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Environmental conservation and wilderness

In the past decades, environmental organizations such as Greenpeace and WWF have advocated for the conservation of the environment from a wilderness perspective, portraying charismatic animals in fantastic landscapes and highlighting the importance of preserving their natural environment. At the same time, people living in urbanized areas often perceive nature as an external setting to their everyday lives, only experienced during holidays or recreational activities. Critics have questioned this outlook on nature because it reinforces the notion that humans are outside of nature and only escape to the wilderness to find spiritual fulfillment and wonder. In this article I will examine wilderness environmentalism from two perspectives and discuss how we might incorporate a revised notion of wilderness into our environmental conservation initiatives and policies.

In “The Trouble with Wilderness”, William Cronon discusses the romanticized notion of wilderness as a sublime setting for human realization in which the human is entirely outside of the natural. He criticizes this constructed idea because “any way of looking at the natural world that encourages us to believe we are separate from nature is likely to reinforce environmentally irresponsible behaviour” (Cronon, 1995). Further, he asserts that the frontier idea of wilderness is a myth invented by white settlers to build up their own system of values and justify oppressive behaviour towards indigenous peoples. Instead of a pristine landscape untouched by human influence, Cronon argues, nature is a setting that has been altered for millennia by the people who inhabit it.

In response to ideas such as Cronon’s, the environmental movement has taken a shift from wilderness conservation to environmental justice. Environmental justice incorporates concerns such as racism and discrimination into the conservation debate. In the view of environmental justice activists, solving the environmental crisis is intrinsically intertwined with solving other social issues such as poverty, discrimination, and economic inequality because the domination of nature and the domination of people are closely related. Environmental justice activists go as far as saying that wilderness conservation and the protection of endangered species is a form of racism because the people advocating this part of the environmental agenda are mainly white people from the developed world. So is wilderness an entirely constructed idea? Should we abandon our efforts to preserve it? What types of values are we prioritizing when advocating for wilderness conservation?

In “A Wilderness Environmentalism Manifesto: Contesting the Infinite Self-Absorption of Humans” Micheal DeLuca discusses these questions from an alternative perspective. For DeLucca, abandoning wilderness conservation is wrong because it would place too much weight on human interests and human values. In his view, putting humans first dilutes the focus and efforts of environmental groups, whose main goal should be to preserve nature regardless of its relationship to human societies. Cronon himself recognizes that “[a]ny way of looking at nature that helps us remember—as wilderness also tends to do—that the interests of people are not necessarily identical to those of every other creature or of the earth itself is likely to foster responsible behaviour” (Cronon, 1995). This idea is a relevant critique to environmental justice because environmental interests are not always the same as human interests. As DeLuca puts it “social justice and human rights around the world are not a priori conditions for environmental protection” (DeLucca, 2007).

In my view, a new notion of wilderness and environmental conservation should take into account aspects of both Cronon’s and DeLucca’s views.  When thinking about “saving the environment” many people might think about a beautiful mountain range, a deep, biodiverse rainforest or an exotic animal. For many of us in large city centers, “saving the environment” does not evoke images of the place where we live, work, and form relationships. This is a large problem when trying to promote conservation efforts because nature is seen as something external to most people’s everyday experiences, and therefore external to their range of responsibility. The outlook on nature as something external to the human experience must change. Firstly, as Cronon argues, we should deconstruct the idea of wilderness as a pristine and sublime ideal. For many of us, wilderness is a place far away, untouched by human influence, where we go every once in a while to clear our minds and breathe fresh air. Then, as DeLucca suggests, we should construct an idea of wilderness as a place we inhabit, a place in which our very existence depends upon and a place that we are responsible for preserving. When it comes to environmental justice, we should be aware that human interests are not always compatible with the conservation of nature. This is a hard realization for many idealists on the political left who think we can solve all the world’s problems by abolishing the structures of power of capitalism. The reality is, nevertheless, much more complex than that. Preserving wilderness is sometimes compatible with pursuing human interests and social justice, but in many cases it is not. As DeLucca suggests, the environmental crisis is an opportunity to overcome human self-absorption and start viewing ourselves as part of a greater web of life on the planet.

~Monica

Photo credi:t Pixabay  https://www.pexels.com/photo/adventure-calm-clouds-dawn-414171/  (creative commons license)

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