...colonial laws, legal constructions taken from landscapes in which 'man is everything and Nature appears to be tamed and subservient.1
One of the most significant issues highlighted in this essay, in my mind at least, is the fact that legislature designed to protect the environment can potentially have/has had an adverse affect on the way in which we appreciate and experience our (New Zealand's) landscape.
This essay speaks particularly about the fact that, due to the high amounts of land settlement during the 1880s and 1890s, specific laws were developed to protect the land. The laws made New Zealand into two kinds of country: one in which the urge was to advance human activity, and another in which the urge was to exclude it2. One of the problems with these laws was the fact that they allowed no provision for a middle landscape – one in which the progression of both humans and the landscape was encouraged. Another problem was the fact that the laws staged the landscape as a resource that needed to be protected for economic reasons (tourism was, and still is a large source of income for New Zealand) rather than a living, breathing entity that needed to be protected because of it's own merits. There was no ignoring the knock-on financial benefits.
Geoff Park certainly has a cynical tone when he describes these provisions and their effects: It led my thinking towards today's Green (Political) Movement and how their methods measure up in relation to what Park was saying. The Green movement is not a centralized group
with centralized leadership. It consists of many different national
groups, and has a particularly strong following in New Zealand3, Germany4 and Canada5. This environmentalist movement is different from many others because it operates within the political/parliamentary spectrum, achieving it's aims through legislature and referendum. While it may not be the perfect situation, to this reader (before reading Park's essay) legislation always appeared to be the best way to deal with environmental issues. Much like affirmative action6, it seems counter-intuitive at the same time as being the most direct way to deal with the problem.
I agree with the point that Park raised, that legislature governing the way in which we interact with the environment has obscured our relationship with it. I just wonder, in a profit driven economy, is there is really a better way to protect it?
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3 Green Party of Aotearoa. 22 March 2009 [http://www.greens.org.nz/].
4 Bűndnis 90/Die Grűnen. 22 March 2009 [http://www.gruene.de/].
5 Green Party of Canada. 22 March 2009 [http://www.greenparty.ca/].
6 “Affirmative action.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 22 March 2009 [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/affirmative-action]
Direct action maintains an aesthetic of the empowered individual, whereas in a lobby the individual is subjugated to the bureacracy of the state. Might I add the NZ Government did not attempt referendum on GM material release... continued the programme, ignored it's protesting public (and it's lobby's).. Now it is debatable the success of either but direct action orchestrated by Anarchist groups(in up rooting GM onion in Omaru) would plug home to be more direct...
ReplyDeleteand somehow negates any counter-intuitive effect.
(the onions die)
Lobby's are for solid citizens [QC's or others in the corrodors of power].. direct action lies in the hands of the politically engaged; illuminating the state monopoly of violence.