The Hindu : Environmental history: need for objectivity

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Dec 09, 2002

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Environmental history: need for objectivity

By Aniket Alam

NEW DELHI DEC. 8. Is "Environmental History" merely the documenting of the "sinking of the Titanic" where attention is focussed on the "dark chapters" of human - nature interaction, asked Richard Grove, Professor, University of Sussex, at the concluding session of an international conference on the environmental history of Asia here on Saturday.

Looking at many of the over 70 papers presented by scholars from all parts of the world at this four-day conference organised jointly by the University of Sussex and Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), it would seem that writing the history of the environment dovetails into chronicles of the adverse impact humans make on the environment.

In the case of India, environmental history concentrates only on the effect of colonialism on the environment.

Forests have been the favourite "hunting ground" of environmental historians, who have searched and found evidence of the massive destruction to nature and livelihood caused by British commercial forestry in India.

Environmental history has therefore emerged as a critique of colonialism and, often by extension, of the modern way of life.

It is the big industries, commercial agriculture, urban pollution and distance from nature which have been the turf of environmental history.

But as some participants argued that there are dangers in "romanticising the past".

Along with a critique of the modern has to emerge an objective assessment of traditional practices.

It would not do to merely lampoon the present and glorify the past. It would be erroneous to label the past as necessarily conservationist.

If earlier attempts at writing environmental history were largely confined to accounts of commercial forestry and destruction of nature, the present conference saw research moving deeper into the forests looking for the wildlife, rivers, lakes and irrigation and at agricultural practices and many other aspects of the daily interaction of human beings with nature.

Papers ranged from studies on specific rivers, deltas, irrigation systems to animals which face extinction; from studying diseases and sanitation to comparative accounts of government policies and state ideologies. From the local to the global.

What happens to this large body of knowledge and volumes of information generated about the environment?

Some participants felt that much of this may land in the laps of private companies which would use it only to maximise their profits.

Others feared that in these days of patents and WTO, unearthing the environmental history would only lead to it getting labelled, patented and imprisoned from the common people.

But this knowledge would also feed public debate and become a resource for people all over the world to reclaim their common natural heritage, argued others.

As Deepak Kumar, professor, JNU, said while welcoming the participants, the idea behind the conference was to bring together researchers from different disciplines and regions so that a richer understanding of the responsibility and role of writing environmental history emerges.

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