Can We Make Conservation Good Work?

Question for Discussion: How would conservation and
Americans giving up consumer lifestyles improve
their quality of life and revive local communities?

Readings: Berry, "Conservation is Good Work;"
Berry, "Local Economies;"

Community-Supported Agriculture

Sustainable Agricultural Network

Sustainability and Politics: An Interview with
Wes Jackson

STEADY-STATE ECONOMICS: A Catechism
of Growth Fallacies

Towards a New Economics: Questioning
Economic Growth

Daly: An Economists View of Sustainability

Die-off: A Population Crash Resource Page

Futuristic Scenario websites for
the World in 2030

How to Build Scenarios for the Future
(4 Future Scenarios)

What is Future Scenario Planning?
(3 Future Scenarios)

Lewis: Three Scenarios for the Future in 2030

State of the World: Survival of Our Fragile Biosphere:
Current Threats to the Human Future

Paths to Sustainability Diagram

Predicted World by 2030 Graph:
The Club of Rome Predictions

Global Trends: The World in 2030

Global Trends: Data for the World in 2030

Future History: The World in 2030

Global Trends 2015

Four Alternative Global Futures

POLES: Population and Energy Use in 2030, Table

UN FAO: World Agriculture in 2030

UN: Population Growth in 2030

UN: World Urbanization Prospects to 2030

The Earth and Its People: The Global Challenge

WRI: Earth Trends

WRI: World Resources Trends

Vitousek: Human Domination of the
Earth's Ecosystems

Global Environment Outlook: 2002-2032

UNEP: Global Environmental Outlook

UN Millennium Development Goals

Overview: Millennium Development Goals

Facing the Future: Global Issues in Depth

The Earth Charter

Science: Modern Global Climate Change

Human Population: The Next Half Century

AAAS: Atlas of Population Environment

Science: Prospects for Biodiversity

World Bank: World Development Indicators

The UC Atlas of Global Inequality

Environmental Scarcities and Violent Conflicts

Kaplan: The Coming Anarchy

Lewis: The Paradox of Global Development

IFG: Alternatives to Economic Globalization

IFG: Ten Principles for Sustainable Societies

GANE: The General Agreement on a New Economy

Korten: Living Economies for a Living Future

Korten: The End of Empire and the Step
to Earth Community

Korten: Beyond the Global Suicide Economy

What does Berry mean when he argues that conservation is good work? Most environmentalist define conservation as preserving scenic wilderness areas and preventing large corporations from polluting and destroying the environment. Many environmentalists would argue that human work destroys nature. We, therefore, want to prevent work in nature in order to protect the environment. However, loggers, fishermen, and farmers would charge that environmentalists do not understand that humans live and work in nature; we can't stop working in our environments. But environmentalists would respond that it precisely the work done by modern industrial society that is destroying the natural world. They are that only by protecting a few remaining pristine wilderness areas where humans do not live and work can we preserve for our children the real nature that modern society has destroyed. So how does Berry square his definition of good work against the environmentalist's definition of conservation?

Berry argues that conservation is good work because only individuals, working and living in specific places, trying to protect and preserve the health of the human and natural communities, which are in fact one larger community, can protect the environment. Good work involves an understanding of the history of the land and place, an understanding of the signs of health and sickness in a particular place, an affection, honor, and respect for the place and all its inhabitants, and a desire to live in a healthy and thriving place. This does not mean leaving that place untouched, uncontaminated by human work and effort. Only by living in a place, working to preserve and protect a place, caring and honoring a place, and understanding that you are just on member of a larger natural community that includes both humans and all life, Berry argues, can we conserve a place. Conservation isn't separate from work or from life but integral to how each individual lives their lives in a particular place, in a particular community, at a specific point in historical time. Good work involves the active human interaction with and stewardship of a place and natural community.

Berry defines conservation as good work to distinguish his understanding of the human interaction with nature from the environmentalists' understanding. He can't understand why many environmentalists and people who spend their lives in larger urban areas create a vast divide between nature and human community. Many people and environmentalists who live in large industrial cities believe that they need to escape to the pure, wild, pristine wilderness on their weekends and during the summer. They look to nature to heal them from the stress, the pollution, the alienation, the overcrowding, and ugliness of these industrial cities. It is for this reason, Berry believes, that so many people insist on drawing a huge distinction between our industrial cities and wilderness. The cities we live in our not natural, they are not healthy, and they are not even human, so we demand a raw, pure, pristine wilderness to heal us from the damage the city does to our psyches and lives. Berry wonders why these people don't recognize the place they live--these industrial cities--as part of nature. Why don't we try to make our cities more livable so that we don't need to use wilderness as an escape from these cities?

Some students suggested that we don't create clean, livable cities because it is too costly to do so. Because the economy and culture of these industrial cities is based on profit and on material success, we can't afford to clean them up. We tolerate the pollution, the traffic, the congestion, the absence of trees and nature, the violence, and alienation of our lives in the cities because of our obsession with profit and economic success. We don't want to pay for the amenities created by livable cities, such as clean air and water; trees, nature, and parks; safety, security, and a sense of belonging; quiet, friendly neighborhoods and downtowns; and a feeling of belonging to a healthy, vibrant, thriving human community. We are willing to give up all these things to chase the almighty dollar and compete for our piece of the American Dream of material wealth and success. But in return for this trade-off we demand pristine, unspoiled nature to escape to on the week-ends and in the summers.

There is a contradiction and terrible irony in this trade-off between our lives in unhealthy industrial cities and our sojourns into pristine wilderness. When we go camping, fishing, or hiking into the wilderness on the weekends or during the summer we run into all the other people we left behind in these industrial cities. Instead of finding escape from the "ratrace" of city life, we find that the city has followed us into the wilderness. For example, if you go to Yosemite and Yellowstone in the summertime, you will find that thousands and thousands of other people had the same idea. At times in these two national parks, one can experience more crowding than most people experience in their daily lives in the crowded industrial city. People bring their motor homes, their loud music, their noise and rowdiness, their impatience with traffic jams, and their obsession with beating the other guy to the wilderness experience. Indeed, Yosemite is now so overcrowded that the government is now going to strictly limit the numbers of people allowed in the park.

Berry believes that there is a better solution to the problem of modern life than periodically trying to come up for air in pristine wilderness. Why do we need to make this trade-off in the first place? Why don't we insist on recognizing the places where we live and work as part of our environments? Why don't we demand that where we live and work is healthy, safe, human, clean, and unpolluted? We don't understand, Berry argues, that where we live and work helps make us who we are. If we live in unhealthy, unsafe, violent, crowded, stressful, and alienating environments, then we will become angry, unhappy, demanding, and selfish people. And we can't make up for these problems by merely escaping to pristine nature once and a while.

But many Americans would argue that they can't really expect to change these industrial cities; they are just individuals, controlled by powerful governments, corporations, and economic and political interests. We feel trapped in a world we didn't create and can't control. Faced with our individual weakness and the unhealthiness of our collective lives in these growing industrial cities, we can only periodically escape to the wilderness, hoping to somehow recover just enough to make our imprisonment in these cities bearable. However, Berry would not accept this analysis and this state of affairs.

Berry argues that many American were indeed pushed off the land and forced out of local communities by national and global economic interests who literally suck the live, people, nature, and health out of communities in order to profit. National corporations have succeeded in undermining rural agriculture, small-town America, small businesses, and support for local communities and traditions. Advertising and salesmanship has caused children to abandon small-town America for the cities, caused farmers to lose their farms because they bought the promise of industrial agriculture, and caused many businesses to move to the cities seeking higher profits and greater success. Americans have become addicted to speed, technology, change, and allowing huge corporations to sell and package every aspect of their lives. And national corporations have very quickly metamorphized into global corporations that are even now sucking the life and blood out of communities throughout the world. But does the growth of a global industrial economy, global corporations, and the increasing loss of control over our communities and lives mean that we as individuals are doomed to be trapped in these unhealthy industrial cities and controlled by giant corporations?

Berry believes that each of us in our individual lives daily make choices either to support or challenge these global corporations and our unhealthy cities. If we only understood, Berry argues, that if each of us took responsibility for our daily lives we could begin to make a real difference in solving the global environmental crisis. Each of us when we decide to drive energy-inefficient, polluting cars, buy products and services produced by corporations that are polluting and destroying the environment, and support our government in its endless chase for more and more economic growth and corporate profits is actually supporting the very corporations, governments, and way of life that we despise. All we have to do is take responsibility for our individual lives and try to support people, companies, governments, and organizations that are trying to protect the environment, preserve resources, reduce pollution, preserve local communities and economies, and preserve and create healthy human communities. Berry suggests that individuals must begin by making small changes and exploring ways in which their individual decisions can help create a healthier local environment, community, and way of life for themselves and their neighbors. Only if we realize that each of us is responsible for the global environmental crisis can we begin to take action to create healthier, happier, cleaner, and meaningful lives and communities.

A great example of what Berry is talking about is the Community Supported Agriculture movement. (See the Community Supported Agriculture and Sustainable Agriculture Network .) The community supported agriculture movement attempts to reconnect farmers with consumers in nearby cities. Local farmers sell shares in their farm production to urban customers, guaranteeing to provide them with fresh produce year round, in exchange for a monthly fee and often some work and help with the farm. Community Supported Agriculture allows local farmers to continue to farm and allows urban consumers to be ensured fresh, healthy, organic produce. In addition, many urban consumers and their families enjoy helping out on the farm, because it gives them valuable contact with nature and farming.

Berry also suggests that instead of going to distant national parks to camp and experience nature, people can pay farmers and logging companies to preserve stands of trees and forests on their land to provide camping and hiking for nearby city residents. This will help the local farmers and foresters, and it will provide local contact with their environments to urban families. These nearby camps and hiking trails will help urban families better understand that they are a part of nature, that their actions and lives can make a difference in protecting and preserving their local environments.

In addition to helping local farmers and foresters, individuals can try to frequent local businesses that draw on local resources, support local families, and preserve and protect local communities. Even though some of these businesses might be more expensive than their national and global competitors, people should buy from them because they have a direct stake in their community and their local place. Instead of disconnecting themselves from their neighbors, their local businesses, and their local communities, individuals through their daily actions can reconnect themselves to where they live.

In addition to supporting local businesses and farmers, individuals can try to gain independence from large polluting energy companies by exploring and developing solutions to their energy needs through solar energy and efficient design. But solar energy and energy efficiency and independence is just the first step. Developments in alternative technology, ecological design, and new approaches to consumption and ecological lifestyles can allow individuals to begin to disconnect themselves from the global corporations, corrupt governments, and powerful economic interests who they are now hooked on through salestalk and advertising. Berry would argue that individuals now have the freedom and resources to make a real difference in their own lives and communities.

Berry concludes that only if we transform our culture and our values and individuals take full responsibility for their own active roles in either solving or worsening the environmental crisis can we hope to have a future. He warns that earlier civilizations have collapsed as a result of environmental and social collapse because they did not understand or take responsibility for protecting and preserving their local communities. We may not be able to change the global economy or defeat a global corporation, but individuals have the choice to decide to take small, real, concrete steps to lessen their impact on their environments and their local communities. For Berry, it is not a question of what individuals can't do, but what we can do. We may not be able to save the world, but we can begin to make a real difference in the lives of our communities and local places. And this is enough for Berry.