Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
material (used both on the construction of
houses and ships) (see
Chapter 5,
this volume).
Beyond this, however, forests also represented an
important source of fiscal wealth: a product that
could be taxed and traded in order to consolidate
a nation's wealth (Scott, 1998: 12). Scientific
forestry essentially enabled state systems to
effectively centralize knowledge about forest
resources and to predict likely shortfalls and
overproductions of timber. In order for this to
happen, Scott describes how scientific forestry
sought to effectively simplify forests and make
them more legible to state bureaucrats. This
simplification process was in part based upon the
planting of regimented forests, where trees were
planted in geometric patterns. These planting
systems made it much simpler to effectively
calculate the volumetric timber yield of any
government forest. This process also involved
ignoring the broader socio-ecological form of
woodlands. Scott (1998: 12) observes:
nation states not only enabled environmental
resources to be utilized and exploited in different
ways, but also changed the way in which the
environment was seen and understood.
7.3 THINKING ABOUT
STATE-ENVIRONMENT
RELATIONS: GREEN
ARBITERS AND
ECOLOGICAL LEVIATHANS
Having established the historical connections
that exist between the emergence of nation states
and changing human understandings and treat-
ments of the environment, this section briefly
considers available theories that can assist in the
interpretation of state-environment relations.
7.3.1 Anarchism and the ecological
good life
One of the earliest groups of theories that
attempted to analyse the relationship between
nation states and the environment was anarchism.
Anarchism is an interconnected set of political
philosophies that emerged during the nineteenth
century (although its basic premises are in many
ways as old as philosophy itself). As a movement
that rose to prominence during the nineteenth
century, anarchism emerged at a time when nation
states were growing in power and significance
throughout the world. The word anarchism
essentially translates as 'the absence of leader'
(Whitehead et al, 2007: 28). Anarchism is perhaps
best interpreted as a movement that seeks to
oppose the formation hierarchies of power, such
as those found within organized religion, science
and the nation state. Anarchists argue that the
formation of large systems of social organization
tend to diminish the liberty and freedom enjoyed
by individuals and result in the loss of creative
opportunities within human life (see Bakunin,
1990; Kropotkin, 1974). In regard to human-
environment relations, anarchists argue that the
formation of modern states has resulted in three
processes: 1) the environmental dispossession
of people who effectively lose access to once
Lurking behind the number indicating
revenue yield were not so much forests as
commercial wood, representing so many
thousands of board feet of saleable timber
and so many cords of firewood fetching a
certain price. Missing, of course, were all of
those trees, bushes and plants holding little
or no potential for state revenue.
Essentially Scott describes how the establish-
ment of nation states went hand-in-hand with the
simplification and standardization of the natural
world. These processes of standardization and
simplification did not apply only to forests but
also to water resources, agricultural land and
mineral deposits. Governments consolidated
their territorial power by developing ever more
sophisticated maps of their environmental
resources. These maps and surveys increasingly
deployed standardized volumetric measures in
and through which nature could be subject
to government calculation (see Braun, 2002;
Whitehead et al, 2007: 86-116). It is in this context
that it is possible to see how the formation of
