An approach to environmental issues that unites issues of ecology with a broadly defined political economy perspective
Reconciliation Ecology A science of imagining, creating, and sustaining habitats, productive environments, and biodiversity in places used, traveled, and inhabited by human beings
When Hintz examines the conservation of bears in Yellowstone, for example, he thinks it is critical to examine how bears are imagined by people and to know what media, assumptions, and stories influence that imagination, since these prefigure how people do or do not act through policy, regulation, or support for environmental laws. When examining solid waste in Mexico, in another example, Moore thinks the crucial question is who controls access to and use of dumps, since this determines, to a large degree, how waste is managed, whether problems are addressed or ignored, and where the flow of hazards and benefits is directed. When examining forests in India, Robbins wants to know how local people and forest officers coerce one another, in a system of corruption that determines the rate and flow of forest-cutting and environmental transformation. People’s power over one another, over the environment, and over how other people think about the environment, in short, is our preferred starting point.
We also share an assumption that persistent systems of power, though they often lead to perverse outcomes, sometimes provide opportunities for progressive environmental action and avenues toward better human–environment relationships. We are stuck in a tangled web, in other words, but this allows us many strands to pull upon and many resources to weave new outcomes.
As a result, we also stress throughout the volume a preference for some form of reconciliation ecology. As described by ecologist Michael Rosenzweig (2003), this describes a science of imagining, creating, and sustaining habitats, productive environments, clean air and water, and biodiversity in places used, traveled, and inhabited by human beings. This point of view holds that while many of the persistent human actions of the past have stubbornly caused and perpetuated environmental problems, the solution to these problems can never be a world somehow bereft of human activity, work, inventiveness, and craft. We live on a planet fully transformed by our presence, yet one always outside of our control.
Such a point of view does not deny the importance of making special places (conservation areas, for example) for wild animals, sensitive species, or rare ecosystems. But it does stress that the critical work of making a “greener” world will happen in cities, towns, laboratories, factories, and farms, amidst human activity, and not in an imaginary natural world, somewhere “out there.” As author Emma Marris describes the possibilities of such a world, she wisely invokes the metaphor of the Earth and its ecosystems as a “Rambunctious Garden,” a hybrid of wild nature and human activity (Marris 2011).
For all the weight of our own views, however, we strongly believe in the analytical challenges presented by all of the approaches described here. It is our intention, therefore, to present the most convincing and compelling arguments of the many and diverse ways of viewing society and environment. We insist that, while it is impossible for us to present a fully unbiased view of the many ways of thinking about nature, it is possible to present fair characterizations of many points of view: characterizations without caricatures. Only the reader can judge our success in this regard.
References
1 Kolbert, E. (2012). Recall of the wild. The New Yorker December 24.
2 Marris, E. (2011). Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World. New York: Bloomsbury.
3 McKibben, B. (1990). The End of Nature. New York: Random House.
4 Mlot, C. (2013). Are Isle Royale’s wolves chasing extinction? Science 340 (6135): 919–921.
5 Radeloff, V.C., Williams, J.W., Bateman, B.L. et al. (2015). The rise of novelty in ecosystems. Ecological Applications 25 (8): 2051–2068.
6 Robbins, P. (2020). Political Ecology: A Critical Introduction. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell.
7 Rosenzweig, M.L. (2003). Win–Win Ecology: How the Earth’s Species Can Survive in the Midst of Human Enterprise. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
2 Population and Scarcity
Keywords
Birth rate
Carrying capacity
Death rate
Demographic transition model
Ecological footprint
Exponential growth
Fertility rate
Forest transition theory
Green Revolution
Induced intensification
Kuznets curve (environmental)
Neo-Malthusians
Zero population growth.
Source: Vladimir Wrangel/Shutterstock.
Chapter Menu
A Booming China or a Busting One?
The Problem of Exponential Growth
Population, Development, and Environment Impact
The Other Side of the Coin: Population and Innovation
Limits to Population: An Effect Rather than a Cause?
Thinking with Population
A Booming China or a Busting One?
The People’s Republic of China has long been a place in the world singled out for environmental concern. With a population of almost 1.4 billion people, or about 18% of the people on Earth, and a growing industrial economy, this would seem to make sense. While China is far lower in per capita greenhouse gas emissions (roughly 9 metric tons of CO2 equivalent for each person compared to around 20 metric tons in the United States), the Chinese economy produces a whopping 27% of total global greenhouse gases). Numbers have power.
Those who approach environmental questions through these kinds of numbers also see a growth trend and a pattern of accompanying industrialization that causes them worry. China had only a half billion people in 1950, while today there are triple that number. With each new person comes more demand for limited available water, the production of mounds of garbage, and the disturbance of large areas for new home construction. The 340 million motor vehicles in China, including 250 million cars, each emit roughly their own weight in greenhouse gases per year, contributing seriously to both local air pollution and global climate change. The dramatic rate of population growth poses obvious questions about the limits of the land, water, and air to support the nation.
Still, there is more than just the number of people to concern us here. Water consumption in China is around 800 gallons per person
