Response 8

I am very much entranced by the concept of community-based natural resource management and am always happy to see it mentioned, as Robbins does on page 42 in his example of management gone wrong in India. In doing so, he stresses the importance of local knowledge—another idea that I am moved and excited by. I think it is extremely important for the global community to finally realize that natives have it right and what has worked for centuries is probably the way that things should continue instead of trying to solve one culture’s issues with another culture’s solutions.

However, local communities are often not able to solve their own issues, as they are “tied into a global economy where they are disempowered, they live within a…system where they are most marginal, and where new demands for capital can only be met by exploiting their local natural resource” (51). This global economy has sucked in so many small societies and is now forcing them into overproduction so that they may meet a new, unrealistic quota. These systems that may have worked for the small communities for so long are transformed into huge industries through the promise of generating greater income. This is seen not only in Asian countries mentioned in the chapter, but also rural American agriculturalists. Many farmers have worked for generations on small farms that generate little income, but provide subsistence for the families living on it. Through promises of money, these farmers decide to buy expensive equipment such as pesticides, fertilizers, genetically modified seeds, etc. These small-scale farms are instantly transformed from innocent crops to monocultures driven by yield. The entire thought process changes and farmers go into debt when unable to provide in this new large-scale system, yet are forced to degrade the land further with their GMOs, pesticides, monocultures, and intensive tilling in a desperate attempt to increase production. Thus, it is difficult to provide in this new large-scale, global economy and often daunting to stick to what one knows in the looming prospect of money…

Also in this chapter, Robbins yet again threw me a curve ball as he completely negated Garret Hardin’s “Tragedy of the Commons.” This classic theory was taught to me in AP Environmental Science and I seem to have always stuck by it, or at least I’ve never been presented with an alternative—until now. Suddenly, Robbins comes along and patiently explains to those misinformed why exactly this theory does not hold up and the problems associated with it. “The ‘tragedy of the commons,’ moreover, by placing the fault of degradation at the feet of disempowered local communities, actually disguises and supports this outcome [of appropriation of locals’ communal capital]” (45). What a rational thought that had never presented itself to me before. Robbins describes the theory as apolitical and “though attractive, is inadequate” (45).