Western environmental history is characterized by humans, especially those living in farming and urban societies, who overexploit and degrade the environment. Some scholars now argue that environmental catastrophes are an ancient rather than recent historical phenomenon. Other scholars contrast the environmental failures of Western civilization to nonwestern societies practicing efficient, productive, and sustainable strategies. Another group declares this a myth and that all human activities are negative for the environment. Rather than assume that humans are either Homo ecologicus or Homo devastans, historical ecologists attempt to evaluate these debates through careful investigation of particular case studies at multiple scales of analysis.
Amazonian Dark Earths, agroforestry, raised field agriculture, transportation and communication networks, urban settlements, mounds, artificial forest islands, river cutoffs, water control, and fisheries management are clear examples of landscape creation, transformation and management by pre-Columbian native people in Amazonia (Figure 11.10). Through the domestication of landscape, native people shaped the landscape as they wanted it and made it work for them. What they transformed was often less productive and biologically diverse than what resulted. In other cases, human activities reduced biodiversity. Most landscapes, which are today appreciated for their high biodiversity, have evidence of human use and management, even if those landscapes are relatively unoccupied today. Environments with high biodiversity are a result of, rather than in spite of, long human disturbance of the environment.
My Bolivian informants state that the best hunting and farmland is on pre-Columbian earthworks deep in the forests (Figure 11.11). Recognized as having the highest biodiversity in
Figure 11.10. Precolumbian domesticated landscape of settlements, mounds, forest islands, raised fields, causeways, canals, and agroforestry. (Artwork by The Monkey Project)
Figure 11.11. Precolumbian raised fields under forest. When the fields were in use, the landscape was treeless. San Ignacio in 2006. (Clark Erickson)
Bolivia, the Tsimane Indigenous Territory is covered with raised fields, causeways, canals, and settlements under what is now continuous forest canopy (Erickson and Walker 2005). These cases of present day biodiversity, treasured by scholars and the public alike, were ironically created under conditions of intensive farming, urbanized settlement, and dense populations. Anthropologists have recently pointed out that regions of high biological diversity tend to map onto high cultural diversity (Maffi 2006). These finding contradict the Myth of the Pristine Environment that biodiversity should be associated with an absence of humans. To historical ecologists, this association makes sense.
Were these native practices sustainable? Sustainability usually refers to rational continuous harvest of a resource without destroying the capacity of that resource to reproduce. According to Janzen, sustainable development is “living off the interests rather than consuming the capital” (1997: 413). The longevity of settlements, agriculture, and cultural traditions and the dense populations supported in what are now considered biologically diverse environments are evidence of sustainability.
Are the past strategies of environmental management defined by historical ecology applicable to the modern world? Many goals of pre-Columbian native people, modern inhabitants of Amazonia, scientists, planners, and the general public coincide: the management of environmental resources for a comfortable life and sustainable future in what most consider a fragile ecosystem. Increasingly, the reservoir of existing biodiversity is found in humanized landscapes. The failure of traditional solutions such as fencing off nature and excluding native people highlights the need for strategies that embrace the co-existence of nature and humans. Environmental management informed by time-tested strategies for specific landscapes may be more appropriate than existing solutions. Because humans played a role in the creation of present day biodiversity, solutions will have to include people.
ADE as a means to mitigate global warming is an example of applied historical ecology. Low temperature biochar or charcoal, the key ingredient of ADE, and ammonium bicarbonate produced from urban wastes are the byproducts of biofuel production. Burial of biochar treated with ammonium bicarbonate is an excellent nitrogen based organic fertilizer and an ideal form of carbon sequestration (Marris 2006). Controlled burning, traditionally considered degrading to the environment, is being re-introduced as a management strategy in many biodiversity reserves. Once removed from their homelands in the establishment of parks, native people are now integral participants in the management of some ecological reserves and indigenous territories (Chapin 2004; Posey 2004). Many small farmers living along the Amazon River continue to practice sustainable strategies from the past within a modern urban context (Smith 1999).
Conservationists seek to protect what they advertise as pristine wilderness. Therefore, many conservationists regard as dangerous and detrimental to their fundraising the idea that humans created, transformed, and managed biodiversity (Chapin 2004). Native rights advocates worry that Amazonian people will be viewed as “bad” by Westerners in terms of environmental stewardship and lose claims and control of indigenous territories (Redford 1991; Chapin 2004; Conklin and Graham 1995). Others declare that historical ecologists who argue against the ideas of the Amazon as a counterfeit paradise fan the flames of tropical rainforest destruction by encouraging reckless development of already transformed landscapes (Meggers 2001).
Historical ecologists respond that ignoring the complex human history of environments in Amazonia would be unwise. A vast indigenous knowledge spanning hundreds of generations about the creation, transformation, and management of environments is physically embedded in the landscape, encoded in the distribution and availability of plant and
Animal species, documented in historical and ethnographic accounts, and in some cases, still practiced by native Amazonians.
World History
