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<meta content="Kirkpatrick, J.B." name="eprints.creators_name" />
<meta content="J.Kirkpatrick@utas.edu.au" name="eprints.creators_id" />
<meta content="article" name="eprints.type" />
<meta content="2007-09-06" name="eprints.datestamp" />
<meta content="2008-02-12T03:15:35Z" name="eprints.lastmod" />
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<meta content="The political ecology of biogeography" name="eprints.title" />
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<meta content="360000" name="eprints.subjects" />
<meta content="270709" name="eprints.subjects" />
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<meta content="Political ecology; growthism; biogeography; ecology; conservation; Australia " name="eprints.keywords" />
<meta content="The definitive version is available at www.blackwell-synergy.com" name="eprints.note" />
<meta content="The Senate of the Commonwealth of Australia occasionally sets up select committees that are charged
to investigate matters it perceives to be of moment for the nation. Occasionally I have been requested
to present evidence on nature conservation planning and resource development/conservation conflicts.
Senators in Australia expect to have six years in their plush seats in the half-buried parliamentary
building in Canberra, a relatively long secure tenure for politicians in a democracy. Although accustomed
to think in relatively long time lines for politicians, most of the senators listening to me speak appeared
slightly bewildered when I talked about the desirability of planning reserve networks that could help
carry our biodiversity through the next glacial (Kirkpatrick & Fowler, 1998), once they realized the
number of years involved. When Chris Harwood and I suggested to another select committee that an
appropriate solution to the running sore of the forest/development debate might lie on the demand side
through regulated reduction of the use of wood to produce advertisements and unnecessary packaging,
the senators obviously thought that we were away with the fairies - as indeed we were, in contrast to
the senators, who were living in the non-alternative fantasy land of the growthist paradigm, in which
consumption is an undisputed virtue.
If people survive on this planet during the commencement of the next interglacial period, only
120,000 or so years in the future, and the memory of our ultimately brief growthist society persists, I
prefer to believe that they will think of our time as one of hubric darkness, the great lesson in how not
to live on a planet. On the other hand history suggests that they might just be jealous of our free access to
an abundance of fossil fuels, minerals, biodiversity and productive soil and see the return of warmth and
rain as an opportunity for the return of economic growth based on newly-bared, glacially rejuvenated
soils and reinvading forests (Diamond, 1997).
While a career in science does not tend to induce certainty in anything, most, if not all, biogeographers
are moderately certain that it is not possible to use irreplaceable material resources at an
exponentially increasing rate on a finite planet for any protracted time period. Yet, the political, economic,
social and cultural constructs within which biogeographers work and play seem to be be based on an
assumption that never-ending growth is both possible and desirable. There can also be little doubt that
the natural world, a world that biogeographers tend to value highly, is receding at a substantial rate as
a result of the operationalization of the growthist assumption. In Tasmania, an island of 6.7 million ha
where I live, the last quarter century has seen approximately 0.25 million ha of native vegetation
destroyed (Kirkpatrick & Dickinson, 1982; Kirkpatrick, 1991, unpublished data), and Tasmania is a
relatively green backwater of the globally anastomosing growthist society. How do biogeographers
cope with the dissonance between the prevailing growthism and their knowledge and values? I advance
a tentative classification of response types below, unfortunately based on general observation over
thirty years of biogeographic practice, rather than rigorous, repeatable research." name="eprints.abstract" />
<meta content="2000" name="eprints.date" />
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<meta content="The Senate of the Commonwealth of Australia occasionally sets up select committees that are charged
to investigate matters it perceives to be of moment for the nation. Occasionally I have been requested
to present evidence on nature conservation planning and resource development/conservation conflicts.
Senators in Australia expect to have six years in their plush seats in the half-buried parliamentary
building in Canberra, a relatively long secure tenure for politicians in a democracy. Although accustomed
to think in relatively long time lines for politicians, most of the senators listening to me speak appeared
slightly bewildered when I talked about the desirability of planning reserve networks that could help
carry our biodiversity through the next glacial (Kirkpatrick & Fowler, 1998), once they realized the
number of years involved. When Chris Harwood and I suggested to another select committee that an
appropriate solution to the running sore of the forest/development debate might lie on the demand side
through regulated reduction of the use of wood to produce advertisements and unnecessary packaging,
the senators obviously thought that we were away with the fairies - as indeed we were, in contrast to
the senators, who were living in the non-alternative fantasy land of the growthist paradigm, in which
consumption is an undisputed virtue.
If people survive on this planet during the commencement of the next interglacial period, only
120,000 or so years in the future, and the memory of our ultimately brief growthist society persists, I
prefer to believe that they will think of our time as one of hubric darkness, the great lesson in how not
to live on a planet. On the other hand history suggests that they might just be jealous of our free access to
an abundance of fossil fuels, minerals, biodiversity and productive soil and see the return of warmth and
rain as an opportunity for the return of economic growth based on newly-bared, glacially rejuvenated
soils and reinvading forests (Diamond, 1997).
While a career in science does not tend to induce certainty in anything, most, if not all, biogeographers
are moderately certain that it is not possible to use irreplaceable material resources at an
exponentially increasing rate on a finite planet for any protracted time period. Yet, the political, economic,
social and cultural constructs within which biogeographers work and play seem to be be based on an
assumption that never-ending growth is both possible and desirable. There can also be little doubt that
the natural world, a world that biogeographers tend to value highly, is receding at a substantial rate as
a result of the operationalization of the growthist assumption. In Tasmania, an island of 6.7 million ha
where I live, the last quarter century has seen approximately 0.25 million ha of native vegetation
destroyed (Kirkpatrick & Dickinson, 1982; Kirkpatrick, 1991, unpublished data), and Tasmania is a
relatively green backwater of the globally anastomosing growthist society. How do biogeographers
cope with the dissonance between the prevailing growthism and their knowledge and values? I advance
a tentative classification of response types below, unfortunately based on general observation over
thirty years of biogeographic practice, rather than rigorous, repeatable research." name="DC.description" />
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<h1 class="ep_tm_pagetitle">The political ecology of biogeography</h1>
<p style="margin-bottom: 1em" class="not_ep_block"><span class="person_name">Kirkpatrick, J.B.</span> (2000) <xhtml:em>The political ecology of biogeography.</xhtml:em> Journal of Biogeography, 27 . pp. 45-48.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 1em" class="not_ep_block"></p><table style="margin-bottom: 1em" class="not_ep_block"><tr><td valign="top" style="text-align:center"><a href="http://eprints.utas.edu.au/1805/2/The_polictical_ecology_of_biogeography.pdf"><img alt="[img]" src="http://eprints.utas.edu.au/style/images/fileicons/application_pdf.png" border="0" class="ep_doc_icon" /></a></td><td valign="top"><a href="http://eprints.utas.edu.au/1805/2/The_polictical_ecology_of_biogeography.pdf"><span class="ep_document_citation">PDF</span></a> - Full text restricted - Requires a PDF viewer<br />199Kb</td><td><form method="get" accept-charset="utf-8" action="http://eprints.utas.edu.au/cgi/request_doc"><input value="2281" name="docid" accept-charset="utf-8" type="hidden" /><div class=""><input value="Request a copy" name="_action_null" class="ep_form_action_button" onclick="return EPJS_button_pushed( '_action_null' )" type="submit" /> </div></form></td></tr></table><p style="margin-bottom: 1em" class="not_ep_block">Official URL: <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1046/j.1365-2699.2000.00372.x">http://dx.doi.org/10.1046/j.1365-2699.2000.00372.x</a></p><div class="not_ep_block"><h2>Abstract</h2><p style="padding-bottom: 16px; text-align: left; margin: 1em auto 0em auto">The Senate of the Commonwealth of Australia occasionally sets up select committees that are charged
to investigate matters it perceives to be of moment for the nation. Occasionally I have been requested
to present evidence on nature conservation planning and resource development/conservation conflicts.
Senators in Australia expect to have six years in their plush seats in the half-buried parliamentary
building in Canberra, a relatively long secure tenure for politicians in a democracy. Although accustomed
to think in relatively long time lines for politicians, most of the senators listening to me speak appeared
slightly bewildered when I talked about the desirability of planning reserve networks that could help
carry our biodiversity through the next glacial (Kirkpatrick & Fowler, 1998), once they realized the
number of years involved. When Chris Harwood and I suggested to another select committee that an
appropriate solution to the running sore of the forest/development debate might lie on the demand side
through regulated reduction of the use of wood to produce advertisements and unnecessary packaging,
the senators obviously thought that we were away with the fairies - as indeed we were, in contrast to
the senators, who were living in the non-alternative fantasy land of the growthist paradigm, in which
consumption is an undisputed virtue.
If people survive on this planet during the commencement of the next interglacial period, only
120,000 or so years in the future, and the memory of our ultimately brief growthist society persists, I
prefer to believe that they will think of our time as one of hubric darkness, the great lesson in how not
to live on a planet. On the other hand history suggests that they might just be jealous of our free access to
an abundance of fossil fuels, minerals, biodiversity and productive soil and see the return of warmth and
rain as an opportunity for the return of economic growth based on newly-bared, glacially rejuvenated
soils and reinvading forests (Diamond, 1997).
While a career in science does not tend to induce certainty in anything, most, if not all, biogeographers
are moderately certain that it is not possible to use irreplaceable material resources at an
exponentially increasing rate on a finite planet for any protracted time period. Yet, the political, economic,
social and cultural constructs within which biogeographers work and play seem to be be based on an
assumption that never-ending growth is both possible and desirable. There can also be little doubt that
the natural world, a world that biogeographers tend to value highly, is receding at a substantial rate as
a result of the operationalization of the growthist assumption. In Tasmania, an island of 6.7 million ha
where I live, the last quarter century has seen approximately 0.25 million ha of native vegetation
destroyed (Kirkpatrick & Dickinson, 1982; Kirkpatrick, 1991, unpublished data), and Tasmania is a
relatively green backwater of the globally anastomosing growthist society. How do biogeographers
cope with the dissonance between the prevailing growthism and their knowledge and values? I advance
a tentative classification of response types below, unfortunately based on general observation over
thirty years of biogeographic practice, rather than rigorous, repeatable research.</p></div><table style="margin-bottom: 1em" border="0" cellpadding="3" class="not_ep_block"><tr><th valign="top" class="ep_row">Item Type:</th><td valign="top" class="ep_row">Article</td></tr><tr><th valign="top" class="ep_row">Additional Information:</th><td valign="top" class="ep_row">The definitive version is available at www.blackwell-synergy.com</td></tr><tr><th valign="top" class="ep_row">Keywords:</th><td valign="top" class="ep_row">Political ecology; growthism; biogeography; ecology; conservation; Australia </td></tr><tr><th valign="top" class="ep_row">Subjects:</th><td valign="top" class="ep_row"><a href="http://eprints.utas.edu.au/view/subjects/360000.html">360000 Policy and Political Science</a><br /><a href="http://eprints.utas.edu.au/view/subjects/270709.html">270000 Biological Sciences > 270700 Ecology and Evolution > 270709 Biogeography</a></td></tr><tr><th valign="top" class="ep_row">Collections:</th><td valign="top" class="ep_row">UNSPECIFIED</td></tr><tr><th valign="top" class="ep_row">ID Code:</th><td valign="top" class="ep_row">1805</td></tr><tr><th valign="top" class="ep_row">Deposited By:</th><td valign="top" class="ep_row"><span class="ep_name_citation"><span class="person_name">Professor J.B. Kirkpatrick</span></span></td></tr><tr><th valign="top" class="ep_row">Deposited On:</th><td valign="top" class="ep_row">06 Sep 2007</td></tr><tr><th valign="top" class="ep_row">Last Modified:</th><td valign="top" class="ep_row">12 Feb 2008 14:15</td></tr><tr><th valign="top" class="ep_row">ePrint Statistics:</th><td valign="top" class="ep_row"><a target="ePrintStats" href="/es/index.php?action=show_detail_eprint;id=1805;">View statistics for this ePrint</a></td></tr></table><p align="right">Repository Staff Only: <a href="http://eprints.utas.edu.au/cgi/users/home?screen=EPrint::View&eprintid=1805">item control page</a></p>
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