Landscapes Lost and Found - Agri-culture: Reconnecting People, Land and Nature - page 10

experiment with modernism. Yet, productive commons persist in many
parts of the world.
In some places, the loss of local institutions has led to further natural
resource degradation. In India, management systems for common property
resources have been undermined, a critical factor in the increased over-
exploitation, poor upkeep, and physical degradation observed over the past
half century. As local institutions have disappeared, so the state has felt
obliged to take responsibility for natural resources, largely because of a
mistaken assumption that resources are mismanaged by local people. This
solution is rarely beneficial for environments or for poor people. A key
question, therefore, centres on how can we avoid this double tragedy of
the commons, in which both nature and community are damaged. It is
in precisely this area that there have been so many heroic transformations,
and why there is increasing hope now for a new future for agricultural and
food systems. 18
On Shaping and Being Shaped
Some may feel there is little value in connecting us to the land and nature.
Is it not just something for indigenous people or remote tribes? What
possible meaning or value can come from an abstract idea such as connect-
edness to nature? Firstly, even in our modern times, we as predominantly
urban-based societies never seem to get enough of nature. People in cities
and towns are wistful about lost rural idylls. They visit the countryside
on Sunday afternoons, or for occasional weekends, but on returning home,
often feel that they should have stayed. Membership of environmental
organizations in industrialized countries has never been higher and is
growing. In many developing countries, city people do not just go to rural
areas for the experience - they return to their home farms. If you ask urban
dwellers in cities from Nairobi to Dakar: 'where do you live?', they likely
as not will give the name of their rural village or settlement rather than
the city. Their family still farms; they earn in the city to invest in the farm
and its community. Here the connectedness is tangible.
Yet, an intimate connection to nature is both a basic right and a basic
need. When it is taken away, we deny it was ever important, or simply
substitute occasional visits and personal experiences. But it is still there,
and it is valuable. Is it any wonder to discover that the gentle opportunities
afforded by urban community gardens have brought meaning and peace
to many people with mental health problems? For all of our time, we have
shaped nature, and it has shaped us, and we are an emergent property of