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Expanding on Sustainability

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1 Expanding on Sustainability
David Landis Barnhill Director, Environmental Studies Program. Presented to the Winnebago Project faculty college, University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, May 22, 2008

2 Expanding on Sustainability
Ideas that refine and challenge our understanding of sustainability conservationism & preservationism anthropocentrism & intrinsic value wilderness sense of place bioregionalism

3 “Conservationism” Sustainability has been a national policy for one hundred years Conserving natural resources (forests, wildlife) for future generations Gifford Pinchot ( ) "the art of producing from the forest whatever it can yield for the service of man." Aldo Leopold ( ) U.W. Professor of wildlife management

4 Problems with Conservationism
“Anthropocentrism” – human-centered “Instrumental value” only, no “intrinsic value” Aldo Leopold’s conversion “fierce green fire dying in her eyes” “thinking like a mountain” > “biocentrism” or “ecocentrism”

5 “Preservationism” John Muir (1838-1914) National parks:
Critic of conservationism, of nature as mere resource for humans Proponent of “preservationism”: preserve the natural world in its natural state for itself. National parks: A national policy of preservationism … sort of Tourism

6 Wilderness Wilderness Society (1935) Wilderness Act (1964)
motto: “keep it wild” Wilderness Act (1964) “an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain” The wild and wilderness in nature writing and environmental philosophy (deep ecology)

7 “The Trouble with Wilderness”
Is what we call pristine wilderness really without impact by people? Native Americans as resource managers Pollution and climate change Wilderness is a “social construction.” Doesn’t it imply a separation and antagonism between humans & nature? It doesn’t help us understand how we should live in and with nature.

8 “Sense of place” Familiarity with the place, an intimate awareness of its special characteristics. Personal meanings associated with the place: human interpretation and implication. Specific subjective, affective sensitivity to the place, from emotional to spiritual. Identification: I am part of this place, and the place is part of me. Personal investment in and attachment to the place. Usually requires a period of time to develop and involves a sense of abiding connection.

9 Sense of place “Once in his life a man ought to concentrate his mind upon the remembered earth. He ought to give himself up to a particular landscape in his experience; to look at it from as many angles as he can, to wonder upon it, to dwell upon it. He ought to imagine that he touches it with his hands at every season and listens to the sounds that are made upon it.” --N. Scott Momaday, The Way to Rainy Mountain

10 Placelessness Lack of a feeling of connectedness to a particular place. Alienation from the natural world. Missing something essential and necessary to being human. Can involve alienation from oneself and other people.

11 Limitations to a sense of place
Sense of place can be “aesthetic” only. It does not necessarily involve the sense of working the land, using it to live (as a farmer or indigenous hunter-gatherer). This leaves open the question: How should one live in and with place? Can one combine the notion of using nature sustainably (as in conservationism) with the high value placed on nature with preservationism and wilderness ideal?

12 Bioregionalism An attempt to answer these two questions Key points:
focus on the local: a decentralized view of nature & society live in harmony with the land, as part of it “The world is places.” (Gary Snyder) “Think little.” (Wendell Berry) “Reinhabitation”

13 Bioregionalism a. Utopian, radical: b. Applied, reform
Descriptive: biogeography 2. Cultural: living bioregionally a. Utopian, radical: politics: local, biogeographic, anarchist society: communal, non-hierarchical economics: local agriculture & businesses culture: diversity history: indigenous peoples, geological history b. Applied, reform farmer’s markets land trusts ecorestoration

14 Integrative and nondualistic
Scientific and cultural dimensions Personal and social levels Practical/reform and radical/utopian Nature and culture High value put on place, but also actively living in, impacting, and using it

15 Bioregionalism “You are a part of a part and the whole is made of parts, each of which is whole. You start with the part you are whole in.” (Gary Snyder)

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