Nature vs Natural Resources

The concept of “Nature” differs across cultures, geographies and historical times. In the Global North, we mainly understand Nature as a source of entertainment, an inspiration for art and culture but most importantly as a resource that can be exploited for human benefit. In this course, we restrict our focus to the Western understanding of “Nature” as “Natural Resource” since it best reflects the way our civilization relates to the global environment and the problems and opportunities this conception entails.

However, even in this cultural environment, the idea of Nature has undergone several transformations: for instance, the conservation movement up until the 1970s was shaped by so-called “biocentric values” meaning that “biologic” elements such as forests, waters, soils, and wildlife were deemed worthy of preservation in their own right. With the 1980 ‘World Conservation Strategy’, relevant organisations such as the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), World Wildlife WWF, and United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), shifted towards more “anthropocentric values”.

The concept of ‘sustainable development’ appeared for the first time in this Strategy in which “Nature” turned from a treasure to be preserved to a resource to be ‘exploited’. Even if sustainability was presented as an ideal balance between environmental, economic and social concerns, in fact the concept of sustainability shifted focus of priority from nature to development. This led to the reinterpretation of nature as capital (Fischer and Hajer 1999) and made it possible to compare natural capital with economic capital with the aim to combine the two in an optimal fashion. While contributing to unprecedented economic progress, this conceptualisation of nature, inspired in economic principles, has been often criticised: it has been associated with the environmental degradation, extinction of species, increasing global inequality, conflict and exploitation of indigenous communities (UNEP 2019, Martinez-Alier 2014). Efforts are currently made by the global community to palliate this negative path and find more balanced ways to relate to “Nature”. This course will provide a few hints on these strategies.

However, it is important to mention at this point that there are alternative ways of imagining and relating to Nature, especially in the Global South. A good example are Bolivia and Ecuador where Nature is not considered an object but a subject of rights, included in the constitutions of these countries. For the first time in history, Nature is seen as a legal entity, stipulating its right to an integral respect for its existence and for the maintenance and regeneration of its life cycles, functions and evolutionary processes.

This reform is inspired by the indigenous philosophy of Buen vivir (Spanish for “Good living”) which puts the idea of harmony with Nature on centre stage. In the Global North, this conception resonates, for example, with the Degrowth movement (D’Alisa et al 2015)1, which challenges the capitalist notion of progress, driven by technology to produce endless economic growth. Why is this important? Because if one is interested in “natural” solutions to environmental problems such as climate change or the degradation of the biosphere (see Mandatory reading 2), one cannot forget the big picture, where nature, culture, politics and socio-economics issues are intimately related.

To summarise: while “Nature” is a wide concept which is understood in different ways in different places, cultures and histories, a “natural resource” reflects the Western, anthropocentric concept of Nature as capital, which can be exploited for the development of human civilization, where development2 is understood predominantly through material consumption and accumulation.?

Extract from the course: NATURE-BASED SOLUTIONS (NBS) FOR CIRCULAR CITIES, brought by https://circular-city.eu/

Authors:

Alexandra Popartan1, Ignasi Rodriguez-Roda1, Joana A. C Castellar , LEQUiA. Institute of the Environment, University of Girona, Spain. Catalan Institute for Water Research (ICRA) and University of Girona, Spain.??