Agroecology and the Struggle for Food Sovereignty ... - Yale University

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agroecology and the struggle for food sovereignty
The Eco-Social Distress Syndrome
If we step back from the details of all the crises that seem to be converging on us, we
can see a pattern. The eco-social distress syndrome (EDS) is a pervasive and intensifying
dysfunctional relationship between our species and the rest of nature, expressed
in increasing demand on depleting resources, pollution, new and resurgent diseases,
climate change, growing inequality, increased vulnerability to disasters of all kinds,
loss of biodiversity, the erosion of our productive systems, and recurrent conflict
within our species. And since our world has been dominated by capitalism for the last
500 years, today’s crisis is both a generic crisis of our species and a crisis of world capitalism.
This is not the first crisis our species has faced in the last 50,000 years. But it is
more widespread geographically, penetrates deeper into the earth and higher into the
atmosphere, has more irreversible impacts, and impinges on more aspects of our
lives. When peoples of the past faced crises in their relations with their environments
and with each other, there were three outcomes. They could move to somewhere else
and continue more or less in their old way of life; they could change their way of life
and deal with nature in a new way; or they could fail and disappear, leaving us some
broken pots, arrowheads, and gravesites. But we have no place to go, and there may
be no one who will come to excavate our abandoned cities.
The Brazilian government made an important
statement by prohibiting logging of Castanheiras
do Pará, the trees that bear Brazil Nuts. In much of
Northern Brazil, these trees are of tremendous
economic importance. But as Levins emphasizes,
knowledge of the importance of these trees is not
enough without a meaningful change in practices
of consumption. Exponentially rising meat consumption
around the globe has initiated massive
land clearing in the Brazilian Amazon in order to
grow soy beans for animal feed. Here a newly
cleared soyfield surrounds a stand of Castanheiras
do Pará. These trees are unlikely to survive the
vast changes to their ecosystem. Photographer:
David McGrath.
Knowledge is Not Enough
For more than 2,500 years, observers have warned of the environmental destruction.
In ancient China, Meng Tzu (Mencius) warned of the deforestation of Ox Mountain
and called for conservationist forestry practices. In the Greece of the 5th century BCE,
Plato lamented the deforestation of Athens to build the navy. Today, scientists have
described the enormous impacts of our activities, but the international treaties at their
best have been feeble compared to the scale of the problems. We have to conclude that
knowledge is not enough, and ask “Why not?”
yale school of forestry & environmental studies