Reconciling Nature and Culture in a Global Context? - Rainforest ...

Reconciling Nature and Culture in a Global Context?Lessons from the World Heritage Listtaxa. Emphasis upon nature’s ‘balance’ in evolutionary terms underscores criterion (i) and(ii) of the Convention’s Guidelines and also the scientific response to them contained in theAustralian Government’s nomination document. As a vast natural expanse of evolutionaryresidues (Figure 1), the rainforests of North Queensland are akin to the monumentallandscapes of an ancient past, represented by Angkor, the Historic Centre of Rome, and anumber of other World Heritage cultural properties.Critical to the idea of a balanced nature resulting from continuous evolutionary processes isthe concept of an ‘untouched nature’, where evidence of human intervention is either ignoredor downplayed so as not to detract from the area’s pristine ‘natural’ values. This last point isparticularly apparent in the way European occupation of the wet tropical rainforests isbrushed aside in three paragraphs in the nomination document. European, as opposed toAboriginal occupation is obviously regarded as negatively impacting upon the ‘natural values’and ‘balance’ of the region. Notwithstanding more than a hundred years of Europeansettlement and at least 40,000 years of Aboriginal occupation, there are numerous examplesin the nomination document and in the supporting reports where the region’s tropical forestsare described as ‘pristine’ or in ‘virgin condition’ (ibid: 15).The notion of nature conveyed in the DASETT report as ‘pristine preserved parts’ harks backto Enlightenment ideas where “the ‘natural’ was the appearance of the non-human in thepresences of any animals, plants and landscapes beyond human control” (Luke 1995: 11).As Luke observes, these “Edenic myths of exceptionalistic purity” (loc. cit.) also informedearly conservation efforts, and are still apparent in contemporary environmental movements.Given the key role of conservation groups in ‘securing’ the Wet Tropics, with the resultantbattle lines drawn around natural zones without a discernable human presence, it is not sosurprising that this particular view of nature is kept alive in the nomination document.J. Baird Callicott and others suggest that the comprehension of nature in terms of an ‘entityoriented’evolutionary ecology, in which humans are depicted as a “destructive force ofchange external to the biota” (Callicott et al. 1999: 24), constitutes a particular school ofconservation philosophy, namely, ‘compositionalism’. According to these authors, ‘biologicalintegrity’ and ‘biological diversity’ are key normative concepts in the glossary ofcompositionalism, while ‘ecological restoration’ and the ‘preservation’ of biological diversityare critical conservation objectives associated with this school of thought (ibid: 25).While the view of nature presented in the Wet Tropics nomination document has much incommon with the philosophy of compositionalism, the biodiversity-centric vision of nature,which now dominates environmental and scientific discourses is not readily apparent. Theview of nature presented in the document largely conforms to the prevalent construction ofnature before it was declared ‘dead’ in the late 1980s and early 1990s (McKibben 1989;Merchant 1990). Prior to the ‘death’ of nature, conservation efforts were directed towardsprotecting “untouched and undisturbed expanses” (Luke 1995: 13), some of which haddubious ecological worth.In keeping with the concept of nature as “acceptable appearances and preserved presences”(Luke 1995: 14), the nomination document provides a detailed inventory of endemic species,accompanied by photographic evidence of the ‘reality’ of the nature so memorialised. Asthese lists suggest, ‘nature’ is commonly presented in the nomination document as a thingthat “really exists out there in the world” (ibid: 12) and is thus a discernable and valid objectof scientific study. In other words, nature is seen as something which is ‘found’ or‘discovered’, rather than something “that itself requires explanation” (Castree and Braun1998: 17). In keeping with this ‘entity-oriented’ stance, so-called ‘natural values’ areregarded as an inherent property or quality of the geographic features and speciesdescribed, rather than part of the beliefs and practices associated with a group or a society ata particular point in time. In many respects, how society views nature is in part a function ofhow society has affected nature. Nature and the cultural conceptions of nature develop7