Conservation and Sustainable Use of the Biosphere - WBGU

E 3
Focal issues
E 3.1
Perception and evaluation
E 3.1.1
Introduction
For millennia, human beings have been shaping their
environment and changing natural conditions
according to their needs and interests. If the call for
sustainable development is accompanied by a desire
to reflect on and change mankind’s current relationship
with nature, it is necessary to analyse in more
detail the factors that determine this relationship.
From this analysis, two things emerge which must
definitely be considered in efforts to conserve the
biosphere:
• There is no uniform, universally applicable relationship
between humankind and nature; this relationship
has different regional and culture-specific
expressions.
• Apart from monetary interests in use, ideal, symbolic
and aesthetic aspects determined by cultural
factors are also key considerations.
E 3.1.2
People-nature interfaces
Human life and the natural world are interwoven in
a variety of ways. Three basic functions can be crystallized
out of these relationships (Markl, 1986):
• Human beings are products of natural evolution.
• They depend on the natural world and its products
in order to stay alive: nature is the foundation
which sustains all human life.
• Human beings use nature; in doing so they bring
about major changes, in many cases with destructive
force.
The way in which nature is used as a foundation of
life is determined both by natural conditions and cultural
factors (Fischer-Kowalski and Weisz, 1998).
These two elements are in a relationship of mutual
dynamic exchange. At the interface between culture
and nature, human actions can have a wide range of
impacts on biological diversity.
The constitution of the natural environment that
surrounds human beings provides the framework for
how they treat nature. For humans, different landscapes,
such as tropical forests, the Arctic, steppes,
savannahs, evergreen broad-leaved forests, oceans,
deserts, etc, represent different prospects for development
and special challenges which must be met if
they are to survive there (Bargatzky, 1986). However,
human development is not exclusively dictated by
the natural habitat; there are also many opportunities
to interact with this environment. For this reason,
when we characterize the relationship between
humans and the environment we do not use the term
‘adaptation’ but culturally conditioned interaction
between humans and the environment. Human
beings can drastically alter their environment and
thus adapt the environment to their needs. This is
illustrated by cases from history, such as the conversion
of forest landscapes into arable and pasture
landscapes in Central Europe since the 10th century
(Gleitsmann, 1989; Section E 2.1). More recent
examples also provide evidence of this reciprocity,
for instance the conversion of rainforests into savannah
(Primack, 1993; Section E 2.2) or the diversion or
drainage of rivers and lakes with the resulting consequences
for the landscape (WBGU, 1995a). However,
less drastic examples of cultural landscape
shaping can also be cited.Although Amazonian landscapes
appear ‘wild’ to Western Europeans, they
show evidence of much human impact as a result of
the cultivation methods of the Kayapó Indians in
Brazil, for example.They extend the vegetation, both
by planting nut and fruit trees in the forest’s various
ecological zones and by creating new woodland
islands in savannahs (Posey, 1982).
The significant influence of cultural factors can
also be seen from the example of the Meo and Karen,
two population groups local to the mountainous
region of Northwest Thailand. Both groups inhabit
the same biome (evergreen primary forest), but live
very differently (cultivation techniques, modes of