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Enrique Leff
To cite this article: Enrique Leff (1999) On the social reappropriation of nature, Capitalism Nature
Socialism, 10:3, 89-104, DOI: 10.1080/10455759909358876
Download by: [Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile] Date: 23 October 2017, At: 12:18
ECOLOGY AND DEVELOPMENT
By Enrique Leff
90
social processes are interwoven synergistically to produce an eco-
technological potential that has been hidden by the prevailing economic
order. The principles of social equity, cultural diversity and political
democracy open up broader perspectives for sustainable development
than the greening of the economy through internalizing the costs of
environmental conservation and restoration. In this way,
environmentalism is generating new theories and values that question
the prevailing economic order and gearing social action towards building
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91
as contrasted to economic demands for employment, income
distribution and social welfare.
Mainstream economics seeks to internalize environmental
externalities by assigning property rights and market prices to natural
goods and environmental services. By contrast, ecological economics
recognizes economic distribution (of wealth and income) as a basic
determination in the valorization of nature. Ecological distribution
unveils economistic approaches to the environment, to discover in
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92
valorization and negotiation characteristic of the dominant economic and
political order.
The ecological debt of the rich countries to the poor countries and
to dispossessed peoples throughout 500 years of ecological
imperialism,6 has established a "gap" that will not disappear by placing
the economy on an ecological basis, by the negotiation of better and
more just terms of commercial exchanges, and by economic
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6
Alfred Crosby, Ecological Imperialism (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1986).
7
Joan Martnez-Alier, op. cit.
93
actualize future preferences or complex, uncertain and long-term
ecological processes.
If marginalist theory is incapable of internalizing environmental
externalities through market mechanisms, it is also true that environ-
mental movements contribute to the manifestation of ecological costs
in economic calculations.8 However, the social resistance by such
movements to the capitalist appropriation of nature, and the
compensatory actions of environmental justice movements, cannot
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8
Leff, 1995, op. cit.
94
and complex environmental field as the "'active' discord in movement
of different and differentiated forces that Nietzsche opposes to every
system of metaphysical grammar in every place where culture,
philosophy and science govern."9 And, that extends today to every
project for the reappropriation of nature, life and culture, in spaces
where individuals and communities confront the globalized world.
Environmental rationality entails a politics of difference as an
antagonistic field of alternative development styles, driven by the lack
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9
Jacques Derrida, Mrgenes de la Filosofa (Madrid: Ctedra, 1989), p. 53.
95
they are expressed in the market.10 By viewing socio-environmental
conflict as issues of ecological distribution, the "environmental"
character of citizens' movements for their collective identities are
obscured and distorted. In such cases, the problem of "ecological
distribution," or the conflict between the private and the communal
appropriation of the environment, is not solved through economic
negotiations, nor by using technical criteria of environmental impacts
or cost-benefit analysis. New social movements are emerging that
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10
As the popular saying goes, "you can only measure the toad once it is
dead."
11 E. Laclau and C. Mouffe are right when asserting that "the logic of
equivalence is a logic of simplification, while the logic of difference is a
logic of its expansion and increasing complexity" (Hegemony and Socialist
Strategy [London: Verso, 1985], p. 130).
96
The category of environmental rationality internalizes diversity and
incommensurability as epistemological and political principles that
challenge the homogenizing dominant order imposed by scientific and
economic rationality. Incommensurability in the field of the
environment not only refers to difficulties in translating energy and
ecological variables into market measures, and to the impossibility of
establishing a common measure for extra-economic costs and benefits.
The confrontation between economic and environmental rationality
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l2
Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1962).
13
Martin O'Connor, "On the Misadventures of Capitalist Nature," CNS, 4,
3, 1993; Leff, 1998, op. cit.
14
Leff, 1995, op. cit.,
97
The grass-roots level is where the principles of environmentalism
take on their full meaning in terms of sustainable productivity, cultural
diversity and social participation, in building this new productive
rationality. The process sets forth the specific nature of biophysical
processes, as well as the forms of cultural significance that define the
environmental potential of development. There is no quantitative and
standardized yardstick that can account for the diverse processes which
the production of sustainable use values depend upon, or that can
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98
distribution of the costs of environmental degradation and better
evaluation of environmental assets in economic accounting.
Equity in the reappropriation of nature is not solved through
evaluations of the costs and benefits involved in the actual forms of
nature exploitation. Environmental democracy departs from the politics
of equivalence,15 to develop in a new field of the politics of difference.
This politics challenges the possibility of achieving social justice
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15
"Justice is the demand for equity, for 'fair play/ and a share in the benefits
of life that are commensurable with one's contribution. In Thomas
Jefferson's words, it is 'equal and exact...' based on a respect for the
principle of equivalence," see Murray Bookchin, Remaking Society:
Pathways to a Green Future (Boston: South End Press, 1990), p. 96.
16
G. Grnberg, ed., Articulacin de la Diversidad. Pluralidad nitica,
Autonomas y Democratizacin en Amrica Latina (Quito: Ediciones Abya-
Yala, 1995).
99
social movements to appropriate nature and alternative practices for the
use of resources that depend on distinct cultural and social conditions.
Equity cannot be defined by a standard pattern of well-being; it does
not depend only on the distribution of the stock of resources available
and of the costs of global environment pollution. Equity can only be
achieved by subverting and abolishing any and all barriers to the
autonomy of peoples and by creating conditions for appropriating the
ecological potential of each region through the cultural values and
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17
Arturo Escobar, "After Nature: Steps to an Antiessentialist Political
Ecology," Current Anthropology, 40, 1, 1999.
18
Laclau, and Mouffe, op. cit.
100
space in which historical interests and subjective meanings are
measured, codified and unified can be rejected and a different
rationality constructed.
5. Environmental Rights and the
Social Reappropriation of Nature
Beyond the perspectives of conservationism, biocentrism and
managerialism, environmentalism is being redefined on the basis of
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l9
J. Moguel, C. Botey and L. Hernndez, Autonoma y Nuevos Sujetos
Sociales en el Desarrollo Rural (Mxico: Siglo XXI Editores, 1992); Enrique
Leff, "Los Nuevos Actores Sociales del Ambientalismo en el Medio Rural,"
in H. Carton de Grammont and H. Tejera, La Sociedad Rural Frente al Nuevo
Milenio, Vol. 4, Los Nuevos Actores Sociales y los Procesos Polticos en el
Campo (Mxico: UNAM/INAH/UAM/Plaza y Valdez Editores, 1996).
101
ecological, technological and cultural potentialities guiding and
supporting alternative strategies for the sustainable use of resources.
In response to the dispossession and marginalization of majority
groups of the population and the ineffectiveness of the state and market
logic to provide basic goods and services, the emerging society is
claiming its right to participate in decision-making on public policies
that affect its living conditions and the sustainable management of its
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20
H. Hobbelink, "La Diversidad Biolgica y la Biotecnologa Agrcola,"
Ecologa Poltica, 4, 1992; Joan Martnez-Alier, "The Merchandising of
Biodiversity," Etnoecolgica, 3, 1994.
102
In this regard, the peoples of the Amazon forest have developed
productive strategies for the self-management of "extractivist reserves."
In Mexico, the establishment of the Los Chimalapas peasant farmer
biodiversity reserve is prompting the communities to fight for
regularization of the ownership of their land and to exercise effective
control over the use of their resources. The entry of indigenous and
peasant farmer communities into the globalization process is leading to
important struggles of resistance and reorientation of development,
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21
Arturo Escobar, "Cultural Politics and Biological Diversity: State, Capital
and Social Movements in the Pacific Coast of Colombia," in O. Starn and R.
Fox, eds., Culture and Social Protest: Between Resistance and Revolution
(New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1997).
22
G. Gimenez, "Los Movimientos Sociale: Problemas Terico-
Metodolgicos," Revista Mexicana de Sociologia, LVI, 2, 1994.
103
exploitation, political marginalization, cultural segregation and the
degradation of nature. The movements are not only struggling for
greater equity and participation within the established order, but also for
the building of a new social order for a reform of the state that will
include indigenous peoples as equals, which implies recognizing their
political differences, their ethnic identities and cultural rights.23
These social struggles for democracy mobilize the construction of a
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23
P. Gonzlez Casanova and M. Roitman, eds., Democracia y Estado
Multitnico en Amrica Latina (Mxico: La Jornada Ediciones/CIICH-
UNAM, 1996); Leff, 1996, op. cit.
24
Instituto Indigenista Interamericano, "Poltica Indigenista 1991-1995,"
Amrica Indgena, 50, 1, 1990; H. Diaz Polanco, Autonoma Regional. La
Autodeterminacin de los Pueblos Indios (Mxico: Siglo XXI/UNAM,
1991); Moguel, et al., op. cit.; R. Torres, Entre lo Propio y lo Ajeno:
Derechos de los Pueblos Indgenas y Propiedad Intelectual (Quito: COICA,
1997); M. Gomez, ed., Derecho Indgena (Mxico: INI/AMNU, 1997).
104