Course: WRITING 101-16 Saving Nature Saving Humans, Duke University
Instructor: Paolo Bocci
Peer Editor: Leona Lu
As the Editor in Chief of the National Geographic, Susan Goldberg attempts to paint a picture of how nature is well “respected” and “protected” by the human society. Nevertheless, she ends up putting we the humans on the top of the wilderness and natural beauty which she claimed to be cherished and esteemed. Goldberg’s vision of nature is a set of highly elitist views of preserving nature for certain people’s appreciation and enjoyment, neither for universal common good nor for protecting nature itself.
Firstly, Goldberg’s picturization of nature roots in the traditional artistic representation of landscapes in ancient and pre-industrial Europe. Neumann states in his book Imposing Wilderness that this tradition of picturizing nature as artistic landscape paintings and other art forms can date back to classical Greece to 18th century England. According to Crandell’s analysis of pictorialization of nature in 1993, these “idealized paintings of natural landscapes” served as the aristocracies’ sources and models of creating estate parks and reserves in their newly conquered lands (Neumann 2002). The phrase “hiked a landscape alive” is an undisputed manifestation of Goldberg’s conceptual connection of nature and artistic landscapes (Goldberg 2016).
Such idealization of nature as “pristine wilderness” leads to the neglection of local people’s connection with nature and the forceful elimination of indigenous presence (Neumann 2002). In order to preserve or restore the unsullied condition of nature, elites throughout the history have been attempting to remove, most often violently, the pre-existing human presence in nature. “A scanty population which struggles to compel the inhospitable soil to yield it a miserable existence” – this is how elites comprehend the relations between locals and nature (Jacoby 2014). The foundation and management of several WWF-funded national parks in Africa and Asia, which seek to maintain an “undisturbed natural wonder”, have led to many incidents where park guards and enforcers hurt, sexually abused, and even killed local residents in the name of preventing poaching and trespassing (Collier 2019). A more familiar case to Americans is the expulsion of Native Americans out of the Yellowstone. Not only in practical terms, documentations and literatures also play significant role of erasing indigenous presence in Yellowstone by “reclassifying inhabited territory as empty wilderness” (Jacoby 2014).
Secondly, Goldberg’s understanding of nature as tools for human leisure and entertainment derives from the upper-class European tradition of sports hunting in the wild. This tradition was then introduced to America notably by Henry William Herbert over the 19th century. As observed in Jacoby’s Crimes Against Nature, the establishment of the Adirondack Park in 1892 was followed by a tremendous emergence of urban upper-class sports hunters and leisure visitors in Adirondacks, which then greatly changed the socioeconomic pattern of the locals. Instead of “analyzing” or “reasoning”, it is after “canoeing”, “hiking”, and “playing” that Goldberg realized that nature should be preserved (Goldberg 2016). It is self-evident that enjoyment of people with higher socioeconomic status is her prioritized purpose of natural preservation.
These aristocratic perceptions of nature have impacts on deepening the socioeconomic gap within human society. The arrogance behind the upper-class nature “worshipers” shaped the nature they preserved exclusive to middle-class and lower-class populations, as they deemed that what the middle- and lower-class were having is “false nature” (Neumann 2002). Ramachandra Guha criticizes the American “deep ecology” preservationists seizing easily accessible and natural resources – such as soils, vegetations, games – from the hands of local residents to restore the wilderness where people with higher socioeconomic status can recreate and rejoice. Identical patterns can also be found in the establishment of Yellowstone, where local Native Americans were deprived of critical sustenance resources, simply for the sake of “people’s benefit”. Under such impacts, lower socioeconomic status communities have largely increased challenges of improving their living standards, and even their survival are at risk.
Thirdly, the elite groups’ control over environmental policy frameworks which Goldberg takes for granted coincides with the nature of colonialism and 19th century American territorial expansion. Without any reserve, Goldberg reveals the National Geographic’s strong political influence on the establishment of U.S. environmental protection agencies and policy institutions. In his book, Neumann mentioned that the artistic depiction of nature in both Britain and colonial Africa was highly influenced by colonialist politics, where the queen was “clear in her instructions” on how royal power should be represented in the paintings (Neumann 2002). Under such strong colonialist ideology, nature preservation is nothing but a political tool.
The above-mentioned political control extremely limited the locals’ participation and representation in the environmental governance institutions in their own homelands. Local Native Americans tribes were able to do nothing, since they have basically no comparative political advantage over the elites in Washington. They can only accept the fact that the federal government took away their daily food and energy sources in Yellowstone in the name of “nature preservation”. Many elite policymakers assumed that their decisions were beneficial for the locals. Upon establishing the Adirondack Park, the New York authorities believed that the locals would welcome their decisions for “the benefits that were sure to follow” (Jacoby 2014). Such benefits never outweighed the locals’ suffering from constrained access to resources and limited individual liberties and property rights. We can even discover similar patterns in contemporary ecological preservation arrangements in Africa: Fiore Longo observed that local residents and other stakeholders are not involved in the dialogues and conferences that decide their life and survival, but only white European “experts” hold their places.
Goldberg is simply one person under the vast dark cloud. It is a cloud of elitism, hedonism, and egotism that overshadows the people’s voice and wellbeing as well as nature’s true essence, whereas with the camouflage of “environmentalists”. If they cannot even truly fight “for the people’s benefits”, the ones more diverse and profound than recreation, how is it possible that we put our endearing mother nature in their hands?
This critical essay responds to “For the people’s benefit” by Susan Goldberg, the Editor in Chief of the National Geographic, on January 2016.
This essay has references from 6 external sources. Please see the original document to view the full list.
