Читать книгу The New Environmental Economics - Eloi Laurent - Страница 27

The tendency nowadays to wander in wildernesses is delightful to see. Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life. Awakening from the stupefying effects of the vice of over-industry and the deadly apathy of luxury, they are trying as best they can to mix and enrich their own little ongoings with those of Nature, and to get rid of rust and disease. Briskly venturing and roaming, some are washing off sins and cobweb cares of the devil’s spinning in all-day storms on mountains; sauntering in rosiny pinewoods or in gentian meadows, brushing through chaparral, bending down and parting sweet, flowery sprays; tracing rivers to their sources, getting in touch with the nerves of Mother Earth; jumping from rock to rock, feeling the life of them, learning the songs of them, panting in whole-souled exercise, and rejoicing in deep, long-drawn breaths of pure wildness. This is fine and natural and full of promise. So also is the growing interest in the care and preservation of forests and wild places in general, and in the half-wild parks and gardens of towns. Even the scenery habit in its most artificial forms, mixed with spectacles, silliness, and kodaks; its devotees arrayed more gorgeously than scarlet tanagers, frightening the wild game with red umbrellas – even this is encouraging, and may well be regarded as a hopeful sign of the times.

John Muir, Our National Parks, 1901. Accessible at https://vault.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/writings/our_national_parks/chapter_1.aspx

Muir passionately promoted “preservationism,” a radical approach to protection, in which nature acquires an intrinsic value: It is worthy of being protected for itself, against the harmful effects of societies, according to a principle of separation of the natural and social world. The notion of wilderness is central to the movement (Muir would write that “the clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness”).⁵

But the political dimension of the preservation movement also needs to be highlighted. In a speech delivered at the cornerstone ceremony for the Roosevelt Arch⁶ in Yellowstone National Park in 1903, Theodore Roosevelt (October 27, 1858 to January 6, 1919), the 26th President of the United States, insisted that national parks were created “for the benefit and enjoyment of the people” and that “the park idea is noteworthy in its essential democracy.” Environmental resources are thus part of human justice (we will come back to this in detail in Chapter 4). To make these resources freely available to the greatest possible number, regardless of money or power, must be part of the democratic project (legally transposing natural resources in the public domain, as for instance the National Trust⁷ does in the UK, is part of this “essential democracy” process). From a policy perspective, preservation, as implemented by Theodore Roosevelt, with the creation of national parks, has put justice, both intra-generational and inter-generational, at the forefront.

In contrast to preservationism, “conservationism” has instead proposed a reasoned management of natural resources exploited for human well-being. The movement’s momentum has greatly benefited from the publication of a major book, Man and Nature by George Perkins Marsh (1801–1882). In it, the ideal of harmony between the natural world and humanity is contested (Marsh writes about “the hostile influence of man,” the true “disturbing agent” of the biosphere) and the picture of a “second Nature” close to what Cicero has envisioned⁸ emerges. Celebrated as soon as it was published in 1864, the book was republished with an even more explicit title: The Earth as Modified by Human Action in 1874. Lewis Mumford⁹ claimed in 1924 that Man and Nature was the source of the entire conservation movement.

Gifford Pinchot (1865–1946), the most important figure of the conservationist movement that sought to bring balance back in the relation between “Man and Nature,” promoted the notion of “wise use” of resources and will later become the first head of the US federal forest service, one of the first sectors where the concept of sustainability emerged. This sustainable use of natural resources (to be achieved through government regulation) is not the same as laissez-faire “green” capitalism. The goal of conservationism is not to make money but to ensure that natural resources continue to be available for human enjoyment in the future. Yet, conservationism understood as natural utilitarianism brings about the issue of inter-generational inequality, as this statement of Pinchot in 1909 makes clear: “The first principle of conservation is development, the use of the natural resources now existing on this continent for the benefit of the people who live here now.”¹⁰

The very real opposition between preservation and conservation, that has inspired many environmental debates such as the choice between “strong” and “weak” sustainability,¹¹ has been mythologized over time. Preservationism is as political as it is mystical and conservationism is not as market-oriented as it seems. The truth remains that while Muir and Pinchot were originally friends and allies, they became increasingly alienated until their different philosophies led them to bitterly oppose one another in the battle over the damming of Hetch-Hetchy in Yosemite,¹² a fight lost by Muir. It is nevertheless equally true that both movements have insisted on the necessity for environmental governance that Elinor Ostrom was able to document and conceptualize through her re-discovery of the “commons.”