Theological and Religious Approaches to Soil Stewardship - Principles of Sustainable Soil Management in Agroecosystems - page 295

property of this integration. In other words, most social systems have evolved an ide-
ological system over thousands of years, and when we examine it today, it is nearly
impossible to unravel exactly how it developed. This was the case for Lansing's water
temple networks of the Indonesian island of Bali, where the soil in terraced rice pad-
dies has been preserved through the ritual processes among decentralized water tem-
ples. Rappaport (1984) noted the importance of ritual symbolically regulating the
ecosystem, especially preventing the overintensification of agricultural production.
Equally, religion plays a key role in building soil. For example, the cerrado region
of Brazil where ultisols and oxisols predominate is only 20% of its original size
because it has been cleared along with the forests to make way for new forms of
agriculture. Japanese development projects along with world development agencies
have promoted and funded the development of large-scale farms in this area com-
posed mostly of cattle grazing, coffee production, and charcoal production, as well
as irrigated agriculture. Cerrado includes native plant and animal species, which
are adapted to the acidity and high aluminum and low calcium content of the soil
and thus have a better chance of succeeding, especially because they are good at
regenerating from roots (Durigan 1997). Cerrado consists of savanna, woodland/
savanna, and dry forest ecosystems, which may seem harsh by some standards but
biologically have high species diversity as well as endemism (species that are found
only within that ecoregion). Darrell Posey, an ethnoecologist and anthropologist,
researched how the Kayapo of Brazil were able to create patches of forest island
( apete ) in the open cerrado.
12.5.1 k ayapo s ustainaBle a ntHropogenic l andscape in B razil
According to Cooper et al. (2005) and Giannini (1991), when classifying natural
objects, the Kayapo divide nature into categories that are related to the domains of
the Kayapo universe: soil ( puka ), sky ( koikwa ), and water ( ngô ). The Kayapo associ-
ate specific plants and animals with the context of particular ecological zones. Each
ecological zone represents a system of interactions among plants, animals, soils, and
the Kayapo themselves. There is a continuum of zones from forest to savanna. The
village is the center of their universe, while the forest is an antisocial space where
people can be transformed into dangerous spirits. Their cosmology revolves around
the tension between social (village) and natural (forest). Accordingly, the Kayapo
have rituals and chants to transform the forest into their social area.
As Posey (2000) has pointed out, “perhaps the most exciting aspect of these new
data is the implication for reforestation. This indigenous example not only provides
new ideas about how to build forests 'from scratch,' but also how to successfully
manage what has been considered infertile.” The Kayapo were able to create value
to their environment symbolically, economically, and socially (Moore 2002) into
one where the plants and animals were more diverse, more locally concentrated, of
greater size and density, and more youthful and vigorous than they would be in a
forest that lacked these indigenous resource managers. They did this by using their
local knowledge of the microclimate and soils to transplant nondomesticated local
varieties (endemism) into wooded concentrations of useful plants (Posey 2000). It is
also related to their practice of transplanting termite mounds, ant nests, and forest