Issues of urban sprawl and migration of exurban residents into the surrounding countryside of metropolitan areas have generated considerable debate across the US. These debates often revolve around the ecological footprint of urban areas and the erosion of quality of life indicators associated with rapid expansion of urban and residential areas. Although there has been much research done on the environmental and socioeconomic impacts of urbanization, little attention has been given to cultural impacts. This paper focuses specifically on the role of local environmental knowledge as an important resource in human ecosystems, and looks at the implications of environmental knowledge loss associated with urbanization and its related demographic changes. We compared environmental knowledge among rural, urban, and developing watersheds in western Georgia, and also look at relationships between local environmental knowledge and variables such as gender, education, income, and participation in outdoor recreational activities. We then explored how variations in environmental knowledge affected land use practices at the household level. The mean knowledge scores of residents in all three classifications of rural watersheds were higher than those living in developing and urban watersheds. We found residents of managed pine watersheds possessed the highest mean scores ( p = 0.006), while urban watershed residents were the lowest. We also found that local environmental knowledge was influenced by active participation in outdoor recreation, with active bird-watchers having the highest environmental knowledge scores. However, we found less influence of factors such as education and income on environmental knowledge. We also found a clear connection between local environmental knowledge and land management practices. Timber owners scored higher than non-timber owners ( p = 0.099), and landowners who constructed streamside management zones (SMZs) scored higher than those who did not ( p = 0.034).
Designating rights for nature is a potentially powerful way to open up the dialogue on nature conservation around the world and provide enforcement power for an ecocentric approach. Experiments using a rights-based framework have combined in-country perspectives, worldviews, and practices with legal justifications giving rights to nature. This paper looks at a fusion of legal traditions, religious worldviews, and practices of environmental protection and advocacy in the context of India. It takes two specific legal cases in India and examines the recent high-profile rulings designating the rivers Ganga, Yamuna, and their tributaries and glaciers as juristic persons. Although the rulings were stayed a few months after their issuance, they are an interesting bending of the boundaries of nature, person, and deity that produce Ganga and Yamuna as vulnerable prototypes. This paper uses interview data focusing on these cases and document and archival data to ask whether legal interventions giving rights to nature can become effective avenues for environmental activism and spiritual ecology. The paper also assesses whether these legal cases have promoted Hindu nationalism or ‘Hindutva lite’.
The Social Life of Trees: Anthropological Perspectives on Tree Symbolism. Laura Rival. ed. Oxford: Berg, 1998. ix. 315 pp., photographs, figures, tables, index.
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