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Imperial power, both formal and informal, and research in the natural sciences were closely dependent in the nineteenth century. This book examines a portion of the mass-produced juvenile literature, focusing on the cluster of ideas connected with Britain's role in the maintenance of order and the spread of civilization. It discusses the political economy of Western ecological systems, and the consequences of their extension to the colonial periphery, particularly in forms of forest conservation. Progress and consumerism were major constituents of the consensus that helped stabilise the late Victorian society, but consumerism only works if it can deliver the goods. From 1842 onwards, almost all major episodes of coordinated popular resistance to colonial rule in India were preceded by phases of vigorous resistance to colonial forest control. By the late 1840s, a limited number of professional positions were available for geologists in British imperial service, but imperial geology had a longer pedigree. Modern imperialism or 'municipal imperialism' offers a broader framework for understanding the origins, long duration and persistent support for overseas expansion which transcended the rise and fall of cabinets or international realignments in the 1800s. Although medical scientists began to discern and control the microbiological causes of tropical ills after the mid-nineteenth century, the claims for climatic causation did not undergo a corresponding decline. Arthur Pearson's Pearson's Magazine was patriotic, militaristic and devoted to royalty. The book explores how science emerged as an important feature of the development policies of the Colonial Office (CO) of the colonial empire.
penetration of a Western economic process beyond as well as within the colonial context. 2 This chapter is primarily concerned with the political economy of Western ecological systems, and the consequences of their extension to the colonial periphery, particularly in forms of forest conservation. However, it also seeks to underline the importance to the latter task of understanding the evolution of new forms of
(see section 123 ) and the conclusion of several environmental treaties (see section 124 ). The UN Conference on Environment and Development (Rio de Janeiro, 1992). The Rio Conference led to: the adoption of a declaration on environment and development, together with a declaration on forest conservation and management
://eh.net/book_reviews/ecology-colonialism-and-cattle-central-india-nineteenth-centuryReview (accessed 5 December 2011). 17 Several scholars have made this argument. See for example Mahesh Rangarajan, Fencing the Forest: Conservation and Ecological Change in India’s Central Provinces, 1860–1914 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999 ); Ramchandra Guha, The Unquiet Woods
expanses in order to reverse the damaging effects of climate change. They campaigned for the US Senate, as well as the UN General Assembly, NGOs and others, to invest in forest conservation projects that could significantly reduce deforestation and mitigate the negative effects of climate change. Maathai’s meeting with US president and fellow Nobel Peace laureate, Barack Obama, was much like that with Gore. In 2006, Obama – then a senator – paid his first official visit to Kenya. Maathai and Obama held a public tree-planting ceremony at
of the French Army Forestry Service (AFS), whose difficult remit was the reconciliation of military felling and forest conservation within the army zone. Its role was one of coordination and control; it alone was permitted to designate and oversee felling in forests within the army zone. Regular military units, who were forbidden from exploiting forestry resources themselves, passed their requests to the AFS. It also policed forest conservation through such measures as banning soldiers 107 Mobilizing nature from tying their horses to trees and bivouacking in the
military operations in the event of war.14 Their role in forest conservation has prompted François Reitel to argue that army personnel unintentionally became ecologists ‘avant la lettre’.15 Can we treat army forest policies as a forerunner of twentiethcentury nature protection or even a militarized version of nineteenthcentury civilian efforts to protect valued natural sites and reforest Alpine and Pyrenean mountain slopes? Similarities are evident with nineteenthcentury civilian foresters and landscape preservationists. Most notably, neither sought to protect nature for
Some studies focus on different facets related to the making of the colonial forest policy, e.g. Richard Grove, Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and the Origins of Environmentalism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, Mahesh Rangarajan, Fencing the Forest: Conservation and Ecological Change in India’s Central Provinces 1860–1914, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996 and Amar Farooqui, Colonial Forest Policy in Uttarakhand, 1890–1928, New Delhi: Kitab, 1997. 55 What has been projected is not a ‘passive’ history but one that
while they remained divided over the CDM, linked to forests and sinks. For example, many ENGOs strongly oppose the inclusion of any projects concerning biological sinks in the CDM, while other groups strongly support the inclusion of sinks offered by forest conservation and restoration.10 As we shall see below, the ENGO position on emissions trading has changed significantly. Lack of direct influence can hardly be traced back to lack of participation at the international level. The number of all types of NGOs (including business and industry groups and ENGOs
important economic activity alongside tourism.11 The army sought to play down worries over the camp’s impact. At a meeting with local officials, Colonel Guéneau tried to soothe their fears, claiming that the churning up of land through shelling would attract game and that the army would support forest conservation (he predicted that soldiers would help put out forest fires and hinted that the camp’s authorities might conduct reforestation work).12 Given the failure to militarize Canjuers in the 1950s, Prime Minister Georges Pompidou and Minister for Armed Forces, Pierre