Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
combination of commercial networks and resource availability focused within the
British Isles, which allowed for a high wage and cheap energy economy. And this
combination was assembled also thanks to a persistent and successful pursuit of
military power.
The military aspect of the question leads directly from economic growth towards
the contemporary experience of underdevelopment. The
of indus-
trialization entailed many different and persistent impacts upon peoples, commu-
nities, nations and landscapes of many non-European countries, usually not taken
into account within the history of growth of the developed regions of the World.
These external impacts of modern economic growth in Western countries deeply
affected the subsequent historical path followed for the rest of Humankind. Not only
were their lands
'
ghost acreage
'
ssured by mines or plantations that spoiled natural resources and
left the burden of heavy pollution everywhere, but their social lives were distorted
as their institutions were submitted to foreign colonial or neo-colonial rules.
59
As
Ramachandra Guha and Joan Mart
nez Alier have pointed out, the popular resis-
tance to the exploitation of their natural resources, destruction of their modes of life,
and externalization of ecological impacts by the rich, has been the true origin of
contemporary environmentalism, often known as the environmentalism of the
poor.
60
í
2.6 Land-Use and Livestock Breeding as a Crucial
Metabolic Hinge for Yield Increase
Precisely because the natural resources required by industrialization in the United
Kingdom soon surpassed the bio-capacities of the British Isles, they exercised an
increasing series of pressures upon the rest of the World. While in many under-
developed regions these mainly entailed a set of dif
culties and distortions, in other
parts of the World a combination of pressures and incentives became apparent
which might produce different outcomes, depending on natural and social
endowments, institutional settings and public policies, together with the role
assigned to the region in the global division of labour established by the British
economy.
61
The convergence path followed by the small but growing group of
developing nations, and the under-developing divergence of the rest, both ensued
the beginning of a Schumpeterian-type of economic growth under British leader-
ship. What were the reasons behind the enduring fortunes of some, and misfortunes
of many others? Once again, this brings the research back to the Malthusian-
Ricardian constraints that were tightly related to the prevailing land-labour ratios.
59
Gadgil (
2000
) and Gadgil and Guha (
1993
).
60
Guha and Mart
í
nez Alier (
1997
).
61
Warde (
2009
).
