founded CPRE. They were remarkably open to the idea of change in the countryside provided that it was properly planned and provided that sophisticated and high-minded people like them helped guide it. As well as opposing inappropriate development, conservationists should propose how to do developments better and where they should go. The aim should be both less damage to the countryside and more new houses. But to make this possible, policymakers must recognise that the current system needs radical change, both to improve the affordability of housing and to make it possible for groups like CPRE to engage more constructively.Less

How the planning system lost its legitimacy, and how to regain it

Shaun Spiers

in How to Build Houses and Save the Countryside

This chapter details the mess of the current planning system and suggests how planning can win back a degree of legitimacy. Planning has become a battleground. The system almost ensures that ... More

This chapter details the mess of the current planning system and suggests how planning can win back a degree of legitimacy. Planning has become a battleground. The system almost ensures that participants take unreasonable positions. Conservationists and local people take up opposition almost in principle because they have no confidence in what will emerge from the process. On the other side, developers use their legal and financial power to intimidate weak local authorities who are desperate to meet housing targets to get what they want. If the public is losing belief in planning, the solution is not to depoliticise it by making it more responsive to market signals or putting ‘experts’ in charge. Part of the solution is to engage more people and get their buy-in. Neighbourhood planning is a good way of doing this. However, the planning system must also show that it can deliver.Less