Objective: Describe “The Tragedy of the Commons”
A shift has occurred in the view of common resources. In human past, people would take only what they needed. Today we have “the tragedy of the commons.” If people don’t understand the natural highs and lows of populations and the proper human response to those changes, humans could risk threatening the whole species. Indigenous community knowledge is hard won knowledge as they have come to learn this. People have long interacted with the environment and harsh conditions and have been tested. Mulder and Coppolillo explain that “[f]undamental to the tragedy of the commons is a social dilemma. Social dilemmas occur whenever an individual’s decision to maximize short-term self-interest leads to a situation in which all other participants in that person’s community are left worse off than feasible alternatives” (Mulder 131). In many indigenous communities, there isn’t a problem of people maximizing their short-term self-interests, as this is against their traditional practices.
Meda is critical of using an explanation like a “tragedy of the commons.” This idea separating people from each other and from the land. Owning land is a fictitious system and traditionally, no one owned resources. Resources are instead viewed as relatives and interdependent relationships built for survival. The appropriate concept, instead of ownership, would be guardianship or stewardship. Indigenous groups had areas of land and water that they would inherit the duty of protecting and cultivating. Rather than a “tragedy of the commons,” there is a natural law to understand need and dependence on the environment to sustain human life. In a culture with traditional indigenous values, there is no worry about a “tragedy of the commons.” They understand the dynamic system of relatedness between species and the importance of biodiversity. Rather than extracting resources from the environment, they cultivate all different kinds of species to work together in the environment. (DeWitt)
Objective: Explain the law of supply and demand
An indigenous perspective on supply and demand is that people today don’t understand the actual value or costs of what is utilized. Many people don’t consider the interconnectedness of the environment and how taking one thing affects many others. A Western view is to simply take from the environment when there is a demand for it. However, we may not see immediate consequences, overuse of an area will eventually crash the supply and ruin the natural regulation also known as natural law. (DeWitt)
A more appropriate way to think of this would be that Creator and Mother Earth provide for us. Our relatives: the plants, animals, minerals, and others look after us as well. When we are cultivating an area we observe cycles, meaning that eating habits, textiles, and trade items fluctuate depending on what is in abundance. Also, in a reciprocal concept, if we stop utilizing a certain item then its population diminishes or goes away, usually due to lack of protection and cultivation. A third aspect of indigenous supply and demand, is that if something is overharvested and or wasted then nature views that as providing too much and reduces what is available. Traditionally being wasteful is strongly discouraged, because it could mean that resource will become scarce in the future. While wasting is viewed as an inconsequential act to a modern person, it indicates that there are behaviors within the population that signify laziness and/or disrespect that would bring about the outcomes of an ecosystem crash. (DeWitt)
Objective: List the three differences between developed and developing countries
From an indigenous perspective, not all wealthy, prosperous, “developed” countries are heading in the right direction. Many developed countries have poor education about the environment they are living in, high levels of waste, and have large carbon footprints. They are consumerism based with their success tethered to exponential growth on a planet with limited resources. This is a recipe for failure. Developing countries still remember how to live Pre-Industrial Era and many of them are skipping directly to the technological era. In both developed and developing countries, a system of renewable energy and conscious resource usage is required to justly transition through the rapidly changing climate cycles. (DeWitt)
Objective: Explain what sustainability is, and describe why it is a goal of environmental science.
Sustainability is the concept of renewing what is used and keeping things at consistent levels. While sustainability is an admirable goal, we can learn from indigenous groups about the consistent cultivation of natural systems. With the understanding that the environment is constantly changing, it is important to work and live in harmony with natural cycles of expansion and contraction in abundance. Indigenous wisdom seeks to constantly learn and improve upon the environment and its yield: seeking long-term improvement rather than false short term benefits. One way is to pay attention to the health of the heard, following long-held knowledge like not killing the lead animal of a herd, which is the leader and remembers the migration routes, or not pulling the roots of a plant if the roots aren’t being utilized. Indigenous peoples harvest responsibly so that there will still be more to harvest later. (DeWitt)