The second problem identified above lies with the extent to which various theoretical assumptions underpin modern political ecology. These relate to the prevailing belief that nature exists in some delicate and harmonious balance, so that any anthropogenic interference such as actions causing
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species extinction might trigger catastrophic ecological collapse. But they also relate to the virtual nature of many of the claims for widespread species extinction which is putatively occurring.
Stephen Budiansky has pointed out how much of modern ‘political ecology’ (that which forms the discourse of environmental activists) is good poetry, but bad science (Budiansky, 1995). Ecologists once thought that nature left free of human interference would eventually reach the steady state of the climax community, but over the past 30 years the idea of adap- tation to disturbance has replaced the concept of the climax community among most ecological scientists. It is a point of some interest that in the popular imagination, the stability of the climax community is probably still the dominant ‘myth of nature’, sustained by constant repetition by political ecologists, and like ‘sustained yield’, the progenitor of ‘sustainable development’ (which emerged in a social context of great uncertainty in Germany), no doubt offering the reassurance of stability in uncertain and rapidly changing times. Similarly, ‘climate change’ suggests that the climate doesn’t usually change, which geological science tells us is poppycock.
An ecological science in which perturbation, turbulence, disturbance, succession and flux are the norm creates what appear to be insurmountable problems for ecocentric philosophical positions (see Scoones, 1999). If nature is constantly in flux, how can we read a prescription from it that any particular state should be preserved? If we should leave it to nature to find its own balance, it is likely instead to demonstrate considerable change, and if we wish to preserve any environment we will have to manage it in line with humanvalues. While we are not reduced to seeing nature in purely util- itarian terms, this does place the emphasis back on human choice – in Botkin’s terms (Botkin, 1990), we must choose among the ‘discordant har- monies’ of nature those elements we wish to retain. We must reject nature as providing a source of norms which guide how we must live and accept instead that we are part of a living, changing system; we can choose to accept, use, or control elements to make for a habitable existence, both singly and individually. But we cannot leave nature alone to look after itself and expect that we will necessarily approve of the result, since it might not be conducive to either maximizing biodiversity or conserving endangered species, if we prize those values.
An emphasis on disturbance and chaos also suggests we need be cautious about assuming we can manage resources at sustained yield, of course, and this is the basis for the emergence of the ‘precautionary principle’ – although this is frequently little more than a slogan with an infinite number of meanings. And while Donald Worster (1993) dismisses sustainability as a sloganeering approach to environmental problems, his solution lies in the direction of another slogan: biodiversity preservation. He argues that we
must make our first priority the strict preservation of the billion-year heri- tage of evolution of plant and animal life, and thus preserve all the species, subspecies, varieties, communities and ecosystems that we possibly can. We cannot stop every extinction, argues Worster, but we should avoid adding to the tally.
But even ‘biodiversity’ is frequently used as a slogan, and there are dangers in this, especially with the unquestioned belief that one simply cannot have enough of it. One can search long and hard for critical discus- sion of how much biodiversity we should seek. There is an unquestioning belief that more is both always better and never sufficient, despite there being doubts as to whether the supposed benefits of diversity, such as ecosystem stability (as May pointed out), are real. This is so not just because of the decline in acceptance of the notion of the climax commu- nity, but because there is evidence of resilience in simple systems and fragility in diverse systems (Budiansky, 1995, pp. 97–9).
Slogans sometimes make for good politics, but they are a dangerous foundation for science – or policy. A management plan for a national park in Germany was once saved from the efforts of environmental groups to write into it a requirement to ‘maximize biodiversity’ only at the 11th hour, when ecologists in the parks agency realized the alpine ecosystem had low natural biodiversity (Haber, 1993, p. 39). Politically, it is often supposed that conservation biology and the preservation of biodiversity are two sides of the same coin, and that human management decisions can be ‘read’ from the available science in some way. Yet this cannot be taken for granted, as a single example shows.
On Cape York Peninsula in the Australian state of Queensland, an area of wet sclerophyll forest is being ‘invaded’ (note the bellicose language) by rainforest (Harrington and Sanderson, 1994). The wet sclerophyll is habitat to several endangered species. What management decision should we take?
Rainforest ecologists might argue that rainforest is naturally more biodi- verse than wet sclerophyll (and, presumably, more stable), and that there- fore the invasion should be allowed to proceed. But if we care about species extinction, should we not intervene? And what difference does it make that both the origins of the wet sclerophyll and the resurgence of rainforest are anthropogenic – the former in the fire activity at the hands of indigenous people, and the latter at the termination of that practice with the develop- ment of the cattle industry?
Should we privilege the wet sclerophyll (which is an artefact of pre- industrial human fire activity) over the rainforest which is advantaged by the fire suppression activity of modern society? Rainforest ecologists tend to argue for rainforest, citing its greater inherent biodiversity, but conser- vation biologists would argue that acting to preserve the wet sclerophyll
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enhances biodiversity on a global scale. As this example shows, all envi- ronmental management requires the exercise of human judgement about whether or not to intervene. A decision not to act is just as much a decision as one to do so. And just as with other areas of public policy, the notion of a totally scientific public policy is a myth (Formaini, 1990).
Moreover, there might be dangers in attempting to follow a scientifically reductionist path of public policy-making, both with conservation biology and with other environmental problems. There is at least a need to avoid assumptions that slogans such as ‘intermediate technology’ will deliver the right results. The tragedy of arsenic poisoning from tube wells in Bangladesh, which have lowered the water table and mobilized naturally- occurring arsenic in geological formations, serves as an appropriate warning. There are numerous examples of the dangers of reductionism, perhaps none more stark than the introduction of ozone-depleting chloro- fluorocarbons (CFCs) in 1928 as a safe substitute for ammonia refrigerants.
Similarly, we need to be careful about translating risk management deci- sions from developed to developing nations: Peru following US EPA assess- ments in deciding not to chlorinate drinking water caused thousands of deaths in the South American cholera epidemic of the 1990s thanks to policy-makers ignoring the differing socio-economic contexts (Anderson, 1991).
It is within this context that some of the recent controversies over species extinction must be placed. This science is now highly politicized, as evi- denced by the Greenpeace claims of extinction rates of 50 000–100 000 species annually in its advertising, soliciting funds. The number seems fantastic, but rests upon the mathematical modelling of a supposed species–area relationship developed by Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson and popularized by Norman Myers. Both are activists and scientists.
Regardless, these are virtualextinctions, and they lie at the heart of part of the heated exchanges between ecological apostate Bjorn Lomborg and Wilson, Myers and other ‘political ecologists’ such as Paul Ehrlich, and others still who were quick to mobilize to counter the political impact of Lomborg’s book The Skeptical Environmentalist, in which he took issue (inter alia) with the virtual extinctions resulting from species–area models (see Chapter 4). Two reviewers, Jeff Harvey and Stuart Pimm, likened Lomborg to a holocaust denier because he challenged them to ‘name one’, ignoring the obvious difference that it is possible in practice to name nearly every holocaust victim if one consults the records whereas it is not possible to name virtual species. But it requires courage to raise issues when one’s opponents use analogies like ‘holocaust denier’.
Chase has explored the origins of ecosystems science, especially the extent to which it borrowed from physics a model that explained energy flows
through a system, with nature operating much like a thermostat, so that ecosystems were seen as self-regulating and tending towards equilibrium.
‘An ecosystem could be pictured in the form of a model like an electrical circuit, whereby energy, derived from the sun, was transferred by means of chemical processes through soil and grass up the food chain, and then, by decomposition, through the cycle again’ (Chase, 1987, p. 313). Ecology lacked a scientifically respectable method for studying life, and the ecosys- tem approach provided scientific respectability by supplying ecologists with mathematical tools developed by physicists. It gave them access to the laws of thermodynamics and mathematics. (May, a physicist who became a leading ecologist, typifies the discipline.) Community ecology boomed, but the problem was ‘true ecosystems . . . were hard to find. In fact, as even Tansley had acknowledged, they did not exist!’ (Chase, 1987, p. 315).
An ecosystem (like a community or society) is nothing more than a con- struction, ‘a tool by which scientists artificially separated their subject of study from everything else’ (Chase, 1987, p. 315). Ecologists tried to study ponds as examples of ecosystems, but soon found even they were not closed systems, but connected to the water table, and affected by groundwater flows, spring run-off, migrating waterfowl, trace elements dropped in the rain, airborne spores and the sun. When everything was connected to every- thing else on the globe, it was impossible to isolate an ecosystem to study, and even earth was affected by sunspots, meteor showers and cosmic radi- ation. To study nature therefore necessitates the use of models and abstrac- tions, and a degree of reductionism, and this provides opportunities for normative factors to intrude.
Ethics became infused into ecological science. Aldo Leopold tried to develop his ‘land ethic’ by taking, somewhat to an extreme, the obvious point that man was a part of ecosystems. Whereas Tansley had taken this point to suggest that any separation between man and nature was artificial, and therefore that any human actions were just part of the system, Leopold took it to mean that man should develop an ethical system which included soils, water, plants and animals, or (taken together) the land. But Leopold’s land ethic, and Deep Ecology and other ecocentric ethical systems which came later, required a science for studying relations between humanity and nature, and there was none.
Environmentalists took to the idea of a self-regulating ecosystem like ducks to Walden Pond, but they failed to appreciate that it was the product of mathematics, part of the very post-Enlightenment rationality they were rejecting as they began to turn ecological science into religion, where knowledge rested on the ‘almost sensuous intuiting of natural har- monies’, as Theodore Rosak put it (Chase, 1987, p. 323), and the balance of nature was granted sacred status.
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The progress of ecological science was to diverge from this notion of a sacred balance, as change, perturbation and succession came to be accepted as core concepts. But the increased emphasis on mathematics which lent ecology its scientific gravitas helped steer it towards virtual science rather than experimental science, and it never totally shook off its normative shackles. The emphasis on mathematical models de-emphasized the need for experiment, and the need for field work. As Chase put it, ‘It became perhaps too abstract, a discipline attracting deskbound number crunchers more than those who liked to tramp about the woods in wool shirts count- ing deer scat’ (Chase, 1987, p. 322). Community ecologists reflecting criti- cally on their discipline concluded it had too often been content with generalized mathematical theory and passively (rather than experimen- tally) collected observations (Chase, 1987, pp. 322–3).
The shift of environmentalism onto a quasi-religious plane, coupled with the descent of much of ecology into the virtual world of mathematical modelling facilitated the virtuous corruption of virtual science.