Varieties of Environmentalism: Essays North and South

255 Pages·2006·14.474 MB·English

by  Ramachandra Guha, Juan Martínez-Alier

VARIETIES OF
ENVIRONMENTALEM: ESSAYS
NORTH AND SOUTH
RAMACHANDRA GUHA
AND
J. MARTINEZ-ALIER
E A N I HH
publishing for a sustainable future
London • New York
First published in the UK by Earthscan in 1997
Reprinted 2000, 2006
Copyright © Ramachandra Guha and Juan Martinez-Alier, 1997
All rights reserved
ISBN-10: 1-85383-329-0
ISBN-13: 978-1-85383-329-8
Typesetting and page design by Carl Inwood Studios
Cover design by Andrew Corbett
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
IN MEMORY OF PAUL KURIAN
AND E. P. THOMPSON
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CONTENTS
Preface vii
Introduction xi
PARTl
1 The Environmentalismo f the Poor 3
The Origins of Conflict 3
Claiming the Commonsi n Karnataka 6
A Vocabularyo f Protest 11
Two Kinds of Environmentalism 16
2 From Political Economyt o Political Ecology 22
Introduction 22
Marxism and Environmentalism 23
Distribution, the DiscountR ate and Incommensurability 27
EcologicalD istribution Conflicts 31
InternationalE xternalities 36
3 Povertya nd the Environment:a Critique of the 46
ConventionalW isdom
Introduction 46
Sustainabilitya nd Carrying Capacity 47
Is Povertya Causeo f EnvironmentalD egradation? 59
Ecology and'A djustment'P rogrammes 65
ProtectiveE xpenditurea nd Income Levels: Leipert'sL aw 68
Ecology and PositionalG oods 69
The Social Ecology of the Poor 72
Conclusion 75
4 Towardsa Cross-CulturalE nvironmentalE thic 77
AmericanD ebateso n EnvironmentalE thics 77
EnvironmentalP hilosophieso f History 79
EnvironmentalP hilosophiesin Two Cultures 85
Social Ecology or EcologicalS ocialism? 90
5 RadicalA mericanE nvironmentalisma nd Wilderness 92
Preservationa: Third World Critique
Introduction 92
The Tenetso f DeepE cology 93
Towardsa Critique 94
A Homily 101
Postscript:D eepE cology Revisited 102
VARIETIES OF ENVIRONMENTALISM
6 The Merchandisingo f Biodiversity 109
Introduction 109
GeneticE rosion 111
PeasanSt trugglest o Control Seeds 113
Agricultural Biodiversity as 'Cultivated Natural Capital'? 115
'Farmers'R ights' 117
The INBio-Merck Deal 119
The Defenceo f AgroecologyO utsidet he Market 120
NAFTA: Petroleuma nd Maize 124
7 The Failure of Ecological Planningi n Barcelona 128
Introduction 128
A City for Cars 130
The Conurbation 132
The LlobregatD elta 136
The Ecology of the City 138
The Paradoxeso f 'Modernism' 141
CorbuserianM onstrosities 146
PART 2
8 MahatmaG andhi and the EnvironmentalM ovement 153
Gandhi'sE nvironmentalE thic 155
Gandhia nd Nehru 161
The Heritageo f Gandhi 166
9 In Memory of Georgescu-Roegen 169
A Brief PersonalE ncounter 169
EcologicalE conomicsa nd its Precursors 171
Freedomo f Migration 174
EconomicG rowth 175
Externalitiesa nd the DiscountR ate 176
Agrarian Economics 177
PrometheanT echnologies 182
10 The ForgottenA mericanE nvironmentalist 185
The Influence of Patrick Geddes 186
Mumford on ModernT echnology 192
The Nineteenth-CenturyH eroes 196
Conclusion 199
Notes 203
Index 225
vi
PREFACE
Although the essaysit containsw erew ritten in the last few years,t his book
draws upon interests and activities that go back almost two decades.
Varieties of Environmentalisme laboratesi n detail ideasf irst tentatively put
forward in Martinez-Alier's history of ecological economics,p ublishedi n
1987, and in Guha'sh istory of the Chipko movement,p ublishedt wo years
later. Those books each ended by noting the differences between
environmentalismin First and Third World contexts.T hat contrastb ecame
one focus of our subsequenrte search,t he resultso f which are presented
here.*
Over the yearsw e have discussedv arietieso f environmentalismw ith
many colleagues, among them Bina Agarwal, Tariq Banuri, Frank
Beckenbach,M ike Bell, Peter Brimblecombe, Bill Burch, Fred Buttel,
Madhav Gadgil, Enrique Leff, JamesO 'Connor, Martin O'Connor, Paul
Richards,J oel Seton, LoriAnn Thrupp, Victor Toledo, StefanoV arese and
Donald Worster. Thesec olleaguesh avep ursuedf or a long time - 20 years
in some cases- lines of researchp arallel to our own. The notion of an
'environmentalismo f the poor' developedin this book will not be a novelty
to them.
An especial word of thanks is owed to the Social Science Research
Council (SSRC), whose Joint Committee on Latin American Studies
conveneda serieso f meetingso n the environmentalismo f the poor. Several
of the ideas put forward here were first discusseda t those meetingsi n
Oxford, New York and New Delhi. At the SSRC, Enrique Mayer and
Lawrence Whitehead, both members of the Joint Committee, and Eric
Hershberg,P rogrammeO fficer, gaves trongs upportt o our work.
The authorso f this book met in August1 988,w henM artinez-Alier came
to India at the invitation of Paul Kurian, an economista nd social activist
then with the Institute for Cultural Researcha ndA ction in Bangalore.P aul
Kurian, who died tragically in 1993, not yet 40, had a wide range of
intellectual and political interests. A student of New Delhi's Jawaharlal
Nehru University in its halcyon years (the early 1970s), he later worked
with a pioneering trade union, the ChattisgarhM ines Shramik Samiti;
wrote scholarly essayso n Solidarity in Poland; and lived for a time in
Sandinista-ruledN icaragua. He then developed a keen interest in
ecological economics,a nd was at work on a doctoratei n the field at the
* Chapters1 ,4,5,8 and 10 have been authoredb y RG; chapters2 ,3,6,7 and 9 are by JMA.
VARIETIES OF ENVIRONMENTALISM
time of his death.
We dedicatet his book to India's Paul Kurian and to England'sE dward
PalmerT hompson,a notherf riend who is no longerw ith us. E. P. Thompson
is, of course,o ne of the most influential historianso f our time, but it is not
so well known that he had an abiding interesti n the environment.S ignso f
this interest appear,i ndirectly, in his biography of that great early 'red-
green' thinker, William Morris, and in his involvement in the peace
movement.I t was also expressedm ore directly in personalc onversation
and in some of his later writings; as for instance his book Customs in
Common (1991), which refers to 18th century peasant protesters as
'prematureG reens',a nd to John Clare as one who 'may be described,
without hindsight,a s a poet of ecologicalp rotest'.T wo yearsl ater, in what
wasv ery likely the last review he wrote, of a book on Indian environmental
history, Thompsonw onderedw hy 'so muche cologicalw riting shouldb e so
deeply depressing'.H e noted that 'despitea ll exploitation and abuse,t hat
vast areao f fissuredl and, from the Himalaya to the tip of the peninsula,i s
so rich still in so manyr esourcesa nd speciest hat onew ondersi f onem ight
be permitteda glimmer of utopiane ncouragementF.' ull of optimism until
the end, and with not just the Indian sub-continenti n mind, he asked,
'Might the downwardd rift not yet be turned around?'
In rememberingP aul Kurian and E. P. Thompsonw e invoke not so
much personalf riendships as a wider socialist tradition of thought and
hope,a tradition that needst o be reneweda nd revitalisedf or the future. In
1991,s hortly after the collapseo f the SovietU nion, a groupo f distinguished
Marxist scholarsp ublished,u nder the auspiceso f a distinguishedM arxist
press,a volume of essaysw ith the gloomy title After the Fall. The authorso f
the presentb ook, however, felt no senseo f failure at the happeningsi n
easternE urope;o n the contrary,w e felt a senseo f relief, at being able to go
back, in a spirit of fraternity and open-nesst,o alternativet raditionso f left-
wing thoughtc rushedb y some7 0 yearso f Marxist and (especially)L eninist
arrogance.B efore Bolshevismb ecamet he Big Brothero n the Left, traditions
of anarchism,s yndicalism,a nd peasantp opulism - to name only three-
existed on more or less equal terms with it. An ecological politics for the
next centurym ust,w e believe,b uild on the insightso f these' other'v arieties
of socialism in their pristine 19th century forms and as they have been
elaboratedb y an array of 20th century thinkers, some of whom are duly
honouredi n thesep ages.
This book is in the first instance a work of comparative history,
an account and analysis, over time and across societies,o f the varieties
of environmentalismt hat we understandt o be characteristic of the
modern world. But we must also own up to another and not always
hidden agenda: the bringing into dialogue of socialism
and environmentalism, two radical traditions that have tended
viii
PREFACE
to talk pastr athert han talk to eacho ther.
RamachandraG uha and Juan Martinez-Alier
Bangalorea nd Barcelona
November1 996
ix