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Democratic or authoritarian, every society needs clean air and water; every state must manage its wildlife and natural resources. In this provocative, comparative study, Paul R. Josephson asks to what extent the form of a government and its economy--centrally planned or market, colonial or post-colonial--determines how politicians, bureaucrats, scientists, engineers, and industrialists address environmental and social problems presented by the transformation of nature into a humanized landscape. Looking at the experiences of the industrialized and industrializing world, Resources under Regimes explores the relationship between science, technology, and the environment. Josephson considers global responses to deforestation, water pollution, and global warming, showing how different societies bring different values and assumptions to bear on the same problem, and arrive at different conclusions about the ideal outcome and the best way of achieving it. He reveals the important ways in which modern governments facilitate power generation, transportation, water production, and other technologies that improve the quality of life; and the equally critical ways in which they respond to the resulting depredations--the pollution, waste, and depletion that constitute the global environmental crisis at the beginning of the twenty-first century. (20050701)
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RESOURCES UNDER REGIMES n e w h i s t o r i e s o f s c i e n c e , t e c h n o l o g y, and medicine series editors Margaret C. Jacob, Spencer R. Weart, and Harold J. Cook p a u l r . j o s e p h s o n RESOURCES UNDER REGIMES T E C H N O L O G Y, E N V I R O N M E N T, A N D T H E S TAT E HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS LONDON, ENGLAND 2004 Copyright © 2005 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Josephson, Paul R. Resources under regimes : technology, environment, and the state / Paul R. Josephson. p. cm.—(new histories of science, technology, and medicine) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-674-01499-5 (alk. paper) 1. Technology and state—History—20th century. 2. Science and state— History—20th century. 3. Environmental policy—History—20th century. I. Title II. Series. T49.5.J67 304.2′8—dc22 2005 2004051132 c o n t e n t s Introduction: Nature, Technology, 1 C O N T Eand N Worldview T S 1. The Modern State, Industry, and the Transformation of Nature 28 2. The Coercive Appeal to Order: Authoritarian Approaches to Resource Management 98 3. Development, Colonialism, and the Environment 148 4. Biodiversity, Sustainability, and Technology in the Twenty-first Century 197 Notes 239 Index 261 RESOURCES UNDER REGIMES INTRODUCTION: N AT U R E , T E C H N O L O G Y, A N D W O R L D V I E W Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need but not for every man’s greed. —Mohandas K. Gandhi Over the past two centuries the modern state has played a major role in backing scientific research and development to promote national defense, public health, economic growth, and resource management. Activities that have had a direct impact on the environment include the study of resources through geological surveys; the funding of expeditions; the support of agricultural and other research; and various flood-control, dam, harbor, roadway, and other improvement projects. By the early twentieth century, many nations had passed and begun to enforce laws to protect resources from overuse and to punish polluters. Even before the rise of modern nation-states, kings and queens had established regulations to protect their lands—forests and the animals living in them—from encroachment by peasant