发帖
雷达卡
[UseMoney=50]
139113.pdf
(108.12 KB, 需要: 50 个论坛币)
[/UseMoney]
Tropical Rain Forest: A Political Ecology of Hegemonic Mythmaking (IEA Studies on the Environment No. 15)
Publisher: Inst of Economic Affairs
Number Of Pages: 48
Publication Date: 1999-11-15
Sales Rank: 2925598
ISBN / ASIN: 0255364857
EAN: 9780255364850
Binding: Paperback
Manufacturer: Inst of Economic Affairs
Studio: Inst of Economic Affairs
Average Rating: 5
This monograph challenges the many Green myths of the tropical rain forest. These myths, the book contends, are founded on what are called "little Green lies" which not only deny the fundamental search for truth in science, but far more seriously warp socio-economic policy.
Review:
Magnificent monograph that destroys rainforest myths
I must first declare an interest: I commissioned Professor Stott to write this book! Nevertheless, I think it is a great book and if you have any interest in the 'tropical rain forest' I urge you to read it. (I should add that I personally do not make any money from sales of this book! The pulisher, for whom I work, is a non-profit, which has no corporate view and which is substantially reliant upon donations for its income.) Here is the foreword that I wrote for the book ...
Our attachment to the tropical rain forest has grown over the past hundred years from a minority colonial pursuit to mainstream environmental obsession. The tropical rain forest has variously been assumed to be the world's most important repository of biological diversity and 'the lungs of the planet'. As Philip Stott shows in this magnificent monograph, neither claim has any basis in fact.
The Northern environmentalist conception of the tropical rain forest is far removed from the ecological realities of the places it purports to denote. Most of the 'million year old forest' to which environmentalists sentimentally refer turns out to have existed for less than 20,000 years. During the last ice age the tropics were colder and drier than today and probably more closely resembled the savanna grasslands of East Africa. Most of the abundant plants and insects of the so-called tropical rain forest are equally novel, having co-evolved with the trees.
Claims regarding the fragility of the ecosystems in tropical areas are similarly awry. Recent research suggests that a clear-cut area will return to forest with a similar level of biological diversity to the original within twenty years. Moreover, cutting the forest at the edges tends to increase, not decrease, biological diversity, because it creates diversity of habitat. Ironically, the mythical 'climax rain forest' would be a barren place: no new species would evolve because there would be no new environmental niches to be filled.
The myth of the tropical rain forest suits the purposes of Northern environmentalists, who are essentially ultra-conservative: for them all change is bad. Witness their paranoid obsession with the climate, which seeks to achieve the impossible of climate stability regardless of cost (when the climate appeared to be cooling in the 1970s, their objective was to keep the planet warm; now that it appears to be warming, they want to keep us cool). By claiming that the tropical rain forest is both static and fragile, environmentalists justify demands for restrictions on the conversion of 'virgin forest' to other uses.
Yet the history of the world has been one of evolutionary change. If we attempt to maintain stasis, we risk limiting our ability to adapt to change when it inevitably comes. The ultra-conservative strategy encouraged by environmentalists is far more dangerous to human survival than a strategy that embraces risk and change.
Calls for the tropical rain forest to be preserved are founded on the implied presumption that the people living in tropical regions are merely there to protect a western construct. This denigrates their rights and dehumanises them. Just as the colonial administrators sought to reduce the numbers of livestock kept by Africans, claiming that the tribes-people did not know how to manage their land, environmentalists demand that indigenous people be discouraged from converting land to agricultural purposes or to plantation forest. This is, at base, little more then a new form of colonialism.
The appropriate use of a particular area of land is most likely to be discovered by people with strong tenurial rights in that land, since such rights create incentives to invest time and money discovering which of the alternative uses is best. Where people cannot own land, or where the costs of protecting land are very high, they have little incentive to invest in conservation. By contrast, where land may be owned and costs of protecting it are relatively low, individuals have incentives to invest in conservation because they know that they will be able to reap the rewards of those investments.
If people in developing countries are to escape from the mire of poverty in which so many continue to live, it is essential that they have secure rights of tenure and are free to do with their land what they will. Some may make mistakes, some may fail in their attempts to manage the land, but many will be successful and those successes will be emulated. Through a process of experimentation -- trial, error and emulation -- people will come to learn how best to manage the land. The environment will then be managed in ways that are best for humanity as a whole, not according to the whims of a minority of eco-imperialists. Giving rights to people, not to the environment, is not only best for the people, but is also best for the environment.
Philip Stott provides an eloquent deconstruction of the ideas that have led to the mythical western idea of the tropical rain forest, which constrains our ability to understand the environments of developing countries and has enabled the eco-imperialist vision to flourish.
提升卡
置顶卡
沉默卡
变色卡
抢沙发
千斤顶
显身卡
京公网安备 11010802022788号
