marți, 16 august 2011
A Hungarian poem
joi, 28 iulie 2011
Sustainability or societal relevance?
This post was initially published here: http://ideas4sustainability.wordpress.com/ and is a response to the previous post on the research implementation gap.
vineri, 15 iulie 2011
Poverty or biodiversity loss: an inevitable choice?
initially published here: http://ideas4sustainability.wordpress.com/
Here’s a 'conservation dilemma’ – (dilemma) a problem offering at least two possibilities, neither of which is practically acceptable (Source: Wikipedia). Working a relatively poor part of Europe (Central Romania), we are confronted with this dilemma on a daily basis.
One possibility to protect biodiversity, widely used in Europe and around the world, is the delineation of protected areas to preserve rare or endemic species, or a certain type of cultural-natural heritage. To achieve conservation goals the area delineated should be managed in a specific way, that is, according to a management plan. If people live there, then a number of (usually financial) incentives can be used to ‘motivate’ agriculture and development which under the best available knowledge is ‘environmentally friendly’. Put simply: there are certain delineated areas where certain species or ecological functions are worth protecting, and there are areas where all these are already lost. It’s only in the latter that development can occur in a relatively unrestricted way.
Financial incentives to people living within protected areas (e.g. in the EU, Natura 2000 sites) have the aim to compensate people so they can afford the same things as people living outside the protected areas. People should not experience economic hardship because they live in a protected area, and therefore payments are used to compensate them for restrictions to development and production.
Does this work? This type of conservation strategy fragments ecological space into small isolates – like islands in the sea. These isolates (i) are unlikely to generate the full spectrum of life supporting ecosystem services, (ii) are less likely to be adaptive-resilient to global change and (iii) might hide a huge latent conflictual situation: what will happen if the financial incentives to maintain biodiverse landscapes stop?
So splitting the world into protected and unprotected areas, and compensating people accordingly works only when the world is stable. It is not sustainable in a rapidly changing world.
The second possibility is to find locations where traditional land use practices are still being practiced today. The assumption here is that if certain farming practices applied over centuries maintained fertile soils, clear waters and biodiverse landscapes, then these practices could be a good solution for sustainability. Moreover, they will generate good quality food, water and other resources for people. Perhaps these areas should then be protected areas, such as Natura 2000 sites? In Romania this happens, but one of the difficulties is that highly biodiverse farmlands are so widespread that delineating protected ‘islands’ appears quite nonsensical or even dangerous. In Romania, many valuable landscapes and biodiversity elements have now remained outside of the protected areas, receiving no conservation status and no attention from conservationists (since they focus on protected areas…). This type of conservation approach thus will result in a ‘forced binarization’ of the ecological space, which is not desired.
How can we solve the problem of biological conservation in areas characterised by traditional farming and high biodiversity? Maintaining those farming practices and traditional knowledge would be a possibility, sounds quite simple – but is it? If we somehow could maintain those traditional systems, we will likely have: (i) life supporting (and many other) ecosystem services, and (ii) adaptive, resilient ecological systems with well pronounced ‘internal-’ and ‘external memory’ (resilient e.g. to climate change, disease outbreaks etc.). But we can’t rid ourselves of that huge potential for conflict: people will want to develop (not nice to be trapped in the Middle Ages when others have satellite TV!), and acquire a similar level of material wealth as other people elsewhere (e.g. in western Europe).
Financial incentives are the solution most commonly envisaged. These incentives also symbolise an invitation for traditional communities to join the big, EU-wide (and indeed, global!) system of money and markets. Not only to be a part of it, but to depend on it. With all the consequences. Although financial incentives may be a solution in short term, they don’t seem viable in long term.
How do we tackle this dilemma?
miercuri, 6 iulie 2011
Perception about life and the trajectory of traditional rural societies and landscapes in Romania (and possibly Eastern Europe)
The original post was published here:
http://ideas4sustainability.wordpress.com/2011/07/06/perception-about-life-and-the-trajectory-of-traditional-rural-societies-and-landscapes-in-romania-and-possibly-eastern-europe/
miercuri, 29 iunie 2011
Landing in a foreign cultural skeleton?
Update (4 July, 2011): nice talk with my friend Hans Hedrich about cultural differences between people and the consequences of this. He was suggesting a nice thing: 'people generally act according to a kind of cultural code. It seems that in this area the Saxon cultural code was replaced by many other, different codes. And the consequences are obvious". After this I suggested the cultural skeleton metaphor - somehow we were talking about the same things. Hans, if you read this I hope I understood it well... (he suggested the book Daniel Quinn, Ishmael. I know (well) that book, warmly recommend to everybody)
vineri, 3 septembrie 2010
Conservation when change is inevitable: an Eastern European rural perspective
Tibor Hartel
Rural landscapes were shaped by human activity, which sometimes can be tracked back to centuries. These landscapes represent a fascinating subject for applied conservation and research. I consider as “conservationist” every academic person who is actively involved in the conservation of cultural values of these societies. This can be an architect or anthropologist or ecologist. Preferably all together in a mixed team. In this note I highlight some aspects related to traditional and new values, changes in these values (which we, as conservationists of Eastern Europe generally don’t like) in rural societies and their potential consequences for conservation thinking.
When is a rural community (with its “extended phenotypes” such are the cultural products) traditional? Difficult question, especially because of the many uncertainties around the word “traditional”. From an Eastern European and Romanian context it seems that the “cultural heritage” of the traditional rural communities can be tracked back for centuries. The traditional costumes, traditional songs and dances, poems, or architectural products (houses, churches etc.) and nevertheless landscapes are just a few of the many cultural values produced and maintained by rural societies. Although these may change during time (since societies are not isolated entities, infiltration occur from other cultures as well – see for example the Saxon-Hungarian-Romanian interface in the Southern part of
Picture 2. The new Sighisoara. The arrow show an unfinished huge building which (i) occupies a lot of space and (ii) is “architecturally mutilating” the town. Source: internet
Picture 3. If the visitor come into Sighisoara (a town built and shaped by Saxons along the centuries) from
Picture 4. I experienced a “remarkable constancy” in the architecture of Finnish (and also Swedish) buildings across that huge country. They were beautifully diverse but at the same time so clearly representative.
Societies are changing, and most likely nothing can be done to stop this process. What need to be done is to help societies adapt (their institutions) to change.
I don’t know how much from the old values will be kept in the newly formed society after and during the institutional change. Conservationists are fighting to keep as much as possible - and I dont know how 'fair' is this or not. If one can manage to “plant” these values in the “core” of the (new) institution (or, why not, to build one around these values) then we may be optimistic. But this is hard to do, and it seems that most of conservationists from
To be efficient in our conservation attempts in a changing world, we need to know what the major driver (or what kinds of drivers operate - since likely there is more than one) of change is. If we understand this, we can assess better our aims, limits and possibilities and also we could allocate resources more efficiently.
If I would try a quick attempt to identify drivers of (institutional) change this would be not hard at all. From individual perspective some short bits could be: The wish to work less and gather more (and more). To feel safe. To feel good. To be healthy. To be sexually attractive. To have money, power (as much as possible). To be independent. (or: to be in a level of social hierarchy which assure more and more independence) To travel around the world. To know more, think more. To have fun. (these are what I generally see around, and I am sorry if the reader lack any or all of them)
If the existing cultural products and heritage allow at least the illusion of having some of the above mentioned things, then it is likely that people will keep them. Otherwise, likely they will dissapear or be markedly changed.
Now, how many milliseconds should be spent to realize how much of these may have a family which is doing something like that presented in Picture 5 especially when they are young and know that in their surroundings there is a life which is presented in Picture 6?
Picture 5. Upper picture: young people making traditional farming in a Saxon village. Picture below: a short brake during agricultural work with my grandmother, mother and a villager who come to help.
Picture 6. Youth in a party in
There are, of course, a number of global-institutional drivers acting more or less independently from the above mentioned ones.
To come back to our problem: how to conserve values when the societies and value systems are rapidly changing? First, I really think that conservation work needs to be done. Other way, we loose all the important reference points. But what and how and how much? As a conservation biologist I would say: life, before all! I would invest a lot of energy and resource to understand the 'behaviour' of a social and ecological system under various circumstances: how adaptive and resilient that system is. Which are the key features of that given system which assures resilience and adaptability. Building or forming, (new) institutions and value systems - dont forget: we live in sharply changing times - would be of critical importance to achieve this goal even if this would mean the “broke” with many traditional values (traditional “cultural packages” should be “filtered”).



