

Sustainability in the Arts and Humanities

Naomi Sykes

Copyright © University of Nottingham, 2013

Published at Smashwords

The University Of Nottingham,

University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK

http://www.nottingham.ac.uk

First published: January 2013

Except for third party materials (materials owned by someone other than The University of Nottingham) and where otherwise indicated, the copyright in the content provided in this resource is owned by the University of Nottingham and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike UK 2.0 License (BY-NC-SA).

This ePub has been put together using material generated by The University Of Nottingham, in combination with material from third-party 'Creative Commons' sources. The principle of sustainability has been upheld through the production of this eBook through the re-use of the openly licensed material. This resource is in turn being made openly available for anyone with an interest in learning. We would like to thank all of the individuals and organisations whose Creative Commons resources are included, or have been adapted, as part of this publication.
Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Introduction

Chapter 2. Sustainability in Context: Deep-time Perspectives on Present Day Issues

Chapter 3. What is 'Natural' Anyway?

Chapter 4.The Four Elements

Chapter 5. Waste

Chapter 6. Food

Chapter 7. Landscape, Environment and Eco-tourism

Chapter 8. Cultural Heritage

Chapter 9. People and Knowledge

Chapter 10. Conclusion and Assignment

Module Aims and Summary

The aim of this module is to introduce students to the concept of 'sustainability' as perceived from within the Arts and Humanities, in particular within the disciplines of archaeology, classics, history (including art history and landscape history), music, philosophy and theology. The module will review a number of topical issues – such as climate change, food security, water and waste management, landscape, environment and biodiversity – through the lens of the Arts and Humanities to consider how our disciplines can contribute to current debates and offer new routes to sustainable futures.

It is expected that the module will foster and develop students' knowledge of issues in sustainability and, by placing evidence in its wider context, encourage students to think critically about possible solutions. Importantly, this module will render students 'educated consumers', aware that their daily decisions have an impact and that their choices can be equally influential. Above all it is about giving students the confidence, as individuals, to bring about social change for the future.

Module Details

Module Credits – 10

Student Study Hours – 20

Availability - Online via U-Now website

Study Method - Self-taught from online resources

Academic Year - 2012-2013

Entry Requirements - Open to all Undergraduates at the University of Nottingham

Suitable for students within the Faculty of Arts, particularly the School of Humanities
Intended Module Learning Outcomes

The intended learning outcomes are that, on completion of this module, the student should:

• Understand the complexity of the term 'sustainability' – that it means different things to different people at different times and has the potential to be misused as a label for political and economic gain.

• Demonstrate knowledge of the environmental and social issues confronting societies both today and in the past.

• Demonstrate knowledge of the strategies that have been employed to address sustainability in the past (successfully and unsuccessfully) and how understanding of past success/failure may be used to inform future decision making.

• Understand there is seldom a single 'correct' sustainable solution to many of the issues invoked by the term.

• Demonstrate knowledge of how disciplines within the arts and humanities can make a difference and help to ensure a sustainable future.

Learning Objectives Context

• Debates about sustainability seldom draw upon discussion from the arts and humanities but this module will use a variety of case-studies to demonstrate how disciplines within these fields have considerable potential to lead change and develop critical and informed solutions to social and environmental problems.

• The module is suitable for students of any discipline wishing to gain knowledge of sustainability in its widest theoretical and temporal context.

Module Outline

The module will be delivered as an online resource via the University of Nottingham's U-Now open source learning portal. Each online chapter will consist of 2 hours digital learning content drawn from disciplines across the arts and humanities: a mixture of text, images, video, sound bites, charts, tables, pod casts and lists of websites.

Method of Assessment

In the final chapter students will spend time reviewing the University of Nottingham's policy, documentation and statements concerning sustainability. As all institutions can be viewed as 'the world in microcosm' students should set out to critique the University, highlighting both good and bad practice, in the light of what has been learnt in the module. If students highlight areas for improvement, they are encouraged to develop well-researched creative solutions to the perceived problem.

The critique and proposal should take the form of a short and well-argued document of 500-1000 words. Once this has been submitted for assessment, the best proposals will be taken forward to the University's 'Sustainability Team' for consideration.
Chapter 1. Introduction

In this lecture you will:

Be introduced to the main themes of the module and method of assessment.

Be introduced to the concept(s) of sustainability – the origin of the term and its multifarious definitions.

Hear from scholars from different fields within the arts and humanities about their understanding of sustainability and how they perceive their disciple can contribute to the issue.
Module Outline: Chapter by Chapter

This online module consists of 10 chapters and associated reading materials drawn from disciplines across the arts and humanities.

Each chapter is expected to equate to 2-hours of work from the student that will involve:

• Engaging with the presentations

• Reading the supplementary readings provided

• Following up the suggested resources.

This first chapter provides a brief introduction to the module, explaining the themes that will be covered.

These points will be developed further in the second chapter.
Chapter 2: Sustainability in Context: deep-time perspectives on modern day issues

The terms sustainability is difficult to define but that does not stop the reality of the issues that the term has come to engender.

Chapter 2 introduces some of the large-scale issues encompassed by 'sustainability': notably global climate and population change, health and well-being.

In this chapter you will be introduced to the evidence used to establish such global changes and how the perspectives brought by Arts and Humanities research have helped to clarify these global concerns.
Chapter 3. What is Natural?

In this chapter it is argued that many of issues faced by the world today have been brought about by the rise of a worldview where culture is deemed to be separate from nature, and human desires are placed before all else.

Chapter 3 charts the rise of this anthropocentrism, examining how the worldview prevalent in the West developed over time: from Classical philosophy, through medieval thought, before being dramatically altered by the Enlightenment.

This chapter will also consider the worldviews of non-western cultures – do they have anything to teach us about sustainability?
Chapter 4. The Four Elements: Fire, Air, Water and Earth

Following on from chapter 3, this chapter introduces Elemental Theory – the fundamental scheme of nature that existed before the Enlightenment and to which, it could be argued, we should return.

The elements – fire, air, water and earth, are then used to consider the issues of sustainability linked to energy production (fire and air) and resources utilisation (water and earth).

This chapter gives examples of where strategies from other regions and periods might be employed profitably to enable a more sustainable future.
Chapter 5: Waste

The idea that we might beneficially return to past ideals and techniques is developed further in Chapter 5, which examines the Western phenomenon of 'waste', an alien concept to many societies both past and present.

It takes as a case-study, manure (human and animal) examining how attitudes to faeces have shaped the fortunes of human societies. What to us is an odious material to be flushed out of sight, to others is a product of great value, responsible for maintaining land and people.

Attitudes to waste reflect the ideology of the society that produces it and, with the benefit of hindsight, this chapter examines whether we need to re-evaluate our ideology.
Chapter 6. Food

As with waste, attitudes to food are culturally determined and the choices we make reflect our individual identities – be they social, religious or ethnically based.

This chapter will examine how choices that, at one time, were appropriate can easily become unsustainable, necessitating change. Food security is now becoming a significant global issue and this chapter will consider how security might best be achieved.

By reflecting on Arts and Humanities research, current attitudes to farming, fishing and the exploitation of terrestrial wild mammals will be critiqued. Some possible options for achieving more sustainable solutions to our food needs are proposed.
Chapter 7. Ecology, Economics and Eco-tourism

Of all the evidence available for assessing human impact on the world, the record provided by the landscape, environment and biodiversity is probably the most accurate and telling.

This chapter examines the evidence for shifts in landscape and biodiversity, making clear that humans are an integral part of nature with little in the UK having existed in isolation from humans.

Environmental records highlight the dynamic interactions between humans and their surroundings – things have always changed as circumstances have shifted.

With this in mind we will examine whether current legislation, that seeks to preserve the present-day landscape and environment, is fitting to deal with a future that will be less predictable and require considerable adaptability.
Chapter 8. Cultural Heritage

Continuing with the theme of preservation, chapter 8 considers 'Heritage' – what is it and how it came into being?

This chapter starts with a historical perspective, examining the power-play and politics than have often lay behind seemingly laudable efforts to preserve human artefacts, landscape and environment for future generations.

To demonstrate the complexities involved, three case-studies are presented: first, a lecture relating to cultural landscapes, second a piece of research examining the seal management (and the famous public campaigns against seal culling), and third, a study in 'sustainable music'.
Chapter 9. People and Knowledge

This chapter is more inter-active and will consider a number of examples where the Arts and Humanities have sought to capture knowledge and make it freely available through the creation of digital resources.

You will be spend time exploring these resources and thinking about what they represent in terms of sustainability – do they make a difference?

We will then recap on some of the issues explored in the module to reconsider the role of the Arts and Humanities in creating sustainable futures.
Chapter 10. Reflection and Assignment

The existence of this module is an indication that the University of Nottingham is taking the issue of sustainability seriously. Further information about the institution's commitment to sustainability can be found on the University of Nottingham's website, which contains a section on 'Environmental Sustainability' and you can download the University's Environmental Strategy Document.

There is also a considerable amount of information on the 'Impact' section of the website, where you can read information and watch videos relating to aspect of the University's work that are relevant to the issues covered in this module.

As part of this final chapter, students are required to read the University's literature. Through independent research they should then investigate policy at other universities and more generally within society - this work is linked directly to the module's assessment.
Assessment

In the light of what has been learnt in this module, and by conducting independent research, students must provide a 500-1000 word critique of the University's strategy. The critique should consider what the University is doing well, what the institution could do better and how.

In addition to representing the assessment for this module, the best critiques will be forwarded to the University's Sustainability Grand Challenge Committee to consider for implementation.

This is an important exercise. The University is a microcosm of society. By establishing good practice at this level there is real potential to make a difference to the world beyond the campus. Students have the capacity to make that difference.
What does 'Sustainability' mean?

The word 'sustainability' is a recent invention, first recorded in 1907 in reference to a legal objection (online Etymology). It entered the folklife discourse with Alan Lomax's (1972) Appeal for Cultural Equity and the 1983 report on The Conservation of Culture, coordinated by Ormond Loomis for the American Folklife Center. The term gained popularity within developmental economics and policy planning following the 1987 publication of the United Nations' Brundtland Commission Report on sustainable development Our Common Future.

The Brundtland Commission Report defined sustainability, and in particular sustainable development, as 'development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs' (United Nations, 1987). http://www.un-documents.net/ocf-02.htm

"However, 'sustainability' is an elusive concept with hundreds of proposed definitions –e.g. see http://www.emrgnc.com.au/SustainabilityDefinitions.pdf. It is a shifting ideal and its meaning changes in different contexts" (Dr Alex Ryan, University of Gloucestershire and Professor Geoffrey Samuel, Cardiff University) Content used in a presentation created for 'Sustainability and the Humanities: Shaping Culture and Community for a Changing World' event: sponsored by the university of Cardiff. Available under Creative Commons, Attribution, Non-Commercial Share-a-like licence.

http://humbox.ac.uk/4307/ (Feb 2012)

Definitions of Sustainability

Here are just a few commonly used definitions of sustainability:

"Sustainable means using methods, systems and materials that won't deplete resources or harm natural cycles" (Rosenbaum, 1993).

Sustainability "identifies a concept and attitude in development that looks at a site's natural land, water, and energy resources as integral aspects of the development" (Vieira, 1993)

"Sustainability integrates natural systems with human patterns and celebrates continuity, uniqueness and placemaking" (Early, 1993)

"Sustainable developments are those which fulfil present and future needs (WECD, 1987) while [only] using and not harming renewable resources and unique human-environmental systems of a site: [air], water, land, energy, and human ecology and/or those of other [off-site] sustainable systems (Rosenbaum 1993 and Vieira 1993)."

"The quality of not being harmful to the environment or depleting natural resources, and thereby supporting long term ecological balance" Dictionary.com

'Sustainable Development is more about new ways of thinking, than about science or ecology. Whilst it involves the natural sciences and economics, it is primarily a matter of culture.' (UNESCO 2002 p.4)

"As can be seen, most commonly cited definitions refer to the 'need to improve quality of life for all without depleting the earth's natural resources' – pointing to inter-generational equity, legacies for the future and responsibilities to the natural world" (Dr Alex Ryan, University of Gloucestershire and Professor Geoffrey Samuel, Cardiff University) Content used in a presentation created for 'Sustainability and the Humanities: Shaping Culture and Community for a Changing World' event: sponsored by the university of Cardiff. Available under Creative Commons, Attribution, Non-Commercial Share-a-like licence.

http://humbox.ac.uk/4307/ (Feb 2012)
However, when we speak of 'the future' in the context of a 'sustainable future', what do we mean? Next year? One or two decades hence? The end of the twenty-first century? The end of the third millennium? Forever?

Ideally, in view of the Brundtland Report's injunction that humanity should not compromise the needs of future generations, we should judge sustainability on an indefinite time scale – far into the very distant future. In practice, however, this might be realistically interpreted as endeavouring to ensure that systems become sustainable (or at the very least, much less un-sustainable) over the next century or so – with the additional proviso that, even beyond that time horizon, few substantial difficulties can presently be envisaged. Future generations will be justified in blaming us for creating problems that were foreseeable; but can they hold us responsible for eventualities that none of us could have anticipated?

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However appealing sustainability is conceptually, it remains open to a variety of interpretations, ideologies, and practices. For this reason the terms is beginning to loose its power and meaning:

For instance, I have mentioned to several colleagues that I am creating this module and it is met, nearly always, with eye rolling. This suggests that popular opinion is essentially that summarised by social commentator, Jonathan Meades, in his recent BBC 4 series On France:

"That universally preached, seldom practiced, utterly trite and entirely unrealistic doctrine of sustainability"

And there is a growing number of examples that satirise 'sustainability'

Above image sourced from xkcd.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 2.5 license. http://xkcd.com/1007/

Within the context of energy, sustainability means

The harnessing of energy sources:

• That are not substantially depleted by continued use;

• The use of which does not entail the emission of pollutants or other hazards to the environment on a substantial scale; and

• The use of which does not involve the perpetuation of substantial health hazards or social injustices.

This is, of course, a very broad ideal. Although a few energy sources can come close to fulfilling these conditions, most fall considerably short of the optimum. This means that, in practice, sustainability is a relative rather than an absolute concept. It is not so much that some energy sources are sustainable and others not; it is more that some energy sources, in certain contexts, are more sustainable than others. Determining the relative sustainability of one energy system vis-à-vis another is usually a complex process, involving detailed consideration of the specific processes and technologies proposed, the context in which they are being used and the differing values and interests of the various parties involved.

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For example... Suppose the government of a country is proposing to construct a large hydro-electric power plant. The villagers whose homes would be flooded by the associated reservoir would probably take a different view of the plant's sustainability to that taken by the city-based planners in the electricity utility proposing its construction, whose homes would be unaffected and whose careers would probably stand to benefit from such a major capital project.

Similarly... The closure of coal mines and coal-fired power stations is perhaps the inevitable result from the need to reduce carbon emissions and the associated growth of more sustainable sources of energy. However, pit closures, such as those witnessed in the UK during the 1980s, can devastated entire communities, which are unsustainable without the pits.
Eggs and Ethics

There are, therefore, important ethical considerations over sustainability – things may be sustainable but does that always make them right?

For instance, the national news was recently reporting that egg supplies are at risk because battery farms are closing as a result of new EU legislation requiring a basic level of welfare.

It could be argued that 'Free range' is not sustainable – should we re-open battery farms to make egg production sustainable?
Sustainability is a Complex Issue

Above image sourced from Wikipedia (Author: Nojhan) under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License[  
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainability](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainability)

It weaves together all spheres of life on earth – if one sphere if affected it will undoubtedly affect the others. As such, it is not simply a matter of scientific enquiry, it is equally about culture and therefore the Arts and Humanities have a role to play in its consideration.
Sustainability in the Arts and Humanities

So, how do people within the Arts and Humanities view their role?

The Arts and Humanities encompass perhaps the most creative but also culture-critical disciplines within academia. For this reason, I asked a number of scholars within the Arts and Humanities about their perspectives on sustainability, how they defined the term and what they thought our disciplines might contribute to the debate. I asked them the following questions:

Q: What does the term 'sustainability' mean to you?

Q. How do you perceive the responsibilities of your discipline in grappling with sustainability?

Q: How can we help to improve understanding of these challenges, through interrogation of the cultural record and analysis of processes of cultural change?

There are several other sources that you should look at.

In March 2012, the University of New Hampshire held their 'Sustainability Unbound' seminar series that brought together top academics (including module contributor Jeff Titon) from within the Arts and Humanities to consider the subject – their seminar were filmed and have been made available on the seminar series website – this one is definitely worth a visit.

A recent collaboration between The Ashden Trust and Open University Culture and Climate Change brought together artists, producers, journalists and academics from a variety of disciplines to map the role that culture had to play in climate change. You can access the discussion in two formats, click on either tab for the links:

Text format

Audio format

Please spend time looking at these now and then return to the chapter.
Humanities Concerns Linked to Sustainability

Having read such a diverse range of perspectives, it is difficult to summarise them in general terms. However, perhaps a few common concerns can be found where it is felt that the Arts and Humanities can make a contribution through:

• Analysis of human-environment relationships, their ethical priorities and cultural practices, across diverse cultures and historical periods.

• Reflection upon philosophical, religious and media representations of utopia and apocalypse and the symbolic devices used to promote them.

• Exploration of the religious and philosophical function within cultures and the uses of ethics in the pursuit of greater sustainability.

• Providing comparative and historical understanding of the contexts for future human development and the ways that conflicting values and interests compete.

Above text sourced from humbox.ac.uk under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-commercial-ShareAlike 3.0 license  
http://humbox.ac.uk/2480/
Sustainability and the Humanities

There is a strong feeling that our disciplines can tackle the sustainability agenda, particularly in the following ways:

• By extracting lessons from specific examples of sustainable and unsustainable development.

• By taking long-term, global and comparative perspectives on questions of human survival.

• By side-stepping 'paralysis by analysis' by unpacking the use of concepts such as 'nature' and 'progress'.

• By building the confidence of other to critique prevailing cultural trajectories and to propose alternate pathways.

This last point is especially important within the context of this module – the hope is that, by the end, you will have developed the confidence to critique the prevailing culture, as represented by the University, and to propose an alternate pathway.

Above text sourced from humbox.ac.uk under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-commercial-ShareAlike 3.0 license  
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References for Chapter 1

Early D. (1993) What Is Sustainable Design, Berkley: Society of Urban Ecology.

Rosenbaum M. (1993) Sustainable Design Strategies. Solar Today.

Vieira RK. (1993) Designing Sustainable Developments. Solar Today 4: 10-13.

World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED). (1987 ) Our Common Future. Oxford 43.
Chapter 2. Sustainability in Context: Deep-time Perspectives on Present Day Issues

In this lecture you will:

Be introduced to some of the main themes engendered by 'Sustainability': climate and population change, health and well-being.

Become familiar with the evidence and traditional approaches applied to such issues.

View the evidence through the lens of the Arts and Humanities – Can our disciplines provide new perspectives?
Recap

As was concluded in the last chapter, the concept of sustainability is complex, difficult to define and cannot be compartmentalised. It is an issue that weaves together all spheres of life on earth – if one sphere if affected it will undoubtedly affect the others.

Above image sourced from Wikipedia (Author: Nojhan) under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License[  
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainability](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainability)
Definitions Vs Reality

The fact that we find 'sustainability' difficult to define (and many academics spend a lot of time trying to do so) makes no difference whatsoever to the real-life issues that the term has come to represent.

This point was made very clearly at an international conference Sustainability and Heritage: How Can the Past Contribute to a Sustainable Future? held at the University of Highlands and Islands in Orkney 29 – 31 May 2012. At this conference John Mussington, a marine biologist and inhabitant of the low-lying Caribbean island of Barbuda (which is increasingly ravaged by the effects of climate change), stated:

"For us, sustainability is not an academic discussion but a matter of life and death"

It is important to realise that whilst we in northern Europe and other parts of the Western world have benefitted from the exploitation of global resources, we are, as yet, are largely unaffected by the consequences of our actions – these are currently being felt most keenly by communities in other parts of the world, such as Barbuda.

As campaigner George Monbiot wrote in The Guardian weekly, (10 February 2000): 'Every time someone in the West switches on a kettle, he or she is helping to flood Bangladesh'.
Overcoming Human Nature

We hear on the news about floods in Pakistan, droughts in Niger and typhoons in Indonesia but these communities are reassuringly distant enough for us to ignore. It is an invidious trait of humans that we, as with most other animals, are largely concerned with self-preservation.

It is therefore, slightly ironic that we face a situation where human survival may well rest on whether we can overcome our egocentric instincts, work with others and to think beyond our immediate surroundings. We need to see the bigger picture.
Global Climate Change

At the largest scale, climate change has come to symbolise humanity's unsustainable actions.

Weather patterns appear to be increasingly extreme and unpredictable. This seems to be a result of atmospheric pollution, caused by the heavy consumption of fossil fuels that is releasing carbon dioxide (CO2) and other dangerous gasses. The situation is made worse by human destruction of the rainforest that would otherwise help to absorb such pollution.

Climate change, in particular human-instigated climate change, is not universally accepted; however, let us now examine the scientific evidence. We will also consider how Arts and Humanities research can help to make the case for Global Warming, which has been linked to atmospheric concentrations in greenhouse gasses.

Above image sourced from Wikipedia (originally NASA) under a Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License  
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Global_Temperature_Anomaly_1880-2010_(Fig.A).gif
There is no doubt that CO2 is accumulating in the atmosphere. The record from Mauna Loa charts a continuing rise in CO2concentration since measurements began in 1958, when the level was 315 ppm; the value had reached about 370 ppm by the end of the 20th century, and hit more than 378 ppm in 2004. Important as changes in atmospheric CO2 undoubtedly are, we need to be aware that this is not the whole story of human-induced greenhouse forcing.

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In particular, monitoring programmes established during the 1980s reveal an upward trend in the levels of two other natural greenhouse gases as well – methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O). But how do we know that the build up of all three gases over recent decades is due to human intervention?

Changes in the atmospheric concentration of (a) CO2, (b) CH4 and (c) N2O over the past 1000 years.

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Contested Science: a case study

For complex issues such as global climate change, there are many opportunities for scientists to take issue with the findings of their colleagues. They can disagree about the procedures for gathering data, the completeness or coverage of the data, how the data are analysed and interpreted, and then finally the conclusions. The assumptions that shape a particular piece of research and inform the kind of questions that will be asked can be no less contentious than the quality of the data gathered.

Disputes within the scientific community can be extensively reported by the media: for instance in the early years of this century, the 'hockey stick' reconstruction (see below, first published by Professor Michael Mann and colleagues in Nature in 1998) became the target for a sustained (and at times, vitriolic) attack that had a high public profile in the US. This is not altogether surprising. It is a potent image – and has become, for some, an icon of what we are doing to the climate. Equally, we should bear in mind the political circumstances of the day.

Shortly after he took office in 2001, President George W. Bush withdrew the US from the Kyoto Protocol on the grounds that it would harm the US economy. Given the link between fossil fuels, CO2emissions and economic activity, this is a legitimate concern; it may well be shared (privately) by other world leaders. Nevertheless, rejection of this landmark agreement to curb CO2 emissions from industrialised countries set the tone for the Bush Administration. It was widely seen as hostile to any mandatory cutbacks in CO2 emissions, and open to the influence of sceptical scientific opinion on global warming – either directly or through the activities of various business-backed lobby groups.

Perhaps one of the main reasons that people are inclined to dispute the evidence for human-instigated climatic change, and in particular global warming, is because the data and predictions based upon them represent a relatively short time period: records for direct temperature measurements (using thermometers), only cover the last 150 years or so. This can easily be critiqued as a poor baseline – what if the records are simply reflecting a 'natural' cycle of global cooling and warming that takes place at the millennial scale, rather than within living memory?

The problems of calculating future risks based on limited modern data are well recognised within marine biology, where the term 'Shifting Baseline Syndrome' has developed to account for the lack of concern some modern fisheries have shown about fish stocks – the argument being that stocks do not seem that depleted compared to a few decades ago. However, when the situation is examined from a deeper-time perspective using historical and archaeological evidence (as we will do in chapter 6) and the problem of over-fishing is apparent.
Shifting Baseline Syndrome

Frans Vera (2009, 29) explains the Shifting Baseline Syndrome as arising when:

Each new generation does not know what 'nature' may have looked like before mankind started to impact upon it;

The environment changes almost imperceptibly from generation to generation;

Each new generation defines what is 'natural' according to its own experience of the (changed) environment it has encountered, and uses this as a baseline against which to measure changes in the environment.

As a result there is a continual lowering of the benchmark for what is 'natural' and the degraded state of the environment is considered to be 'normal'. This means that society as a whole becomes very tolerant of creeping negative environmental change.
Lessons from the deep-past

Whilst marine biologists are coming to recognise the value of historical and archaeological data "the contribution of archaeology to the present debate over the future of the planet is just not discussed in most publications". (Wickham-Jones 2010, 3). This is an oversight, as ancient data offer a way to mitigate against the Shifting Baseline Syndrome of modern evidence and therefore help to build a stronger case.

For instance, the Copenhagen Diagnosis (please read this) which examines the evidence for global temperature rise, the melting of land and sea ice (glaciers, ice-caps, ice sheets) and sea level rise is based almost exclusively on recent data, obtained since 1980. This may seem like a long time-frame but climate is not static and change is to be expected over the short-term.

Admittedly there is a section in the volume entitled 'lessons from the past' but even here the time-frame is limited to the last two thousand years. Given that the world is currently estimated to be 4.54 billion years (± 0.05), there is considerable scope to examine climatic data that would provide a secure baseline to make substantiated claims about the aberrant nature of present day climate.

This is where evidence from archaeology and paleoenvironmental reconstruction are particularly important as they provide empirical data about long-term changes in global climate and temperature.

Past conditions are reconstructed from a variety of proxy data. These include historical documents, together with natural archives of climate-sensitive phenomena, such as the growth or retreat of glaciers, tree rings, corals, sediments and ice cores. In general, the proxy data record becomes more sparse and more imprecise the further back in time we go. Nevertheless, it has proved possible to produce a reasonably reliable reconstruction of how global temperature has varied throughout most of the Earth's history.

For example, dendroclimatology depends on the fact that trees in many parts of the world experience an annual growth cycle. Each year's growth (the thickness and/or density of a ring) depends on the local temperature and moisture conditions, creating a unique record that can then be matched with overlapping records from other trees to produce longer time series. Annual records typically go back 500 to 700 years. In a few cases, the preservation of fossil trees has allowed continuous records from 11 000 years ago to the present to be constructed.

In a similar way, cyclical responses lead to annual banding in corals, which can provide information about sea-surface temperatures, sea level and other ocean conditions – typically back to some 400 years ago.

Layered sediments on lake and ocean floors are another rich source. The types of pollen trapped in lake sediments reveal shifting patterns of vegetation, and thus indirect information about temperature and moisture conditions. Records can go back some 100 000 years. In marine sediments, analysis of microfossils can provide data on seawater temperature and salinity (salt content), atmospheric CO2 and ocean circulation.

Less common deposits of coarse debris can point to the break up of ice sheets and the release of detritus from melting icebergs. Marine sediments provide information from time periods ranging from 20 000 years to 180 million years ago.

Finally, long ice cores drilled out of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets yield a wealth of information. For example, past temperatures can be determined by oxygen isotope analysis . 99% of the oxygen on Earth is the isotope 16O; most of the rest is 18O. Because water molecules containing the different isotopes (i.e. H2 16O and H2 18O) have slightly different physical properties, it turns out that the 18O/16O ratio in ice locked up on land is affected by the ambient temperature at the time when the ice formed. Thus, fluctuations in the oxygen isotope ratio in an ice core provide a proxy for temperature changes back through time (see below)
Temperature changes over the past 400 000 years reconstructed from the Vostok ice core, the longest continuous ice-core record to date.

To view this chart, use the link below

 http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=397952&section=2.2.1
This record tells us that the Earth entered into the most recent comparatively cold period of its history (known as the Pleistocene Ice Age) around 2.6 million years ago. Drilled in Antarctica, the Vostok ice core provides a temperature record that goes back several hundreds of thousands of years. Beyond about 10 000 years ago, it tells a story of an unstable climate oscillating between short warm interglacial periods and longer cold glacial periods about every 100 000 years – with global temperatures varying by as much as 5 to 8 °C – interspersed by many more short-term fluctuations.

By contrast, global temperatures over the last 10 000 years or so seem to have been much less variable, fluctuating by little more than one or two degrees. In short, the interglacial period in which we live, known as the Holocene, appears (on available evidence) to have provided the longest period of relatively stable global climate for at least 400 000 years. It is almost certainly no coincidence that this is also when many human societies developed agriculture and when the beginnings of modern civilisations occurred. We now shift the focus to the more recent past – the period during which human population growth and the coming of the industrial age began to make their mark on the composition of the atmosphere.

Viewed against the deeper-time data, the evidence for global warming is compelling. Figure b shows how modern instrumental records (shown in red) map onto the proxy records (blue). The grey region is the 95% confidence range in the annual data. Note that the uncertainty is much greater than for the period covered by the instrumental record, and increases further back in time.

However, the "long-term hemispheric trend is best described as a modest and irregular cooling from AD 1000 to around 1850–1900, followed by an abrupt 20th century warming" (IPCC, 2001a).
Importance of Ancient Data

The shape marked out by the smoothed curve in Figure b is significant because the warmth of the last few decades appears to be unprecedented in this 1000-year period (and longer); i.e. it rises above the range of natural variability, and exceeds even the uncertainty in the proxy data record (at the 95% confidence level).

It is one thing to detect a global warming trend but quite another to establish with a given level of confidence that it has been caused by human activity – specifically, the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations and associated radiative forcing since pre-industrial times. Establishing 'cause-and-effect' relationships in the behaviour of complex natural systems is always difficult, and often controversial.

However, the overwhelming scientific consensus is that the human impact on the atmospheric burden of greenhouse gases has made a significant contribution to recent climate warming – and hence, by implication, to the observed changes in other climate variables, and in physical and biological systems. But what of the future?

At a time when climate change is already beginning to create sever problems for many communities, what might lie ahead in a future that could see a dramatic rise in atmospheric pollution as a result of population increase?

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Population Data from Archaeology and History

Unlike climatic data, past demographics are difficult to reconstruct from the archaeological record. In many periods there were no formal burials, so human remains do not survive, and in other periods where we have cemetery data, we cannot be certain that the buried populations reflect living populations. For instance, in the Roman period babies were not buried in cemeteries but rather stored in the eaves of houses or placed in enclosure ditches. Because of the difficulties of reconstructing ancient population levels, most data within the public remit suggest population began to increase around the Roman period.

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There is, however, one period that is beginning to show clear changes in human fertility (and therefore most probably population increase) – that is, the Neolithic, when people first began to abandon a hunter-gatherer lifestyle and instead adopt farming.

Bocquet Appel et al. have demonstrated, on a global scale, that the transition from a hunter-gather to farming lifestyle was accompanied by major demographic change, characterized by an abrupt increase in immature skeletons, indicating a notable increase in birth rates. On the basis of this evidence it would appear that farming brought about the first major population explosion. Details of this research can be downloaded for free here.

For many researchers, such as archaeologist Wickham-Jones (2010) and anthropologist Ingold (2000) the transition from hunter-gather to farmer marks the start of the problems faced by the world today. Certainly, by comparison to low-density mobile communities, the increased population of sedentary communities would have been more at risk to the effects of environmental change – something that is becoming clear today.
Documentary Records of Population

Demographics are far easier to reconstruct from the historical records and a brief tutorial about the history of the census can be found here.

What factors affect the death rate of a population? Broadly speaking, the main factors are the biblical favourites: war, disease and famine. These were famously invoked by the 19th-century demographer Thomas Malthus.

We in the developed world have been relatively uninfluenced by these factors in recent times (although remember back to the Upton Church records). Yet a glance at the fertility rates of various countries shows that the rate is actually lowest among the developed countries.

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Population Growth

In many Economically Less Developed Countries (ELDCs) population growth rates have also fallen, but this is largely because infant mortality has remained high. Therefore the primary health-care needs of ELDCs are still seen as crucial to curbing population increase. Parents continue to produce more children than they really want but a proportion will almost certainly not survive beyond infancy. A better-educated population is more able to make health choices, choosing contraception and learning simple techniques to combat disease.

Some of the consequences of increasing populations have been unexpected, such as environmental damage and accidents resulting from inadequate safety measures as ELDCs strive to increase their output and wealth through industrialization. These have posed at least as great a threat as poor agricultural practices; the latter are leading to loss of agricultural land through soil erosion, desertification and increasing soil salinity (which we will examine in chapter 4).

Meanwhile, population growth in Africa continues at 3% per annum and there is not enough food or clean water to sustain this level of growth. So, although there may theoretically be enough food grown world-wide to feed everyone (see chapter , we will continue to hear of famine and undernourished communities in ELDCs.

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Population, Health and Quality of Life

By considering present evidence against the backdrop of historical evidence, and by using statistics to weave together different sets of data it is possible to construct a narrative that highlights patterns of change and the reasons behind them. Nobody does this better than Professor Hans Rosling.

So please use the next 4 minutes to watch as he takes us through 200 years of global development.

Prof. Roling's work clearly charts shifts in global population, health and quality of life – highlighting the huge disparity between countries and even within countries. This historical perspective provides an excellent baseline for considering the future. Indeed, the presentation ends on a positive note about the potential for green technology to make the global population healthier and wealthier.

But can the carrying capacity of planet actually support this prediction in the light of population increase? Resource availability will be considered in the later chapters but here I want to look and how we might address world population growth that is clearly unsustainable.
Curbing Unsustainable Population Growth

The 'natural' ways of controlling population are based on death and famine. In the developed world, and increasingly in developing countries, we have recourse to other methods – artificial contraception - to limit our families and population size.

In Britain family sizes are now in decline but this was not the direct result of social policy aimed at reducing the birth rate. In fact, the deliberate use of birth control was widely condemned as unnatural and immoral by the medical profession, the church and a wide range of conventional opinion, even though doctors and vicars were the first to limit their own families.

Many people with particular religious beliefs are fundamentally opposed to the use of artificial methods of contraception. In the developing world, where, as you saw above, the population is frequently increasing at an unsustainable rate, this is a particular problem. For Muslims and Roman Catholics (and others), who may nonetheless wish to limit their families, the preferred option is to use natural family planning methods. Most of these have been practised since ancient times, but they were all unreliable or dangerous by today's standards and over the period under review their use was closely associated with prostitution and 'vice'.

This highlights the fact that population dynamics cannot be considering in isolation from religious beliefs and cultural ideology. Indeed, religion and ethics have a fundamental part to play in the debate about sustainability and, in particular, attitudes to 'nature' and environmental responsibility. It is to these issues that we turn in the next chapter.

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Conclusions for Chapter 2

It is becoming increasingly clear the world is facing unprecedented changes in climate and population.

Arts and Humanities research help to make clear the trends, demonstrating just how unusual the current situation is.

Left unchecked, these changes are likely to become even more severe and everyone will be affected by them.

Yet doubt over the reality of the issues, and inertia rather than action, prevail. Why is this the case?

The possibility that the general lack of concern is, perhaps, due to the prevailing Western worldview, in particular the belief that culture is superior to nature, will be examined in the next chapter.
Chapter 3. What is 'Natural' Anyway?

In this lecture you will:

Recap briefly on the last chapter.

Consider present day Western worldviews and attitudes to nature, examining how they developed over time: from Classical philosophy, through medieval thought, before being dramatically altered by the Enlightenment

Examine the worldviews of non-western cultures – do they have anything to teach us about sustainability?
Attitudes to 'Nature'

As was intimated in the last chapter, humans have a tendency to be egocentric and perceive that their ideology – be it personal, religious or cultural – is 'right' and that others are 'wrong'. For this reason, humans do not always critique their actions and belief systems.

However, given the apparently fragile condition of the world, which would seem to be a product of modern belief systems, there is a growing drive to analyse present day ideology and ethics, particularly those current within Western society.

It is becoming increasingly clear that the pervasive view in Western society is that humans are somehow separate from the natural world and that 'culture' is somehow superior to nature – after all, we have the capacity to alter our environments to serve our need. This worldview is unsurprising given that most people now live in cities, where night and day become blurred, the seasons are largely inconsequential and food arrives through third parties.

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Our relationship to the environment 'verges on the parasitic' (Wickham-Jones 2010, 4). The increasing distance between humans and 'nature' is held by many to be at the heart of the current crisis but, if it is, how did this worldview develop?

From the outset we must be clear that what might now label the 'natural world' had no currency for the Classical or medieval scholars. The phrase is never encountered in historical texts because, as either a physical entity or a mental construct, its existence was simply not acknowledged.

Modern western society has no problem with the idea because it has found a philosophical rationale for separating it from us, nature from culture. But this division, false or otherwise, has a relatively short historical pedigree and enjoyed little or no valence before the seventeenth century. Indeed in other parts of the world such disaggregation has yet to occur, as we will see later on in this chapter.
Past Attitudes to 'Nature'

So when ancient scholars wrote about nature (natura) what did they understand it to mean? What did it encompass?

As might be expected of a word viewed as one of the most complex in the language, the semantic development of the term 'nature' has had a long and convoluted history.

For pre-Socratic thinkers nature did indeed encapsulate everything that they knew of or believed in. A single word, Physis, was sufficient to express this totality. The parameters of nature began to narrow with Plato who distinguished between a creative power existing outside and beyond nature, and the created, nature itself. For Plato, nature thus resided in the tangible and visible universe, the 'realm of forms'. This would be the view held by medieval neoplatonists down to the eleventh and twelfth centuries. With the 'rediscovery' of the works of Aristotle, however, the medieval age was provided with a different configuration of nature's scope.

So when ancient scholars wrote about nature (natura) what did they understand it to mean? What did it encompass?

As might be expected of a word viewed as one of the most complex in the language, the semantic development of the term 'nature' has had a long and convoluted history.

For pre-Socratic thinkers nature did indeed encapsulate everything that they knew of or believed in. A single word, Physis, was sufficient to express this totality. The parameters of nature began to narrow with Plato who distinguished between a creative power existing outside and beyond nature, and the created, nature itself. For Plato, nature thus resided in the tangible and visible universe, the 'realm of forms'. This would be the view held by medieval neoplatonists down to the eleventh and twelfth centuries. With the 'rediscovery' of the works of Aristotle, however, the medieval age was provided with a different configuration of nature's scope.

The Middle Ages drew upon and further extended these Platonic and Aristotelian positions.

For instance, Aristotle had provided seven definitions of nature in his Metaphysics but by the 9th century AD, the Irish theologian Eriugena offered nine definitions. And Alan of Lille—writing in the twelfth century— provide eleven in his Liber in distinctionibus dictionum theologicalium.

But amongst these various nuances, two senses of nature came to dominate medieval thought:

1)nature as the essential quality or character of something

2) Nature (with a capital 'N') as the inherent force which directs either the world or human beings or both

From both Plato and Judaic traditions, the medieval scholars developed the idea that God was the creator of nature and in so doing insisted on nature's subordinate and subservient place in the greater scheme of things. And following Aristotle, some (but by no means all) later commentators had come to restrict their discussions on nature to terrestrial and atmospheric phenomena below the orbit of the moon.

These medieval works were all written in the Christian tradition, their authors and compilers (with the odd exception) vocational churchmen and members of open and closed monastic orders.

But Christianity's hold was not total. Medieval Europe accommodated significant populations of Jews and Moslems, particularly in Spain after the Islamic conquests of the early eighth century.

Despite this pluralism, and perhaps against first expectations, writings on nature irrespective of their religious and cultural milieux do not radically diverge from one another. This is, in part, explained because all three of the main religious groups in Europe shared a common sacred text, the Old Testament:

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and have dominion over it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground. (Gen 1:27-8).

Genesis provided the basis for the cosmological models for Jews, Moslems and Christians alike; while the Book of Psalms provided each religion with its poetic glorification of nature. The cornerstones of all three religions is that humans have dominion over the world – that its resources are there for humans to exploit, with humans place rightfully at the top of the Chain of Being.

However, some (e.g.  Preece and Fraser 2000) have argued that the term 'dominion' is a mistranslation of the Hebrew term radâ which has been taken to mean despotic subjugation rather than what Preece and Fraser believe is the correct translation:

Stewardship.

Indeed, it would seem that, traditionally, all three religions were far more attuned to the notion of balance (and thus sustainability), believing that they had a duty of care over their environment.

It is now becoming clear that it was the Enlightenment that brought the separation of Man and Nature. The 'rational' thinking of the period insisted upon the superiority of the human mind over the laws of nature; the rise of science saw the rejection of both simple readings of Nature's workings and the accumulated folklore knowledge of mankind achieved over many millennia.
Notable Exceptions

Of course, even during the Englightenment, not everyone subscribed to the pervasive views. For instance, echoes the stewardship philosophy can be seen in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's ballad, 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'.

In this Coleridge develops the theme of the horrible consequences for one individual (the mariner) of wantonly killing an albatross. Through this act he brings about the death of fellow sailors. From other writings it is clear that Coleridge deplored cruelty and believed that the lives of all living things should be respected or there would be dire consequences for humanity. This view contrasted with the contemporary view that humans were apart from the rest of the natural world and had the right to control and use it as they wished. Coleridge's perspective was further developed in the 19th century and might be seen as the predecessor of today's conservation movement.

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Attitudes to Nature: Dominion

In general, however, the Enlightenment came to see the human duty of care towards the natural world was replaced with that more despotic version of dominion that has come to see these three religions labelled as anthropocentric; that is, focussed upon humans

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Attitudes to Nature: Ecocentric

Anthropocentrism is not necessarily the 'norm'. Archaeological evidences demonstrates clearly that many societies in the past were more ecocentric, making no distinction between culture and nature – neither concept appears to have existed. Instead people, along with all other organism, inanimate entities, were an integral part of the whole environment.

Anthropologist, Tim Ingold, has highlighted how similar views are held by many modern hunter-gatherer groups, who tend to have an intimate, familial relationship with their environment, perceiving their surrounding as a 'mother' or 'father' that provides warmth, shelter and clothing. They have no conception of 'nature' and certainly do not perceive that humans are superior to it. Indeed, the views of the Koyukon of Alaska have been summarised thus:

"The proper role of humankind is to serve a dominant nature. The natural universe is nearly omnipotent and only through acts of respect and propitiation is the well-being of humans ensured...human existence depends on a morally based relationship with the overarching powers of nature. Humanity acts at the behest of the environment" (Nelson 1983, 240 cited in Ingold 2000, 68).
Differences in Worldview

Schema showing the hierarchical, anthropocentric worldview that is prevalent in the West where nature: culture opposition dominates (left) compared with the flatter, integrated and ecocentric perspective common to many hunter-gatherer groups (after Ingold 2000, 46)

Above image developed at the University of Nottingham
Dominion and Domestication

Ingold, in his classic article From Trust to Domination: An alternative history of human-animal relations argues the shift from a ecocentric to anthropocentric worldview can be traced to the origins of domestication. The idea being that as people began to farm, their relationship with their environment changed from a situation where people existed within their environment, as part of their environment, to a situation where they sought to impose their control upon it.

Others, notably Wickham-Jones in her book Fear of Farming are beginning to reach similar conclusions and suggest that we should look to hunter-gather societies (both past and present) in order to re-learn some of their values that were lost with the advent of farming.

This is not to suggest that we should abandon our farming lifestyles, especially since many farming societies today hold similar worldviews to those of hunter-gatherer communities (see next slide):
Attitudes to Nature: Ecocentrism

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Conversing with Nature and Other Cultures

Western observers often regard indigenous cultures, and particularly their ideas of animism (attributing agency to non-human others), as being 'primitive' and hence inferior. However, as Ingold (2000, 76) has stated:

"This strikes me as profoundly arrogant. It is to accord priority to the Western metaphysics of the alienation of humanity from nature, and to use our disengagement as the standard against which to judge their engagement. Faced with an ecological crisis whose roots lie in this disengagement, in the separation of human agency and social responsibility from the sphere of our direct involvement with the non-human environment, it surely behoves us to reverse this order of priority."

Of course, not all 'indigenous' populations or even individuals within those groups may share the ecocentric perspectives. In the same way, it would be misleading to caricature all of Judeo-Christianity as essentially anthropocentric in its narrative regarding nature (e.g. Samuel Coleridge).

There are likely to be variations of perspective within as well as between different cultural traditions. What is important, though, is the influence of spiritual traditions on the quality of conversation; how we converse not only with non-human nature but also between human cultures.

As Jeff Titon, contributor to this module, has stated in his blog :

"alternative economics are available, both "in the past" and "over there." Can we learn anything about sustainability from production, consumption, and exchange among indigenous peoples?"

The belief that we can has seen growing emphasis placed on 'Traditional Ecological/Environmental Knowledge' or TEK

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Conclusions for Chapter 3

In this chapter we have seen how attitudes to 'Nature' have changed through time, in particular with the rise of a worldview where humans perceived themselves as separate from, and superior to, their environment.

Reflecting back on chapter 1, it is worth considering how these changes in worldview correlate with the climatic shifts associated with global warming – is it a coincidence that the two follow very similar temporal trends?

Not all societies today share the Western worldview of nature. It is possible that these groups, as well as those from pre-Enlightenment periods, may have ecocentric knowledge that the West should learn from as it moves forward into a period of instability, brought about largely by its own anthropocentric worldview.

Some examples of traditional knowledge will be considered in the next chapter , which examines issues of power and water.
Acknowledgements and References for Chapter 3

Much of the text presented in slides 2-9 was provided by Richard Jones, Centre for English Local History, University of Leicester. It is an extract from his book:

Jones, R. In press. The Medieval Natural World. Seminar Studies in History, Longman.

References

Ingold, T. 2000. The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill London: Routledge.

Wickham-Jones, 2010. Fear of Farming. Oxford: Windgather Press
Chapter 4.The Four Elements

In this lecture you will:

Recap on Chapter 3 by introducing elemental theory – the fundamental scheme of nature that existed before the Enlightenment.

Consider the issues of sustainability linked to energy production (fire, water and air) and resources utilisation (water and earth).

Consider whether strategies from other regions and periods might profitably be employed to enable a more sustainable future.
Recap

In the last chapter we saw how the perception of human dominance over nature developed in Western thought, the Enlightenment changing worldviews in a way that many perceive to be the root of the modern day environmental issues.

There is, perhaps, now a need to critique our anthropocentric worldviews and consider instead the validity of more ecocentric ideologies, to try and work within Nature, rather than to try and dominate it.

We finished the last chapter with Jeff Titon's statement that the answers to sustainability are 'in the past, and over there'.

This is a good starting place to begin this chapter, which will look at the four elements (fire, air, water and earth) which not only represent the world's most fundamental natural resources but also represent an ancient philosophy of how humans should exist within their environment.
Elemental Theory

As we saw in the last chapter, the Enlightenment fundamentally altered attitudes to the natural world.

Prior to the advent of 'science' and the nature-culture separation that it brought, the theoretical model which underpinned the classical and medieval scheme of nature was beautiful in its simplicity: the material world was universally understood to be composed of just four elements—earth, water, air, and fire.

Above image developed by Dr Richard Jones, University of Leicester. Reproduced with permission

These essential building blocks came to dominate not only everything that was thought and written about nature but also how:

• People lived and worked in their environments

• People made decisions about their crops, diet and medical conditions

• Time, space and life-courses were structured and understood.

Everything was based on the elements

Elemental theory can be traced to pre-Socratic philosophy but is probably of much earlier Asian origin.

In his poem Physis (roughly translated as On Nature), Empedocles (c. 495-435BC) developed the notion of four unchanging and indivisible 'roots' from which all things were made. Plato—the first to use the term 'element'—laid out his vision of the creation and working of the universe.

Plato accorded primacy to the element fire which made all tangible things visible and earth which gave everything their substance. These were bound together by two intermediary elements air and water.

Aristotle attached greater significance to their associated qualities—hot, cold, dry, and moist. These properties acted on the terrestrial elements through the influence of the celestial bodies (the sun in particular), leading to a constant process of generation and decay resulting in the changeable and corruptible state of flux that characterized the material world and visible nature.

The important point is that, as we learnt in the last chapter, everything was perceived to be interconnected, with no nature-culture divide, and depended upon balance.

Currently, we have lost the balance between the elements – the over-exploitation of some, leading the pollution of others.

Let us now consider some of the evidence for present day issues of the elements, namely the production of energy (fire and air), water security and pollution, and the fragile condition of soils (earth).
World Population and Energy Use

As we saw in Chapter 2, the population of the world rose nearly four-fold during the twentieth century, from 1.6 billion in 1900 to approximately 6.1 billion in 2000. However, world primary energy use increased at a much faster rate. Between 1900 and 2000, it rose more than 10-fold.

For most human history the world's principal fuel was firewood (or other forms of traditional 'bioenergy'), but by the beginning of the twentieth century coal use was rising fast replaced wood as the dominant energy source. During the 1920s, oil in turn began to challenge coal and by the 1970s had overtaken it as the leading contributor to world supplies. By then, natural gas was also making a very substantial contribution, with nuclear energy and hydro power also supplying smaller but significant amounts.

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On average, world primary energy use per person in 2000 was about 70 thousand million joules (70 gigajoules), including non-commercial bioenergy. This is equivalent to about one and two-thirds tonnes of oil per person per year, or about 5 litres (just over one Imperial gallon) of oil per day. But this average conceals major differences between the inhabitants of different regions.

North Americans annually consume the equivalent of about 8 tonnes of oil per head (about 20 litres per day), whereas residents of Europe and the former Soviet Union consume about half that amount, and the inhabitants of the rest of the world use only about one-tenth. World consumption per person has shown almost no growth over the past 20 years. North American consumption per capita is more than twice that of Europe and the former Soviet Union, and almost 10 times the level in the Rest of the World.
Per capita primary energy consumption, in tonnes of oil equivalent per year, for different regions of the world and for the world as a whole, 1975–2000

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What are the Principle Energy Sources at Present and How Sustainable are They?

About 80 per cent of the world's energy is currently supplied by fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas. Present estimates suggest that, at current consumption rates, there are over 200-years' worth of coal left, 60-years' of gas, and 40-years' of oil. Clearly, reliance on these finite or, 'non-renewable', resources is unsustainable and new sources of energy are required.

A second problem with fossil fuels is that they are hydrocarbons, and their combustion releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, one of the main causes of the human-induced greenhouse effect, that we examined in chapter 2.

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Nuclear Energy: Pros and Cons

Nuclear energy is a fairly new technology which currently provides nearly 7 per cent of our primary energy requirements. It is based on harnessing the very large quantities of energy that are released when the nuclei of certain atoms, such as uranium-235, are induced to split or fission. Estimates suggest that there is sufficient fuel for many decades or even centuries, depending on use rates.

Like fossil fuels, nuclear energy is a finite resource. However, it does not emit greenhouse gasses and is, therefore, considered by many to be a 'greener fuel'.

Nuclear energy is not without risk and there are major concerns over the disposal and safety of nuclear waste and the power plants themselves. These concerns were validated following the Tokyo earthquake and tsunami of March 2011 when the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant experienced meltdown of three of its reactors, leading to contamination of the surrounding region and sea.

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Biofuels: the pros

A more ancient technology is bioenergy – that is, deriving power from the burning of wood and other vegetative combustibles. From Prehistoric times, humans have harnessed the power of fire by burning wood to create warmth and light, to cook food, smelt metals and make pottery.

Wood is still very widely used as a fuel in many parts of the 'developing' world. In some countries, other biofuels such as animal dung (ultimately also derived from the growth of plants) are also used. Such traditional biofuels are estimated to supply some 11 per cent of world primary energy, though the data are somewhat uncertain.

If the forests that provide wood fuel are re-planted at the same rate as they are cut down, then such fuel use should in principle be sustainable. When forests are managed sustainably in this way, the CO2 absorbed in growing replacement trees should equal the CO2 given off when the original trees are burned.

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Biofuels: the cons

Whilst the use of wood is potentially sustainable, in many 'developing' countries wood fuel is being used at a rate that exceeds its re-growth. This is not only unsustainable but also results in villagers having to travel ever-increasing distances, often involving great hardship, to gather sufficient firewood for their daily needs. Also, when it has been gathered, firewood is often burned very inefficiently in open fires – as was the case in Britain and many other 'developed' countries until quite recently.

This not only results in excess greenhouse gas emissions, as we have seen, but also gives much less effective warmth than if an efficient stove were used. Moreover, it usually results in high levels of smoke pollution, with very detrimental health effects..

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Beyond air pollution, a reliance on wood as a source of fuel often leads to deforestation. Not only does this reduce the amount of vegetation, so useful for 'metabolising' CO2 but, without trees roots to stabilize the land surface, rates of soil erosion tend to increase. This may, in turn, lead to pollution of water sources (as we shall see later on).

For instance, Nocete et al. 2005. demonstrated that the arrival of intensive metallurgy in Iberia during the third millennium BC was widespread with widespread deforestation (the wood utilised for smelting ores). This is indicated by a clear decline in tree pollen and an increase in wood charcoal in the archaeological record.

This is just one of many examples from human history where demand for combustion fuels has led to extensive deforestation and resulted in environmental pollution.
Renewable Fuels

Most renewable energy sources originate from the sun (solar energy). These include bioenergy and wind energy, which ultimately derived their energy from the sun. Tidal energy originates from the gravitational pull of the moon, and geothermal energy results from hear trapped below the surface of our planet.

All of these renewable resources hold out a great promise for the future. At present, they are more expensive than fossil fuels but their sustainability but their lesser environmental impacts make them attractive alternatives to fossil fuels. None are without problem however and we will now examine the pros and cons of the two most significant sources of renewable energy – Solar and wind.

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Solar Energy

Harnessing solar energy to provide electricity directly involves the use of a sophisticated technology called solar photovoltaics (PV). The photovoltaic effect was first described in 1839 by Edmond Becquerel who observed that the voltage of an early 'wet cell' battery increased when its silver plates were exposed to light.

In 1877 Cambridge physicists discovered that selenium crystals created an electrical current when exposed to light. A New York electrician, Charles Edgar Fritts, devised the first working PV cells in 1883, using selenium plates covered in gold wires, but they converted in gold wires, but they converted less than 1% of the incident solar energy into electricity. Since then PV technology has been mainly concerned with improving efficiency, so that today's solar cells convert up to 25% of incident solar power to electricity.

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Pros of Solar Energy

The immense global energy flux from the Sun makes it the prime candidate for future sustainable energy production. Solar energy can be deployed at personal, community or regional scales, using both simple and advanced technologies. You have probably already seen solar PV panels that power automatic roadside weather stations and other low-drain communications systems. The panels require low maintenance and usually charge batteries to allow them to remain operational during the night. In poor countries where the energy infrastructure is rudimentary or absent, PV systems hold out great potential. An important use is for daytime pumping of water from wells.

The main hindrance to greater deployment is simply that of cost; at between US$ 0.2 to 0.5 per kWh, solar PV electricity was almost ten times as expensive in 2005 as that from the cheapest fossil-fuel source, natural gas. To progress, the technology requires continued reduction in the cost of the solar cells themselves – but the enormous reduction in cost of silicon-based computer hardware since the 1970s is cause for optimism.

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Cons of Solar Energy

Solar PV could theoretically supplement grid-power during daylight hours to reduce generating costs and environmental emissions. However, at this scale serious disadvantages emerge:

The daily intensity of the sunlight varies dramatically because of cloud cover.

Solar power is greater in the summer whilst the demand for electricity is lower.

Should future solar PV power rise above 20% of the total electricity supply, then existing grid systems built to be dominated by coal, oil and nuclear generation would have to be modified.

Despite these caveats, the potential of solar PV is enormous. If photovoltaic conversion with 10% efficiency was installed over an area of 500,000km2 (about 1.3% of the area of tropical deserts) humanity's present energy requirements would be met. That outlook is probably far off. Of the electricity generated from all alternative energy sources in the early 21st century, solar PV contributes only about 0.0.2%, with solar thermal generation a little more significant at 0.06%.

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Wind Turbines

Wind energy was the fastest growing at the start of the 21st century, yet wind-driven mills and pumps, and nautical sails for transport were, along with waterwheels, the first mechanical devices to power industrial production. The advantages of harnessing wind energy are obvious; it is free, clean and widely available. Although a favoured source of 'green' energy, the increasing deployment of wind turbines where they are most efficient, on hilltops and coasts, together with their increasing size has led to outcries because of their impact on landscapes.

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Pros of Wind

A great advantage of using wind energy is that, unlike power generation from combustion of fossil fuels, it produces no gas emissions/ Even a small 750 kW wind turbine operating with wind speeds just above that of a cut-off would reduce annual emissions to the atmosphere by 1200 t of carbon dioxide, 6.9 t of sulphur dioxide and 4.3 t of nitrogen dioxide, compared with the equivalent power output from coal-fired generators.

Wind energy is inexhaustible and free of fuel costs. Given advanced technology, wind energy could provide up to 20% of the energy needs of the United States. This is equivalent to the amount currently provided there by nuclear power.

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Cons of Wind

Certainly public opinion can be strong enough to halt wind energy: a turbine designed to supplement power on a Milton Keynes housing estate has never operated, because residents complained of the noise. Yet by the very nature of the resource, many wind farms are usually placed far from dwellings. Moreover, modern turbines are much quieter than their predecessors, as they have to conform to more stringent noise pollution guidelines. Undoubtedly, wind farms that deploy many large turbines, either on high ground or in coastal areas, dramatically change the vista. That disturbs many people who live in the vicinity or who use the locality recreationally. Interestingly, an object of comparable height to a wind turbine, the Angel of the North on the outskirts of Gateshead, is the subject of local pride yet only serves a symbolic function.

The main practical problem with wind turbines is their variable output and intermittency of supply.

Turbines cannot be used when wind speed is too high or too low, which requires either complex switching between power sources or an energy storage system when wind-power output is high.

Wind turbines and their infrastructure are substantial constructions with a short life span (around 30 years), so production of the materials used in their construction (e.g. concrete) would not be effect-free.

Wind energy is geographically variable/ In windy places, small-scale development combined with power storage devices could supply all the electricity needs of individual dwellings and small communities; an ideal environmental solution, but not an equitable one, which applies to other alternatives too.

Perhaps, therefore, we need to think as much about how we use energy rather than just which source of supply.

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Efficient Use of Energy

When Thomas Edison set up the world's first electric power station in New York in 1882, it was not electricity he sold, but light. He provided the electricity and light bulbs, and charged his customers for the service of illumination. This meant he had a strong incentive to generate and distribute electricity as efficiently as possible, and to install light bulbs that were as efficient and long-lasting as possible.

Unfortunately, the early Edison approach did not survive, and the regulatory regime under which most utilities operate today simply rewards them for selling as much energy as possible, irrespective of the efficiency with which it is used or the longevity of the appliances using it. In a few countries, however, governments have changed the way energy utilities are regulated by setting up mechanisms to reward them for providing energy services rather than mere energy. In this case, customers benefit by having lower overall costs, the utility makes as much profit as before, and the environment benefits through reduced energy wastage and the emission of fewer pollutants.

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Energy Efficiency

Energy efficiency measures can play a part in reducing both energy demand and greenhouse gases. At present, only about one-third of the energy content of the fuel we use emerges as 'useful' energy, the remaining two-thirds ends up as waste heat. One reason for this is that energy gas been reducing in price over the past century, so there is little incentive to reduce costs by increasing efficiency.

There is a large potential for improving the efficiency of electricity generation by the application of new technology. One example is the combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT) which uses the hot exhaust gases from a gas turbine generator to power a steam generator which then produces additional electricity. This results in efficiencies of 50 per cent or more. Another example is the use of waste heat from power stations to directly heat buildings This process, called combined heat and power (CHP), is widely in use in Denmark where around 72 per cent of electricity was produced this way in 2000.

There is also a large potential to increase the efficiency of energy use on the demand-side. The technological approach is to improve the efficiencies of the appliances we use so that we use less energy to achieve the same service levels. The social approach involves rearranging our lifestyles so that we use less energy, e.g. by walking or cycling instead of driving to work.

Another way to reduce energy usage is to reduce the material used in products as diverse as car bodies and drink cans.

The royal Commission on Environmental Pollution (RCEP) has come up with four scenarios for the UK which consider the options available for balancing supply with demand given the need, as suggested by various reports, to reduce CO2 emissions by 60 per cent. The scenarios focus on the reduction of demand and the use of renewables, perhaps in conjunction with cleaned-up fossil or nuclear plants. The overall message is that there is a number of paths to sustainability, but, since they rely on different mixes of technology, they are likely to have a different social, environmental and political implications.

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How can we Improve the Sustainability of Energy Use in the Future?

Fuel switching to use less-polluting fuels (e.g. nuclear) is an option, as is switching to renewable energy sources such as solar or wind power, whose environmental impacts are usually less severe than those of fossil or nuclear sources.

Renewable energy sources are generally sustainable in the sense that they cannot 'run out'; however they need wise management because although the environmental and social impacts of renewable source of energy are generally more benign than those of fossil or nuclear fuels, large areas of land are often required for renewables and this can lead to significant visual impacts, as in the case of wind turbines

The monetary costs of many renewable sources are at present considerably higher than those of conventional fuels until this imbalance is recued, either by reducing the costs of renewables or through increases in the costs of conventional sources, renewables may be unable to succeed in capturing a substantial fraction of the world market.

At the demand-side of the energy chain, we could develop options to employ the energy we have more efficiently.

Having considered energy - in particular the elements of fire (fossil guels, nuclear, bioenergy) and air (wind) - let us turn now to another element that is essential to life and whose supply is as problematic as that of energy, if not more so...

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Water as a Global Resource

"We shall not finally defeat AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria or any of the other infectious diseases that plague the developing world until we have also won the battle for safe drinking-water, sanitation and basic health care." (Kofi Annan, United Nations Secretary-General (2005.) The International Decade for Action 2003–2015)

Freshwater is a natural resource that is vital for human survival and health. The Earth is a very wet planet, but only 2.53% of its water is fresh; the rest is seawater (UNESCO, 2003). There is currently much concern about the capacity of the Earth's freshwater resources to sustain human life and health in the near future. One estimate suggests that, if current trends continue, by 2050, when the global human population will reach almost nine billion people, seven billion people in 60 countries will be short of water unless action is taken (UNESCO, 2003). Half the human population will be short of water by 2025. (Note: 1 billion = 1000 million.)

Planet Earth contains an enormous amount of water, but only a tiny fraction of it is available as freshwater to plants and animals, including humans, that live on land. As can be seen here, only about 0.01% of the world's total freshwater is readily available to terrestrial life.

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Water Quality

As well as being concerned about the quantity of water available for humans, governments and international agencies are much concerned with its quality. Naturally occurring water is never pure, but contains a wide variety of dissolved substances, some of which are harmful to health.

The supply of clean water is also affected by how people dispose of their waste water. People living in areas where there is no sanitation system for the disposal of waste water have little choice but to throw it away into a river or onto the ground. Each litre of water disposed of in this way pollutes an average of eight litres of freshwater, and the UN estimates that the global human population pollutes 12 000 km3 of water annually in this way. Unless there is major investment in sanitation systems, this figure will have increased to 18 000 km3 by 2050 (UNESCO, 2003).

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Waste Converted to Clean Water

The sewerage system is now an important component of the water cycle, with water-borne human waste being collected, treated and returned, as cleaner water, to the water cycle, into rivers or the sea. The primary function of sewage treatment is to break down faeces and remove harmful microbes from the water. Sewage plants also have a role to play in removing harmful chemicals from water. In heavily populated parts of the world, water passing through sanitation systems represents a substantial proportion of the water flow in rivers. The River Lea, which runs from Hertfordshire in England into the River Thames, would probably cease to flow for much of the year were it not for the output from sewage plants (Brown, 2002).

The population in many of the world's megacities is growing so fast that the development of effective sewage systems is not keeping pace. In cities such as Karachi, in Pakistan, the water supply, mostly from groundwater, is heavily polluted by untreated sewage and contains high levels of bacteria (Rahman et al., 1997).

If predictions about a shortage of water for half the human population in 2025 seem alarming but far away, it is important to point out that, for many people, a water crisis is already a daily experience: many people in the world already face the severe adverse consequences for their health of having insufficient water and water that is also polluted. This is particularly true in Africa.
People in many parts of the world currently face a chronic shortage of water. This is a developing crisis that is expected to get worse. Several factors underlie this dire prediction but in addition to these, climate change is expected to cause major changes in the distribution of freshwater. The uneven distribution of freshwater across the world is illustrated here.

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People use water for a variety of purposes. As well as water for drinking, people use water to wash in, for sanitation, to irrigate the land for crops, to give to livestock, as a source of food (fishing), for transport and for recreation. The major categories of water use, on a global scale, are (in order of increasing use) reservoirs and municipal needs, industry and agriculture – the last being the most demanding in terms of water use.

Water use in agriculture is of two kinds: irrigation of crops and watering of livestock. Many methods of crop irrigation are wasteful of water in that much of it is lost into the air by evaporation before it is taken up by crops. Livestock use even more water. Below the amounts of water required to produce various major food products are compared. Notice how 'expensive' it is to produce beef and lamb in terms of water requirements.

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Volume of water required to produce 1 kilogram (kg) of specific food products

(Source: data derived from UNESCO, 2003, Figure 1, p. 17)

The availability of freshwater will be significantly altered in a future world affected by climate change. In some regions, water availability will decrease; in others it will increase. Precise predictions about the extent and exact location of such changes cannot be made because they are based on climate models, the accuracy of which is uncertain. However, there is wide agreement that probable changes will include:

Rising sea levels, which will lead to flooding of low-lying coastal regions, including major flood plains and river deltas, many of which are currently densely populated; for example, the Bengal delta in Bangladesh contains 8.5 million people (Hecht, 2006).

• More rain in northern high latitudes in winter and in the monsoon regions of south East Asia in summer.

• Less rain in southern Europe, Central America, southern Africa and Australia in summer.

• Greater water flows in rivers that are fed by glaciers.

• Overall, higher temperatures in all regions, which will lead to greater evaporation so that, even in regions where rainfall does not decrease, water availability will be reduced.

Desertification already "affects more than 110 counties, threatening the survival of more than a billion people (UNCCD 2009), and the population of the arid regions is increasing even faster than the world average (Hillel 1994, 33)." Guttmann-Bond (2010, 359)
Future of Water Supply

The situation relating to water supply can be summarised thus (Narayan Pandey et al. 2003, 54):

Over half of the accessible freshwater runoff globally is already appropriated for human use.

More than 1 × 109 people currently lack access to clean drinking water.

Human population will grow but per capita availability of freshwater will decrease in the coming century.

Climate change will intensify the earth's hydrological cycle in the next 100 years, with generally increased precipitation, evapotranspiration, occurrence of storms and significant changes in biogeochemical processes influencing water quality.

There is, therefore, a pressing need to develop local systems that will secure water sources for the future. It is here where traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) – in particular the implementation of rain harvesting techniques - is being employed to great effect.

http://www.rainwaterharvesting.org/
Water Harvesting

In a recent paper, Guttmann-Bond (2010), reviewed the extensive archaeological evidence for rainwater harvesting systems, such as the artificial canals and underground cisterns constructed by Prehistoric farmers of the Negev desert (c. 2000 years ago).

Guttmann-Bone (2010, 358) explains how two of these Prehistoric farms were reconstructed prior to the most extreme drought ever recorded in the Negev and whilst crops failed across the region, the reconstructed farm had a good harvest.

Elsewhere in the Near East modern Bedouin groups continue to use ancient cisterns and terraced fields (terraces help to retain water). Recent surveys reveal that these structures are found across Israel, Jordan and India but that most have fallen into disrepair – should the cisterns be renovated it is estimated that they would save 10-15% of water currently being lost (Ibid 358). This is not to suggest that we should revert to old techniques: Guttman-Bond advocates integrating these ancient systems with modern technology to produce new systems that are even more effective.

It is important to realise that traditional methods of rain harvesting need not be restricted to arid climates. Indeed, forward thinking farms in the UK are beginning to implement rain harvesting systems following the recommendations of the Environment Agency.
Agricultural Terraces

Terraced fields combine the elements of Water and Earth, for they not only help to retain moisture in the ground but also help to prevent soil erosion.

Soil erosion is, itself, a threat to water supply since hill-wash can clock lakes and reservoirs with sediments, as is currently occurring in the reservoir in Gondar, Ethiopia - click below for a short film that illustrates the connection between soil erosion and water supply.

http://www.open.edu/openlearn/science-maths-technology/science/environmental-science/water-ethiopia?track=2710940216
Earth: Soil Erosion

Soil erosion can also increase water pollution: the sediment and soil particles are pollutants in their own right but often carry additional pollutants with them.

Soil erosion has been described as 'skinning the earth' and it has been estimated that, on a global scale, 24 billion tons of soil are eroded by wind and water every year (Guttman-Bond 2010, 360). Terraces therefore represent an important ancient mechanism for conserving soil.

Soils are really important to us for many reasons – water quality has already been mentioned but they are also vital for food production and biodiversity. However, as climate changes, the implications for soil erosion may be serious. A higher frequency or higher intensity of rain may increase soil erosion by water; and in dry areas, prolonged drought periods may increase soil erosion by wind.

At the same time, the ever greater need for food resulting from population increase is seeing soils farmed intensively, without cessation, which is quite literally killing soils – for they are living things that require nurture or will become depleted and die.

Currently, the nutrient gap is being filled by chemical fertilizers but these are quick-fix solutions that bring long-term problems (in the end they lead to soil degradation).

Furthermore, the fertilizer are, themselves, a source of environmental pollution. Is there a solution? This is something we will consider this in the next chapter – 'Waste'.

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Conclusions

Our move away from elemental theory, and the understanding that the global environment is interconnected to the point that a change in one element will lead to a change in another has brought disastrous consequences as we seek to take more from the environment than we give back. And what we do give back is frequently a poor present that pollutes the very elements – air, water and earth – that we need to sustain us.

A return to a more balanced approach to the elements and their management is required. It will necessitate that we re-think our attitudes to available resources, including those that we currently consider to be 'waste'.
Acknowledgements & References

Much of the text presented in slides 3-8 was provided by Richard Jones, Centre for English Local History, University of Leicester. It is an extract from his book:

Jones, RLC. In press. The Medieval Natural World. Seminar Studies in History, Longman.

Thanks go to Jonty Redgate and the residents of Upton for allowing extracts of the village newsletter to be reproduced here.

References

Guttmann-Bond, E. 2010. Sustainability out of the past: how archaeology can save the planet. World Archaeology 42(3), 355-366.

Narayan Pandey, D., Gupta, A. K. and Anderson, D. M. 2003. Rainwater harvesting as an adaptation to climate change. Current Science 85 (1): 46-59.

Nocete, F., Alex, E., Nieto, J.M., Saez, R. And Bayona, M. R. 2005. An archaeological approach ti regional environmental pollution in the south-western Iberian Peninsula related to third millennium BC mining and metallurgy. Journal of Archaeological Science 32, 1566-1576
Chapter 5. Waste

In this lecture you will:

Recap on Chapter 3.

Examine how concepts of waste are culturally determined and consider how attitudes to rubbish, faeces, manure and food waste have changed through time

With the benefit of hindsight, consider the best ways forward
Recap: Linking the Elements

The last chapter highlighted that elemental theory, which was central to pre-Enlightened thought (and continues to be central to many worldviews), is a useful way of considering the world – the belief being that everything is interconnected through the elements.

Modern biodynamics and the organic movement owe much to this ancient philosophy, in particular its attitudes to waste, both human and animal.
Attitudes to Waste

In the modern urbanised world, attitudes to waste – be it artefact-based rubbish, food remains, animal manure or human faeces – tend towards the negative. The received wisdom is that these are noisome and odious materials to be removed from their source as quickly as possible and without comment. But the same attitude is not common to all cultures either now or in the past. Indeed, as Hawkins and Muecke (2003, xiii-xiv) have stated:

"Expelling and discarding is more than biological necessity – it is fundamental to the ordering of the self...it is bound up with a whole host of habits and practices through which we cultivate particular sensibilities and sensual relations with the world...changing relations to waste mean changing relations to self" (cited in Waddington 2012, 58).

Attitudes to waste are, therefore, a reflection of a society's political, philosophical and religious frameworks and we learn much about humanity by considering how perceptions have changed through time and space.
Source of Evidence

History is littered with examples of the ingenious schemes designed to rid us of the rubbish from which we cannot escape. We might think of the legal procedures of the Assizes of Nuisance in medieval London that fined those who defiled the streets. Our attention might be drawn to the efforts of Napoleon's engineer Bruneseau or later the works of Haussman to clean up Paris, or to Albert Giblin, that forgotten hero of waste management whose early 19th century invention, the Silent Valveless Waste Water Preventer, was later popularized by the all too familiar Thomas Crapper. Across the centuries, the efficient removal of waste from the domestic setting has become synonymous with 'progress' and civility. By the 18th century it was part of the discourse of improvement, a marker of polite society, a policy driven by the urban bourgeoisie.

Place-names, the labels given to landscapes, fields and streets, are another source of evidence that preserve memories of waste and attitudes to it. Cullen and Jones (2012), have noted a variety of waste-related place-names from dating from Anglo-Saxon charters through to nineteenth-century Tithe Awards. For instance, the meox beorhym, 'dung hill' mentioned in a 10th-century charter boundary for Alderminster, Warwickshire, must have been a permanent (and significant) enough landscape feature to warrant record.

Archaeology is particularly well suited for understanding attitudes to waste as the profession is, essentially, based on the study of ancient rubbish; concerned with examining the artefacts and food remains thrown away by people in the past.

Given the archaeologist's fascination with ancient refuse it is possible for them to highlight cultures that were fastidious recyclers and others that accumulated monumental rubbish dumps.

Importantly, when archaeological data are combines with information from other disciplines it is possible to examine the consequences of the different strategies that humans have employed to deal with 'waste'.

In this chapter, we will do exactly this: examine how attitudes to waste have changed and where apparent 'achievements' in waste management may, in the long term, have been little cause for celebration.
Non-existence of Waste

Looking back, or sideways, to hunter-gatherer groups it is clear that 'waste' was/is not a valid concept. As was seen in chapter 2, many modern hunter-gatherers societies believe that their environment provides for them in a parental fashion and, as such, they tend to consider it inappropriate to take more than is needed, or waste what is taken.

If we assume that similar beliefs were held by ancient hunter-gatherers, this could explain why Mesolithic settlements produce little evidence for over-hunting and many of the animal remains are highly processed, suggesting that all part of the carcass are utilised.

The mobility of hunter-gather groups and their low population density also reduces the impact of human faeces on their environment. Indeed, human manure would have been spread widely and thinly and so would probably have been an important addition to the nutrient cycle.
The Virtuous Cycle of Return

The ecosystems in which hunter-gatherers exist are generally sustainable because nutrients are recycled efficiently: they are drawn from the soil by vegetation which is consumed by animals (including people) and then excreted back into the same environment.

As soon as humans start deliberately growing food but consuming it elsewhere, the balance can be lost with nutrients excreted away from the environment that produced them. This not only begins to deplete the soil of its nutrients but can also create a problem of human 'waste' (excrement) at other locations.

Above image developed at the University Of Nottingham
The Necessity of Waste

As hunter-gatherer groups began to settle down into permanent farming communities, they were confronted with these two problems:

• Accumulations of waste from both humans and the newly-domesticated animals seemingly increased rates of disease.

• The communities had to keep the soil fertile over many years of activity.

The solution was the domestication of animals, for not only did these animals provide the traction for ards, but now corralled and deprived of their extensive ranges, these early farming communities were able to gather their dung more easily and spread this on their fields. To these early farming communities manure was vital to the establishment of these prototypical centres, helping to create both place and community.
Waste of Display

By the Bronze and Iron Ages, communities were apparently taking pride in the mounds of domestic refuse (also known as 'middens') that they were able to build up over generations.

In southern England, for instance, are at least 30 very large (up to 52,500 square meters!) middens dating to the Late Bronze Age/Early Iron Age (approx. 1000-500 BC).

Above image developed at the University Of Nottingham, after Waddington, 2012

Waste as Life

These middens were not the result of communities too lazy to dispose of their rubbish away from human view, rather they were a deliberate product of groups who had carefully accumulated their waste. As Needham and Spence (1997:85) state, these refuse were socially significant having:

"Connotations of affluence and social success, even becoming marks of territorial dominance. Refuse has links with fertility where the value of green midden as fertiliser was recognized, and more generally to the cycle of death and renewal" (cited in Waddington 2012).

It would seem, then, that for these Prehistoric communities, waste was an important source of life and regeneration. This importance of waste and, in particular, human/animal excreta appears to have endured into the Roman period.
Classical Attitudes to Waste

For the ancient Greeks and Romans, human and animal manure held an elevated status. As early as c. 800 BC Xenophon was extolling the virtues of animal waste in his Oeconomicus:

"Manure is the best thing in the world for agriculture, and everyone can see how naturally it is produced...matter in every shape, nay earth itself, in stagnant water turns to fine manure" (Chantraine 1948, 108-9, cited in Jones 2012, 6).

By the first century Virgil wrote in his Georgics that:

Yet shall thy land from these at pleasure rear,

Abundant harvests each alternate year,

If rich manure fresh life and nurture yield,

And ashes renovate th'exhausted field

Thus lands in grateful interchange repose,

And weath unseen beneath the fallow grows.

From this poem is made clear the need to manure fields and leave them to lie fallow for a year so that the soil may recover. Pliny's Natural Historia is another of many Roman texts that brought together advice on manure and manuring provided by earlier authorities.
The Rise of Abhorrent Waste

That there was so much literature on the subject of manure, produced both before and during the Roman period, highlights that animal 'waste' was unquestionably valuable to the rural economy. The same was not true for the urban population however. For whilst waste is an important fertilizer, it is also a source of disease and internal parasites – both of which spread rapidly within towns.

The Roman authorities sought to deal with the issue of waste by constructing a monumental sewerage system, the Cloaca Maxima. This has been the focus of Dr Mark Bradley's research. He can be seen on the left descending into the Cloaca Maxima so that he might bring back the knowledge that he has made available here in the next few slides.
The Cloaca Maxima

For Pliny the Cloaca Maxima was the stuff of legends and he was proud of the Roman sewers for their scale and durability. By the sixth century AD the Roman politician and author Cassiodrus remarked on the 'splendid sewers' that bore witness to the greatness of Rome. Clearly the Cloaca Maxima was as much a powerful expression of urban development as it was a practical waste management solution.

However, the sewers also had strong religious connection, with a shrine dedicated to the Venus Cloacina, 'Venus of the Sewers', and man-hole covers (shown left, image provided by M. Bradley) depicting a river god swallowing away waste – known today as the Bocca della Verita, 'Mouth of Truth'.
Next to Godliness

For the Romans then, cleanliness was very much next to godliness. Roman dirt existed to be cleaned up and the prominence of the sewers in Roman literature, in archaeological remains, in the shrines to Venus Cloacina and in the metaphors of political debate indicate that to control dirt was to reach the state of purity and order that was the cornerstone of the Roman religious and political system.

As was seen in chapter 2, the Romans saw it as their spiritual duty to bring order to their surroundings but frequently this came at a cost to their wider environment. In this case, the 'magnificent' Cloaca Maxima saw an estimated 100,000 lb of waste washed daily from the city into the river Tiber.

In addition to pollution of the river that must surely have accompanied this outflow of effluent, the expulsion of sewage into the rivers began "the process of removing nutrients from the agricultural cycle and increasing the problem of maintaining soil fertility" (Shiel 2012, 19).
A Break in the Nutrient Cycle

Above image developed at the University Of Nottingham
Medieval Filth as a Source of Fortune

To a certain extent the story of Rome is reflected in medieval Europe, when classical agricultural texts were rediscovered by the likes of the thirteenth-century agronomist Walter of Henley. In these agricultural texts are repeated the recommendations of classical authors alongside the advice of Arabic writers such as Ibn al-Awwan, for whom waste was once again a source of life rather than death. The importance of animal dung is medieval Arab agriculture is apparent from the wide variety of terms employed to describe the different varieties:

Above table after Varisco (2012) (see chapter references)
As for the Roman rural population, waste was a source of goodness and, for many, brought not only material benefits in the form of food but also spiritual succor: the Bible is full of references to dung and dunghills, the Old Testament making clear that it is from the dung heap that the poor will be delivered and the unrighteous condemned.

Furthermore, the metamorphosis through which unholy excrement is converted into wholesome fertilizer is akin to transubstantiation. Undoubtedly this was read as an allegory of Christ's crucifixion and resurrection: from death and decaying matter, through the process of putrefaction, comes a substance that can restore life.

For this reason, great efforts and industry was put into retrieving manure and spreading it on fields – even the urban population made a contribution, their 'night soil' being collected by gong farmers, or 'gongfermours'. The gonfermours's job was to clean out urban cess-pits and take the contents out to collection points in at the extremities of towns so that it might be spread on the fields.
Cleaning up European Cities

The medieval system operated largely unchanged until the 1850s and 1860s when London's sewers were overhauled on a scale akin to that witnessed earlier in Rome.

Interestingly, two plans were put forward for London. The first was to channel the city's effluent to a number of key points outside the city, where it might then be transported to the fields. However, critically, this plan was rejected in favour of a scheme that sought its immediate disposal into the Thames.

At approximately the same time, the sewers of Paris were also disgorging large quantities of effluent into the Seine. This genuine waste of a useful resource was commented upon by Victor Hugo (1862: 54) in Les Misérables:

"All the human and animal manure which the world wastes, restored to the land instead of being cast into the waster, would suffice to nourish the world"
Critical Turning Point

To a large extent the changes to traditional waste management systems were encouraged by an international cast of chemists, such as Lavoisier, Senebier, Priestley, Ingenhouz, Tilley and du Hamel, whose experiments demonstrated that plant vitality rested on the uptake of chemicals rather than biological inputs.

In 1840 Justus von Liebig published his Agricultural Chemistry and within a year the first artificial fertilizer factory opened at Deptford, south-east of London, where a 'Super-phosphate of Lime, Phosphate of Ammonia, Silicate of Potash, etc' was manufactured.

A new age was born. Where previously farmers had relied on the recycling of locally-produced waste to keep their land in good condition, they now could access a range of specialized products designed for specific crops or soil conditions. What on earth could go wrong?
A New Generation of Waste

If we are to believe the rhetoric of the great agricultural reformers writing at the end of the 19th century, the answer is nothing. But here the witness of other times and places should not be ignored. In India there is now considerable debate about the future of farming as international conglomerates aggressively push forward monocultural practices using high-yield crops underpinned with the use of agrochemical fertilizers. This is threatening not only the livelihoods of smallscale farmers but also having an immediate and deleterious impact on the ecosystem itself.

This apparent 'need' for chemical fertilisers to feed the large proportion of the world's human population is now the major source of nitrates in the environment. As a result of all this release of nitrogen compounds, the natural cycle of nitrogen in the environment has become swamped by what is called the 'nitrogen cascade' (Galloway et al., 2003).

This is having considerable environmental impact. As we saw in chapter 2, nitrous oxide is a significant greenhouse gas but there are also other environmental effects, as outlined in the following slide:

The increased use of nitrogen compounds in agriculture is also indirectly implicated in:

• Marked increase in the incidence of asthma in many developed countries.

• The formation of algal bloom which 'choke' lakes, rivers and streams. The blooms

may contain a type of bacteria, called cyanobacteria, which produce toxins, killing water life and posing a threat to people

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A Necessary Evil

Many would argue that such chemical fertilisers are necessary if we are to feed a growing, frequently starving population. However, as one farmer in the region of Uttar Pradesh, India, reported in 1990:

Earlier ... no one knew about [chemical] fertilizer and people used to apply desi fertilizer (i.e. manure). Now, they mostly use market fertilizer: it makes the soil weak and deficient... so the soil is getting weaker...and the taste is diminishing in this way.

(Gupta, 1998).

Food losing its flavour, the very make-up of the soil is being destroyed, and farmers are required to buy in fertilizers and thus find themselves exposed to the vagaries of the market. This is a sorry indictment of the impact of chemical fertilizers on the lives of producers and consumers, and on the land itself. And yet governments and other international agencies, either frightened of, or in cahoots with, the powerful agrochemical lobby, turn a blind eye to the consequences of their actions.
Back to Basics

Not everyone has been so passive in their response, however.

The first half of the 20th century saw the publication of a number of influential treatises which rejected chemical fertilizers and advocated more organic methods. We might pick out Rudolf Steiner's 1924 lectures, published as Spiritual Foundations for the Renewal of Agriculture, which responded to the damage he perceived had been done to agriculture by 'modern cultural and intellectual trends'.

Steiner's suggestion for a more holistic approach, that emphasised the use of manure and planting according to lunar cycles, resonates with the earlier agronomic texts of Roman and Arabic writers. His treatise would become the basis of biodynamic agriculture. This, together with the works of others, led to the formation of the Soil Association in 1946, which remains the most important voice for the organic movement.

In the post-war period, in what might be described as a Malthusian ground swell, we have seen a return to more natural practices. This largely unchoreographed movement from below lies behind biodynamic farming, organic farming, local food, and slow food movement. What articulates the practice and philosophy of this amorphous group of individuals and organisations is a concern for the environment and the future of the soil. As a consequence those involved are increasingly discarding the chemical solution and returning to the very principles that guided farming throughout the pre-industrial era.
Deep Time perspectives

Viewed over the long expanse of time, archaeology and history scream to us that we now arrived at a moment of decision. We either face up to this crisis and look to return to systems of waste management that can be self-sustaining or we accept that our fate is sealed.

In order to return to a situation where human and animal 'waste' is considered as an important product, it will require the West to get over our phobia of faeces and dirt, and gain a more balanced perspective on labelling materials as 'waste'.

Nowhere is this point made more clearly than in terms of current attitudes to food...
Waste at Source

One of the most high-profile examples of food waste is that of fish 'discard' – whereby caught fish are thrown back (dead) into the sea by fishing fleets because they have exceeded their EU quota. This is an example of waste at source.

Discards have become a major feature of the fishing crisis, publicised by the campaign led by celebrity chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, who has argued that half of all fish caught in the North Sea are discarded. His Fish Fight was a very creative campaign against the practice of discarding fish on the grounds that the fishing team have exceeded their quota, and that the fish being discarded are less valuable than other species.

His campaign became part of a wider battle against over-fishing, and for changing the way we consume fish, which engaged the public through petitions, challenging them to become more discerning consumers. The Fish Fight campaign also developed effective alliances with movements like Greenpeace to force the large supermarkets (including Tesco and Morrisons) to change their practices – this must be a priority for the future.

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Food Waste

Our supermarkets, where most British people do their regular shop, are responsible for huge quantities of waste': shelves hold baskets of oranges, scores deep, hundreds of cartons of milk are on perpetual display and meat and fish counters bulge with pre-wrapped, oven-ready protein. A proportion of this food is never sold and while some supermarkets have signed up to food bank donations, large quantities of unspoilt but 'past sell-by', or slightly blemished items, are, literally, 'dumped'.

And then came the 'freegans'. 'Freeganism' is an attempt to redress food wastefulness. Opposed to the routine waste of supermarkets and households, freegans seek to draw attention to the financial and friendly benefits of sharing wasted foods. Click  here to see a film 'feeding the 5000' which sought to provide Londoners with a meal made from 'out of date' food.

Whilst freeganism is now a term used in common parlance, the message is still not getting through to the general public. It is estimated that nearly 30 per cent of the food Britons buy is wasted, with over 6.7 million tonnes being discarded uneaten.

In the past, perishable goods would have been consumed immediately, but now carrots and chicken legs go in the fridge in the expectation that they will be cooked at some point during the week. Surprisingly often, however, they are not. The drumsticks find their way to the back of the fridge, eventually pass their sell-by date, and, when excavated, are put in the bin.

The issue of waste, and perhaps more importantly, wastefulness, goes to the heart of global inequalities. As Tristram Stewart notes, 'All the world's nearly one billion hungry people could be lifted out of malnourishment on less than a quarter of the food that is wasted in the US, UK and Europe'. Moreover, a 'third of the world's entire food supply could be saved by reducing waste – or enough to feed 3 billion people; and this would still leave enough surplus for countries to provide their populations with 130 per cent of their nutritional requirements.'

The statistics of waste – food waste, packaging waste, electronics waste, wasted journeys – are shocking, and have economic, environmental and, perhaps increasingly, personal implications.

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What is Rubbish

Economist Viv Brown, poses the question: 'What is rubbish?'. He says: 'One answer is that it is something that has no value.... It is what nobody wants, so it is worthless....Items have value because people value them.... Similarly, if rubbish has no value, this is because people disvalue it (not because the item is in and of itself worthless). So looking at rubbish ... can tell us something about the social processes that are involved in valuing, or in this case, devaluing, an item.' (Vivianne Brown, Rubbish Society: Affluence, Waste and Values, 2009, p.105).

What may be labeled 'rubbish' in the West, represents a resource for other less wealthy communities around the world.

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In many Chinese cities street recycling is a way of life. Here 'waste' is a means for people to earn money to live. If they work hard (and are lucky) they make more money than if they had not migrated from their villages. Many cities have a steady supply of materials such as paper, corrugated card, plastics and metals. These are collected for recycling (that is, making into new items with a similar function). The recyclers will spend their entire day travelling around neighborhoods collecting and buying materials. Once they have collected as much as they can carry, they then take their load to depots where the waste is weighed out and money changes hands. In many cases the people collecting waste are rural migrants who have moved towards China's coastal cities in search of a better life for themselves.
Conclusions

Attitudes to 'waste' reveal a lot about the cultures responsible for its generation (or not). Rubbish may be a focal point for communities, as in Prehistory when middens proclaimed wealth and fertility, or in modern Chinese cities where rubbish middens proclaim the opposite: poverty and ill-health.

Where connections are made between illness and waste, humans have gone to extraordinary lengths to ensure that 'filth' is jettisoned out of eyesight.

Many cultures have seen great feats of civil engineering to deal with waste, such as the sewer systems that were monuments to Roman and Victorian civilisation. However, as is the case with most short-term solutions, the problem was just passed down the chain (or drain) creating much larger long-term problems of water pollution and soil fertility.

Sanitation systems, for all the benefits that they have brought for human health, have also created a legacy of cultural neuroticism about 'filth', with communities discarding ever greater quantities of 'rubbish' (or perfectly good food) that ought to be used to bring others out of starvation.

Returning to the start of this chapter, we examined Hawkins and Muecke's (2003, xiii-xiv) statement that waste is a reflection of the self. If this is the case, and I believe it is, we must ask ourselves a question: if we see rubbish everywhere, what does that say about our society? Are we just a little bit rubbish? Do we need to clean up our act by getting dirty?

Perhaps it is time for us to learn from the many lessons of the past, rethink our attitudes to 'rubbish' and give ancient technologies a new twist. Perhaps the most achievable would be to better collect and utilize manure – in the end this might be key to saving the collective arses of those that produce it.
Acknowledgements

Much of the text presented in these slides was provided by Richard Jones, Centre for English Local History, University of Leicester. It is an extract from:

Jones RLC (ed) 2012. Manure Matters: Historical, Archaeological and Ethnographic Perspectives, Ashgate Press.

Jones, RLC. 2010. Oh Shit. 106-116 in Franceschini, A. and Milicevic, M. (eds) Beneath the Pavement: A Garden. Radar. (download)

Much of the text from slides 12-15 has been provided by Mark Bradley, Department of Classics, University of Nottingham. It was previously published as:

Bradley, M. 2006. Roman sewers and the politics of cleanliness, OMNIBVS, 51: 3-5.
References

Cullen, P. and Jones, R. 2012, Manure and Middens in English Place-names, 97-109 in Jones, R (ed) Manure Matters: Historical, Archaeological and Ethnographic Perspectives, Ashgate Press.

Jones, R. 2010. Oh Shit. 106-116 in Franceschini, A. and Milicevic, M. (eds) Beneath the Pavement: A Garden. Radar.

Jones, R. 2012. Understanding medieval manure, 145-158 in in Jones, R (ed) Manure Matters: Historical, Archaeological and Ethnographic Perspectives, Ashgate Press

Varisco, D. 2012. Zibl and Zirā'a: Coming to Terms with Manure in Arab agriculture, 129-143 in Jones, R (ed) Manure Matters: Historical, Archaeological and Ethnographic Perspectives, Ashgate Press.

Waddington, K. 2012. (Re)cycles of Life in Late Bronze Age Southern Britain, 41-59 in Jones, R (ed) Manure Matters: Historical, Archaeological and Ethnographic Perspectives, Ashgate Press.
Chapter 6. Food

In this lecture you will:

Recap on Chapter 5 and examin how concepts of food are culturally determined and that the choices we make reflect our individual identities - be they sociak, relioous or ethnically based

Consider issues of 'Food Security' and how this might best be achieved

Critique current attitudes to farming, fishing and the exploitation of terrestrial wild mammals and how we might acheive more sustainable solutions to our food needs
Recap and Introduction

In the last chapter 5 (Waste), we examined how the concept of refuse is a reflection of the self. If that is the case for waste, it is certainly the case for food.

Cultural anthropologists and sociologists have long recognised that food fulfils far more than biological need – this is clear from the fact that no society on the planet consumes all the sources of food available to them, they tend to eat a limited range. For instance, in the UK most protein is derived from a restricted suite of domestic animals, whilst equally edible species (e.g. dogs, cats, rats and horses) are eschewed.

This very fact highlights the cultural motivations behind food choices. Indeed, scholars such as Mary Douglass and Claude Levi-Strauss have argued that food is a language, communicating our ideologies – be they personal, social, religious or cultural.

If food is a language, what does it say about us? And can we learn from the message?
A Sociology of Food

Walk into most supermarkets today and the consumer is faced with choices. To buy organic or genetically modified produce? Free-range or intensively farmed? Individual decisions will be based on a whole raft of considerations: questions of price; assessments of quality, freshness and taste; concerns for the environment including such issues as food miles or animal welfare; life-style choice and even self image. The simple act of choosing, say, carrots, is thus an engagement (whether people choose to acknowledge it or not) with wider bioethical debates surrounding the politics of food.

As we saw in chapter 1, sustainable sources of food (such as battery farmed eggs) are not always the most ethical sources (e.g. free-range eggs). And there are certainly many bioethical and political issues surrounding the mechanisms via which we fill our mouths.
Food Issues

As we saw in the last chapter, one of the biggest problems with food in the West is waste, with scandalous quantities of edible goods being discarded as a result of stock-piling and misguided beliefs about 'out of date' foods being 'rotten'.

Another problem in the UK, and other developed countries, is over-indulgence, with high percentages of the population being obese. This stands in stark contrast to the near one billion people in the world who are currently hungry.

Currently there is sufficient food to feed everyone in the world, but this is not achieved due to profligacy in the West and poor distribution mechanisms in the developing world. By 2050 our food systems will have to feed 50 per cent more people than they do today.

However, in addition to population increase, the situation is set to worsen with the onset of climate change, as explored in Chapter 2.
As a Result of Climate Change, the UK is Likely to Experience...

• increasingly warmer weather: the average annual temperature in the UK is expected to rise by between 1°C and 5°C by the end of the 21st century

• warmer, wetter winters with fewer frosts and cold spells.

• hotter, drier summers leading to more summer droughts.

• more extreme weather events such as high summer temperatures and more winter storms.

• sea level rise: potentially by up to 80cms on parts of the UK coast during this century.

These changes will have a drastic effect on agriculture. Cultivable land will be lost to sea level rises and soils will be degraded due to salination. Extreme weather conditions will encourage more crop pests, which will produce increased pollution through more pesticide use. Top soil, our most precious resource, will disappear from deforestation, floods, landslides and droughts.

As a result, farming livelihoods will disappear leading to widespread food insecurity all over the globe.

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What is Food Security?

Food security is defined by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation as 'a condition in which all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life'.

The impact of climate change on food security will be a consequence, not just of biophysical climatic changes, but of the social, economic, institutional, demographic and technological responses (or non-responses) to the challenge that climate change poses. Food security is undermined by lack of action or the wrong kind of action in these spheres.

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The Situation is Also Exacerbated by the Following Factors

We have already examined some of these issues in previous chapters, again highlighting how issues of sustainability are all encompassing and cannot be compartmentalised.

• fossil fuel depletion

• corporate control of genetic diversity, seeds and natural resources

• displacement of indigenous people

• soil degradation

• water scarcity

• increasing population

• increasing urbanisation

• intensive livestock farming

• competition for land and resources

• super farms and monoculture

• poor planning of urban areas

• just-in-time distribution

• supermarket domination

• geopolitics and war.

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Heading For a Fall?

If we take our 'just-in-time' food distribution system, we can see that it takes only a minor shock to almost bring our food system to a halt. In the UK in 2000, road hauliers' protests at increasing fuel costs led to a blockade of fuel depots across the country and brought the food distribution system to a standstill. Supermarket bosses told government ministers that shelves could be bare within three days. Considering 80 per cent of our food is purchased through supermarkets, this is a sobering example and highlights the folly of relying on foods sourced from great distances: not only does it lead consumers vulnerable; the food miles are contributing to climate change.

In September 2010 two academics from the Universities of Nottingham and Leicester set out to explore how easy it would be to live off local food, produced within a 2-mile radius of their house. It was not easy to find locally-sourced supplies but they survived for a month (loosing quite a lot of weight). A short film about the rationale behind their project can be found here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/nottingham/hi/people_and_places/nature/newsid_8858000/8858393.stm

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So Where Did It All Go Wrong?

In this chapter we will examine the deep history of food production and consumption to explore three particular issues:

• Agriculture as a 'Fall from Eden'

• Over-exploitation of scarce wild food resources

• Under-exploitation of abundant wild food resources
The Rise and Rise of Agriculture

For many, the move away from hunter-gatherer lifestyles and towards sedentary agriculturalism heralded humanity's fall from the Garden of Eden: where once people had lived in balance with nature, the ascent of farming changed the relationship whereby humans now sought to take from it without return.

In the last chapter we saw that, to some extent, agriculture did break the 'Virtuous Cycle of Return' instigating the soil depletion and erosion that is becoming particularly prevalent today. However, as Stanley Ulijaszek highlights in his podcast the situation is a little more complex, after all many of the extinctions of megafauna (e.g. mammoths) can be attributed to the actions of hunter-gatherers and we should be wary of idealising their lifestyles.

As we saw in Chapter 2, the development of agriculture – which saw the emergence of domesticate plants and animals (the first Genetically Modified organisms) certainly helped to support population increase, and many would argue that farming (and in particular GM crops) holds the key to supporting the population as it grows.
The GM Debate

Many critics of GM feel that the techniques reflect an unwelcome form of 'tampering with nature'. This is a particular concern of some consumers with respect to food. Such a view is sometimes scornfully interpreted as an expression of what is called the 'naturalistic fallacy' – a belief that equates morality with naturalness, seeing what is natural as 'right'. But concerns about GM foods may reflect a more reasoned and defensible position.

Deciding whether GM technology is acceptable, in ethical terms, involves a judgement about the plausibility and moral weight of competing sets of claims.

The issue of global food security is at the heart of many of the ethical issues related to GM technology. Proponents of GM crops argue that further development of this technology is vital to meet the challenge of 'feeding the world' but others, notably Jules Pretty, are more critical of such suggestions.

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Furthermore, there are reasons to question the legitimacy of the traditional 'nutritional pyramid' that places farmed carbohydrates at the base, as the foundational dietary staple. Although this pyramid is preached widely, some would argue that this is a 'received wisdom' perpetuated by those in the agri-business to ensure that profits from cereal crops continue to roll in.

It is becoming increasingly apparent that the high carbohydrate diet brought by farming is perhaps less balanced and nutritious than that of our hunter-gathering ancestors. Indeed, there are even new dietary regimes, such as the 'Palaeolithic Diet' that are gaining in popularity as people seek to loose the weight brought through excessive consumption of carbohydrates.

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Mesolithic Nutritional Pyramid

Certainly prior to farming (and humans existed for millennia before agriculture), the nutritional pyramid would have looked very different with no cereals and a far greater reliance on animal protein – in particular fish and meat.

The reliance of Mesolithic hunter-gathers on marine protein has been proven repeatedly by archaeological studies of human remains, which preserve signature of diet in the chemistry of the bone. These studies have shown overwhelmingly that Mesolithic people ate a lot of marine fish and shellfish.

Of course, we cannot simply return to a Mesolithic lifestyle – the world's oceans would not support even greater exploitation of marine resources, especially since many are already under threat.

Above image developed at the University Of Nottingham
Fish Food

There is a growing consensus that the world's marine ecosystem is in deep trouble with overfishing, pollution and other human-assisted changes (e.g. global warming) having a disastrous effect on fish stocks (Erlandson and Rick 2010).

According to Charles Clover in his book The End of the Line, recently made into a successful documentary film, over-fishing will mean extinction for the most popular fish species over the next decades. He argues that the way we currently consume fish is completely unsustainable, especially since (as we saw in the last chapter) many fish are discarded due to EU quota legislation.

Declining fish stocks have become an international issue, the concern of the European Union as well as national governments and the subject of increasing political debate. It has led to heated arguments between environmentalists, campaigning journalists and representatives of the fishing industry. A review of the current situation can be found here.

Debate continues because there are still uncertainties about what the 'natural' state of fisheries should be and this is where history and archaeology can help to provide important baseline data.
Archaeological Studies of Fish

Historical records from fisheries help to reconstruct past catches and how their composition has changed through time. However, studies of the fish remains themselves provide an excellent source of information, particular where not written records exist.

It is possible for archaeologists to examine which species are represented on archaeological sites – this figures for England shows that through the course of the medieval period, eels gradually decline in representation (most probably due to over-fishing) and that cod frequencies increase as deep-sea fishing technologies became available.

Above image sourced from Naomi Sykes at the University of Nottingham
The impact of human exploitation can be examined by studying the size of fish bones, which increase in size according to the individual's age. Very often we see a decline in the size of fish as fishing becomes more intensive, suggesting that populations are no-longer able to replenish themselves.

Numerous studies have been conducted on the remains of archaeological fish around the world and researchers have been able to highlight where fishery collapse is due to human over-exploitation or if other factors, such as climate change, are responsible. The overwhelming evidence suggest that humans have has a severe impact on fish stocks for longer than marine ecologists had estimated.
Fish and Religion

The fish case-study is a good example of how cultural and religious beliefs play and important role in dictating decisions about dietary choices. For much of the over-fishing that we see in the seas today had its origins with the introduction of Christian fasting traditions, bought in during the 10th century, that required ecclesiastics and later the general population to avoid the consumption of animal flesh on days of fast (fish were not deemed to be meat and so could be consumed on fast days).

The idea of eating 'fish on a Friday' is a remnant of this medieval tradition and many, even non-practicing Christians, still follow this tradition.

This highlights the inter-linked nature of culture and diet but also how long-standing food practices can be continued as a statement of religious identity, even when they have lost their meaning.

It is now time to recognise, however, that some traditions need to change, and new food preferences need to be adopted. 
Hunter-gatherers Anew?

Whilst there is clear evidence that humans are over-exploiting marine resources, there are many terrestrial resources in the UK that remain untapped.

Of particular note are species that were introduced to the British Isles in antiquity or more recent history. For instance animals such as rabbits, fallow deer, pheasants and grey squirrels are not native to Britain but were brought by humans during the last 1000 years and have since become well-established in the landscape.

In some areas, these species have established themselves so successfully that, in the absence of natural predators, their populations are becoming very large and they are now a threat to native wildlife – the introduced America grey squirrel which has outcompeted the native red squirrel is a classic example. Where introduced species are considered to represent a threat to native wildlife they are labelled as 'invasive' (bad).

But, as with most labels, perceptions are culturally determined. If we wished we could see these species in a positive light. They are after all, perfectly edible and could constitute an important source of food.
Avoidance of the Wild?

Despite the abundance, and in some cases over-population, of some wild animals, they contribute little to the UK diet. Indeed, despite the large populations of rabbits in Britain, a recent review of European rabbit consumption has classified England as a 'rabbit-rearing desert' where people are not interested in them as a source of food.

It is possible to purchase rabbit meat in supermarkets but, look carefully, and you will find it has invariably been imported from the many rabbit farms on the continent.

This situation is bizarre, unethical in terms of food miles and also reduces opportunities for increasing jobs in the rural sector. Why does the UK import farmed rabbits when wild rabbits are available in abundance?

The rabbit situation is just the tip of the iceberg and similar scenarios can be found for other 'invasive' species that are present in abundance but, should you wish to purchase meat from them, it will most probably have been imported.
Conclusions

In order to increase our food security and reclaim our food sovereignty, a systemic and structural change must take place in how we plan our food systems. This will require a radical transformation of farming methods and reconstruction of more regionalised food processing and distribution networks.

It is not about aiming for complete self-sufficiency, however, but rather aiming for a way to develop a resilient food system that can respond positively to global shocks.

Work is already being done by individuals and communities on how to bring about this change despite the government's insistence on continuing to promote policies that prop up trade liberalisation and the global market.

There will need to be a massive recruitment drive and re-skilling for low carbon farming. Many more people will need to be involved in food production, replacing the fossil fuel driven machinery that has replaced human energy. This is not to advocate a return to solely human labour.

Much of this must come about alongside a change in diet and tastes towards more plant-based foods that are less processed.

We will have to eat less meat, and the meat we eat will need to be reared outdoors on extensive pasture systems, preferably with an increasing emphasis on utilising wild animals whose meat is a by-product of sustainable management.

Farming methods will need to adapt and organic farming will need to be the minimum. Permaculture and agroforestry will have to play a much greater role in achieving multiple functions from land. So, as well as producing food, land must produce fuel, wildlife habitats and sustainable livelihoods.

Systemic changes in where we live, how we live on the land, and our patterns of settlement will need to change radically. We will need to work towards the principle of ensuring that where possible our staple foods are produced close to where they are consumed in order to reduce food transport and support food security.

There will need to be more small farms, more mixed farming and family farms alongside producer cooperatives, larger farms and some imports. Where food is imported it must be only if it cannot be produced internally, and it must be traded fairly to avoid the so-called 'food swaps' where governments seek to raise taxes by importing similar amounts of foods to those they are exporting.

Many land reformers promote the idea of re-ruralisation; in other words, re-populating the countryside with low impact, localised agricultural communities. The government has many strategies around what it calls 'sustainable communities'; however, at present our planning system does not support this kind of development, a fact that will be considered in the next chapter.

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References

Erlandson, J.M. and Rick, T.C. 2010. Archaeology meets marine ecology: the antiquity of maritime cultures and human impacts on marine fisheries and ecosystems Annual Review of Marine Science 2, 231–51.
Chapter 7. Landscape, Environment and Eco-tourism

In this lecture you will:

Examine how the landscape and environment can be viewed as documents that chart human behaviour and, as such, can be read to determine how best to plan for the future

Consider landscape and wildlife legislation - are they well suited to help us face the environment and social changes of the future?

Reflect, once again, on whether the past might have important lessons for the future
Landscape and the Environment

Over the last sixty years scholars within the Arts and Humanities have been able to convey to policy-makers and the general public the idea that the landscape and environment are important and worthy of safeguard and appreciation.

The result has been a raft of legislation specifically designed to ensure the preservation of elements of past landscapes, be they hedgerows or trees, farm buildings or settlement plans. Across the European Union, local and regional variation are now actively celebrated and protected.

Landscape is seen as central to the perpetuation of local identities, a vital income stream through the promotion of tourism, and, crucially an essential element in the forging of sustainable futures.

However, in the context of the English landscape, what do we recognize or value of its past? How and why do we value it? And are we using the past appropriately to build a sustainable future?

One man's vision of England's landscape entered the public consciousness in the mid-twentieth century and has remained there ever since. That man was W.G. Hoskins, the book The Making of the English Landscape, first published in 1955.

Since its publication, the book has rarely been out of print and what he wrote nearly sixty years ago remains essentially the national landscape narrative of today.

Hoskins' quiet and elegant prose resonated immediately with his readers, and over the decades can be said to have introduced countless thousands of people to the beauty and significance of the landscape that surrounds us and the time-depth encapsulated in its formation, a landscape which he himself memorably described as the 'richest historical record we possess'.
So What was Hoskins' Landscape Story?

If we dissect his thesis—based on the state-of-the-art of the day—then it is this. The making of the English landscape begins to all intents and purposes in the historic period: the prehistoric, indeed for large parts of England even the Roman, contribution was minimal. Hoskins argued, for instance, that it was the Anglo-Saxons who undertook the clearance of the primaeval woodlands that covered lowland England.

Secondly, Hoskins looks for continuities rather than discontinuities—the modern village sits, he muses, on the same site at its Celtic predecessor. Both these approaches serve only to concertina the history of the landscape: it is both long (in the sense that it extends beyond what is immediately around us) and short (because it can be encapsulated in the last two millennia). Where there has been change, this has been slow and evolutionary (at least before the eighteenth century), a landscape characterized by stability rather than flux. And it is for these reasons that Hoskins can claim that a single view can capture landscape history in its totality.

In its way, The Making of the English Landscape is a deeply political work. Hoskins detested modernity: the twentieth century had added nothing, he believed, but ugliness to the English landscape; bureaucrats (by which he meant 'planners') were ruining the countryside; barbed wire and suburban development were defacing the pastoral scene and atomic bombers were drowning out the song of the skylark. The future was not bright, the past the final refuge. For the mid-twentieth century conservation lobby, The Making offered a powerful manifesto.

No wonder, then, that in 1962 (seven years after the publication of The Making) the Local Authorities (Historic Buildings) Act sought to strengthen provisions for listing buildings of the type Hoskins celebrated, or that six years later the Town and Country Planning Act changed listing in favour of preservation.

Unsurprising too, given Hoskins holistic view of the landscape, that in 1967 the Civic Amenities Act paved the way for the creation of Conservation Areas where the wider setting of historic buildings and architectural ensembles began to be recognized as worth of legal protection.

Or to jump a few decades why, in the wake of their destruction, statutory protection was provided for hedgerows in 1997.

Layer upon layer of legislation has been laid out over the landscape, Hoskins landscape, in the name of heritage protection: the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979; the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981; the National Heritage Act 1983; and after 1990 the infamous planning policy guidance documents PPG15 and 16; and the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000.
Landscape Planning

Local Plans, the national foundation for all planning decisions remain founded on Hoskinian principles of the landscape they serve to curate.

They are designed 'to protect the natural and built environment and conserve the particular character of the place', that they are there to 'ensure that all development is socially, environmentally, and aesthetically acceptable.' Planning will be normally granted 'is compatible in terms of type, scale, setting, design and materials with the existing character of the locality'.

As for the implications of this, let me use my own village, Upton in Nottinghamshire, as an example.

Upton village itself is nucleated, arranged essentially along a single street. With the exception of the former water and windmills there are very few outlying farms.

The housing stock is predominantly eighteenth and nineteenth century, brick walls and pantile roofs, cogged eves and using range of sash and casement windows. The original houses were relatively small but have been extended over time, providing a jumble of roof lines and wall angles and heights, and set on relatively large plots.

Beyond the village is a landscape of Parliamentary enclosure, small geometric fields surrounded by hawthorn hedges and alder standards, now supporting a mixed farming economy. Where there is pasture, some ridge-and-furrow, a memory of open-field farming survives.

In other words, the visible and material landscape is to all intents and purposes little more than three hundred years old.

If we go back, say, five hundred years, then we suddenly discover an open rather than enclosed landscape, the village still nucleated, of course, surrounded by its three open fields. What happens if we go back a thousand years?
It is something that we can do because we have a description of its landscape in an Anglo-Saxon charter. The landscape is unkempt, uncultivated, wooded, and wet. There is moorland and evidence for a dispersed settlement pattern of isolated farmsteads rather than a centralized village.

From the Greet along the paved way: by the north of Hockerwood. From the paved way across the moor to the servants' enclosure, northwards from there to the apple tree. From the apple tree straight across Micklebarrow Hill. On to the moor and to the little Stream. Along the stream then back to the Greet.

Or how about two thousand years, when there is limited evidence of again individual Romano-British homesteads and large sheets of slow-flowing water sufficient to allow the build up of deep deposits of peat, a process we can trace back to the Mesolithic.

Through historical, archaeological and palaeonvironmental evidence we now recognize the enormous contribution of earlier societies to our landscape inheritance: the Bronze Age clearance of woodland and extensive field system as well as individual monuments. We recognize the ebb and flow of arable cultivation and woodland regeneration across the Roman and early medieval period. We recognize that significant periods in the development of settlement patterns have left little physical trace in the existing landscape. We recognize that the so-called Great Rebuilding which Hoskins isolated as a period of intensive architectural change, is in fact just one (albeit important) phase in a continuous process of rebuilding.

The landscape story of today, then, is longer, more complex, far less visible and material than it was in 1955, and yet this is not reflected either in the law or in its interpretation.

Viewed through a deep-time perspective many questions arise:

• Why are these earlier landscapes less characteristic of the place than the one that happens to currently exist?

• Why do we need to plan for the future within the current structure of the landscape rather than return to or adapt an earlier landscape configuration?

• Why do we value only what we can see rather than what lies just out of sight?

• More controversially, might the future landscape and settlement pattern of Upton resemble none of these, something entirely new, but in and of itself functioning just like all of them, solutions found by the local community to make a living off the land?

What the long-term landscape view reveals with clarity is that different times demand different landscape configurations; that historically the landscape has never stood still, that it has either had to be changed or it has been thought desirable to change.

An informed landscape historical position would conclude that change is the essence of sustainability and resilience (historical and archaeological proof is on my side). The corollary, of course, is that fossilization of any landscape will lead to its inevitable demise and that of its people, however intrinsically pretty or old it may appear.

The landscape we seek to preserve has been made at the hands of people who worked the land and who had the freedom to alter their surroundings according to prevailing circumstance. It was these choices, many radical and ushering in wholesale change, that ensured the past sustainability of the English countryside.

The challenges that the English countryside now faces are just too large to be overcome by sensitively adapting an outmoded landscape structure and sentimentalizing about 'our heritage'. It is time for radical thinking and I believe that landscape historians have their part to play in shaping new visions.

Village England has not always been village England. Need it be in the future?

With rapidly growing populations, there is a desperate need for more housing. A landscape historical perspective would tell you that dispersed settlements patterns have in the past accommodated greater number of people than nucleated villages (you only need to look at the Norfolk folios of Domesday Book to reach this conclusion).

This is not to support the construction of housing on greenfield sites or to suggets that the 2012 National Planning Framework document, which purports to place power back in the hands of local communities and has a 'presumption in favour of sustainable development' is a good idea. Indeed, as Landscape Historian Richard Jones has stated "this document is a prime case of governmental rhetoric which has no practical basis and is unworkable under the current planning structure".

We may need to think carefully about whether current field size is appropriate, whether we need more or less hedgerows. We need to ask whether we should return to productive hedgerows that provide firewood or soft fruits, rather than the hawthorn barriers designed to be stockproof.

Do we need hedges at all as the countryside empties of animals as people reduce the meat component of their diets. Or do we still need animals because, as we saw in Chapter 5, livestock provides vital manure which will be needed to plug the nutrient gap left when it is no longer feasible to manufacture chemical fertilizers or phosphates?

All we can be certain about is that the fields of enclosure may not be those we need. And what about climate change? Again we can look at past responses to periods of warming (late Iron Age; early medieval) and cooling (Bronze Age, later medieval and early modern). Our responses will not be the same, but they might valuably be informed by what history teaches.

How about renewable energy? Medieval farmers knew how and where this could be garnered – through watermills and windmills.

The community in a near neighboring village to Upton were recently up in arms over plans to erect a wind turbine because it would detract from the settling of a deserted medieval hamlet. Where was this turbine proposed? Windmill Hill!

In Upton itself, however, some of the farmers are returning to medieval principles. The village has its first organic farm (complete with wind turbine) and the community are involved in weeding their crops. Our relationship to produce and the growing of that produce is changing. Community farming is, in places, beginning to replace individual enterprise.

Ancient Biodiversity

The same arguments about 1) the need for adaptability and 2) that we should look to past to consider how best to deal with the future are also gaining currency within the fields of environmental management and, in particular, with regards to issues of biodiversity.

As with landscape management, policy documents relating to environmental conservation and biodiversity "rarely look back more than 50 years and may ignore the historical context entirely. This has been a lost opportunity for understanding ecological systems. Many natural processes occur over timescales that confound our attempts to understand them, so the vast temporal perspective provided by palaeoecological studies can provide important guidance for nature conservation (Willis & Birks 2006)" (Hodder et al. 2009, 4).

Similar to W.G Hoskins, certain key scholars have pushed the agenda forward and notable amongst these is Oliver Rackham whose work on the history of Britain's flora and fauna has highlighted how biodiversity has changed through time, reflecting millennia of human-environment interactions and showing that humans are, and have always been, a force of nature – we are certainly not separate from it.

The rise of global trade has seen a sharp increase in the number of plants and animals transported around the world by humans, purposefully or inadvertently. Many of these introductions are legacies of ancient societies, dating back thousands of years. They have radically altered the environment, sometimes detrimentally by outcompeting native species in the absence of natural predators.
Ancient Faunal Introductions to Britain

In addition to anthropogenic introductions, Britain has also seen many extinctions over the last few thousand years including:

• The aurochs – the wild ancestor of all domestic cattle

• The bear, the wolf, the lynx – carnivores that are now locally extinct (extirpated)

• Beaver, wild boar and elk - all extirpated in Britain.

Beyond Britain there are many more, just a few are listed here;

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Rates of Extinction

We can tell from the fossil record that extinctions are a normal part of evolution. However, the current rate of extinction is the cause of our concern. The fossil record shows that five major extinction episodes have taken place over the past 500 million years, but the fear is that:

... humanity has initiated the sixth great extinction spasm, rushing to eternity a large fraction of our fellow species in a single generation.

(E. O. Wilson, 1992)

You may feel that this is alarmist, given that the Earth recovered from the other five episodes, but consider the time-scales. Previous mass extinctions (the most recent of which put paid to the dinosaurs some 66 million years ago), are presumed to have taken place over several million years, with the recovery to similar levels of diversity taking up to 20 million years. At the present time, extinctions are occurring most rapidly in the tropics, yet, even in Britain it is estimated that around 6 per cent of our species have become extinct during the 20th century.

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Reversing Extinction?

The perception that humans have been responsible, directly or indirectly, for the extinction or extirpation of certain species is leading to growing calls for 'rewilding' programmes that seek to recreate a primordial nature untouched by human actions.

However, in the case of Britain, human have been an integral part of nature since they arrived, along with the other fauna and flora, at the end of the last Ice Age – would it not be 'un-natural' to recreate an environment without people?

There is, perhaps, something to be said for conservation programmes that seek to recreate ecosystems more akin to those that may have existed prior to the advent of farming and intensive human intervention. One of the foremost proponents of this idea is Frans Vera, whose studies of ancient ecosystems, and in particular the role of the extinct aurochs in managing landscape and environment have been very influential.
Oostvaarderplassen, The Netherlands

Vera has been heavily involved in Oostvaardersplassen, a 6,000ha nature reserve in the Netherlands which has been stocked with red deer and other animal species considered to be the best replacements for the extinct aurochs - Heck Cattle (B. taurus) – and prehistoric horses, e.g. Konik Ponies (E. caballus).

These herbivores have been left to regulate themselves, largely without human intervention, under a system of what has come to be known as 'naturalistic grazing'. When red deer die, their carcasses are left and these have become an important source of food for the white-tailed eagles that moved into the reserve in 2006 and have subsequently been breeding in the area. Certainly biodiversity within the reserve has increased and it has become a haven for wildlife and an influential exemplar of conservation management.

The problem with the 'naturalistic grazing' practiced at Oostvaardersplassen is that there are no predators which must surely be viewed as an equally important part of a functioning ecosystem.
Is 'Rewilding' an Option?

In Britain, and across Europe, there are growing calls (mostly amongst the public) for the reintroduction of top predators such bears and wolves. To some extent these have been driven by successful reintroductions of wolves to Yellowstone Park in America. At Yellowstone, the wolves have been managing the deer populations which in turn has seen a regrowth of woodland and an associated increase in the range of woodland species in the National Park.

In America, where it is thought that humans were responsible for the extinction of the continent's megafauna, there have even been suggestions that attempts should be made to 're-wild' with modern day versions of Pleistocene mammals – lions, elephants and so on...

There are several reasons why such re-wilding programmes are difficult to implement. The first is one of human-wildlife conflict.
Human-Wildlife Conflict: Re-extinction

In Britain, and across Europe, there are growing calls (mostly amongst the public) for the reintroduction of top predators such bears and wolves. To some extent these have been driven by successful reintroductions of wolves to Yellowstone Park in America. At Yellowstone, the wolves have been managing the deer populations which in turn has seen a regrowth of woodland and an associated increase in the range of woodland species in the National Park.

In America, where it is thought that humans were responsible for the extinction of the continent's megafauna, there have even been suggestions that attempts should be made to 're-wild' with modern day versions of Pleistocene mammals – lions, elephants and so on...

There are several reasons why such re-wilding programmes are difficult to implement. The first is one of human-wildlife conflict.
The Validity of Re-introduction

Another reason for caution over reintroductions of carnivores, and other locally extirpated species, to Britain is that, although we assume humans are responsible for their demise, at present we are not certain that this was the case.

In truth, astonishingly little is known about the timing and circumstances of many extirpations. Without evidence for the ancient history of these species, cases for re-wilding largely collapse because the IUCN requirements for reintroduction, which state that the factors responsible for a species' extinction must be identified before a reintroduction can be considered cannot be met.

This is where studies of species history and archaeology are likely to become vital for informing future management of biodiversity.

However, the final question that we must address is 'why'? What are we trying to achieve? Is re-wilding about conservation, guilt or profit-making, after all endangered is often a good money-spinner. The answers are not always clear but history does have lessons to teach.
Conclusions

Landscape history teaches us that long-term resilience, the sustainability of communities and their economies has been based on change, often radical reconfiguration, driven by people who understood their immediate environments and who had the freedom and capacity to adapt, often rapidly, to shifting circumstance. Surely one of the greatest worries that we should all have is that it would seem that for the first time in our history, people's capacity to change is now denied just at the moment when change is most needed.

Species and environmental history teaches us that when humans play at altering ecosystems the results are not always predictable or desirable. They may sometimes be disastrous. As Keith Kirby (2009, 63) states:

"We do need to be realistic and clear as to what we are seeking from wild landscapes – is it specific species, habitats, or natural processes; is it a feeling of wilderness, or spiritual renewal; is it a new form of recreational experience? They may not all be compatible; they may not all have the same level of support both within the conservation community and the wider public"

It is to these questions of what we are seeking to make sustainable, why and with what effect that we turn in Chapter 8 – Heritage.
Acknowledgements and References

Much of the text in slides 2-16 derives from a lecture, delivered by Richard Jones, Centre for English Local History, at the Sustainability and Heritage: How Can the Past Contribute to a Sustainable Future? held at the University of Highlands and Islands in Orkney 29 – 31 May 2012.

References

Kirby, K. J. 2009. Conclusions, British Wildlife (special edition) Volume 20(5), 63.
Chapter 8. Cultural Heritage

In this lecture you will:

Define the term 'heritage' and examine the circumstances under which the concept of World Heritage came into being.

Consider critically the different kinds of heritage: natural, cultural and 'intangible'

Examine three case-studies that highlighted the complexities of sustainable management of heritage, be it natural, cultural or intangible
Heritage

Throughout this module the importance of the 'cultural' and 'natural' world, both past and present, for informing sustainable futures has been stressed. But how do we ensure that this inheritance is itself sustainable?

To a certain extent we touched on this issue in the last chapter with discussion of landscape, environment and biodiversity – as we saw, all are artefacts of past human behaviour and, as such, can be seen as important cultural documents that contain lesson for the future.

In this chapter we will look at heritage in further detail and, after a brief introduction to the definitions and development of the concept of 'heritage' will examine three case studies, offered by colleagues who have been key contributors to the module, that give different and thought-provoking perspectives on issues of sustainable heritage.
What is Heritage?

According to Robert Hewison (1987, 32), heritage can mean anything you want – it can mean everything or nothing. However, UNESCO (please visit this site) define it as:

Heritage is our legacy from the past, what we live with today, and what we pass on to future generations. Our cultural and natural heritage are both irreplaceable sources of life and inspiration.

Among natural features counted as World Heritage, the Great Barrier Reef off Eastern Australia, the Amazonian rainforests, and human artefacts like the Great Wall of China and the Egyptian pyramids fall into this category; but of course there are many other famous sites in the world that do not quite match these in scale or perhaps even in importance. This raises immediate issues: how is inclusion determined, and who decides what's in and what's out? Who maintains and promotes such places, landscapes or cultures, and to what political, social, environmental and economic ends? What impact do World Heritage inscriptions and related developments have on communities, on regions, nations, or indeed on the actual heritage that is at the focus of the inscriptions?

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Development of World Heritage

From its inception as a concept World Heritage has been integrally linked to international politics, and those who are excluded, or exclude themselves, from the moral world community have invariably been excluded from decisions about World Heritage.

After the First World War the League of Nations, established in 1920, aimed to promote peace and encourage international cooperation. It was far from inclusive, for despite the enthusiasm of President Woodrow Wilson (US president 1913–21) one of its main promoters, the USA, refused to join. Germany was excluded until 1926 and the USSR denounced it as a capitalist club until it eventually joined in 1934. Although partly undermined by such structural problems and deepening political crises, the league had some modest successes and its international agencies did much to foster internationalism.

As far as heritage was concerned, under its auspices in 1931 the International Council of Museums (ICOM) promoted a congress in Athens which established basic principles for an international code of practice for the preservation and restoration of ancient buildings. The congress conclusions and the subsequent Athens Charter (ICOMOS, [1931] 1996b) reflected a growing consciousness about historic sites, and opened up the debate about conservation issues and the nature and value of international heritage. The charter set important benchmarks for future technical and moral cooperation, on the role of education and the value of documentation.

From the outset UNESCO also played a role in the promotion and rescue of historic sites. In Europe postwar reconstruction from 1945 to 1955 brought about the large-scale restoration of damaged cities including Dresden, Warsaw, Gdansk, Blois and Vicenza, among others. Concern at the scale of war damage was such that the Hague Convention produced in 1954 a convention on the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, and which arguably had considerable significance for World Heritage in the longer term.

Another important trigger to further action was the international concern raised by the construction of the Aswan High Dam in Egypt, which would flood the valley containing the Abu Simbel and other temples, significant relics of ancient Egypt. In 1959, following an appeal from Egypt and Sudan, UNESCO instigated a major conservation programme which involved intensive archaeological excavations and the removal, stone by stone, of the temples that were reconstructed on higher ground above the flood line.

Venice came to be associated with the second major protocol concerning conservation, for there in 1964 an international congress of heritage experts produced the Venice Charter. This defines internationally accepted standards of conservation relating to buildings and other sites. It emphasises the importance of authenticity and maintaining the historical and physical context of the site, and makes clear that monuments are to be conserved as historical evidence as well as cultural artefacts. It also spells out a code for restoration and preservation. While concerned mainly with buildings and cultural sites, the Venice Charter continues to be the most influential international conservation protocol.

At the same time the concept of combining conservation of cultural sites with natural sites was gaining currency in the USA. In 1965 a White House conference in Washington DC called for international cooperation to protect 'the world's superb natural and scenic areas and historic sites for the present and the future of the entire world citizenry'. In 1968 another NGO, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which had been established with its headquarters in Switzerland, developed a similar set of proposals. Presented to a UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm these proposals established international measures of protection and conservation similar to those for cultural sites.

Hence the 1972 Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage (or 'World Heritage Convention') developed from the coincidence of separate movements focusing on the one hand on the preservation of cultural sites, and on the other dealing with the conservation of nature. Ultimately a single text was agreed to by all parties and the convention was adopted by the General Conference of UNESCO in November 1972. Since then all countries joining UNESCO have ratified the convention.

UNESCO claims the World Heritage Convention is not just 'words on paper' but an instrument for concrete action in preserving threatened sites or endangered environments, species and, more recently, cultures. Essentially, it is about sustainability of heritage. The convention is an important document and merits close analysis, albeit briefly in this context. In short, it:

• defines the cultural and natural heritage

• calls for national and international protection of the heritage established by the World Heritage Committee

• calls on states to submit lists

• draws up a World Heritage List

• defines World Heritage in danger

• promotes international assistance, supported by state parties

• sets up a secretariat

• establishes a fund for the protection of cultural and natural heritage

• promotes educational programmes.

While these aims are highly laudable, fulfilment is potentially complex and in some contexts politically sensitive.

This brief introduction to the background of World Heritage helps de-code what has become politically an increasingly complex field reflected in a large international bureaucracy and a proliferation of related national organisations. On the ground there has been increasing diversification in listings, with more groupings of sites, some in quite interesting ways, like serial (or groups of similar) sites, route ways, industrial heritage, designations of heritage cities and cultural landscapes, the emergence of new heritages (such as intangible heritage), and of large-scale restoration and safeguarding campaigns.

Let us now examine some examples of these different categories of 'heritage'.

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Types of Heritage

Natural heritage is rather under-represented in the portfolio of World Heritage, at least if raw data on the UNESCO website are taken as a measure. While the scale and environmental or scientific qualities of many natural sites are such that it is difficult to say whether we are comparing like with like, there are other explanations for the imbalance. The first is the relative under-representation of natural heritage specialists on international NGOs; the second, is that some countries have a long tradition of national parks or reserves along with legislative frameworks for environmental conservation, sometimes enacted long before it began to be addressed as a serious global issue.

In the UK, the Dorset and East Devon Coast has been a World Heritage site since 2001. This site comprises more than 200 miles of undeveloped coastline and countryside, with cliff exposures and rock formations of international geological significance. Its status has had a number of valuable outcomes.

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Devon/Dorset Coast

First, it has raised awareness internationally, regionally, nationally and locally, generating enthusiasm and pride in the community, which in turn has brought together other sectors in support of initiatives.

Second, it has helped protect the site by limiting planning applications for inappropriate development.

Third, it has encouraged enhanced funding to manage the site, improve transport and develop tourist potential. The spinoffs have been extensive and are thought to have contributed greatly to the local economy, mainly through the large numbers of visitors attracted to the site.

But ensuring that the region is managed sustainably is difficult, as you can read  here.
Increasing Damage Through Interest?

There are many cases where heritage is put at risk by the large number of people who are attracted to visit it.

One such example is Turkey's diminishing population of turtles. These endangered animals draw large groups of tourists to the southern coast, taking boat trips specifically to watch them. However, the propellers of tourist boat are responsible for maiming and killing many turtles, whilst development to support the tourist trade is significantly damaging the turtles' breeding grounds. Information about the situation is provided in these three short documentaries (click to view).

Documentary 1

Documentary 2

Documentary 3
The Grey Seal in Britain: Coping with a Conservation Success

We often lament the failures of conservation, as in the case of the Turkish turtles, but hardly ever address the opposite, which can also generate real conflicts. The Atlantic grey seal is a good example of the problems associated with a nature conservation success in modern Britain and has been studied extensively by Dr Robert Lambert, who has supplied the details of this case-study.
History of the Grey Seal

Before the late nineteenth century, there was no real sense of people taking delight in seals in Britain. There was some 'celebration' derived through the seal's role literature and Gaelic folklore (as the 'selkie') but the most traditional response was to use seals for food, for their oil, and for sealskins made into waistcoats, sporrans and fashionable motoring jackets. To fulfil these economic roles, seals were brutally hunted on places like Haskeir in Outer Hebrides.

Gradually concerns began to arise about over-hunting and there was a belief that populations had dwindled to less than 500 individuals. In reality the population was probably closer to 2,000-4,000 but, nevertheless in 1914 the grey seal became the first wild mammal protected by Parliament.

The Act set up a close season from 1 October to 15 December (breeding season) which ended centuries of subsistence and commercial exploitation of the grey seal.
Additional Protection

In 1925 the National Trust purchased the Farne Islands, off the Northumbrian coast, which had been an unofficial nature reserve since the late 19th century and where grey seal breeding populations were established.

Further parliamentary protection in 1932 extended the close season, and gave year-round protection to seals resident on Haskeir in Outer Hebrides. This Act also gave government the power to suspend protection at a site or to alter close season dates.

This protection, plus other factors, has seen British grey seal population increase by around 6% per annum in modern era:

• In the mid-1930s the population was estimated at 9,000

• By the mid-1960s it had increased to approximately 34,000

• In 2000 the SMRU figures indicated a population of 124,300

• Today, there may be up to 150,000

Around 40% of the world population now breeds in Britain, giving the UK government international responsibility for the species. About 90% of the British population breeds in Scotland.
The Issue

Against this background it is possible to see how the grey seal passed from being a source of folklore, a resource for hunters and a sporting trophy in the nineteenth century to being a curious but valued part of our natural heritage in the first half of the twentieth century.

However, as populations started to rise, so too did the number of complaints from local fishermen. The first grumbles about the 'seal menace' started to be heard in the mid-1930s, coming from the River Tweed Commissioners and local.

By the 1950s, fishermen in seal 'hot spots' were urging the government to make it an object of scientific inquiry.
The Grey Seal Culls: Farne Islands

First government-sponsored culls of female pups by MAFF took place in 1958. These were halted by public anger, but re-started in 1963 running to 1966. National Trust start culling there in 1970s to protect islands ecosystems: they were concerned that seal overpopulation would damage vegetation and crush puffin burrows.
The Grey Seal Culls: Scotland

The Scottish Office accepted a 1960 DAFS report which said that possibly 15% of the total annual British catch of all fish from home waters fell victim to seal predation, concluding 'seal stocks must be reduced and maintained at a level which will not interfere unduly with commercial fisheries'.

This resulted in culls on Orkney and in Western Isles during the 1960s and 1970s.

The public took up the grey seal a domestic environmental and it became linked up with international events, especially the harp seal hunt on the pack-ice off Newfoundland. The 1978 Scottish cull was abandoned due to the powerful alliance of Greenpeace, the media, and the British public, and a loss of political will in government.

In 1982 the European Parliament announced a ban on 'baby seal' skin exports from Canada to Europe and by 1987, under massive international political and environmental pressure, Canada banned the commercial hunting of harp seal pups under 3 weeks old.
An Exceptionally Challenging Animal to Manage

Grey seals are the focus of a large number of groups, each with different interests:

• Government: a political question.

• Conservationists: a nature question.

• Scientists: a biological/ecological question.

• Fishing communities: an economic question.

• Humanitarians: an animal welfare question.

• General public: a social/cultural question.

• Other countries: an international question.

Once again, this reminds us how complex and integrated issues of sustainability are. Hotly contested contemporary animals reflect deeply held and intertwined historical forces, both natural and cultural.

The same can be true for all types of heritage – including cultural landscapes, to which we now turn.
Cultural Landscape

An important concept in the World Heritage portfolio is the cultural landscape, influenced significantly by the long tradition of European landscape painting which became established as a genre in the 15th century.

A great variety of landscapes can be identified with distinctive regions of the earth. Invariably they combine a natural environment modified over the ages by humans, and they have become significant and often politically sensitive because they reflect specific techniques of land use that sustain biological diversity and are under threat from inappropriate development or climate change. Moreover, they are often associated with intangible heritages unique to the communities who live there; examples are religious beliefs, and artistic and traditional customs, perhaps reflecting the spiritual relationship of people with their environment.

According to the guidelines provided by the European Landscape Convention a thorough understanding of the long-term histories of cultural landscapes is essential to develop conscious policies for their preservation and/or sustainable development.

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In this respect, multidisciplinary archaeological approaches can provide the tools and expertise necessary to analyse the history of cultural landscapes as entities modelled through the interaction of humans and their environment.
The Category of 'Other'

Diversification beyond major cultural and natural sites has resulted in some interesting permutations, such as linear features or ensembles of sites linked in different ways. Best known perhaps is the Camino de Santiago, the Pilgrim Way to Santiago de Campostela in Galicia, north-west Spain. The old city itself is a remarkable ensemble of Baroque cathedral, churches and civic buildings, designated a World Heritage site in 1985 and the object of a major conservation effort since.

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Camino De Santiago

Described as 'a journey of the soul and spirit', the Pilgrim Way, also known as St James's Way, is in fact several different trails along ancient route ways in France and Spain that all lead to the supposed shrine of St James in Santiago. Here the body of the fisherman and apostle is believed to have been laid to rest in the eighth century. The origins of the route date back to the time when Christian pilgrims, some from distant parts of Europe, would set off to visit and pray at the saint's final resting place. It is one of the most important pilgrimages beyond those of Rome and Jerusalem and still attracts thousands each year to add to recreational walkers. The route is marked with a scallop shell, the symbol of the saint, and the way was declared a European Cultural Route in 1987 and a World Heritage site in 1993.
Category of 'Other'

Railways also fall into this category, prime examples being the mountain railways of India, first designated in 1999 and by extension again in 2005. The 'site' includes the famous Darjeeling mountain railway and now incorporates the Nilgiri line in Tamil Nadu state, another remarkable legacy of the colonial era constructed 1891–1908 and still fully operational.

A sub-set is what one consultant planner has described as 'boundaries heritage', which might be linked to cultural or historical landscapes encroached on by others, say through invasion. An interesting example is the initiative by the World Heritage Centre to define and promote the frontiers of the Roman empire transnationally across the Upper German-Raetian Limes and, in the UK, Hadrian's Wall in northern England and the Antonine Wall (listed 2008), linking the Forth and Clyde in Central Scotland.

Making excellent walking routes, all three incorporate important archaeological features such as forts, camps and civil settlements (often themselves linked by Roman roads or other historic routes).
Intangible Heritage

This brings us to another category, the 'non-material' intangible cultural heritage (ICH), which recognises the importance of living heritage, cultural diversity and its maintenance for the future as 'a guarantee for continuing creativity'. It came about because of criticism from countries with significant oral, folklore and other cultural traditions where indigenous people thought the list dominated by built or material heritage. According to the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage, it is seen in what UNESCO describes as the following 'domains':

• oral traditions and expressions including language as a vehicle of the intangible cultural heritage

• performing arts (such as traditional music, dance and theatre)

• social practices, rituals and festive events

• knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe

• traditional craftsmanship.

(UNESCO, 2008b)

All of this raises significant issues as to what ICH actually is and how representative examples can be, but nevertheless several significant initiatives have been undertaken including listings, identifying ICH requiring 'urgent safeguarding' and a number of projects mainly focused on developing countries. Beyond these, steps to identify Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity got underway following a proclamation at the UNESCO General Conference in 1997 (see Harrison and Rose, 2010). Between 2001 and 2005, ninety outstanding examples of ICH were identified, including a wide range of phenomena similar to those described above. One domain that has attracted particular attention is the safeguarding of endangered languages.

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Sustainable Music

In the same way that as certain languages have become extinct, or are in danger of extinction, so too are many other oral/aural traditions, such as music and instruments. Ethnomusicologist, Prof. Jeff Todd Titon, has written extensively on sustainable music and has made some of his papers as part this module. Please take time now to read his 2009 article.

Music and Sustainability: An Ecological Viewpoint' The World of Music 51(1), 119-137. The abstract is as follows:

"Attempts to preserve music as cultural heritage put applies ethnomusicologists and public folklorists in a defensive posture of safeguarding property assets. By supporting the conservation of those assets with tourists commerce, heritage management is doomed to the paradox of constructing staged authenticities with music treated as a market commodity. Instead, best practices arise from partnerships among ethnomusicologists, folklorists and music culture insiders (community leaders, scholars, and musician), with sustainability interventions aimed directly inside music cultures. These efforts should be guided by principles drawn from ecology, not economy; and specifically by four principles from the new conservation ecology – diversity, limits to growth, interconnectedness, and stewardship"
Conclusion for Chapter 8

The rise of World Heritage has been responsible for the rescue and conservation of numerous monuments to human values and endeavour and to large areas of unique natural environment and landscape across the globe. It has promoted heritages that have previously been neglected, for example rescuing cultures and languages that would otherwise have disappeared.

It has promoted heritage cities, contributing to their regeneration in some cases, and, directly or indirectly, major world sites for cultural tourism. World Heritage has considerable implications for cultural tourism and increasingly for eco-tourism, which are major studies in their own right.

There is no question that UNESCO and the other heritage NGOs have dramatically raised the profile of global heritage and are continuously seeking to redefine heritage beyond its previous Eurocentred and essentially western viewpoints. This now assists less developed regions of the world to raise their game in the World Heritage stakes.

However, heritage is not, as many believe, so much about the past as it is about the present. Heritage looks to the past, but it is something that is produced in the present for a particular purpose within human groups and societies.

Following on from this idea is the concept that heritage is a form of 'representation', which has the potential both to include, exclude or exploit certain members of society. When we talk about heritage as a form of representation, we refer to the way in which heritage objects, places and practices come to 'stand for' something else, whether that be an idealised sense of nationhood and its citizens, an ethnic group, or a particular set of histories and ideas about the past. For this reason, heritage is also about the power to control the past and to produce it in the present often for political or economic gain.

The many positive aspects of World Heritage are, therefore, often countered by these issues of politics, protocols and impact – particularly where the impact is negative on the very heritage that the legislation seeks to make sustainable.

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Chapter 9. People and Knowledge

In this lecture you will:

Recap briefly on the role of Arts and Humanities in Sustainability.

Consider a number of examples where the Arts and Humanities has sought to capture knowledge and make it freely available.

Use the links provided to spend time exploring creative digital resources and think about what they represent in terms of sustainability - do they make a difference? Can our disciplines make a difference?
People and Knowledge

Examination of the cultural record highlights that the key to sustainability is the ability to adapt and change. As circumstances shift in the future, as they surely will as a result of climate change, population increase and other factors, human cultures will need to adapt, potentially rather rapidly. For many, this is a scary prospect as people are often averse to the concept of change, even though the cultural record demonstrates that the world has never been static.

Cultural studies also demonstrate that human groups have a universal need for roots and identity – to know who they are and where they have come from. This need is the main reason why humanity has produced, and continues to produce, such a rich cultural record.

If we are to enter a period of increasing instability and change, it seems likely that the need for cultural identity will become ever stronger and thus the Arts and Humanities more important.

In this chapter we will explore how research and initiatives within the Arts and Humanities are helping to make people and their knowledge sustainable
Heritage of Fossil Fuel Communities

An obvious place where change will come is in energy provision. The requirements to move away from fossil fuels will inevitably lead to the scaling down and closure of coal, oil and gas extraction facilities. However, communities have built up around these industries and they are themselves unsustainable without them.

One only needs to look to the pits closures of the 1980s and 1990s to see how the closures devastated local communities. Take, for example, the impact of the closure of Nottingham's  Newstead  Colliery.

Communities have had to be highly creative to regenerate but the Arts and Humanities have played a role in this, and there is considerable potential for collaboration. Arts and Humanities are also vital for preserving the memories and experiences of communities, be it through:

• Photographs

• Oral history projects

• Museums

• Music
Museum , Libraries and Galleries

Museums, as we know them today, have their origins in the 18th and 19th centuries, when they came to dominance for showcasing the wonders of British imperialism. Since this period their function and symbolism has gradually changed and they, together with libraries and galleries, are important repositories for cultural knowledge.

The University of Nottingham itself has many of its own collections, including the Natural History Collection (curated by the School of Biology) and the Archaeology Museum as well as the galleries down at the Lakeside Arts Centre and the Manuscripts and Special Collections, to which we will return later.

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Museum Lives

However, although museums and other collections represent a wealth of knowledge, this is often accessible only if mediated through people who are familiar with the collections.

Concern over loss of knowledge – as curatorial staff leave retire - is prompting a growing number of researchers to undertake oral history projects that seek to preserve cultural knowledge for the future.

Once such project was 'Museum Lives', a collaboration between Kingston University and the Natural History Museum that seeks to preserve the curators (less fatally the jar of pickled lizards to the right) so that their knowledge and experiences are available for future generations. A podcast about this project can be found  here.
Pickling Knowledge

The preservation of knowledge can be exceptionally important and of great significance for some of the issues that we have examined over the course of this module.

For instance, as we saw in chapter 6, our understanding of modern day over-fishing has been enhanced dramatically through archaeological studies of fish remains.

However, like cod, archaeological fish specialists are also an endangered species – at present, only the University of Cambridge has an academic fish specialist, Dr James Barrett. This means that only one person is available to train a new generation in the skills that have proven so vital for understanding fish stock.

In an endeavour to halt the growth of a skills gap, the University of Nottingham led an initiative to develop a new digital resource.
Archaeological Fish Resource

The Archaeological Fish Resource sought to make the knowledge of fish specialists sustainable by filming them as they gave instructional on fish identification, but also to make collections of fish remains sustainable through the creation of a digital skeleton reference of approximately 100 species of fish. Click on the red tabs to explore this resource

To access this resource, view the link below

http://fishbone.nottingham.ac.uk/
Nottingham's digital resources

Within Nottingham's School of Humanities there are many other digital resources that seek to sustain knowledge for future generations. One important resource is the Oath in Archaic and Classical Greece, which brings together ancient oaths in a single database.

These oaths, which at the time were a religious binding force that brought about social stability and harmony, are records of ancient morality on which it is interesting to reflect.

To access this resource, view the link below.

 http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/classics/research/projects/oaths/intro.aspx

But the jewel in the crown of Nottingham's digital resources is the University's Manuscripts and Special Collection. You should take some time to explore these exceptional digital materials. They include virtual art exhibitions, learning resources, and you can even turn the pages of a medieval manuscript.

To access this resource, view the link below.

 http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/manuscriptsandspecialcollections/exhibitions/wollaton/home.aspx
Looking back or looking forward

So, the Arts and Humanities are playing an increasingly important role in helping to make knowledge sustainable. Not all of this is 'backward looking' however,

Indeed, digital technology is becoming a stage where 'calls to arms' for the future can be made. For instance, as we saw in chapter 1, the collaboration between The Ashden Trust and Open University Culture and Climate Change brought together, artists, producers, journalists and academics from a variety of disciplines to map the role that culture had to play in climate change.

Recap on the discussion by clicking below on your preferred format:

Read

Listen
Open Access and Creative Commons

A very important aspect of all of these resources is that they are Open Access, or Creative Common, meaning that they are available free of charge and can be downloaded and re-used.

This must surely be the way forward and several scholars, such as  Alaric Hall from the University of Leeds, are exemplars of Open Access publishing, making sure that wherever possible their research is freely available so that all might access, and benefit from, their knowledge.

Conclusion

As we have seen throughout this module, important lessons can be learnt from the experiences of other societies, both past and in the present.

Disciplines within the Arts and Humanities have perhaps the greatest responsibility for researching and curating such cultural information. As arguably the most creative disciplines, the Arts and Humanities also have the skills to make this knowledge accessible and sustainable through a variety of media: writing, art, music but increasingly also virtually.

These resources are important not only so that people in the future might benefit from the knowledge they contain, cultural repositories serve a more fundamental psychological role: they ease the process of change.

Change –the very thing that has sustained human cultures over the millennia – necessitates that some traditions or practices are left behind. Extinction is not a pleasant concept and so change is often fought against. As we have seen in this chapter, the Arts and Humanities can ensure that cultures are sustainable, thus allowing them to evolve rather than face extinction.

Viewed in this way, our disciplines are at the very foundation of sustainability and we need to take up the challenge set us by the Culture and Climate Change: who will be the one to create the next work of art, music, literature or film that changes public perception and enables society to ease into a new direction?

Those of us that populate universities are supposed to be the 'bright' ones – if we cannot rise to the challenge and think of ways to tackle the issues that confront the planet and those that live upon it then perhaps we do not deserve the status that we have been given.

In the next chapter, which represent the final assessment, you will have the opportunity to influence the future.
Chapter 10. Conclusion and Assignment

In this lecture you will:

Recap briefly on the module

Consider the role that Universities should play in creating a sustainable future

Explore the University's sustainability literature. Your Assessment should critique the literature (finding both positives and negatives). Where you highlight a potential issue, try to find a creative solution to the problem that can be taken forward to the University's Sustainability team
Recap

In this module you have been introduced to:

• Multiple definitions of 'sustainability'.

• Examples of environmental and social issues that are invoked by this term.

• The idea that these issues are REAL, made clear when they are examined from the deep-time perspective that the arts and humanities provide.

• The suggestion that the actions of the West, and Western worldviews are unsustainable.

• The need for us to think creatively to find solutions.

• The probability that solutions are likely to come from the ground up, rather than top down.

• The belief that people within the Arts and Humanities can make a difference to creating a sustainable future for the world.
University as World in Microcosm

All universities (and large institutions in general) represent the world in microcosm and, as such, they can be sustainable or not.

As establishments that seek to produce the future generations of well-educated citizens, it falls to Universities to be at the vanguard of good practice in terms of sustainability.

And universities certainly appear to be taking this responsibility seriously: type 'sustainability' and 'university' into Google and you will see evidence of all the documents, working groups and 'hubs' that different institutions have established. This is certainly positive and, as this module has shown, it is necessary.

The University of Nottingham is up there with the rest.
Nottingham's Sustainability Resources

On the University website you will find a variety of statements of commitment to environmental sustainability and an environmental strategy document – click on the link below to access these resources (your assessment relates to these).

 http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/about/values/environment/index.aspx

There is also a considerable amount of information on the 'Impact' section of the website, where you can read information and watch videos relating to aspect of the University's work that are relevant to the issues covered in this module.

To view this video, click on the link below.

http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/impactcampaign/campaignpriorities/sustainablefutures/sustainable-futures.aspx
Just Rhetoric?

A recurring theme throughout this module is how power and politics lay behind many human actions, often resulting in decisions that have dire long-term consequences for people and their environment.

No-one would suggest that striving to be more sustainable could be seen as a bad thing but, to return to chapter 1 and deliberately misquote Jonathan Meades, we need to make sure that we are not following:

"That universally [university?] preached, seldom practiced, utterly trite and entirely unrealistic doctrine of sustainability"

We need to make sure that our University is practicing, in more than a "utterly trite" way, what it preaches. And it is this need that forms the subject of your assessment.
Your Assessment

For your assessment you should spend time reading the University's sustainability document and, in the light of what you have learning in this module and from reading more widely, you should:

• Critique the University's documentation, by which I mean consider what the University is doing well but also what it might be doing better.

• If you are able to identify an area for improvement you should think creatively about how the University could implement changes to redress the situation.

• Any suggestions for improvement will need to be well researched (perhaps drawing upon work at other Universities – this can be explored via the internet) and well argued, a key skill of Arts and Humanities students.

• You should bring together your critique and suggestions for improvement in a statement of between 500-1000 words.

• After submission and marking, the best statements will be taken forward to the University for consideration.

• If you are struggling for ideas, here are some questions (I do not know the answers as I have not done the research that is your job...).
What is the University's Worldview?

If you had to assess the University from an anthropological perspective as a form of cultural group, would you say the University considers itself to be part of Nature or is it separate from it?

Above image developed at the University of Nottingham
Natural Resources

• How does the University power itself? What energy supplies does it use?

• Does it produce/consume biofuels on any of its UK campuses?

• What are its approaches to water supply – are there any water harvesting mechanisms on campus?
How much 'Waste' Does the University Produce? What Kinds and What Happens to it?

With this question in mind (and in fact for all of these questions) it is interesting to consider what is happening at other universities. For instance at Bradford. Please follow the link below to watch the video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4acK_2H7vs
Where Does the University's Food Come From?

• Does Nottingham have food security?

• Are its supplies locally sourced? (Is anything produced on campus?)

• What are the food-miles?

• Are meats from free-range animals?

• Are fish sustainably sourced?

• Does local wild food feature on any menu? Would students eat it if it was available?

• Is anything organically grown or GM – does it matter anyway?

• Are products Fair Trade?
What Does the Campus Landscape Represent?

If landscape is one of the most important historical documents, what does the campus reveal to us about the University's sustainability credentials?

Is the University a force for sustaining people and knowledge?

There are examples of excellent practice, such as the Nottingham University Samwoth Academy (see video below) and the other resources considered in Chapter 9, but there is always room for improvement, as work continues to be undertaken curating the priceless Natural History Collection.

To view this video, follow the link below

 http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/impactcampaign/campaignpriorities/nurturingtalent/nurturing-talent.aspx
Have Your Say

email: sustainability@nottingham.ac.uk

Once you have completed your statement, submit it for marking. The course convenors will then review all the statements and choose the best to take forward to the Sustainability Team for consideration.

It is our hope that your ideas, formulated as part of this module will help to make the University a better place and give you the confidence to come up with creative solutions in the future.
