For your enjoyment, and discussion.
Carl Jarvis
***
The Masaai, a pastoral people, were removed from their traditional
lands in the Serengeti by British colonialists, largely in order to
reserve the land
for big game hunting and tourism. The Masaai are resisting similar
removal practices by the Kenyan and Tanzanian governments.
By CHRIS TEI
We don't need to be removed from nature. We need to radically change
the way we relate to it.
Capitalism's endless pursuit of profits for the few continues to
destroy the ecosystems upon which human beings base our very
existence. And while one
political wing of the capitalist class ceaselessly denies climate
change, those capitalist politicians who do acknowledge the science
make attempts to
shift blame for it away from themselves. Misanthropic explanations for
the state of the world, holding all humans to account for our original
sin of being
human, help reduce the risk that the exploiters will have to answer
for the unique crisis that they have created.
Foremost among these misanthropic explanations of climate change is
populationism, which holds that the growing population is responsible.
In the words
of Ian Angus and Simon Butler, who have worked diligently on refuting
this idea, "populationist policies focus on symptoms, not causes.
Worse, they shift
the blame for climate change, and the burden for stopping it, onto the
poorest and most vulnerable people in the world."[1]
This perspective is, rather unfortunately, popular on both the left
and right. And if we assume that our nature, as a species, is
inherently harmful, we
will inevitably push for policies that are harmful to humans.
Empty half the Earth?
Kim Stanley Robinson recently contributed a piece to the Guardian with
the provocative title and call to action, "Empty half the Earth of its
humans. It's
the only way to save the planet."[2]
Robinson is a science fiction novelist, and this writer is a huge fan
of his work. His books combine hard science, involving an immense
amount of personal
research, with speculation about the social and political
ramifications of developments such as climate change and planetary
colonization. He tells stories
of future histories and addresses how the oppressive institutions of
our present day might evolve, be challenged, or even be eliminated.
A lot of popular science fiction imagines how the world will only get
worse for humanity, but Robinson very consciously does something
different: "Anyone
can do a dystopia these days just by making a collage of newspaper
headlines, but utopias are hard, and important, because we need to
imagine what it might
be like if we did things well enough to say to our kids, we did our
best, this is about as good as it was when it was handed to us, take
care of it and
do better. Some kind of narrative vision of what we're trying for as a
civilization."[3]
Robinson therefore assigns a great deal of importance to the work of
imagining a more progressive future. "I do consider my books to be a
political work.
It seems to me that the more stories out there that encourage these
kinds of actions, then the better off people would be."[4] From his
books and his personal
activism, it's clear that Robinson has an affinity for liberation
movements, the political left, and of course climate justice.
His call to action is to "leave about half the Earth's surface mostly
free of humans, so wild plants and animals can live there unimpeded as
they did for
so long before humans arrived." How this is to be accomplished is left
somewhat to the imagination, although he appears to favor "repricing"
and perhaps
new cultural and legal frameworks that would govern threatened areas:
"Many villages now have populations of under a thousand, and continue
to shrink as
most of the young people leave. If these places were redefined (and
repriced) as becoming usefully empty, there would be caretaker work
for some, gamekeeper
work for others, and the rest could go to the cities and get into the
main swing of things."
Anyone who finds this notion to be obvious, that humans must be
removed from the land to save the environment, and specifically the
world's biodiversity,
would be wise to look at indigenous political movements around the
Earth. In 2016, during the Native American-led protests against the
Dakota Access Pipeline
(DAPL), the Standing Rock encampment was visited by indigenous
activists from Latin America who came to express their solidarity. A
Sarayaku activist named
Nina Gualinga, who has been a leader in her people's fight to keep the
Ecuadoran government from allowing oil drilling on their ancestral
lands, illustrated
in remarkable terms the outsized role that native peoples have played
in preserving the global environment: "The statistics say that we are
4 percent of
the world's population but we are protecting more than 80 percent of
the world's biodiversity."[5]
The conclusion we should draw is clear: to preserve the world's
biodiversity, it is also necessary for us to support the indigenous in
their struggle for
self-determination and, importantly, lend our assistance to prevent
any effort to remove them from the lands they inhabit.
Yet this is, in effect, the opposite of what Robinson calls for. It's
not at all obvious that humans need to be removed from the land to
preserve biodiversity.
It's certainly not true of indigenous people, who are the vanguard of
movements for environmental justice in the world. And while it's true
that sensitive
ecosystems should be removed of industrial agriculture companies,
logging companies, and oil extraction companies, those profit-making
entities are not
the result of an essential "human nature." They result from a social
system directed toward the accumulation of private profit, something
that is neither
eternal nor predetermined by our biology. It is capitalism that we
need to remove, not people.
"Half-Earth"
The inspiration for Robinson's piece was Edward O. Wilson's book
"Half-Earth: Our Planet's Fight for Life." Wilson is the world's
leading expert on ants,
but for many critics he is more well-known for the biological
determinism of his "sociobiology" idea.
In 1975, a group of scientists responded to Wilson's ideas of
sociobiology, saying that he offered up a "particular theory about
human nature, which has
no scientific support." They explained that views of biological
determinism similar to Wilson's become fashionable from time to time,
not because of their
scientific validity, but because of their usefulness to those in
power: "The reason for the survival of these recurrent determinist
theories is that they
consistently tend to provide a genetic justification of the status quo
and of existing privileges for certain groups according to class, race
or sex. Historically,
powerful countries or ruling groups within them have drawn support for
the maintenance or extension of their power from these products of the
scientific
community." [6]
In "Half-Earth," Wilson continues to paint humanity with broad
strokes, and insist that most of our behavior is biologically
determined. In his view we
were driven by our genetics to multiply and strain the Earth's
resources "like a hostile race of aliens."[7]
When speaking on social issues, his used of the pronoun "we" shows
that he has no understanding of class. He wonders how humans can be so
knowledgeable
yet make decisions against our own interests.[8] Indeed, his
explanation of capitalist society's negative impact on the planet is
that it is "largely due
to the excess of the many quotidian activities we perform just to get
on with our personal lives. Those activities have made us the most
destructive species
in the history of life."[9] Thus, responsibility for the negative
effects of industry is shared equally among the members of our
species, even those who,
due to the class divisions in society, have no decision-making power.
He devotes woefully little of his book to his actual proposal. How it
could be enacted, whether enforced by state repression or encouraged
by Robinson's
"pricing", or both, is left to the imagination. Wilson just wants us
to know it should be done.
There is a link between human health and biodiversity. And, of course,
there are complexities to ecosystems, involving the participation of
countless species,
which make our existence possible. We are, therefore, self-interested
to protect Earth's biodiversity. So, while it may indeed be necessary
for that purpose
to create new protected areas, it's not obvious at all that masses of
people will need to be removed to do so.
We should be asking, first and foremost, who specifically would be
removed from the land if Wilson's dream becomes reality. And given the
proximity of
many indigenous peoples to threatened ecosystems, it's clear that they
would be uniquely impacted by Wilson's proposal.
Conservation and expulsion
The proposal to empty half the Earth of people would have an enormous
impact, and it would be naïve to think it could be enacted without
causing a great
deal of suffering. In fact, there is already a long history of much
smaller conservation projects leading to forced expulsions, violence,
and the shredding
of native people's rights.
The creation of nearly all of the world's national parks involved
expulsions of indigenous people. These areas of the world are now,
ironically, considered
to be the closest examples of "pristine" nature, of "wilderness," and
of the true nature that existed before human despoilment. In reality,
they stand
as examples of ecosystems that have never existed in such a
people-less state. And the sudden departure of humans from ecosystems
where they lived for
thousands of years led to rather serious ecological problems.
Though Serengeti National Park is known to many as a pristine and
people-less wilderness, the Masaai people called it home for thousands
of years before
they were evicted by the British colonial government. The Masaai
leader Kissale Ole Serupe remembers it thusly: "The Brits razed our
houses to the ground…
we did not dare to fight back."
And though the stated purpose for removing people was to protect
wildlife, in actuality the Masaai were responsible for the survival of
the great Serengeti
herds. With their abrupt departure from the land, poachers found it
much easier to hunt and kill animals such as elephants and rhinos.
Their numbers dwindled.
"I am surprised by the accusations against us," said Lomayani Ole
Pose. "Had it not been for our ancestor and us, these wild animals
would not be here.
Despite these facts, we are still being demonized."[10]
Stories like this abound. Even the creation of Yellowstone, the
world's first national park, involved the expulsion and destruction of
land-use rights
for native Crow, Shoshone, and Bannock. Glacier National Park was
created with the expulsion of Blackfeet, Yosemite with the expulsion
of Yosemite Indians,
and Grand Canyon with the expulsion of Havasupai. When Havasupai
gained part of their land back from the government in the 1970s, they
did so despite many
self-avowed conservationists, who fought against it.[11]
At worst, the dispossession of native peoples for conservation
purposes was based on an intentional erasure of native history and
claims to the land. At
best, it was based on a flawed definition of nature, which holds that
it is exogenous to human beings. Indigenous people have played a
crucial role in
the maintenance of their native lands, such as in fire management and
the protection of wildlife. In fact, they often see their fight for
sovereignty as
being directly aligned with the need for conservation.
Conclusion
Misanthropic views about humanity have the real potential of
precluding the solidarity we should be building to address climate
change. There's little
hope for that kind of solidarity if people in the industrialized
countries accept the nonsense that poor women in the underdeveloped
world are to blame
for the crisis for having too many children. And there's little hope
for it if the basic rights of indigenous people are opposed by
conservationists asserting
the superiority of their own demands regarding their lands.
We want a revolution in our relationship to the environment, and that
is something that can only come about with a revolution in our
relationship to each
other. Che Guevara once said, "At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let
me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of
love. It is impossible
to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality."
The misanthropy at the root of populationism, as well as Wilson's view
that we need to remove people from the land, is not one that holds
great love for
humanity. If it doesn't entail outright hatred for our species, it
certainly entails great fear and suspicion of one another.
This is not the compass that points us in the correct direction.
Solidarity is the answer to alienation. We need to build broad
movements to address our
collective material and ecological interests.
And ultimately, the source of humanity's destructive behavior is the
system that directs all of society's productive power toward the
accumulation of profits
for a tiny minority. Only socialism can redirect our collective labor
toward the fulfillment of all human needs, including the need to
preserve the Earth's
delicate ecosystems.
[1] Angus, Ian, and Simon Butler. Too Many People? : Population,
Immigration, and the Environmental Crisis: 4.
[2] Robinson, Kim Stanley. "Empty half the Earth of its humans. It's
the only way to save the planet." The Guardian, US edition, 20 Mar.
2018,
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/mar/20/save-the-planet-half-earth-kim-stanley-robinson.
[3] Bisson, Terry. "Galileo's Dream: A Q&A with Kim Stanley Robinson."
Shareable, 4 Nov. 2009,
https://www.shareable.net/blog/galileos-dream-a-qa-with-kim-stanley-robinson.
[4] Smith, Jeremy. "The Ambiguous Utopian." January Magazine, Jul. 2002,
http://januarymagazine.com/profiles/ksrobinson.html.
[5]Jaffe, Sarah. "Standing Firm at Standing Rock: Why the Struggle is
Bigger Than One Pipeline." Bill Moyers & Company, 28 Sept. 2016,
http://billmoyers.com/story/standing-firm-standing-rock-pipeline-protesters-will-not-moved.
[6] Allen, Elizabeth, Barbara Beckwith, Jon Beckwith, et al. "Against
'Sociobiology.'" The New York Review of Books, 13 Nov. 1975,
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1975/11/13/against-sociobiology/.
[7] Wilson, Edward O. "Half-Earth : Our Planet's Fight for Life."
Liveright Publishing Corporation, a Division of W.W. Norton & Company,
2016: 81.
[8] Ibid, 167.
[9] Ibid, 63.
[10] Interviews in "A Place Without People." Directed by Andreas
Apostolidis. Quebec: Films Transit International, 2011.
[11] Spence, Mark David. "Dispossessing the Wilderness : Indian
Removal and the Making of the National Parks." Oxford University
Press, 1999.
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