In other words, Motorola justified its continued purchase of coltan from the DRC—which
was clearly funding continued armed conflict in the region—by claiming that the real
reason conflict in the region continued was that armed groups in the DRC lived by the
law of the jungle. In other words, conflict in the region wasn’t Motorola’s fault but the
fault of uncivilized groups who still lived in a state of nature, or perpetual armed conflict.
A group’s supposed relation to nature then was used as justification for the continued
implementation of a policy (the purchase of coltan) that was known to degrade the
ability of people to realize their human rights in practice.
Overall, combined with the way the conceptual split of nature and society informs policy
decisions about conservation areas, this shows us how conceptualizations of the
environment affect peoples’ ability to realize their rights in practice. While such
conceptualizations can lead to the implementation of policies that restrict peoples’ ability
to access resources they need to survive, such conceptualizations can also lead to
direct acts of terror and torture that violate standards of human rights. The environment
then—at least our conceptualization of it—clearly affects the ability of people to realize
their rights in practice. As we’ll see in the next section, it’s not just our perceptions of the
environment and peoples’ relation to it that impact the ability of people to realize their
rights in practice. The actual materiality of the environment, or the physical environment
itself, is also deeply implicated in the ability of people to realize their human rights in
practice now and in the future.
Thinking of the Environment, Reconceptualizing Human Rights
As your assigned text by Banerjee (2008) points out, incorporating the natural
environment into conceptualizations of human rights has become increasingly
prevalent, and it is acknowledged as critically important.
One passage that I thought particularly powerful in this regard discusses Ken Saro
Wiwa, the Nigerian activist mentioned in Lesson 3. Banerjee notes: "In one of his letters
smuggled from jail, Ken Saro Wiwa, the late Nigerian activist, writer, and Ogoni leader,
said that the “environment is man’s first right. Without a safe environment, man cannot
exist to claim other rights, be they social, political." (page 166)
In other words, without a safe natural environment to live in, the realization of human
rights in practice is not possible. A safe natural environment is a prerequisite to the
realization of human rights in practice, not a secondary concern.
One example in which we can see the relationship between the natural environment
and the ability of individuals to realize their human rights in practice is the issue of
pollution. More specifically, the link between the environment and human rights can be
seen in the relationship between environmental pollution and health. Polluted
environments that promote the emergence of infectious diseases, respiratory diseases,
heart diseases, and various forms of cancer do not promote the realization of human
rights in practice. Instead, such polluted environments represent an explicit example of
how environments constitute a barrier to individuals' realizing their right to life.
Beyond the immediacy of the negative health consequences of environmental pollution,
the environment has another more long-term relationship with human rights.
Specifically, when we think about issues of environmental sustainability, it becomes
clear that the environment will be critically important for the realization of human rights
well into the future. When we think about the possibility that the environment will no
longer sustain life, or the amount of life that it currently sustains, we again see a link
between the environment and the realization of human rights. After all, if the
environment cannot sustain human life, humans cannot realize their human rights. It is
important to note that the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights directly
addresses neither environmental sustainability nor the environment in more general
terms.
With this in mind, it’s not surprising that the United Nations has increasingly begun to
focus on issues of environmental sustainability and how they relate to the realization of
human rights in practice. The potential and likely consequences of global climate
change have received a large amount of attention, because they are expected to have
dramatic
consequences on various issues related to sustainability. These consequences include,
but are not limited to, agricultural production of food, water availability, desertification,
and the flooding of coastal regions where people live.
For more on the relationship between climate change and human rights
follow this link to the UNEP's page on Human Rights and the Environment.
As you’ll see, a healthy environment capable of sustaining life is centrally
important to the continued realization of human rights in practice.
Correspondingly, it’s critically important to think about the potential
environmental consequences of climate change in relation to human rights,
because it will have direct consequences for the ability of people to realize
their rights in practice by affecting the environment’s ability to sustain life. In
fact, as you’ll see in the film The Island President, some people are already
facing the consequences of climate change—making it very clear that climate
change will, and in fact already is, having consequences for the realization of
rights in practice.
It is critically important to realize that, when thinking about human rights, we cannot
focus solely on humans and lose sight of the environments in which we live. As we
discussed earlier in this lesson, while we may tend to think of nature and society as
separate (Latour, 1993), being able to achieve our human rights now and in the future is
contingent upon an environment that is safe now and able to support life in the future.
Anything less means that people will not be able to realize their rights in practice.
In the next section, we will take a look at how communities have implemented what are
known as “toxic tours.” Returning to the concept of dialogue, we will see how toxic tours
act as a form of dialogue. From this, we’ll see how dialogue can effectively promote the
realization of human rights by promoting safe and sustainable environments.
Specifically, toxic tours bring attention to our differential positioning within the same
matrix of domination and illustrate how those in different social locations within the
matrix experience the consequences of our actions differently. In this case, such
consequences are cases of environmental pollution that have occurred because of
industrial growth, economic policies, and consumers’ decisions. Overall, this discussion
will bring attention to the potential of dialogue as a means to promote environmental
sustainability and, correspondingly, human rights.
The Case of Environmental Racism: Common Fate, Uncommon Barriers
to Realizing Rights, and the Power of Dialogue
While the assigned reading by Chiro (2003) is admittedly a bit dense, it provides a
perfect example of the ability of dialogue to promote the realization of human rights in
practice. As we discussed in the previous lesson on intersectionality, the potential of
dialogue to promote human rights is predicated on its ability to account for the different
barriers to the realization of human rights faced by people and groups of people in
different intersectional social locations. Further, the potential of dialogue to promote the
realization of human rights is also predicated on its ability to draw on the connections
that exist between people who, while facing different barriers to the realization of their
rights, are nevertheless connected because they exist within the same matrix of
domination. Dialogue represents a potentially powerful tool for promoting the realization
of rights in practice by utilizing and capitalizing on these connections, while
simultaneously acknowledging and accounting for differences between people. In Di
Chiro (2003), we see this potential of dialogue realized in the form of toxic tours.
Di Chiro (2003) pushes back against the notion that we all face common environmental
barriers because we face a common fate through the issue of global environmental
sustainability, and she displays through toxic tours the critical importance of
acknowledging the different, specific environmental concerns we face depending on our
intersectional social location. Although she acknowledges that global environmental
sustainability is a critically important issue, she argues that we all face particular
environmental concerns depending on who we are. Specifically, she uses the concept
of environmental inequality in tandem with environmental racism to draw attention to
this fact (page 215).
Critically, without taking account of these different environmental concerns and power
positions within the matrix of domination, policies may be implemented in the name of
all, when in reality we really aren’t all facing the same environmental concerns. Flying
under the banner of “the common good,” such policies (which often create conservation
areas that restrict peoples’ access to an area) typically justify marginalizing sizable
numbers of people for the “benefit of everyone.” In order to avoid the implementation of
such policies, which can actually result in even further marginalizing groups that are
already at a greater environmental risk than others, we must take into account the way
we face different environmental concerns.
Toward the end of her discussion, Di Chiro (2003) analyzes an "alternative form of
tourism," which emphasizes "the interrelationships between the environment and local
cultures."
Further, the tours are explicitly designed to promote awareness of the interconnection
between differently situated individuals.
In other words, toxic tours promote recognition that some individuals and groups are
exposed to more environmental risk precisely because some of us are shielded from
environmental risks due to our relative positions of power within the matrix of
domination. They enable those with a relative position of power to see the
environmental consequences of their privilege.
Through such processes of dialogue, we can more effectively promote environmental
sustainability and human rights. This occurs because we are forced to take account of
both (a) the different environmental challenges faced by groups positioned differently
within the matrix of domination and (b) our own roles in creating such different
environmental challenges. With this recognition, we may avoid generalized
environmental protection policies in favor of policies that take account of the diverse
experiences and challenges of various groups. Further, as a result of the dialogue and
with a greater awareness of the consequences, we can be compelled to change our
own actions. In summary, by promoting the recognition that we don’t all face the same
environmental concerns in relation to sustainability and that our own actions have
impacts on others’ environments, human rights are promoted through dialogue and
through the promotion of more appropriate and effective environmental policies and
personal actions.
Summary
Throughout this discussion, we have focused on the critical link between the
environment and realizing human rights in practice. Specifically, we explored how our
perceptions of environment affect the ability of people to realize their rights in practice.
Further, we also analyzed how the material environment directly affects the ability of
people to realize their human rights now and will continue to do so into the future.
Consequently, we analyzed a means through which environmental sustainability could
be promoted in a way that could avoid protecting the environment at the expense of
human rights. Specifically, we considered Di Chiro’s discussion (2003) of toxic tours and
their relation to the concept of dialogue. As we saw, promoting environmental
sustainability in a way that does not infringe on human rights is made more likely
through processes of dialogue that make us recognize how groups are interconnected
and face differential environmental risks accordingly.
Overall, we have continually seen the close link between the environment and human
rights. While the concept of human rights may compel us to forget about the
environment by focusing our attention on humans and not the environments in which we
live, it is critically important that we don’t lose sight of the environment. The environment
is important for the realization of rights now, and it will continue to be critically important
in the future.
Introduction
In this section, we will consider the relationship between the natural environment and
human rights. A relationship between the two may not be immediately apparent,
because the natural environment is often thought of as beyond, or outside of, social
concerns such as human rights (Latour 1993; Jerolmack 2012). As you read in the
assigned texts for this lesson, the natural environment is integrally important to the
realization of human rights in practice for many reasons—a point that has become
increasingly clear in the last twenty years to human rights activists and international
governing bodies such as the United Nations. We will focus on two instances.
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•
First, we will examine how our concept of the natural environment and peoples’
relationship to it affects policies that impact the ability of individuals to realize
their rights in practice. As we’ll discuss, the rationale and reasoning behind these
policies is clearly tied to the environment and specifically to our
conceptualizations of it.
Next, we’ll examine a more direct relationship between the environment and
human rights by looking at the issue of environmental sustainability. We’ll see
how the realization of human rights now, and in the future, is in fact completely
dependent upon the natural environment.
After examining these two links between the environment and the realization of human
rights in practice, we will return to a topic from the previous lesson. We will discuss the
power of dialogue to promote the realization of rights in practice by examining a strategy
used by communities to build awareness of and overcome what’s known as
environmental racism. As we’ve discussed, the strength of dialogue comes from its use
of the divergent viewpoints and experiences of intersectionally situated individuals to
overcome divergent experiences of oppression, instead of trying to erase them through
generalized activist strategies that do not account for the unique experiences and
challenges of various individuals and groups of individuals.
What is the Environment?
What comes to mind when you think of the environment or nature? You probably think
of trees, rocks, streams, birds, fish, deer—maybe a favorite state or national park like
the Rocky Mountains, an Ozark stream, the Florida Everglades, the Amazon rainforest,
or the desert Southwest. It’s likely that you didn’t think of cities, machines, or even
humans—and for good reason. As Latour argues in We Have Never Been
Modern (1993), one of the central features of Western thought is a tendency to think of
nature and humans, or nature and society, as distinct, separate entities. So it would
make sense for you to think of nature and society as separate, because that’s how
you’ve likely been taught. It wouldn’t be surprising if you thought of the environment or
nature as being “out there somewhere,” beyond the reaches of human society.
Critically, this is a false conception, because when we really think about the
environment and society, we quickly figure out that they’re not separate. Candace
Slater (2002) and Jake Kosek (2006) both show that nature and society are intimately
intertwined and tangled. Nature is affected by society, and society is affected by nature.
In fact, when we look at how nature and society interact, it’s unclear what’s “nature” and
what’s “society.” Where does nature stop and society begin? In fact, we see that they
shouldn’t be thought of as separate in the first place.
William Cronon’s discussion (1991) of the growth of Chicago displays this point well.
While Chicago is typically not what you picture when you think of the environment or
nature, we have to realize that the growth of Chicago would not have been possible
without nature or the environment. Further, the growth of Chicago had vast,
transformative consequences for the environment throughout the central United States.
Chicago’s growth would not have been possible without the environment for two
reasons in particular. First, in order to acquire the building materials necessary to build
the city itself, large amounts of natural resources were extracted from environments
throughout the central United States. Second, Chicago’s growth was predicated on its
position within the railroad network of the United States, which became responsible for
shipping natural resources. If natural resources were not shipped on the rails, Chicago’s
position on the rail network would not have mattered. These two facts show us that
Chicago’s growth was completely dependent upon the environment or nature. Chicago,
a city typically thought of as being separate from nature or the environment, really isn’t.
In fact, its existence is completely dependent upon nature.
Chicago’s growth also had immense, transformative impact on environments throughout
the United States. Not only did the environment affect Chicago’s growth, but Chicago’s
growth also affected the environment, both in immediate and far-reaching ways.
Immediately, the growth of Chicago led to deforestation in the region surrounding
Chicago, because any available trees were cut down to provide materials for building.
Further, massive amounts of pollution, including human waste and animal remains from
the large-scale butchering facilities, were simply dumped into the Chicago River.
Chicago’s growth also transformed environments throughout the upper United States,
Midwest, and even the western United States. Specifically, the growth of Chicago
created a market where large amounts of timber, grain, and livestock could be sold. The
creation of a market to ship goods long distances promoted a system of production in
which a region concentrated on one particular product and then shipped the product
long distances to sell at the central market (Chicago). Consequently, Northern forests
were logged, Midwestern prairies were tilled to grow grain, and Western prairies were
turned into grazing ranges to produce cattle. Of course, such production practices had
dramatic transformative consequences on the environment.
Thus, while Chicago’s growth depended upon the environment, the environments in
many regions of the United States were dramatically changed by the growth of Chicago.
In fact, the environments we see today throughout many parts of the United States
would not be what they are without Chicago’s growth.
We must realize that the environment is not separate from society, and society is not
separate from the environment. They interact to transform one another. Consequently,
as we’ll now discuss, we must consider how the environment relates to the topic of
human rights.
While human rights and the environment might not typically be thought of together—
largely because human rights are considered a social phenomena or a process set
apart from the environment—the environment is integrally important to the realization of
human rights in practice.
In the following examples, we’ll see how our perceptions of the environment and how
people relate to that environment affect the ability of policies to promote the realization
of rights in practice. We’ll also see that environmental degradation is directly related to
the realization of human rights now and in the future.
Conceptions of the Environment Guide Policy Decisions
One of the primary ways the environment affects the ability of individuals to realize their
human rights in practice is through our perceptions of what the environment is. This has
occurred historically in two primary ways.
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First, perceptions of the environment as pristine, without human influence, or
somehow beyond society have promoted the emergence of an environmental
“protection” model that has excluded people from resources on which they
depend for their livelihoods.
Second, perceptions of certain people as closer to nature and the environment,
and therefore more primitive, have justified extreme acts of colonization and
oppression in the name of development or progress. Together, both points show
us how perceptions of the environment and peoples’ relation to that environment
affect the ability of individuals to realize their rights in practice.
A good place to start is to consider how perceptions of the environment have guided the
formulation of conservation policies that seek to conserve or protect “environmental
areas.” It’s important to note that conservation policies such as those that establish
national parks or special protection areas are largely based on a perception of the
environment as separate and distinct from humans.
Importantly, the existence of such parks and wilderness areas is based on the original
conceptualization of nature and the environment as separate from society. Without such
a conception, it would not make sense to establish such parks, because the primary
rationale behind them is that the only way to save nature is by keeping people (society)
out.
Known as the “Yellowstone” model of conservation—because Yellowstone National
Park was one of the first examples of a conservation policy that explicitly sought to
exclude people from an area to protect its apparent pristineness—examples of such
conservation policies are too numerous to list (Stevens 1997). It’s important to note,
though, that such policies often lead to restrictions on individuals’ abilities to access
resources they need to survive. In other words, the institution of environmental
conservation areas often keeps individuals from accessing resources they were
depending on for their livelihoods. Examples of such consequences can be seen in
North America, South America, Africa, Asia, and Australia (Kosek 2006; Slater 2002;
Charnley 1996; Kajembe, Mbwilo, Kiduna, and Nduwamungu 2003; Malley, Taeb,
Matsumoto, and Takeya 2008; Ghate 2003; Lacy and Lawson 1997, respectively). See
references here.
The Ruaha National Park in Tanzania serves as an excellent example for two primary
reasons. First, promotional materials for the park play upon the idea of the separation of
nature and the environment from society. Second, because of the creation of the park,
individuals who were relying on resources within the park can no longer do so. The
Tanzanian government’s official national park Web site assures potential tourists that
Ruaha is an exceptional destination, because “Previous inaccessibility has ensured it
has remained virtually unchanged for centuries, unaffected by the ravage of mankind.”
(Tanzania National Parks 2008; Charnley 1996; Kajembe, Mbwilo, Kiduna, and
Nduwamungu 2003; Malley, Taeb, Matsumoto, and Takeya 2008). Overall, the creation
of the park, which was predicated on a vision of nature as separate from society and
humans, has resulted in the inability of a group of individuals to access the resources
they need to survive. See references here.
Consequently, the case is an example in which the perception of the environment has
led to the institution of a policy—in this case a national park policy—that has resulted in
the degradation of a group of individuals’ ability to realize their human rights in practice.
The institution of the park is seen as violating these rights, because it has led directly to
the institution of a barrier that prohibits a group of people from accessing the resources
they need to survive.
Perceptions of the environment haven’t just affected the realization of human rights in
practice by affecting conservation policies, although this has been one of the key
methods. Perceptions of the environment also affect the realization of human rights in
regard to how people are situated in relationship to the environment. Historically,
justifications for human rights violations have argued that certain people, or more
precisely groups of people, are somehow closer to nature. By being closer to nature, the
argument goes, such people should not be accorded rights. They should either be
“civilized” and brought into society from nature, or they can and should be exterminated
altogether, because they are conceptualized as below humans and therefore unworthy
of rights to begin with. In both cases, it is clear that conceptions of the environment, and
more specifically the relationship of specific groups of people to that environment, have
been used to justify policies of colonization and even genocide. In fact, oftentimes,
processes of colonization and genocide were carried out in tandem, predicated on
perceptions of peoples’ closeness to nature.
Michael Taussig provides a gut-wrenching account of how such processes have
occurred in Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man (1987). In his account, Taussig
shows how Spanish colonizers’ conceptualizations of nature, indigenous Colombians,
and the relationship between the two provided the rationale for the brutal colonization of
the Putamayo River basin of Colombia. Taussig displays how the Spanish colonials’
fear of the Amazonian jungle, combined with their perception of the indigenous
population as closer to or part of that nature, fueled egregious acts of torture and
violence. Importantly, as Taussig points out, without the fear of the indigenous
populations that was fueled by the fear of the jungle and the assumed relationship
between the jungle and the indigenous peoples, the acts of torture and violence would
not have occurred, because there would have been no rationale to carry them out. It
was only through the fear of the indigenous population that acts of terror and torture
were seen as not only justified but also necessary. It was only through the association
of the indigenous populations to the wild, dark, mysterious jungle that such intense fear
existed in the first place. Critically then, the torture and terror perpetrated upon the
indigenous population of the Colombian basin was predicated on the conceptualization
of nature (the fearful jungle) and a group’s relationship to it (the indigenous population
associated with nature).
Notably, we shouldn’t assume that the way people are conceptualized in relationship to
the environment or nature is no longer important for the realization of human rights in
practice. An excellent example can be seen in the international trade of coltan, a
mineral critical to the manufacturing of computer technologies. As we’ll see, connections
are made between groups of people and nature in order to justify actions, specifically
corporate policies, that do not lead to the realization of human rights in practice.
To simplify a complicated story, vast coltan deposits are located in a conflict-torn region
of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). To acquire the resources needed to
perpetuate the conflict (such as guns and ammunition), groups acquire and then sell
coltan to willing buyers. With the revenue from these sales, the groups can acquire the
resources to perpetuate armed conflict. Of course, the relationship between the sale of
coltan and the perpetuation of armed conflict is not unknown to the buyers of coltan.
Nevertheless, companies continue to buy coltan from the DRC, because it is available
at cheaper prices than anywhere else in the world.
Importantly, companies have received international pressure from activist groups to stop
purchasing coltan from the DRC. The companies' justifications for the continued
purchase of coltan illustrate the tight link between human rights and the perceptions of
various groups' relationship to nature. Nicole Shukin (2009) analyses Motorola’s
response to activists’ concerns over the use of coltan produced in the DRC. As she
points out, Motorola explicitly linked groups in the DNC to a conceptualization of wild
nature in order to deflect blame from their role in perpetuating conflict in the region.
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