17 Traditional & Modern Methods of Resource Consumption in different Geographical Regions

Mr. Dhiren Borisa

Learning Objectives:

After studying this unit you should be able to:

• Broadly contextualize the issues around resource consumption and relationship with carrying capacity and need for ecological prudence
• Have an overview of the global resource consumption
• Understand the ‘tradition’ and ‘modern’ in the resource management practices and prudent ecological practices

Keywords

Resource consumption, Ecological Prudence, Overconsumption, Traditional and Modern Resource Management

1.  Introduction

We currently struggle within the fit of dwindling resource base and rising population sizes. This relationship is peculiar and geographically representative of mismatch between the scarce resources and their carrying capacity, and population and burgeoning levels of economic and social inequalities. The question we raise here is that of consumption of resources that on one hand, stands on the cultural idea of what qualifies as a resource – be it land, water, forest, energy or even humans producing specific geographies, flows and relationships across diverse societies from hunting-gathering to industrial and consumerist. On the other hand, raises questions on over and under-utilization of resources levelling cries for sustainable usage and ecological prudence keeping current and future generations in mind.

This narrative is also about the ownership of resources, the common pool of resources, the question of access to them, the social relations within which the extraction and utilization operates, the geographical backdrop of the terrain and resources available with their finiteness, and modes of consumption and management. In the current section, we briefly navigate through these questions to comment upon the changing resource consumption practices both traditional and modern and the synthesis of the two raising questions on their sustainable usage.

2.  Need for Ecological Prudence: Carrying  Capacity and Overconsumption

Gavin Bridge (2009) in his paper “Material Worlds: Natural Resources, Resource Geography and Material Economy” argues that we live in a material world. Our economies if not exclusively but fundamentally depend on the material transformations of our natural resources both biotic and abiotic into a vast array of commodities and by its extension into waste products. From the food we eat, to drinking water or various kinds of substances, a soap or the spoon etc. are all parts of this consumption chain. He writes, this extraction, production and consumption produces paradoxes and contradictions.

Many resources we extract and consume have a finite life, are unevenly distributed, and mostly non-renewable and suffering immense pressures of population. The concept of carrying capacity suggests the maximum population that the earth’s resources can survive indefinitely given the available pool of food, habitat, water and other needs. With population size crossing over 7 billion mark with a probability of reaching the 10 billion mark with the middle of the century, and unevenly distributed global resource base and political economy of resource extraction, exchange and consumption, there is a crisis of over consumption. Over consumption refers to a situation of depleting resource bases and environmental degradation emerging out of prolonged extraction of finite resources beyond their capacity of sustainable replenishment. As Mahatma Gandhi famously noted – ‘The earth has enough for human needs but not for human greed’. According to a report on resource over consumption by Sustainable Europe Resource Institute (SERI), Austria and GLOBAL 2000 (Friends of the Earth, Austria) in the year 2009, the human use of earth’s resources had grown over 50 percent over a period of three decades with likely to reach 100 billion tonnes per year of raw material extraction by 2030 from 60 billion tonnes per year in 2009.

Thus, we witness across the globe changing climatic patterns, depleting fresh water reserves, shortages of food supplies with challenges to fertility of land, fuel shortages and uneven supplies, endangerment and extinction of several species of flora and fauna that inhabit the earth alongside us. The coping abilities to such changing terrain of resource consumption is also variedly marked impacted through the geographies of socio-economic inequalities and levels of development. Areas rich in resource base but lacking technological knowhow of extraction as noted ‘modern’ hinting towards ‘scale’ of extraction and production have historically fallen prey to areas that grow rich at the cost of them. Richer high consuming countries import a great amount of resources from Poor low consuming countries. Despite growing resource efficiency through technological advancements, our economies have outgrown the efficiency increments burdening resource bases and expanding global injustices. The sufferers of the aftermath of the resource over consumptions and the impacts of its prolonged continuation are also more likely be these areas marked by poverty and inhabited by poor people. Economically rich industrial countries such as of North America and West Europe consume up to four to eight times more per-capita resources as compared to the poorer agriculture dependent counties of Africa, Latin American and Asia and thirty times over the hunting and gathering societies (SERI, 2009). This state of over-consumption directs towards the question of ecological practices linking the issue to the management of resources and modes of the same. Rather than aiming at returning to Stone Age on minimal resource consumption, the attempts are towards efficient use of available resources by better modes of management and reducing ecological footprints. Ecological footprint refers to the impact of human activities on available productive land and water resource required to supplement a human survival and the generated waste products.

3.  A brief Overview of resource consumption

The history of resource consumption is also the history of human development from simple hunting and gathering societies with low population base to complex agricultural and industrial societies with burgeoning population growth rates, increase in technological knowledge and increase in demand and dependence on finite available resources. During the course of this history, the nature of resources used have also undergone a drastic change determining what qualifies as a resource, with the discovery and usage of fossil fuels dramatically changing the course of human resource consumption history post the industrial revolution. The following table represents the per-capita resource use across different societies.

Global Consumption of Natural Resources between 1980 and 2005

Source: SERI Report on ‘Overconsumption? Our Use of World’s Natural Resources’, 2009, p 9.

The above figure reflects the global consumption trend of resources that have seen a tremendous growth across the period. This increase is variedly represented across geographical regions of the world with startling gaps between the developed and developing countries. This is also representative of gross lifestyle differences among these countries in terms of cultures of mass-consumption, with Europe, North America and Oceania showing higher rates of resource extraction, import and consumption compared to African, Asian and Latin American Countries. African Countries use on an average 10 Kg of resources per person per day while they extract 15 Kg per person per day. The excess being exported to feed in the needs of the economically rich countries. Similarly, Asian countries have their extraction and consumption rates equal at 14 Kg per person per day compared to consumption of 90 kg and 43 Kg in North America and Europe respectively. With more involvement of State and large corporate houses in the matters of management of resources and usage as compared to the indigenous modes of community-based relationship with nature and resources, ecologists suggest a grim future ahead.

4. What are the Traditional and Modern Modes of Resource Consumption?

In the light of the afore-mentioned geographical unevenness in the consumption of resources and their scarcity and the future needs in sight, one leads the argument towards management of resources. What are these traditional and modern modes of resource consumption and management? The question is of ecological prudence – the relationship between the human and non-human environment and on what ideological grounds or world-views are such distinctions produced. It is also about restraint prescriptions on resource extraction and usage and a synthesis of traditional and modern wisdom. Madhav Gadgil (1998) in his paper “Traditional Resource management Systems” argues that the distinction lies between the way relationship between resources and human usage is mediated. While within indigenous communities with smaller scale of practices and closely-knit networks, the conceptualization of nature is often synonymous with the human rather than a distinct position, on the other hand, the modern scientific methods build on consumptive and extractive relationship with the environment producing a distance between the human and the non-human.

The distinction between these two modes of consumption is in terms of networks, institutions, knowledge, and practices. Traditional practices build through the ‘folk ecology’ producing interactive relationship between human and non-human environment often questioning this forced distinction. These relationships are heterogeneous and contextual of the immediate environment conditions, and perceived and experienced relation with resource use and their fluctuations. For instance, due to perceived fluctuation in resource bases certain hunting and gathering communities impose restraints on the use. On the contrary, certain other communities with advanced technological expertise and perception of resource as expanding are less likely to impose restraints on consumption. An example of such can be the early industrial societies during the times of colonial expansion when the new lands were being occupied to feed in the consumption chain. Similarly, perception of resources as finite and sensitive to further utilization to the effect of diminishing may provoke restraints on extraction and consumption and need for sustainable usage as we are experiencing today.

Traditional practices often involve community-based management with local institutions for governing common pool of resources amidst their scarcity. The effectiveness of such mechanisms is thus more due to these institutional frameworks rather than super-abundance of resource base. As against this, ‘modern’ represent a monolithic vision that produces homogenous perspectives on resource management governed through institution of State.

The distinction between traditional and modern is also of scale, empirics and testability of management practices. It is also a representative of the perceived and experienced relationship between the human and non-human environments. Whether an active difference is forged between users and resource base and there is no separate conceptualization of nature. Where every part of the natural environment including humans share equal stake. This takes shape in form of cultural and religious significations in which trees, animals, mountains and water bodies etc. take form of a significant part. This relationship which Gadgil (1998) speaks of as “the community of beings” as opposed to the idea of “power of the dominion”. The former takes form of intimate relationship of communities with nature with designation of certain areas, species as sacred. One example can be the Niyamgiri Hills of Orissa where the resident Dongria Kondhs treat the mountain as sacred and provider of resources including water, forest, food etc. as against the immense Bauxite reserves that have attracted Odisha State Mining and UK based corporation Vedanta leading to protests and resource conflicts. The distinction between traditional and modern is also then the economic relationship of production and consumption and logic behind such productions of profit maximisation and efficient usage.

The following table represents some traditional modes of resource consumption and related areas.

     5. Restraints on Resource Consumption

Gadgil argues that overconsumption of resources across different geographical regions can be tackled through following certain thumb rules of sustainable use involving both traditional and modern methods. The synthesis involves following principles:

1. Maintenance of resources above threshold level by providing total protection to certain habitat patches.
2. Protection of certain species to minimize community level disruptions.
3. Protection of certain species at certain stages of life history to maintain resource population and complete protection at certain times.
4. Organize access to resource use

He proposes restrained use practices under following broad categories:

1. Imposition of Quotas
2. Decline in resource densities and abandonment of harvesting resources
3. Abandonment of extraction from certain patch if yields start diminishing
4. Abandonment of harvesting certain species
5. Fallowing of land or resource by abandoning harvesting during certain seasons or years
6. Prohibition of harvesting certain species
7. Ban on certain harvesting measures
8. Strict regulation around harvesting areas through protected patches

  Parallels between Traditional modes of resource consumption and management and modern scientific modes

Summary

Traditional modes of resource consumption involve folk classification of landforms into scared patches, common resource areas and management of the same, shifting cultivation and jhuming, restraints and time of consumption through fallowing of land and protection of species, interlinkage of livelihood, economy and culture of the locality etc. Most of this knowledge is generational and proven through practice by localised communities with close knitted networks. However many of them have suffered breaking down through advent of cash economies and corporate and state management of resources which works at widening the gap between man and nature through a monolithic vision of consumption of resources and their management. With growing social complexities and economic demands with ever-increasing population, these traditional modes are insufficient in themselves to help resolve the crisis of overconsumption and thus lead to prudent ecological practices. An integrated approach is required between the traditional and modern modes of resource conservation to ensure sustainable use amongst growing population demand and resource scarcity. Traditional wisdom is likely to compliment modern technology and thought to expand outreach and better governance of resources keeping contextual factors in mind and work towards effective sustainable practices.

References

• Bridge, G. (may 2009). Material Worlds: Natural Resources, Resource Geography and Material Economy. Geographical Compass, 3(3), 1217-1244.
• Descola, P. (2005). Beyond nature and culture. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Gadgil, M. (1998). Traditional Resource Management Systems. In B. Saraswathi (Ed.),
• Lifestyle and Ecology (pp. 5-26). New Delhi: Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts.
• Glassow, M. (1978). The Concept of Carrying Capacity in the Study of Culture Process.
• Andvances in Archaeological Methods and Theory, 1, 31-48.
• Mohiuddin, M., & Alam, M. K. (2007). Opportunities of Traditional Knowledge in Naturall Resource Management Experiences from the Chittagong Hill Tract, Bangladesh. Indian Journal of Traditional Knowledge, 10(3), 474-480.
• SERI, GLOBAL 2000. Austria, & Friends of the Earth, Europe. (2009). Overconsumption? Our Use of the World’s Natural Resources (Rep.). doi:https://www.foe.co.uk/sites/default/files/downloads/overconsumption.pdf