A Perspective from the Developing South
Anthony Turton
Head: African Water Issues Research Unit (AWIRU)
Centre for International Political Studies (CIPS)
University ofPretoria
http://www.up.ac.za/academic/libarts/polsci/awiru
E-mail: art@icon.co.za & awiru@postino.up.ac.za
Abstract
Central to the climate change debate is the way that we construct knowledge.
Concepts are the basic building blocks around which complex knowledge systems
are built. Yet the concepts that we use are value laden. The whole notion
of ‘global warming’, for example, suggests that the planet was cooler at
some time in the past and is now becoming warmer with possible devastating
implications for humans. ‘Climate change’ suggests that dynamic equilibrium
is an abnormal condition and conveys with it the subtle suggestion that
the climate as we have come to know it is in fact the climax condition.
These concepts are highly anthropocentric, all conveying as it were, the
sense that humans are the pinnacle of all creation. The physical sciences
generally fall into this category, with the underlying rationale being
the desire (or the need) to control nature. In terms of this, the way that
we construct our knowledge about climate change reflects this bias in a
subtle yet unmistakable manner. There is a school of thought that challenges
this anthropocentrism however. This school seeks to reintegrate humans
into the environment, rather than see humans as separate from that environment.
This presentation will seek to give an alternate angle to the climate change
debate by focussing on the way that we have constructed our knowledge around
the central conept of a ‘resource’. A substantial portion of the current
climate change debate is focussed on a change in the natural resource base
- either in the form of an abundance such as flooding and sea level rise
- or in the form of scarcity such as droughts and famine. This bias is
what I shall call a first-order resource focus. In this case, a first-order
resource is defined as a natural resource such as land and water. I shall
then introduce the notion of a second-order resource, which is loosely
defined as the ability of a given social entity to deal with changes to
its first-order resource base. In constructing this new type of knowledge,
the argument will be developed that while the current climate change debate
is generally focussed on first-order resources, the real issues that should
be receiving our scientific attention are the way that social entities
deal with that rapid change. Given the fact that a large portion of the
worlds population live in developing countries, most of which are characterized
by significant population growth, coupled with the fact that the impact
of climate change is likely to be severely felt in those same areas, makes
this a worthwhile endeavour. As such, it will be argued, that for the developing
world at least, a key area of research focus should be on the way that
social entities deal with the impacts of climate change. In other words,
we need to make a conceptual shift away from a first-order research bias
towards a second-order research agenda if we are to construct knowledge
that is useful for decision-makers in the developing world. This idea should
be conveyed to scientists (and emerging scientists) in a way that they
can understand. In short, we need to develop a discourse that is capable
of functioning across scientific disciplines, and that is capable of withstanding
the rigours of translation into different languages, if we are to have
a profound understanding of the highly complex phenomena associated with
climate change.
Introduction
Central to the climate change debate is the way that we construct knowledge.
The very concept 'climate change' implies that something - in this case
the climate - is changing. Inherent in this notion is a hidden value judgement.
Changing climates seem to be somehow threatening to human beings so consequently
we need to manage this perceived risk in some way or other. Concepts are
the basic building blocks around which complex knowledge systems are built.
Inherent within these concepts, and the way that we use them to construct
knowledge, is an underlying assumption, and that assumption is invariably
a manifestation of a power relationship of sorts. This paper seeks to open
up the discussion on climate change, and in particular the way that knowledge
is constructed as part of that overall discourse. The overall framework
used will be that of political ecology, which will be used to analyze a
component of the climate change discourse, the way we construct notions
of what a 'resource' is. Due to the specific research interest of the author,
water will be used as an example of a natural resource where appropriate.
A reconstructed alternative discourse will be proposed from a political
ecology perspective.
Political Ecology
Scientific Discourse and its Manifestation in the Water Sector
Man and Nature
What we see emerging is a change in paradigms about ecological thinking
over time, but central to all is an assumption about Man and Nature. Initially
Man is seen as being the master of Nature, whereas current thinking sees
some form of hybrid emerging between Nature and Man in the form of technology,
with the contemporary debate reflecting who or what should be in the middle
- Man or Nature. This is also evident in the Emancipation Phase of political
ecology thinking as shown in Figure 1.
The matrix presented in Figure 2 shows 1st Order Resources on the vertical
axis, expressed as freshwater availability per capita in 1998, with 2nd
Order Resources being shown on the horizontal axis, expressed as GNP per
capita in US Dollars adjusted to purchasing power parity for 1998. Two
arbitrarily defined thresholds have been superimposed onto the grid, in
order to make a crude distinction between high and low availability. From
this it is evident that 2nd Order Resources are the determining factor
when it comes to converting natural resources into economic activity or
political stability. Countries in the lower right-hand quadrant are mostly
1st Order Resource poor, but due to their ability to mobilize sufficient
2nd Order Resources, seem to be able to still generate economic growth
and relative political stability.
Charles Darwin proposed the Savannah Hypothesis in order to explain
how evolutionary pressure was responsible for developing intellectual powers.
In terms of this hypothesis, the African forests were thought to be shrinking
in response to climate cooling at around the beginning of the Pleistocene
(Homer-Dixon, 2000:197). As the Savannah expanded, the level of uncertainty
facing early hominids increased, but with greater uncertainty came increased
opportunities as well. Faced with this greater challenge, the hominid brain
started to develop in complexity, as evidenced by the volume of various
skulls. From an analysis of the skull volume, an interesting manifestation
is evident. Figure 3 shows one possible interpretation of aggregate data
plotting brain volume as a function of time (Homer-Dixon, 2000:197). From
these data two distinct periods of brain development can be detected. The
Savannah Hypothesis can be used to explain the first rapid increase in
hominid brain volume, but not the second.
The Challenges of Climate Change Climate change should consequently not be seen as a threat to humanity,
but rather as a major challenge, and the way that we construct our knowledge
should reflect this. The challenges are many, and the highly complex web
of interactions that have been caused by the successful colonization of
virtually every ecosystem on this planet by humans, will tax our combined
wisdom to the extreme. Yet the message is one of hope.
Conclusion
This paper has sought to show that the way in which we construct our
knowledge contains a number of hidden assumptions. An example of such knowledge
constructs was given in the form of Piltdown Man, where it was shown that
this knowledge was based on strong assumptions of cultural Darwinism. The
existing discourse on global climate change has also been used as an example,
and it has been shown that the current construction of knowledge favors
a perception of risk that seeks to protect human beings from climatic fluctuations
as we have become divorced from the ecosystems in which we live. This is
proof of the enduring nature of the Descartean philosophy of science that
drives us to become "masters and controllers of Nature". This is a manifestation
of the 'man at the risk of nature' construct noted earlier in this paper.
Evidence has been presented which suggests that human Ingenuity has been
stimulated directly as a result of climatic variation. An optimistic tone
has been adopted, suggesting that encoded within human beings at the most
basic of genetic levels, is the ability to adapt. The existing knowledge
has been deconstructed and an alternative knowledge has been proposed.
Even here it has been shown that human bias, in this case cultural Darwinism,
has been found in our recent historic past. Finally, it has been suggested
that the current discourse on climate change, as manifest in the UNFCCC
deliberations and the CDM as an instrument of carbon trading, reflects
an unfair playing field, at least as perceived by negotiators from the
developing world. In conclusion therefore, the notion of human Ingenuity
has been used as a central theme. Just as past climate change has stimulated
human Ingenuity, the current debate on global climate change can have a
similar effect too. Yet in order to tackle the problem effectively, we
will need to mobilize massive amounts of Social Ingenuity - what has been
called a 2nd Order Resource - illustrating the need to redefine what we
mean by the concept of a 'resource'. Emerging evidence suggests that the
defining resource in the field of natural resource management, particularly
in the developing South, is the mobilization of sufficient 2nd Order Resources
- Homer-Dixon's (2000) Social and Technical Ingenuity or Ohlsson's (1999)
Social Adaptive Capacity - and it is hoped that this will become more widely
acknowledged in the global climate change debate in the near future.
Bibliography
Anscombe, E. & Geach, P. (Eds.) 1954. Descartes: Philosophical
Writings. Edinburgh: Nelson & Sons.
Political ecology has existed for a long time, but has not always been
given that name. Stott & Sullivan (2000:2) note that it has existed
unconsciously from the moment people started to imagine environmental utopias
and dystopias. As such it can be traced back from Virgil's The Georgics
(29 BC), through the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78) and Henry
Thoreau (1817-62), to Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. At its heart, political
ecology is about the sense of politically located ideas of the environment
and of the right sort of relationship of humans to and within it (Stott
& Sullivan, 2000:2).
Stated simplistically, political ecology is about the construction
of environmental knowledge, and in particular, about the underlying power
relationships inherent therein. As such it provides a valuable analytical
framework for this purpose. Political ecology is concerned with tracing
the genealogy of environmental narratives, with identifying power relationships
supported by such narratives, and with asserting the consequences of hegemony
over those narratives (Stott & Sullivan, 2000:2). Political ecology
tries to shift the focal point in intellectual debate away from the ideographic
to the ideological and from the particular to the general, running in parallel
with modern concerns about globalization (Giddens, 1990). As such, political
ecology enables us to answer four key questions (Stott & Sullivan,
2000:2):
* Who currently holds power over influential narratives?
* How is this power employed and for what political purposes?
* What is the science that supports these defined narratives?
* What are the ideas of morality infusing these narratives and their
supporting science?
These questions will be answered from a Southern perspective at the
conclusion of this paper.
The way that we construct our knowledge impacts on the conclusions
that we reach. Sullivan (2000) has shown that while western-styled notions
of 'desertification' have been identified as the outcome of the disintegration
of local-level resource management institutions in Namibia, very little
scientifically-derived data has been used to support (or refute) this,
because it was simply accepted as an undisputed fact or a self-evident
truth. In the environmental field, there has been a philosophical change
in perceptions of Nature and the environment, which may be characterized
as a shift from a 'man at the mercy of nature' to a 'nature at the mercy
of man' perspective - a view that has found a fruitful home in the global
climate change debate (Bradnock & Saunders, 2000:67).
This political construction of environmental knowledge is clearly evident
in the eco-feminist literature. It was initially based on the assumption
that women would be appropriate agents for environmental protection, merely
because they are often the visible victims of 'environmental degradation'
(Dankelman & Davidson, 1988). A particular brand of this literature
is that espoused by Shiva (1988), where it is argued that women act as
natural 'intellectual gene pools' through their role as 'selectors and
preservers of seed'. This argument is used to construct the notion that
women are naturally suited for the conservation of bio-diversity (Jewitt
& Kumar, 2000). As such, these images of the intimate relationship
between women and the environment became an important foundation for the
women, environment and development (WED) movement (Leach et al., 1995).
For Shiva (1988), men's domination over nature has been translated into
male domination over women which has excluded them from participating in
both science and development (Jewitt & Kumar, 2000). This notion that
women have a 'special' link to the environment in now being deconstructed
by some authors (Leach et al., 1995) because of its misleading simplicity
and political naïveté (Jewitt & Kumar, 2000). It is consequently
necessary to go deeper than an understanding based on a direct linear relationship
between humans - in this case women - and the environment, because inherent
in such linkages are more subtle but no less important relationships of
inequality, property rights and power. This has lead some commentators
(Jewitt & Kumar, 2000) to conclude that while the WED/eco-feminist
idea of a special link between women (humans) and Nature has been important
in raising awareness of a certain category of environmental issues, there
is also a real danger that this specific form of knowledge construction
can divert attention away from a nuanced understanding about people and
their relationship with the environment. Consequently, what is needed is
a shift away from this simplistic construction of environmental knowledge,
towards a more people-sensitive form of analysis that can unpack the issues
inherent in the "highly political yet ever changing socially constructed
nature of people-environment interactions" (Jewitt & Kumar, 2000:108).
In order to start deconstructing the knowledge that we have created
in the field of scientific endeavor, we need to understand the origins
of the scientific method, because therein lies a valuable clue to understanding
the global climate change discourse. The philosophical basis of modern
science is to control Nature rather that to understand it (Turton, 1999).
Understanding Nature is tolerated insofar as it enables Man to ultimately
gain control over Nature. This is evident in the work of Francis Bacon
(1620) that first described new methods of inquiry into the Natural Sciences.
In this context, Bacon said that we can use "noble discoveries" that will
come from the new method of inquiry to "renew and enlarge the power of
the human race itself over the Universe" (Kitchen, 1855:129). Bacon's thesis
became the foundation of the subsequent work by René Descartes (1637).
In this regard Descartes noted that "[I] saw that one may reach conclusions
of great usefulness in life, an[d] discover a practical philosophy [i.e.,
the Natural Sciences] … which would show us the energy and action of fire,
air, and stars, the heavens, and all other bodies in our environment and
[we] could apply them … and thus make ourselves masters an[d] owners of
nature" (emphasis added) (Anscombe & Geach, 1954:46).
From these early philosophical origins, so-called scientific methods
became the foundation for the construction of knowledge. These methods
were based on experimentation, which sought to establish direct linkages
between cause and effect, and as such were based on the principle of reductionism.
Central to this early scientific discourse was the desire to become "masters
and owners of nature". This seemed to be the logical way to proceed for
the philosophers of science at that period in time, because it fitted in
neatly with Christian biblical notions of Man being created in the image
of God, having been placed on Earth in a position of natural dominance
over all other animate and inanimate objects. At the time of these early
writings, nature was a source of fear and trepidation with natural disasters
such as floods, famines, avalanche and disease being the order of the day.
Consequently the pursuit of scientific knowledge, and in particular knowledge
that would give Man some respite from the ravages of Nature, were particularly
valuable and consequently considered to be noble.
The modern day Natural Sciences are firmly embedded in this philosophical
reasoning. This is strongly evident in hydraulic engineering for example,
where the Hydraulic Missions of specific states are reflective of the desire
to correct what were perceived to be the perturbations of nature. An example
of this is found in the USA. Roosevelt approved the Land Reclamation Act
on 17 June 1902, which in turn gave rise to the 'Bureau for Reclamation'.
The very name of the institutional entity reflects an inherent assumption
about Man and Nature. This was made evident in a speech prior to the acceptance
of this legislation in which Roosevelt said, "the western half of the United
States would sustain a population greater than that of the whole country
today if the waters that now run to waste were saved and used for irrigation"
(emphasis added) (Reisner, 1993:112). This American Hydraulic Mission was
consequently based on the notions of river water 'conservation' through
the action of damming and piping it in order to 'make the desert bloom'.
In deconstructed form, this hydraulic mission sought to assert Man's control
over Nature, by redirecting the fresh water flowing in rivers, in order
that the dry lands could be reclaimed from Nature. In deconstructed form,
Nature was seen as being wrong in allowing fresh water to flow 'to waste'
into the sea and for deserts to exist where humans wanted to settle. As
such the Hydraulic Mission was constructed as being a noble pursuit, fitting
perfectly with the Descartean notions of being masters and owners of Nature.
As a result, the "engineers who staffed the Reclamation Service tended
to view themselves as a Godlike class performing hydraulic miracles for
grateful simpletons who were content to sit in the desert and raise fruit"
(Reisner, 1993:114).
Similar examples exist in Spain, where Swyngedouw (1999a; 1999b) has
shown the existence of a powerful urge to show mastery over Nature, in
this case as a partial response to the shock of losing the Spanish Empire.
This is referred to by Swyngedouw (1999a) as "the production of nature"
in which the Hydraulic Mission seeks to correct perturbations by means
of creating a hybrid between Man and Nature. In this regard he notes that
"hydraulic politics, understood in a broad and symbolic sense as a process
of transformation of agriculture from extensive into modern and intense
[forms] must constitute the fundamental vector of [Spanish] national politics.
This must catalyze an agrarian reform which would permit a balanced economic
development …" (Swyngedouw, 1999a). As in America, the Spanish Engineering
Corps, which was founded in 1799, is still "highly elitist, intellectualist,
'high cultured', male dominated [and] socially homogenous" playing a major
role in Spanish politics and development discourse (Swyngedouw, 1999a).
Current research that is being conducted by a team at the African Water
Issues Research Unit (AWIRU) has found that a similar pattern is evident
in South Africa. In this case, the South African Hydraulic Mission was
based on the desire to control Nature as a means of managing risk in an
uncertain social, ecological and political setting. The South African hydraulic
engineers have also been trained in Descartean methods, and show similar
attributes to those found in Spain and the USA, although this is undergoing
a rapid change at present.
In essence therefore, what started with Galileo, being developed further
by Descartes, Spinoza and culminating with Newton's grand synthesis in
the late 17th Century, was the development of a powerful and enduring paradigm.
This new view emphasized the simplicity of Nature because of its reductionist
logic, opening the way to the interpretation of natural phenomena by mathematical
law, and more fundamentally, the machinelike character of the natural world
(Homer-Dixon, 2000:108). To Descartes, "he made of [N]ature a machine and
nothing but a machine; purpose and spiritual significance had alike been
banished" (Randall, 1940:241, in Homer-Dixon, 2000:108).
Consequently, what can be concluded from this is the fact that Descartean
philosophical foundations are strongly evident in the Natural Sciences
today, and still impact on the way that we construct knowledge, which in
turn impacts on the way that we interpret information. This has urged social
theorists like Giddens (1984:335) to conclude that there are social barriers
to the reception of scientific ideas and provable truths. Yet it is also
true that we have fallen prey to the seductive powers of our modern technological
achievements, and many of us have come to believe that a reality outside
of our constructed world is unimportant, because if we ever have to, we
can manage any problem that may arise there (Homer-Dixon, 2000:83). It
will consequently be argued in the rest of this paper that this is clearly
evident in the climate change discourse.
What we have established thus far is that knowledge is constructed,
using a set of conceptual tools. Inherent within each of these concepts
is a set of implicit assumptions that are only evident once we try to actively
deconstruct them. In order to explore this further, we can look at the
evolution of models of nature, sensitive at all times to the way in which
they have been constructed. An excellent indicator of this is the relationship
between humans and natural ecosystems.
Holling (1994a, in Homer Dixon, 2000:131) makes a key distinction in
the epistemology of natural systems and the way we have developed simple
mental models of how those systems work. Our epistemology is distinct from,
but related to, the simple mental models that we have constructed of Nature.
In this regard, Holling distinguishes two dominant epistemologies, which
for argument sake, are illustrated in the field of Biology.
* Molecular biology is a science of parts. As such it is reductionist
in its logic, stressing the need for careful analysis, meticulous data
collection, precise statements and the rigorous testing of theories. Therefore
it is essentially experimental and narrow in focus with a special interest
in understanding the properties of the smallest building blocks that can
be isolated.
* Evolutionary biology and ecology is a science of the integration
of parts. As such it builds on the products of other branches of science,
but is intrinsically less interested in the properties of individual component
parts than in what emergent properties can be identified when these parts
are combined into a larger whole. Therefore it is essentially pluralistic
(being interdisciplinary in its configuration), and more accepting of uncertainty
and surprise.
Building on this, Holling (1994b, in Homer-Dixon, 2000:131-133) concludes
that there are four distinct models of Nature, each marking the chronological
stages in the development of ecological knowledge. These are as follows:
* Nature Balanced prevailed in the early 20th Century. This was based
on notions of stable equilibrium and balance between self-regulating populations
and their environmental support systems. This was based on mathematical-like
understanding of the mechanistic functioning of Nature and was often found
as the fundamental rationale of governments and large corporations. Language
constructs included notions of equilibrium, balance, climax and maximum
sustainable yields. It is this construction of knowledge that Sullivan
(2000) found to be the basis of colonial-era land management bureaucracies
in Namibia.
* Nature Anarchic grew as a response to the earlier discourse on the
environment (Nature Balanced). This view held that organisms within ecosystems
are highly diverse and do not maintain a self-regulating balance among
themselves. Ecological stimuli originate in the form of pressure from outside
of the ecosystems themselves, such as the migration of animals, the population
of new plant species and changes in the climate. These in turn cause wide
fluctuations in the complex pattern of interactions between the various
organisms living in the given ecosystem. Over time however, the concept
of anarchy began to suggest disorder, whereas Nature clearly seemed to
manifest a high degree of orderliness, so the model seemed to be flawed.
* Nature Resilient thus began to emerge as the new paradigm. In this
model, ecosystems are seen as being highly resilient if the relationships
between the respective organisms persist in the face of sharp shocks from
outside of those systems. In this regard, Holling (1973, in Homer-Dixon,
2000:133) makes a key distinction between resilience and stability. Resilience
determines the persistence of relationships within a given system in the
face of unexpected external pressures, whereas stability is the ability
of a system to return to an equilibrium state after a temporary disturbance.
Within this model, complex ecosystems are understood to consist of a plethora
of nested sub-systems. Nested systems in turn range from the macro to the
micro level and are structured around a range of features such as keystone
species, periodic extreme events and long-term carbon, nitrogen and sulfur
cycles. Inherent within this model are notions of complexity, uncertainty,
nonlinearity and change in which multiple stable states are the rule rather
than the exception.
* Nature Evolving is the latest paradigm in ecological thought. While
this does not deny the existence of ecosystem resilience, it does suggest
that we have entered into a new era, marked by a dialectical evolution
of Man and Nature. This is strongly evident in Swyngedouw's (1999a; 1999b)
analyses. In this model, Holling (1994a, in Homer-Dixon, 2000:133) notes
that anthropogenic impacts are now so large that they are changing our
ecosystems to such an extent that the underlying processes are being compromised.
Manifestations of these altered ecosystems, such as collapsed fisheries
and global warming, force us to change our behavior in what Giddens (1990)
calls reflexivity - concern with the undesirable consequences of our actions
and the desire to do something about it. Holling (1994a, in Homer-Dixon,
2000:133) therefore concludes that "not only is the science incomplete,
[but] the system itself is a moving target".
Inherent within this paradigmatic evolution is the notion of complexity,
and in particular, a movement away from a model based on mechanistic simplicity
and predictability, towards a model based on risk, uncertainty, nonlinearity
and consequently unpredictability. Implicit in this is a dialectic of Man
and Nature, with works such as Stone's (1974) classic being examples of
an emerging desire to place humans back into the ecosystem above which
they seemed to have emerged as a new master. In this regard, Homer-Dixon
(2000:167) concludes that as markets and social systems get more complex,
the requirement for management ingenuity rises concomitantly. The same
can be said of 'ecosystem management' that is implicit in Holling's model
of Nature Evolving. We will return to this later on in the paper.
Towards a Political Ecology Discourse of Climate Change: 1st and 2nd
Resources
In order to develop a political ecology discourse of climate change,
it is necessary to dwell for a moment on the way we construct our knowledge
about what constitutes a resource. An important conceptual and epistemological
distinction has been made by Ohlsson (1998; 1999) between what has now
come to be known as a 1st and a 2nd Order Resource. In this regard, a 1st
Order Resource is any natural resource such as water, land, minerals etc.,
with which a country may be either well endowed or poorly blessed. Consequently,
a 1st Order Resource such as water may be either scarce or abundant, with
the degree of scarcity and/or abundance being relative spatially, temporally
and in terms of quality. Under conditions of global climate change, the
conventional discourse focuses on this aspect alone.
A 2nd Order Resource, on the other hand, is a social resource. It is
the need, acutely perceived by societies, administrative organizations
and managers responsible for dealing with natural resources of a country,
to find the appropriate societal tools for dealing with changes in the
1st Order Resource availability (Ohlsson, 1999:161). In other words, what
is critically important in terms of this conceptual split, is not so much
the availability of the natural resource itself (1st Order level of analysis),
but rather how society adapts to changes in that supply (2nd Order level
of analysis), either by way of long-term increases in water scarcity or
abundance as a result of climate change, or short-term changes in the form
of floods or droughts (Turton & Warner, 2001). In terms of this thinking,
the management of natural resources such as water, is depicted as being
a series of oscillations between 1st Order and 2nd Order Resources over
time, much like the turning of a screw (Ohlsson & Turton, 1999; Ohlsson
& Lundqvist, 2000), in which priorities change from supply-sided management
(mobilizing more water) through demand-sided management (doing better things
with available water) ultimately to adaptive management (adapting to absolute
scarcity).
If this argument is valid, then it places a new emphasis on the climate
change debate, and allows us to construct our knowledge in a slightly different
form. Ohlsson's 2nd Order Resource is simply another way of looking at
what Homer-Dixon (1995; 1996; 2000) refers to as 'Ingenuity'. As such this
has particular relevance for understanding the problems confronting developing
countries (Turton & Warner, 2001).
From this conceptual differentiation, the author started to develop
a set of new concepts specific to the management of water resources. This
was achieved by means of a matrix showing different levels of 1st and 2nd
Order Resources expressed as two extremes of either abundance or scarcity
(Turton & Ohlsson, 1999). A variation of this matrix is presented in
Figure 2.
If this hypothesis is correct then it casts a new light onto our understanding
of what a resource is, particularly in terms of the climate change debate.
Here we link up again with what was noted earlier in this paper - that
as markets and social systems get more complex, the requirement for management
Ingenuity rises concomitantly (Homer-Dixon 2000:167). In order to find
a suitable answer to this problem, we turn our attention to the work being
done by Thomas Homer-Dixon.
Homer-Dixon (1995; 2000:21-26) develops his argument around the concept
of Ingenuity, which as previously noted, is merely another manifestation
of Ohlsson's (1998; 1999) concept of Social Adaptive Capacity. In this
regard, Ingenuity is defined as ideas that can be applied to solve practical
technical and social problems, such as the problems arising from water
pollution, cropland erosion (Homer-Dixon, 2000:21) and the impacts of climate
change. Seen in this light, Ingenuity can be described as consisting of
sets of instructions that tell us how to arrange the constituent parts
of our social and physical worlds in ways that help us to achieve our goals.
As such, it is totally compatible with the methodological approach used
in this paper - political ecology - because it has as a core theme, the
manner in which we make sense out of an infinite array of mostly disconnected
data or the construction of environmental knowledge.
Homer-Dixon (2000:22) goes on to note that the amount of Ingenuity
needed to run systems, such as anthropogenically created urban environments
(or what Swyngedouw (1999b) calls the production of socio-nature as a hybrid),
is not the same as that needed to create those environments in the first
place. In this regard, Homer-Dixon (2000) makes the distinction between
two forms of Ingenuity:
* Technical Ingenuity is what is needed to create new technologies.
As such it enables us to solve problems in the physical world.
* Social Ingenuity is what is needed to reform old institutions and
social arrangements. As such it helps us to meet the challenges we face
in our social world, often as the result of things happening in the physical
world.
Homer-Dixon (2000:22-3) has come to realize that Social Ingenuity is
a critical pre-requisite to the development of Technical Ingenuity. For
example, we need Social Ingenuity to design functioning markets capable
of responding to the needs of society, and we need market incentives to
produce an adequate flow of technologies. A product of a functioning social
system is the negotiation of political coalitions in order to construct
various institutional arrangements; competent bureaucrats plan and implement
the necessary public policy, and ordinary people living in various communities
build local institutions and adapt their behavior in order to solve the
various problems that they face.
After substantial research on the subject, Homer-Dixon (1999; 2000:23)
has concluded that the Ingenuity requirement increases rapidly as environmental
problems worsen, because societies need more sophisticated technologies
and institutions in order to solve those problems. The benchmark in this
case was defined as the amount of Ingenuity needed to compensate for any
aggregate social disutility caused by environmental stress - in other words
- the minimum amount of Ingenuity that a society needs to maintain its
current aggregate level of satisfaction despite the stress caused by environmental
scarcity (Homer-Dixon, 1999:111). Consequently, the supply of Ingenuity
within any given society involves both the generation of good ideas and
their implementation within that society. As such, many of the obstacles
seemed to occur not when the Ingenuity was originally generated, but rather
when people try to implement those ideas, with the biggest obstacle being
political competition among powerful groups, which often results in the
failure of key institutional reforms (Homer-Dixon, 1995; 2000:23). This
has led Homer-Dixon (2000:23-4) to conclude that societies experiencing
severe Ingenuity gaps - that condition where the supply of appropriate
Ingenuity falls short of the demand for that specific Ingenuity - cannot
adapt to or mitigate environmental stress. This notion is similar to what
Turton & Ohlsson (1999) have called Social Adaptive Capacity, and what
Ohlsson & Turton (1999) have identified as being bottlenecks in resource
management.
Seen in this light, the countries in the upper left-hand quadrant of
Figure 2 are confronted with a classic problem. The scarcity of 2nd Order
Resources prevents the development of the Social and Technical Ingenuity
needed to develop. It therefore comes as no surprise that some of the countries
listed there - Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo and Mozambique - have
been ravaged by decades of civil war and are consequently nothing more
than quasi states today. The countries in the lower left-hand quadrant
of Figure 2 face an even more daunting task, because in this case they
are confronted by a scarcity of both 1st and 2nd Order Resources. These
are what Turton & Ohlsson (1999) and Turton & Warner (2001) have
defined as being under conditions of 'water poverty'. Conversely, the countries
in the lower right-hand quadrant of Figure 2, are the most economically
developed in their specific regional settings, simply because they are
apparently capable of mobilizing sufficient Social and Technical Ingenuity.
One specific case in this category - South Africa - is very illuminating.
Whereas all evidence seemed to be pointing towards a vicious civil war
based on race, an extraordinary amount of Social Ingenuity was mobilized
in the late 1990s. This led to complex negotiations that ended Apartheid,
creating new political institutions, thereby paving the way for a relatively
peaceful transition to democracy. It seems therefore that 2nd Order Resources
are the critical issues to focus on in the context of developing countries,
particularly in the field of natural resource management and global climate
change.
Reconstructing the Climate Change Discourse from a Political Ecology
Perspective
Having noted the importance of 2nd Order Resources, it now becomes
instructive to try and reconstruct the discourse on Man and Nature, specifically
in the context of the climate change debate. As noted above, Ingenuity
plays a crucial role. Central to this is human intelligence, so it becomes
instructive to understand how this has developed over time. Homer-Dixon
(2000:195) cites Calvin (1996) in this regard. Working on issues such as
climate change, Calvin has developed a cluster of features that define
human intelligence. These include imagination, the use of symbols and language,
the capacity to engage in complex planning and a broad base of knowledge
from which to draw solutions. Central to this is the human ability to adapt
to unexpected circumstances. Calvin (1996:12) notes that "the best indicators
of intelligence may be found in … those rare or novel situations for which
evolution has not provided a standard response, so that the animal has
to improvise, using its intellectual wherewithal". Calvin (1996:117) goes
on to say that intelligence "implies flexibility and creativity - in the
words of the ethnologists James and Carol Gould (1994:68-70), an 'ability
to slip the bonds of instinct and generate novel solutions to problems'".
It seems therefore, that problem solving is central to the development
of animal intelligence. This being the case, it becomes instructive to
review some key evolutionary theory in order to explain how intellectual
powers developed.
Recent work by paleoanthropologist Rick Potts (1997) has challenged
theories of hominid brain development that are based on the underlying
assumption of climatic stability. Instead, Potts (1997:168 in Homer-Dixon,
2000:198-9) has suggested that the environmental conditions in which hominids
evolved was highly unstable. Studies of fossilized pollens, sediment layers
and other indicators suggests that the mid to late Pleistocene (700,000
to 100,000 years ago) was also a period of extreme climatic variability.
These variations were so dramatic in fact, that they were the most extreme
since the time of the dinosaurs, some 64 million years before (Potts, 1997,
in Homer-Dixon, 2000:199).
In response to extreme climatic fluctuations, living organisms can
essentially respond in two different ways (Homer-Dixon, 2000:199). They
can retain their specialist lifestyles by migrating to areas that favour
this particular form of adaptation, or they can stay in the same general
location by developing a more generalist approach to survival. Such an
approach seemed to have been chosen by hominids, and this in turn raised
a new set of challenges. For example, it now became necessary to live in
larger social groups in order to survive. This in turn meant that social
skills were needed. Memory started to play an important role, specifically
with respect to developing mental maps of the local environmental conditions.
This is evident today in large mammals such as the African Elephant, and
in particular those living in highly variable conditions such as those
occuring in the Namib Desert. These elephants can remember important details
about the location of water, and are known to move through the desert to
specific locations that were favorable to survival under extreme conditions
decades earlier. Similar strategies in hominid groups would have improved
chances for survival under conditions of rapid climatic variability. Language
would also help to coordinate a group of hunters, and in particular to
pass on valuable information such as the existence of safe refugia in times
of need. Yaneer Bar-Yam (1992:808, in Homer-Dixon, 2000:200) concurs that
the hominid brain developed a level of complexity in direct relationship
with the levels of environmental complexity confronting that brain. Potts
(1997:244, in Homer-Dixon, 2000:200) has concluded that greater cognitive
capacity and behavioral versatility grew into symbolic coding, the development
of complex social institutions, cultural diversity, technological innovation,
outward migration to new and as yet unoccupied parts of the planet as a
colonizing species, greater self-awareness and a tendency to buffer harsh
climatic variations by altering the immediate surroundings by hominids.
Recent work has shown that hominids evolved four specialized capabilities
(Mithen, 1996, in Homer-Dixon, 2000:202):
* Technical intelligence in order to understand things such as gravity
and inertia, and in particular how to use these to hunt large animals in
the most effective way possible.
* Natural history intelligence in order to identity and categorize
plants and animals and to understand the relevance of these to daily survival.
* Social intelligence in order to develop complex social arrangements,
social institutions and to retain the necessary social cohesion on which
survival depended. This implies the development of rules and the mitigation
of conflict in order to maintain some degree of social harmony.
* Linguistic intelligence in order to use abstract symbols to describe
the natural and social world. This also implies the ability to transmit
knowledge from one generation to another, greatly increasing chances for
survival under conditions of uncertainty or climatic variability.
A specific element in the evolution of mental development is the capacity
for analogy and metaphor. The ability to see similarities among a diverse
range of objects and events, coupled with the ability to combine ideas
that emerge from these different forms of intelligence are essential elements
of human creativity (Homer-Dixon, 2000:202). The archeological record shows
a veritable proliferation in art, ritual and complex tool making around
600,000 years ago, providing the first solid evidence that the four different
types of intelligence were starting to interact in the hominid brain at
that time (Mithen, 1996:209, in Homer-Dixon, 2000:203). It is through this
expression of abstract ideas that human Ingenuity started to develop, with
the transmission of ideas as sets of instructions (about how to manage
under conditions of environmental variability) from one generation to the
next becoming a key to survival. Culture, when viewed from this perspective,
is like a pipeline carrying knowledge from our past into our future (Homer-Dixon,
2000:205). Consequently, for scientists like Potts (1997:277) the message
from the Pleistocene is one of optimism, saying that "the strange buoyancy
of the hominids is in us, a hopeful heritage of response to novel environmental
dilemmas" (Homer-Dixon, 2000:277).
From this two conclusions can be drawn:
* Climate change is responsible for the development of the human race
into the dominant species it is today, particularly with respect to intelligence.
* Early human development emerged from Africa.
Yet both of these are somehow contested in the modern world. In the
first instance, the construction of knowledge in the current climate change
debate is being framed in such a way as to suggest that variability is
a threat to humanity. In the second instance, Africa's contribution to
the world is either downplayed, and in some historic cases, was actively
countered (although this is starting to change). The best example of this
can be found in the saga of the Piltdown Man. Paleoanthropological work
that was being conducted in the early part of the 20th Century, suggested
that large volume brain cavities emerged in Europe. Evidence for this was
provided in the form of a skull and partial jaw of what became known as
the Piltdown Man. As Harter (1997) notes, "he [Piltdown Man] was the expected
'missing link' … [and] best of all, he was British!" Raymond Dart was sent
to South Africa from London in order to start working on the paleoanthropological
history of Southern Africa. In 1924 Dart found a skull fragment of what
became known as Taung Man (Australopithecus) in a location close to the
home of the author. Dart submitted this as evidence of early hominid development
in Africa to Sir Arthur Keith at the University College of London (UCL),
but this evidence was shunned. Dart continued to work, but in relative
isolation and facing some degree of ridicule from the mainstream paleoanthropological
community, largely as the result of Keith's writing (Tobias, 1992). Dart
retained his initial views on Taung Man, and after a number of years of
isolated work, was supported by Robert Broom and William Gregory, both
of whom were highly respected scientists. This team started to piece together
their evidence in a meticulous fashion, ultimately resulting in a startling
discovery. Piltdown Man was a fraud (Weiner, 1955; 1980) and nothing more
than a construction of knowledge that was cleverly crafted to suit the
cultural Darwinistic views which were dominant in England during that period
of history. In terms of this view, intelligent hominids simply had to have
emerged in Europe rather than in Africa, a view that was heavily influenced
by Darwin's 1859 Classic, Origin of Species. Taken to its logical conclusion,
if species evolved through a process of natural selection as Darwin had
hypothesized, then clearly that selection would have favoured the 'high
civilization' found in Europe, and in particular that embodied in the form
of an Englishman. This is the foundation of much of the colonial experience
in Africa, manifesting in various bureaucracies such as those responsible
for land management and so-called 'native affairs'. It is also the genesis
of natural suspicion about the motives of the former Colonial masters in
particular, and the North in general.
This paper has sought to present an alternative view on some of the
issues relating to climate change. In particular, it has sought to highlight
two key issues. Firstly, the way that we construct our knowledge contains
within it implicit assumptions and power relations. Secondly, the way that
we define a resource is important. So let us deal with the latter first.
This paper has shown that climatic variability is the norm rather than
the exception, and that this variability has been central to the development
of human Ingenuity, of which two distinct types exist. We will need massive
Social Ingenuity in order to negotiate agreements between countries, across
language and cultural divides, and more importantly, across the North/South
rift. As things currently stand, the negotiations around the United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) are being dominated by
the developed North, with the developing South being somewhat isolated
and marginalized in the process. In particular, large powers like the USA
are reneging on past agreements (Financial Times, 2001:6). This will stall
existing negotiations and will undermine the development of political will
and institutional arrangements with which to effectively attack the problem.
At present the majority of this Social Ingenuity is coming from the North,
with growing suspicion in the South. But we will also need much more Technical
Ingenuity than we currently have available, even in the highly developed
North. The 'brain-drain' from the non-industrial South is also an important
factor to consider, decreasing the capacity of developing countries to
respond to the new demands of a globalized and changing world. For example,
Africa lost 60,000 middle and senior managers between 1985 and 1990, whereas
in India 30% of the graduates from the Indian Institute of Technology emigrated
between 1970 and 1990 (Homer-Dixon, 2000:260). The state of the art is
also lacking, with scientists often being unable to reach agreements on
key methodologies or issues. This again points back to Social Ingenuity.
And where are the scientists from the South? Unfortunately they are conspicuous
by their absence. Central to this argument - and this is a key objective
of this paper - is to change our ideas about what we view as a resource.
It is the contention of the author that 2nd Order Resources are going to
become the key element in the long-run. How do we understand these resources
at present? In truth, we are in the dark about them. We do not even have
adequate definitions of what they are and we have only the crudest of indicators
at our disposal with which to develop models and theories. So clearly we
are confronted with a major challenge in this regard. This is a challenge
that needs to be responded to not only by the Social Sciences, but also
by the Natural Sciences. We need to develop language registers capable
of communicating across disciplines (and not only by the industrialized
North), and we need to develop methodologies that are capable of accommodating
the vagaries of different approaches. This is a huge challenge indeed,
and one that falls squarely within the parameters of what we now understand
to be Social Ingenuity.
Returning now to the first issue - the way we construct our knowledge
- we can answer the questions posed at the start of this paper.
* Who currently holds power over influential narratives?
In the case of the climate change debate, the narratives are firmly
embedded in the Natural Sciences at present. This means that natural scientists
set the agenda and maintain hegemony over the discourse by determining
key epistemologies. The Social Sciences at present have only a limited
impact on the climate change discourse.
* How is this power employed and for what political purposes?
The hegemonic control over the climate change debate has two key elements
to it. Firstly, it is located mainly in the Natural Sciences. Secondly,
these scientists are mostly based in developed countries of the North.
As such there is a strong bias towards what may be described as Reflexive
Modernity (to use Giddens' analogy) or Risk Society (to use Beck's analogy).
As such the playing field is far from level. This is evident in the UNFCCC
deliberations, and in particular with respect to the Clean Development
Mechanism (CDM). Scientists and negotiators in the North are convinced
that these are fair and reasonable, whereas their counterparts in the developing
world are convinced that they are not. Stated simplistically, the developed
North is constructing knowledge around a perceived risk that has at its
heart, the notion of becoming reflexive about development in the North.
While this sounds highly logical to a scientist from the North, it means
that the skewed global development pattern will be frozen, with North/South
inequalities being perpetuated. Notions of fairness, perceptions of reality
and ideals associated with equity are at the heart of this issue, yet it
is impossible to define these in concrete terms because they are inherently
value-laden. The Natural Sciences can be of little help in such a debate.
* What is the science that supports these defined narratives?
This is an interesting question to answer, and the answer provided
will no doubt be hotly contested. From a Southern perspective, the Northern-based
science is in fact shaky to say the least. Major uncertainties exist about
a number of key issues. We cannot effectively model climates that result
from a near infinite number of variables. Chaos theory shows us that even
with three variables at work, the range of possible outcomes is so large
as to become nearly meaningless. We do not fully understand the functioning
of key physical manifestations such as the thermohaline circulation in
the North Atlantic and the El Niño/La Niña oscillations in
the Pacific, and we understand the triggers and drivers of these even less
than we understand the connection between these fundamental natural processes.
Consequently it seems as if the science is not as solid as it should be,
given the complexity of the problem it is trying to tackle. In other fields
we see similar developments, where we cannot really predict things like
the risks associated with Mad Cow Disease, the spread of Foot and Mouth
Disease and the possible environmental implications of genetically modified
organisms which current technology allows us to produce with relative ease.
Science it seems, based as it is on reductionist logic, may not be up to
the task at hand, and efforts at generating a more integrative approach
are being hampered by our apparent inability to mobilize sufficient Social
Ingenuity with which to gain consensus on key epistemologies. So again,
we return to the importance of 2nd Order Resources, which we also know
are severely limited in the developing South.
* What are the ideas of morality infusing these narratives and their
supporting science?
Here again the answer is likely to be a contested one, in all probability
reflecting the North/South dichotomy noted above. Inherent in the way that
we have constructed our knowledge about climate change, and in particular
in the way that we have constructed our understanding of the risks inherent
to that change, is a strong North-based morality (if such a generalized
thing can be said to exist). We have moved our perceptions of risk away
from the rapidly expanding frontier mentality of conquering new natural
resource bases as new technologies become available, or in response to
depleting resource bases elsewhere, to a more global perception. This has
been triggered, at least in part, by recent satellite images of the Earth,
seen as a rather fragile ecosystem that supports the only known life forms
in the entire Universe, floating as it were, in the infinite vastness of
hostile space. This in turn has caused a change in morality and perspective.
When critically examined, the industrialized North is emitting the majority
of greenhouse gasses, and it is they who are saying that we are on an unsustainable
path. So having voraciously consumed the worlds resources as a development
strategy, they are now saying that development as we know it is unsustainable
and must consequently be stopped, or at least slowed down. The developing
South has been sensitized to the consumer society values of the developed
North, and now aspires to those levels of 'development'. Unfortunately
we do not have the technologies that the industrialized North have, so
people in the South are saying that they cannot be denied the right to
develop, and unfortunately the only model of development that seems to
have endured, is that based on industrialization and consumerism. Consequently
the very concept of 'sustainable development' is value laden and represents
a construction of knowledge that contains within it, powerful normative
values and political bias.
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank ISODARCO for extending an invitation to
him to participate in the 2001 Summer School, and to use this opportunity
to interact with mainstream scientists and post-graduate students from
the industrialized North. This represents a valuable exchange of ideas,
knowledge and wisdom. In addition to this, Prof. Marie Muller, Chairperson
of Pugwash South Africa and Director of the Centre for International Political
Studies (CIPS) at Pretoria University, is also thanked for her support
in this endeavor.
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