DeGrowth & Conservation:

Lessons from Pre-Industrial Societies

Debal Deb

Centre for Interdisciplinary StudiesKolkata, India

www.cintdis.org

Humans began migrating across the Beringia land bridge ca. 12500 YBP.

Humans did not manufacture advanced spearheads until 13000 YBP.Cave bear and Woolly mammoth declined 14800 YBP.

Bison populations crashed 37000 YBP.

“It's unlikely that a few thousand humans running around thecontinent with pointed

sticks in hand could eliminate more than 130 big mammals in less than 400 years.”

Ancient Hunters experienced incidents of RESOURCE CRUNCH

resulting from imprudent resource use modes

until ca. 8,000 YBP

Ever Since 8000 YBP, No Extinction Event Recorded Until the Advent of Modernity.

Pre­Industrial Societies * Remember Consequences of 

Their Resource Use Modes* Learn from Past Mistakes* Design Cultural Restraints on   IndividualsCommunity Memory is contained in Folk tales, Mythologies, Proverbs, Omens & Auguries in Pre-Industrial Cultures.

• Hunting Ethics

e.g. Specific Life History Stages

• Closed Seasons (for hunting/fishing)

• Ritual Domestication

• Cultural Restraints on Harvest

e.g. Customary Quotas of Harvest

Customary Protection of Useful Species

The Indigenous Worldview recognizes (in symbolic and metaphoric terms)

* the Intrinsic Value of Many Species, regardless of Their “Utility”

* the Future Potnetial Value of Many Species that are Currently of “No Use”

Totem and Tabu

Sacred Species

Sacred Habitats – as Groves, Ponds, Rivers, Hills and Landscapes

were Once Widespread on All Inhabited Continents

Vestiges of Sacred Groves – in Europe

Sacred Groves and Landscapes – in Asia, Africa, North

America and South America

Sacred Landscapes – in Australia.

Sacred Habitat - An Element of the Cultural Landscape

Ventilago sp, A Rare Liana in a Sacred Grove, W. Bengal

Casearia varica, a Rare Tree from a Sacred Grove in Bengal

Turtles in Baneswar Sacred Pond, Cooch Behar

Sacred Heronry

When “scientific” forestry takes over...

Industrial Societies Have No Community Memory.

Therefore, They Allow No Restraint

A Centralized Information Industry entails: 

* Generation of Selective Information* Selective Information Dissemination* Selective Public Attention to Events

Big-Fish Stocks Fall 90 Percent Since 1950, Study SaysNational Geographic NewsMay 15, 2003

Only 10 percent of all large fish—both open ocean species including tuna, swordfish, marlin and the large groundfish such as cod, halibut, skates and flounder—are left in the sea, according to research published in today's issue of the scientific journal Nature.

"From giant blue marlin to mighty bluefin tuna, and from tropical groupers to Antarctic cod, industrial fishing has scoured the global ocean. There is no blue frontier left," said lead author Ransom Myers, a fisheries biologist based at Dalhousie University in Canada. "Since 1950, with the onset of industrialized fisheries, we have rapidly reduced the resource base to less than 10 percent—not just in some areas, not just for some stocks, but for entire communities of these large fish species from the tropics to the poles.”

Ref: R. A. Myers & B. Worm 2003. “Rapid worldwide depletion of predatory fish” Nature 423: 280-3.

“Rational” Harvest for Individual Profit Leads to Exhaustion

Community Memory is Essential to ensure (a) Restraint over Resource Use (b) Intergenerational Equity

Hence, the Community is Anathema to

(a) Private Profit (b) Industrial Growth

Eppur si Muove…

Despite the Advent of Modernity,

• Communities continue to exist

• Customary management systems

• persist

• Biophilia remains alive

…. in remote villages of South Asia

Biophilia in Practice

Rescuing a Bat

Recognition of Intrinsic Value of Nature

Conservation for Future Generations

Hunting Ethics Seasonal Restrictions

Sacred Species Sacred Groves

Myths & Totems Omens & Auguries

Recognition of Intrinsic Value of Nature

Obviates

DISCOUNTING of Natural Resources

in all Pre-Industrial Societies

Discounting is a Tool of Neo-Classical Economicsto Boost Growth of Capital

If we take a discount rate of five percent, then the cost to society of a $100,000,000 cleanup in 250 years' time (at today's value) is just $270. At an eight percent discount rate, the cost drops to just nine cents! Through discounting, then, future environmental problems of immense size can be made simply to fade away. – Mario Petrucci 2002. “Sustainability – long view or long word?” Social Justice 29: 106.

The Spurious Arithmetic of Discounting

Zero Rate of Zero Rate of Interest /Discounting Interest /Discounting Entails ConservationEntails Conservation

Price = Rent ÷ Interest rateWith interest rate → 0, price → ∞

Nobody can buy [the right to destory] any ecosystem.

‘What matters is not how much they have but how much more they have than others’ – Barry Schwartz 1986. The Battle for Human Nature. Norton. New York, p. 165.

* The difference between ‘need’ and ‘want’ is never transcended. * The perception of want is governed by the desire to attain material well-being relative to all others.* The horizon of want perpetually recedes with techno-industrial progress.

The Red Queen Race for Happines

Signs of Prosperity?

Bhopal: Genocide

for Development

Global Carbon dioxide Levels (800 - 2000AD)

Another Form of Civilization: Existing and ALIVE !

A Civilization in which • The individual’s right to deprive others

of Nature’s services is abrogated;• The intergenerational right of all

community members is upheld;• Natural “resources” cannot be price-

tagged;• “Enoughness” prevails over

“Moreness”.

100

80

60

40

20

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Time →

De-growth phase

No-growth phase

Tenets of Eco-Socialist Society

1. Zero Rates of Profit and Interest Natural objects will be conserved for future generations; will preclude accumulation and wealth inequity.

2. Civic democracy

Participation of all members of society; accountability for all actions that affects the rights of community; access to information and choice for all; consideration of rights of all members, including future generations.

Tenets of Eco-Socialist Society

3. Cooperative individualism

Encourage rational cooperation among individuals to align with civic democracy; foster growth of personal knowledge, enhance individual creativity and facilitate dialogue between the individual and the community.

4. Inclusive Freedom

Truncate certain exclusive individual freedoms and ensure inclusive freedom of the whole community and intergenerational social and environmental justice.

Civic Democracy

Communitarian Ethos

Biophilia &Ecocentric Ethos

Eco-SocialistEthics

“The defects of formal parliamentary democracy result from the delegation of power. To make democracy effective, power must always be vested in the people, and there must be ways and means for the people to wield the sovereign power effectively, not periodically, but from day to day.

“Economic democracy is no more possible in the absence of political democracy than the latter is in the absence of the former.”

M N Roy (1954)

Villagers United to Protect their Sacred Groves

Power to the Community