Environmental Management: Social Science Fundamentals Unit 3 Weekly Assignment

Paredes (Student ID: 3450737)

Richard Grove provides a historical lesson in the failure of a conservation policy. Due to
persistent attempts to improve and develop the island of St. Helena as a colonial profitmaking plantation economy, dependent on an intensive and unsustainable agriculture
permitted by the use of slave labour, consequences such as rapid deforestation, firewood
shortage, drought, soil erosion, endangered species and disease risks were rapidly seen.
Failure of governors to carry out early attempts to protect the existing woodland and
legislate properly, companys failure to intervene more effectively, and settlers failure to
take early measures to halt the overuse of resources resulted in a foreseeable and
irreversible environmental decline and deterioration. The case of St Helena had a main role
in the history of environmental ideas as a documented site of environmental decline where
men despoiled an erstwhile Garden of Eden in only one generation.
On the other hand, Rachel Carson, mother of the modern environmental movement,
achieved a successful campaign when she argued that uncontrolled and unexamined
pesticide usage, specifically DTT, over urban areas was not only harming and even killing
animals, but also threatening human life. Her attempts to halt the chemical spraying were
focused on preserving the environment but ultimately led to the protection of the social
well-being and their economy. Her legacy prompted the beginning of a new era in terms of
environmental policies and regulations. Carson realized human beings are just one part of
the environment and everything we do affects the environment greatly or even irreversibly
and consequently affects us. Fifty years later, humankind is challenged more than ever
before to demonstrate our mastery, not over nature but over ourselves.
Meredith Burgmann points out another successful campaign: the Green Bans movement,
which were first conducted in Australia by the NSWBLF and represented an entirely homegrown contribution to international environmental politics and radical practice. The unions
guiding principle was the social responsibility of labour which led to an environmental
activism. It is precisely because the green ban movement constituted a subaltern
counterpublic mobilized by social-movement unionism that it was challenging, popular and
extremely effective. A linkage between environmentalists and a progressive trade union
movement brought an interconnection between a politically radical and a militantly
economistic aspect. The success of the green bans has continuing implications for green
political practice today and in the future.
Boltons article, clearly written in the wake of the Green Bans, focus on the environmental
activism, and he emphasizes that developers and environmentalists could reach satisfactory
agreements based neither on total destruction nor on a total freezing of activity and change. By
exemplifying with the process of protection of heritage areas, the author points out how the
green bans movement created a heightened consciousness of environmental issues outside
NSW. However, he also challenges the effectiveness of the campaign against the pressures for
economic development and the preservation of jobs.
Finally, there is a permanent conflict between those who exploit a country to serve
preconceived economic goals and imported attitudes of mind, and those who sought to create a
civilization where human use of resources was compatible with a sense of identity with the
land. The moment when both sides could work together to pursue one single goal will be the
moment when social and environmental management will have achieved its goal.

Environmental Management: Social Science Fundamentals Unit 3 Weekly Assignment

Paredes (Student ID: 3450737)

REFERENCES

Grove, Richard. Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and
the Origins of Environmentalism. Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1995, Ch.
3: pp. 95-129.
Carson, Rachel. Silent Spring. Boston: 1962, chapter 9: Rivers of Death
Burgmann, Meredith. Green Bans, Red Union: Environmental Activism and the New
South Wales Builders Labourers Federation. UNSW Press, 1998, Ch. 1: pp. 3-11.
Bolton, G. Spoils and Spoilers: A History of Australians shaping their environment:
pp.164-168.