Environmental Justice
vs.
Nature Protection
“The Winding Road: Incorporating Social Justice
and Human Rights into Protected Areas”
Crystal L. Fortwangler
Primary Forms of Biodiversity Protection
1.
National Park Model
2.
Regional Approaches
3.
Community-Based Conservation
4.
Private Acquisition
The “Yellowstone Model”
Biosphere Reserves
Established by the United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO)
Programme on Man and the Biosphere
beginning in 1971.
http://www.unesco.org/mabdb/bios1-2.htm
Biodiversity Protection in Practice: Problems

Forced removal of local people to create protected
areas.

Torture and intimidation of local people to enforce
protection policies.

Restricting local people’s access to natural resources.

Excluding local people from participating in decisionmaking and management of local protected areas.
Biodiversity Protection in Practice: Problems

Failure to actually protect biodiversity because local
people exploit natural resources, kill animals and plants,
encroach upon habitat, and/or denude or destroy habitat.

Worries that local people will put their own interests
above the goal of protecting local biodiversity.

Worries that local people will make bad management
decisions about how to protect natural areas.

Ironically, attempting to protect biodiversity might hasten
its demise.
“Feeding People vs. Saving Nature” (1996)
Holmes Rolston III
If persons widely demonstrate that they value many other worthwhile
things over feeding the hungry (Christmas gifts, college educations,
symphony concerts),
2.
And if developed countries, to protect what they value, post national
boundaries across which the poor may not cross (immigration laws),
3.
And if there is unequal and unjust distribution of wealth, and if just
redistribution to alleviate poverty is refused,
4.
And if one-fifth of the world continues to consume four-fifths of the
production of goods and four-fifths consumes one-fifth,
5.
And if escalating birthrates continue so that there are no real gains in
alleviating poverty, only larger numbers of poor in the next generation,
6.
And if low productivity on domesticated lands continues, and if the natural
lands to be sacrificed are likely to be low in productivity,
7.
And if significant natural values are at stake, including extinctions of
species,
Then one out not always to feed people first, but rather one ought to sometimes
save nature.
1.
“Nature as Community: The Convergence of
Environment and Social Justice”
Giovanna Di Chiro:




Because mainstream environmental groups (MEGs) have focused
so heavily on wilderness preservation and protecting endangered
species, and have focused so little on urban and rural environmental
problems, MEGs have contributed to the continued environmental
injustices suffered by marginalized urban and rural peoples.
MEGs advocate top-down nature management at the expense of
local communities, and MEGs contribute to participatory,
recognition, and identity injustice.
MEGs perpetuate past colonial injustices by alienating people from
nature.
With their focus on protecting nature (wilderness) and species “out
there” in the wild, MEGs deny human-nature relationships.
U.S. Wilderness Act of 1964

Introduced in Congress in 1956 and rewritten 65
times until it passed in 1964.

Created the National Wilderness Preservation
System (NWPS) with 54 wilderness areas (9.1
million acres).

Set a precedent for subsequent wilderness acts.
http://www.wilderness.net/index.cfm?fuse=NWPS
Section 2c of the Wilderness Act of 1964
A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his works dominate
the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its
community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor
who does not remain. An area of wilderness is further defined to mean in
this chapter an area of undeveloped Federal land retaining its primeval
character and influence, without permanent improvements or human
habitation, which is protected and managed so as to preserve its natural
conditions and which (1) generally appears to have been affected primarily
by the forces of nature, with the imprint of man's work substantially
unnoticeable; (2) has outstanding opportunities for solitude or a primitive
and unconfined type of recreation; (3) has at least five thousand acres of
land or is of sufficient size as to make practicable its preservation and use in
an unimpaired condition; and (4) may also contain ecological, geological, or
other features of scientific, educational, scenic, or historical value.
Wilderness Under Attack
Some members of the Environmental Justice
Movement openly criticize wilderness for:
1.
2.
3.
Being racist, ethnocentric, colonialist, and
elitist.
Putting nonhuman nature above people and
sacrificing human interests to preserve
wilderness.
Begin celebrated as a fiction or a place that
really doesn’t exist.
No Wilderness Argument
1. The concept of wilderness denotes an area that exists independent
of human cultures.
2. To say that an area exists “independent of human cultures” is to say
that it is uninhabited and/or untrammeled by people and has been
such in the past.
3. New interpretations of both old and new empirical evidence strongly
suggest that no areas of the United States were uninhabited
and/or untrammeled by people prior to current wilderness
designation.
4. No current wilderness areas (de facto or legally designated) satisfy
criteria required to qualify as wilderness.
Conclusion: Thus, there are no real wilderness areas in the United
States. When viewed as a set, the category of wilderness has no
members.
Moral Argument
Against Wilderness Preservation
1. Wilderness areas—areas that are empty of people and
their developments—were created by Euroamericans
who intentionally killed and removed Native American
Indians from landscapes.
2. Killing and removing Native American Indians from
landscapes was morally wrong.
Conclusion: Thus, because wilderness areas were created
by morally wrong actions, the preservation of
wilderness today is morally wrong.
Ethnocentric Argument Against Wilderness
1. The idea of wilderness is largely a product of European
and Euroamerican ethnic cultures.
2. Wilderness preservation, as informed by this idea, is
largely practiced only by people of European ancestry.
3. The practice of wilderness preservation largely has
ignored the presence of non-European descended
peoples, such as Native American Indians.
4. To ignore non-European descended peoples is wrong.
5. Ethnocentrism is morally wrong.
Conclusion: Thus, the practice of wilderness preservation
and the idea of wilderness are ethnocentric, and
because of this they are morally wrong.
Values Argument Against Wilderness
Preservation (Elitism Argument)
1. Wilderness preservation historically has been justified by appealing
to the aesthetic, religious/spiritual, recreational, and symbolic
values of wilderness for people.
2. Only people in privileged positions of economic, social, and/or
political power historically have been able to appreciate these
values.
3. Because most people have never been in privileged positions of
economic, social, and/or political power, most people have never
been able to appreciate the values of wilderness.
4. Further, many people who have not been in these privileged
positions of power have needed to use wilderness resources in
order to make a living in an economic sense.
Conclusion: Thus, wilderness preservation is elitist. It is justified by
appealing to values that are not available to most people. Further,
protecting wilderness harms people economically.
Social Constructivist Argument
Against Wilderness
1. In order for the concept of wilderness to make sense, it must
connote the idea of nature as existing independent of human
cultures.
2. The concept of wilderness thus presupposes that a meaningful
conceptual distinction can be made between human cultures and
nonhuman nature.
3. Because wilderness and nature, like all other concepts, are human
social constructions (concepts invented by social groups of
people), it is problematic to say that wilderness exists
independent from human cultures. That is, because the ideas of
nature and wilderness are socially constructed, there are no nonsocially constructed natural areas that exist independent of
human cultures.
What the concept of wilderness connotes––the idea of nature as
existing independent of human cultures––is non-existent.