The last section of our ENVS 160 course has been focused on the text Who Rules the Earth by Paul Steinberg, and built off our discussions throughout the course demonstrating the importance of scaling up in order to solve environmental problems. He addresses the importance of institutional thinking, as well as how much social rules regarding property and land management impact environmental problems. As a future conservation biologist, this section has been specifically interesting to me as it provides a framework for how to go about implementing change via.
Scaling Up, why it’s important.
The way we’ve been trained to think about environmental problems is that the small changes we make individually to our own lifestyle will eventually add up to something greater. Classic environmentalism has taught us to focus on changing specific things on an individual basis as a means for global change. “Yet solutions that promote green consumerism and changes in personal lifestyles strike many of us as strangely out of proportion with enormous problems like climate change, urban air pollution, and the disappearance of tropical forests.” (Steinberg 2015, 5). Steinberg begins his book by acknowledging that the commonplace method for environmental action – individualism – simply has not been cutting it.
Steinberg then examines the complex rules and policies that govern who rules and has access to the earth. In order to progress and better our world, he says that “often it is a matter of reforming institutions – the rules that we rely on to coordinate human activities.” (Steinberg 2015, 37). He explains the complexities and importance of international regulations such as LEED certifications and cap and trade economic policies for promoting collaborative solutions. He presents the European Union as a model institution in many regards, and applauds its work in uniting a multitude of European nations to make progress economically, socially and environmentally. Steinberg does also recognize the impact that more informal institutions can have in rural and indigenous areas around the world. The section I found most interesting and applicable to myself was the discussion of the Cerulean Warbler and its complex migration path across national boundaries.
The Case of the Cerulean Warbler; scaling up in conservation biology.
The cerulean warbler is a small blue bird that makes the annual trek from its wintering grounds in Peru to its summering grounds in the Midwestern United States and Canada (Steinberg 2015). Tracing the route this bird takes exemplifies the importance that institutions and social rules have on the conservation of wildlife and habitats. Before taking this class, I would’ve assumed that the issues pertaining to its protection were simply to do with a combination of biotic and abiotic factors throughout its migratory range. Starting in its summer range of Manu National Park, Steinberg examines how much social rules regarding land control have changed in the past centuries. “The encomienda system likely encouraged deforestation throughout cerulean habitat because Spanish owners of encomienda lands could not transfer the property to their descendants” (Steinberg 2015, 73). A series of land reforms performed in order to alleviate poverty throughout the Cerulean Warblers Central and South American migratory path have resulted in the destruction of vast tracts of critical habitat. “Cerulean warblers feel the effects of these rules as they pass over a patchwork of land at varying levels of degradation.” (Steinberg 2015, 76).
The dizzying rate of coffee consumption in the United States has led countries like Colombia, Guatemala and Nicaragua to beef up their production by converting vast tracts of shady rainforest into sunlit coffee plantations (Steinberg 2015). The birds’ layover grounds in Mexico have been impacted by diverse social interactions ranging from an indigenous rebellion to the reintroduction of ejidos, community owned forest plots. “Community forestry in Mexico builds on an innovative property institution … called ejidos.” (Steinberg 2015, 85).
Diverse social and property management rules define the quality and quantity of the Cerulean Warbler’s habitat between the rural selva of Peru and a city park in Ohio. In order to hope to protect this threatened bird (IUCN, 2016), one must understand the incredibly complex social and institutional factors that govern the use of property throughout its range. This is a critical aspect of the bird’s conservation story that I hadn’t much considered before reading Who Rules the Earth.
Works Cited
Steinberg, Paul F. 2015. Who Rules the Earth?: How Social Rules Shape Our Planet and Our Lives. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
IUCN. 2016. “Setophaga Cerulea: BirdLife International: The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2016