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ENVIRONMENTAL
ANTHROPOLOGY
Human Dimensions
of Environmental Policy
Achieving sustainable ecosystems and communities presents a formidable
public policy challenge. Legal and regulatory approaches to environmental
protection are important, but by themselves not enough. Additional achieve-
ments will require efforts at promoting institutional and behavioral changes.
Promoting such changes, in turn, relies on models of why people act as they do, how
they interact with one another and with the environment around them, and how these
patterns of interaction become formally and informally instituted over time. In short,
efforts to achieve environmentally sustainable societies need to be based on compre-
hensive models of human behavior in its social context.
Environmental policy has relied heavily on "individual decision-making," or rational-
choice models of human behavior, which assume that behavior is the result of active
choices. From this perspective, choices affecting the environment are made in several
steps: (1) identify a problem (e.g., how can I commute to work efficiently, comfortably,
and affordably?); (2) identify a range of possible solutions (car, bus, train, move closer
to work, change jobs); (3) seek information on the costs and benefits of each alternative;
(4) assess the respective costs and benefits, and (5) choose the outcome with the
greatest benefits and fewest costs.
While this is recognized as an over-simplification of human choice-making, many
behavioral scientists believe that such models can predict behavioral outcomes with
reasonable accuracy. How have individual decision-making models influenced environ-
mental policy? Such models imply that if people are given more information or more
appropriate incentives, they will make better choices. Following this logic, if we want to
motivate individuals to change behavior that would otherwise result in environmental
degradation, we will inform them of the likely consequences of their choices. If they care
about the environment, they will then make appropriate changes. If they are uncon-
cerned, we will teach them why they should care. After these efforts, if their behavior
remains unchanged, we will hold them responsible for the environmental problems to
which they have contributed.
One of the aims of the Environmental Anthropology Project, established through a
cooperative agreement between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the
Society for Applied Anthropology, has been to open up our collective thinking about
where people fit into the environmental protection equation. Instead of thinking about
environmental problems as primarily the result of individual decision-making, environ-
mental anthropology focuses attention on how solutions to these problems can and
should take into account a complementary set of factors that are often "externalized"
in other disciplines: the institutional and cultural settings that constrain our choices and
shape our judgments about what is in our collective interest.
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ENVIRONMENTAL
ANTHROPOLOGY
The Importance of Properly Defining
the Policy Problem
c
Photo: Ed Uabow
Farmers In North Dakota compete in a
global wheat market with their
counterparts in Australia, Russia and
Canada. The "world price" does not
more// reflect local conditions of supply
and demand. To compete in a world
market, many wheat growers are forced
to choose production practices that
have long-term adverse environmental
consequences. It would be incorrect to
blame the producers alone for these
environmental problems, or to expect
effective solutions to result solely from
changing their outlook.
onsider some of today's "big picture" environmental policy challenges:
• Slowing the rapid rate of global environmental change
• Preserving species diversity and abundance :
• Strengthening protection of our oceans and coastal zones
• Reducing the urban environmental health penalty
• Keeping water safe to drink
• Cleaning up the hazardous legacy of industrial and military contamination
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This is a formidable list. Indeed, the problems we leave for government to tackle are
among the stickiest, those for which no simple, ready-made solution can be found,
where the stakes are high, the uncertainties are great, and the impacts will be broadly
felt for the longest time. If they were easier to solve, government intervention probably
would not be needed.
But what public policy interventions are most likely to work? A host of
laws and regulations have been developed to help meet these chal-
lenges - from protecting endangered species and their habitats to
outlawing CFCs, and limiting the discharge of pollutants. Acknowledging
that further progress may be beyond the reach of regulation, public
investment opportunities have been designed to create market incen-
tives (e.g.{ carbon credits) or provide public goods (riparian conservation
buffers). But whether regulations, incentives, or public goods are used,
how one defines the problem in the first place will greatly affect the
potential solutions that appear relevant, as well as the possible points of
intervention that seem feasible.
Where the human dimensions of environmental management are
concerned, problem definition needs to consider explicitly several linked
levels of analysis. Individual behaviors that affect (and are affected by)
environmental conditions are important. But patterns of interaction
among family, friends, neighbors, church congregations, community
groups and so forth are often equally important. Regional, national,
and even international institutions also play a critical role in shaping
the conditions that create environmental problems.
Often environmental problems result from a combination of factors at'all these levels.
It is reasonable to attribute environmental degradation to population growth and
consumerism, holding individuals at least partially responsible because of a failure to
recognize the link between consumer choices and their ecological impacts. The policy
remedies at this level are educational — by teaching people to consider the ecological
consequences of their choices, they may make better choices, and thus preserve the
earth. !
!
It is also reasonable to attribute environmental problems to the decisions of corporate
institutions. The policy rernedies here are structural — businesses need to be offered
incentives to adopt different criteria for what to produce and how to produce it.
On a larger scale, governments must be held responsible for environmental problems,
because of inadequate laws and regulations and their ineffective enforcement. The
policy remedies derived from this view are regulatory and organizational — the institu-
tions we trust to protect the public interest must have the necessary tools and the
organizational capacity to use them.
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Human Dimensions of Environmental Policy
Fact, Value and Expert Knowledge
A related but distinct issue is the matter of voice. Whose values should inform
policy choices at each of these points of intervention? Who ought to sit at
the table when policy problems are defined and decisions are made about
how best to deal with flood hazards, dirty air, disappearing wetlands, or toxic
workplaces?
From the perspective of many environmental professionals, such decisions are
usually assumed to require the assessment of technical data through professional
judgment. In this view, what matters are "facts", not values. Only persons with
suitable training and credentials are considered to have applicable knowledge or
expertise. Non-specialists are effectively excluded as inexpert, and their judgments
discounted as ill informed, politically motivated, or both.
However, this is a path to conflict, not consensus. Among the disabling effects of
exclusion from such decisions are: a lack of trust in specialists, a lack of confidence
in the fairness of policy decision-making, and a feeling that the hazards and rem-
edies are beyond the control of those people affected most by them.
One aim of anthropologists' involvement in environmental management has been
to give voice to the knowledge and insights of non-specialists, whose experience -
often with a series of highly relevant events - should make us pay attention to
laypersons' judgments about environmental and health impacts and the public
agencies responsible for managing those impacts. These people are experts about
their own cultural values, and their views about their own judgments often give us
great insights into the extra-local institutional forces that shape and limit their
choices locally.
Many scientists are trained to think that "experts", or specialists, form judgments
based on systematic observation and statistical reasoning, while "lay" persons,
those who lack specialized credentials, use some sort of intuitive approach that is
not suitable as a basis for policy decisions. Using an intuitive approach is seen as
troubling because it is based on mental short cuts that lead to judgments scientists
find to be at odds with expected outcomes.
These mental short cuts, also called heuristics, come in several flavors, with names
like "representativeness," "availability," "anchoring," and "framing." It is popular to
blame a dramatically hot, dry summer on global warming, for example, while the
past two years of extra rain are forgotten. Plans to transport nuclear waste are
labeled a "Mobile Chernobyl," while the environmental hazards posed by triple-
length petroleum trucks routinely jangling across the washboard highways are
overlooked.
But even if laypersons generally do not form judgments solely on the basis of
analytical reasoning, does this necessarily disqualify them from taking part in
environmental management decisions? Moreover, if violating principles of analytical
reasoning is a disqualifying criterion, what are we to do with the experts, whose
judgments also can be shown to depart from these principles? When citizens and
their representatives want to know the consequences of environmental planning
decisions, experts must almost invariably extrapolate and generalize from the "pure
science" of the laboratory to circumstances not yet studied. To do so, they must
resort to "judgment." Yet this judgment is subject to much the same uncertainty and
distortion that supposedly characterize laypersons.
Anthropologists are convinced that non-specialists do have expertise to offer.
They build this expertise out of participation in everyday events, which are widely
observed, measured, labeled, discussed, and otherwise given shared meanings.
They also have indirect knowledge of exceptional events, which do not occur even
once in a lifetime, but have effects of extreme and lasting magnitude. And intermedi-
ate events—in between these two extremes—are likely to occur at least once in a
lifetime, and therefore require a model of interpretation. Floods, hurricanes and
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ENVIRONMENTAL
ANTHROPOLOGY
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earthquakes are examples of such intermediate events, where a calamitous and
unexpected natural force occasionally sweeps across the landscape, leaving in its
wake both the common experience of exposure to hazard and the highly personalized
circumstances of vulnerability, loss, response and recovery. Cultural practices develop to
ensure that the experience of an older generation will be brought to bear when the event
recurs. Problems of forecasting and contingency planning can occupy as large a place in
the popular domain as they do in more specialized domains of knowledge.
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Anthropologists have learned to credit non-specialists with insights about what problems
should matter - a lesson highly relevant to building policies that serve the public interest.
It suggests the need to refocus the practice of the environmental sciences, and to re-
examine critically the underlying premise of "scientific authority" on which science-based
policy is founded. ! ;
Don't Blame the!Victim
T
Photo: Ed Uebow
In the arid American Wast, water
scarcity makes it an extremely valuable
commodity, a commodity around which
an extensive body of law exists to
assure that those who have water rights
can exercise them. Under that law, the
right to use water is often more valuable
than the land to which it applies, for
without the water tha land has little
economic value. As Mark Twain once
said about the West, 'Whiskey's for
drinkin', water's for fightin'."
he transformation of policy-making to accommodate both specialists and non-
specialists begins With one recommendation: Refrain from blaming the victims for
the environmental degradation to which they are exposed.
Instead, it pays to focus less on individuals and instead think
structurally about: :
• population growth, resource scarcity and uneven resource
distribution as causes of conflict :
• howj different sub-populations have different vulnerabilities to
environmental hazards, and how this difference in vulnerabilities is
produced
• how the environmental risks on which we choose to focus our
attention are a reflection of more encompassing societal values
• the importance of preserving traditional ecological knowledge as
sources of appropriate strategies for land restoration and
conservation. r
Population Growth. Scarcity, and Conflict: The need for environ-
mental protection is often justified by showing that population
growth heightens natural resource scarcities. Some great puzzles in
human history - for example, the decline of the Mayan Empire, the Hohokam diaspora
from the American Southwest - appear to have resulted from population growth and
concentration outstripping the local resources.
Population growth is difficult to separate from a larger set of questions of economic and
social development, and from the environmental concerns related to the issues of
production and consumption throughout the world. Thus, such driving factors as the
causes of fertility changes and migration are of interest because of the implications for
patterns of land use, settlement, and resource consumption. Rapidly increasing stress
placed on natural resources creates social tensions and conflicts between as well as
within nations. Such conflicts likely will occur before there is an actual^ ecological
breakdown.
In this context, however, scarcity is the target problem to be explained, not population
growth. Resource scarcity - for example, declining old growth conifer forests - reflects
insufficient supply, excessive demand, or unequal distribution, which singly or in combi-
nation can force communities into a condition of deprivation. These sources of scarcity
are in turn the result of factors such as population growth, economic development, and
pollution. Declining supply, for example, can prompt one group to seize control of a
resource, simultaneously forcing another group onto an ecologically marginal landscape.
Faced with growing scarcity, sub-groups within our society may experience health
problems, social factionalism, and relative declines in economic productivity. Many
logging and fishing towns |in the Pacific Northwest, for example, have seen their natural
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Human Dimensions of Environmental Policy
WjslUr
resource-based economies dry up, only to be replaced by tourism, the development of
vacation homes, and huge disparities between the local folks and their new neighbors.
Local people may be forced to move in search of economic opportunity. This move-
ment, in turn, often intensifies group tensions. Demands on government for intervention
and redevelopment may increase while tax bases are being eroded. Conflict may ensue
or, if already present, deepen. In this volatile, interactive and complicated context that
environmental scarcity can be described as a cause of conflict. Scarcity is not likely to
be a sufficient or necessary cause, but its growing presence in the causal network that
generates conflict is clear and growing clearer.
Social production of vulnerability to environmental hazard and deterioration:
We often think of disasters as departures from "normal" social functioning.
In this view, recovery means a return to normal. This thinking directs policy-
makers and preparedness planners to focus their efforts on improvements in
prediction, preparation, relief and reconstruction, while the unequal distribution
of vulnerability to natural hazards remains unchanged. However, for some social
groups, "normal" daily life is difficult to distinguish from disaster. In downtown
Los Angeles, for example, one of the larger apartment buildings suffering partial
damage from the 1987 Whittier Narrows earthquake was notorious and nation-
ally newsworthy. Its 400 units occupied largely by recent arrivals from Central
America, the building had been the site of terrifying gang and drug activity.
Just prior to the earthquake, the City Housing Authority had successfully
prosecuted its owner for failing to provide standard housing conditions.
The convicted owner was given his choice of sentencing, a 30-day jail term or
a week living in his building. He chose the jail term.
Anthropologists think it is useful to think of vulnerability as a progressive series
of social and economic pressures, which, when combined with exposure to a
hazardous event, result in disaster. The progression of vulnerability leads from
"root causes" to intermediate ("dynamic pressures"), and finally, the most
proximate ("unsafe conditions"). Roof causes of vulnerability are to be found in
limited access to power, structures, and resources, and in ideologies that reinforce
inequalities. Dynamic pressures are processes and activities that channel the root
causes into particular forms of insecurity. Rapid population growth, depletion of timber,
fish, and soil productivity are all seen as macro-forces derived from underlying causes
that lead to unsafe conditions for some population sub-groups. These unsafe conditions
may include environmental and economic fragility, a lack of preparedness, endemic
diseases, and a lack of local institutions to fall back on when conditions of scarcity are
exacerbated.
Risk and culture: Life is full of risks, but if we dwell too long on the lengthy list of
potential sources of harm, we probably would not get out of bed in the morning. But we
do get out of bed, because we choose to ignore some potential risks, while turning our
attention to others. How do we select from among the onrushing stream of possible
environmental, health, and safety hazards the ones that we consider significant? If there
is not universal agreement on what constitute the most important sources of hazard,
how does this judgment vary among population sub-groups?
The prevailing view of risk and culture among risk specialists has been to treat "risk"
as a dependent variable. That is, certain groups lead specific lifestyles that result in
variable exposure to environmental, health and safety hazards. If you are part of a
group that relies on subsistence fishing, for example, and the fish are feeding in
contaminated sediment beds, then you are more likely to be at elevated risk due to
your group affiliation.
A variant of this model regards "perceptions" of risk - and not "risk" itself as the depen-
dent variable subject to cultural influence. As mentioned earlier, distortions in probabilis-
tic reasoning due to heuristics, biases, and other cognitive sources are often associated
with group affiliation. By focusing on differences in the perception of risk among distinct
cultural groups, environmental planners often look to educational campaigns and other
information-based interventions aimed at adjusting public thinking about risk attribution.
I OH Altf tii
•amnsa, wlfhKuctfc
psifecf fcalwwc'w^h jmtett
- s i: ii:i«l with teoSyt
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Courtesy Chateau Ste. Michelle Wineries
What is normal and natural? What is
unfamiliar and risky? It depends on
one's cultural perspective. In this wine
bottle label, Washington state wine
grape growing conditions are
compared favorably to the great
vineyards of France. The gray shaded
area on the left, however, also
corresponds to the Hanford Nuclear
Reservation, one of the more polluted
spots on earth.
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ENVIRONMENTAL
ANTHROPOLOGY
There is an alternative way to understand the relationship between risk and culture.
Instead of assuming "cultijire" to have a static, one-to-one relationship with a local
population, anthropologists regard culture as the encompassing context within which
local problems are framed. The goal in making decisions about how best to reduce risk
is to do so fairly, but fairness is itself culturally defined. One should anticipate that local
constituents will clash over what they consider to be fair outcomes. The US EEnergy
Department's "Site-Specific Advisory Boards" are local forums created to give full airing
to widely divergent views about how site cleanup should proceed at the dozen or so
locations (e.g., Hanford, Washington, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, Savannah River, South
Carolina) where nuclear weapons components were produced and tested throughout
the Cold War era. Given competing views of fairness, the challenge is to transform an
unproductive conflict into a productive one. Environmental specialists should seek a
collaborative approach to [defining the legitimacy of perceived problems and the stan-
dards by which to judge potential outcomes. There is no substitute for understanding
how potentially affected persons judge the burdens and benefits associated with the
deployment of risky technologies.
In fostering a dialogue over risk and remediation, it is important to probe for underlying
assumptions, and to recognize the variability in viewpoint that may exist even in seem-
ingly homogenous groups. Some critical questions to consider: >
Q Consent - By what means are different sorts of joint actions agreed to? Different types
of consent include, for example, implicit consent; through deference to group leader
authority; or explicit consent from "talking things out" or negotiating
Q Equity — By what principles of fairness are resources ideally allocated to address
imbalances (e.g., proportionate to need; absolutely equal regardless of need; or
according to rank or status, regardless of need) •
Q Liability — What happens if something goes wrong? Who will be held accountable
for making restitution of compensation? Is this a shared responsibility, or placed at the
feet of the party with the greatest ability to pay? ' <
Q Time — How far out into the future do contemporary events retain their salience?
What constitute locally [relevant "everyday," "exceptional," and "intermediate" events.
Traditional ecological knowledge: An "indigenous knowledge system" |is what anthropolo-
gists call the way members of a particular community define and classify phenomena :
in the physical/natural, social, and ideational environments. Examples include local
classifications of soils, knowledge of which local crop varieties grow irj difficult environ-
ments, migratory patterns for game animal herds and anadromous fishes, and traditional '
ways of treating human and animal diseases. Indigenous knowledge systems often
provide the basis for local-level decision-making. This frequently occurs through formal
and informal community associations and organizations. Communities often identify
problems and seek solution to them in such local forums, capitalizing pn information
exchanges among knowledgeable persons, and leading to experimentation and innova-
tions. Such traditional (in pontrast to imposed) forms of communication are vital to the
preservation, development and spread of indigenous knowledge.
i i
The aim of identifying and classifying traditional ecological knowledge' is quite practical:
preserving biodiversity while producing equitable, ecologically sustainable economic ;
development. Many out-of-the-way places where traditional ecological knowledge still \
flourishes are vulnerable to degradation as resources become more accessible and
disappear. Often they remain repositories of considerable biological and financial
significance. If commercially viable uses can be found for local traditional resources,
the pressure to realize shprt-term gains from natural resource exploitation (such as cash
wages, or return on corporate investors' shares) may be reduced and biodiversity •
conserved for future generations. Indigenous classification schemes for plants, animals,
and landscapes have other practical uses as well, offering appropriate strategies for land [
restoration, conservation, :and nutrition. ,
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Human Dimensions of Environmental Policy
Summing Up:
Collaboration in Environmental Problem-Solving
The key environmental policy questions concern how best to protect natural
resources and reduce the public's exposure to the risk of environmental and
health hazards. Finding acceptable answers to these questions involves value-
and conflict-laden choices over where local burdens will be created while trying to
achieve a widespread benefit.
Discussions about these choices must acknowledge the linkages between the local
and the global. Policies that focus on individuals while ignoring the more encompassing
forces that shape and constitute everyday behavior are likely to meet with failure.
Choices and judgments are never made in a vacuum. Understanding the institutional
and cultural settings where behaviors are shaped, decisions are made, and risks are
perceived, is a necessary step in effective policy formulation.
The best way to make choices about local burdens and widespread benefits so that they
lead to lasting solutions - fixing problems so they stay fixed - is by building partnerships
with the local communities most directly affected by the decisions. People who feel they
have had a hand in crafting a solution are much more likely to abide by the outcome than
those who feel ignored.
Additional Resources
Blaikie, Piers, Terry Cannon,
Ian Davis, and Ben Wisner
(1994) At Risk: Natural
Hazards, People's
Vulnerability, and Disasters.
New York: Routledge.
Douglas, Mary, and Aaron
Wildavsky. (1982) Risk and
Culture: An Essay on the
Selection of Technological
and Environmental Dangers.
Berkeley: University of
California Press.
Goldman, Laurence R., ed.
(2000) Social Impact
Assessment: An Applied
Anthropology Manual.
New York: Berg Publishers.
Posey, Darrell, ed. (1999)
Cultural and Spiritual Values
of Biodiversity. London:
Intermediate Technology
Publications.
Townsend, Patricia. (2000)
Environmental Anthropology:
From Pigs to Policies.
Prospect Heights, IL:
Waveland Press.
Winthrop, Robert. (1991)
Dictionary of Concepts in
Cultural Anthropology.
Westport, CT: Greenwood
Press.
Online Resources:
The SfAA Environmental
Anthropology Project
(http://www.sfaa.net/eap/
abouteap.html)
The US Environmental
Protection Agency's
Community-Based
Approaches to Environmental
Protection (http://
www.epa.gov/ecocommunitv/)
Sustainable Development
Tools (http://www.ncedr.org/
tools/othertools/sdtools/
indicators.htm)
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Environmental Anthropology Projects focused on community-based
approaches to environmental protection throughout the U.SJ
Environmental anthropologists analyze and resolve human
and ecological problems posed by energy extraction and
use; agriculture, forestry, fisheries, mining, and other
resource development; pesticide exposure, toxic wa$te
disposal, and other environmental health issues;
environmental restoration; tourism, public lands,
and cultural resource management; the protection
of traditional knowledge, values, and resource rights;
and environmental education
ffjir The Society for Applied Anthropology
The Society for Applied Anthropology
was incorporated in 1941, with the mission
of promoting the scientific investigation of
"the principles controlling the relations of human
beings to one another" and the wide application of
those principles to practical problems."
In 1996 the Society established the Environmental
Anthropology Project, funded through a five-year
cooperative agreement with the U.S. Environmen-
tal Protection Agency. The aims of the project
were to provide technical support for community-
based approaches to environmental protection
and to improve the understanding of how cultural
values and social behavior affect environmental
management decisions.
Theresa Trainor served as EPA's project officer
from the project's inception. Barbara Rose
Johnston directed the project for its first four
years; Robert Winthrop served as director for the
final year of the project. The^Review series was
produced by Barbara Rose Johnston, and
Gabrielle O'Malley and Edward Liebow of the
Environmental Health and Social Policy Center.
The Reviews solely reflect the views of their
authors, not those of the Environmental Protection
Agency. Society officers (including Jean Schensul,
John Young, Linda Bennett, and Noel Chrisman)
and a project advisory group provided oversight
during the course of the agreement. Many Society
members served as mentors for the project's
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reports and publications.
The Society for Applied Anthropology is grateful
for the financial support and professional coopera-
tion of the Environmental Protection Agency and
its staff. For more information on the Society and
the Environmental Anthropology Project,
please see our web site: www.sfaa.net.
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© 2001 Society for Applied Anthropology. This Review has been prepared by the Society for Applied Anthropology, and does not imply any
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