Conservation, ecological justice and harm to nature - Environmental Harm: An Eco-justice Perspective - page 84

Climate change as manifest in changed weather patterns, combined
with monoculture planting, may also have an impact on forest health
and wellbeing. For example, the mountain pine beetle outbreak in
North America has killed over 14 million hectares of mature pines in
Canada alone since 2000. This is due to the presence of an abundance
of mature lodgepole pine (as a result of forestry management practices),
the preferred host tree of the mountain pine beetle, and unusually
high beetle survival during a series of mild winters. Previously, harsher
winters and greater diversity of tree species had ensured that the pine
beetle was unable to spread across the landscape to the same extent
(UNEP, 2011: 50). One consequence of the pine beetle outbreak has
been to change the net carbon balance of Canada's forests, from that
of carbon sink to carbon source. In other words, forest-based climate
mitigation strategies are based upon sequestration of carbon within
'living' forests - the direct impact of the pine beetle outbreak was to
contribute to rather than reduce overall carbon emissions, from the
decay of the dead trees (UNEP, 2011).
land, property and the global commons
At the heart of many discussions of ecological justice is the question
of land and land use. To put contemporary disputes and discussions
into context, it is useful to briefly consider the nature of property as
a social phenomenon.
Laws relating to the protection of property are largely a modern
phenomenon and are closely tied to the evolution of capitalism as a
political and economic system. Before the seventeenth century there
were few goods to steal and most wealth was held in the form of
land. In Europe the class that owned the wealth also controlled the
administration of justice and the formulation of law. Its members
employed servants to protect them and their goods. Consequently,
they had little interest in developing property laws even though groups
lower down the social scale would have benefited from this, especially
those in trade, manufacturing, and farming.
The industrial revolution changed this by creating a new class of
industrialists for whom legal protection of property was essential.
Machinery production made portable goods available in large numbers
and expanded the opportunities for theft. A succession of laws designed
to protect private ownership was gradually enacted (Hall, 1952). Over
time the notion of individual ownership was extended to information
and ideas, so that knowledge and ideas could be owned.