Nature - autonomous learning

the ‘nature’ of geography 101influenced by the debates on ‘sustainable development’ – did take a‘dry green’ (or weak ecocentric) perspective on resources and asked fora more drastic alteration of how societies use their natural resource base(e.g. Adams 1996). Similarly, a number of human geographers becameinterested in ‘ecological modernisation’, which is the idea that advancedindustrial societies can, with proper governmental intervention and a shiftin societal attitudes, combine continued economic growth with prudentmanagement of the natural-resource base (e.g. Gibbs 2000). Figure 2.2 andTable 2.1 summarise how contemporary geographers study nature.Figure 2.2 Contemporary geography and the study of natureAnd today . . .?As the twentieth century has given way to the twenty-first, there are twonotable things about geography’s approach to the subject of nature. First,it’s clear that human and physical geography produce very different kindsof knowledge about nature – or, rather, about the very different thingsdesignated by that word. Physical geography’s broadly realist 8 approachremains focused on the environment, as it has been for decades – be it the