Environment and Anthropology

Some months ago I found this valuable resource in the internet: Anthropology and the Environment focuses discussion on how people(s) around the world evaluate their environment correlating to sustainability, health and their kind of living. Research includes every part of the world, therefore it is not focussed on Non-Western societies. A glimpse on this huge field of Anthropology is given via this guide on resources. EEA Volume 1, No 1 (2007) is out: This open access journal contains articles and reviews about what is called ecotourism, sometimes also meant by soft tourism, and merging qualitative and quantitative methods of research. To delve into Environmental Research, I suggest the ENN, short for Environmental News Network, to receive daily news, or PlanetArk, which is the Reuters Daily World Environment News - and pictures. Their archives provide issue by issue research, on themes like Biodiversity, Animal Rights, Air pollution, Emissions - Trading, Greenhouse Effect, Genetic Engineering, Sustainable Development, Tourism or Water pollution, to name just a few. Planet Ark is an Australian not-for-profit organisation having been constituted in 1991. Indegenious knowledge is presented by the iapad, which means the Integrated Approaches to Participatory Development. Reconstruction is an EJournal about Eco-Cultures: Culture Studies and the Environment relate to anthropological interests, especially in the reviews section, where two texts question connections to the Natural World and the Castes of Mind.

The article Garifuna Land Rights and Ecotourism [...], written by Keri V. Brondo and Laura Woods, proposes ecotourism as economic development in a protected area of Honduras:
"The Garifuna are descendants of Africans and Amerindians (i.e., Carib and Arawak Indians) who intermixed on the island of St. Vincent. Prolonged warring over the island’s fertile lands eventually led to a defeat of the Garifuna by the British, who exiled the Garifuna in 1797 to the island of Roatan, off the north coast of Honduras (Gonzalez 1988; Palacio 2000). From there, many Garifuna crossed to the Central American mainland, establishing settlements along the North Coast, from Nicaragua to Belize. Honduras has the largest Garifuna population, located in 48 coastal and island communities (Brondo/Woods 2007: 2 f.)."
Ecotourism should be financed by the public, but managed and organized by the local Garifuna community in the Cayos Cochinos, so Brondo and Woods (2007) found out, after having done ethnographic fieldwork in 2005 and 2006. The Honduras Coral Reef Fund provides a reading list to better understand, how valuable these reefs are (rf. Brondo/Woods 2007: 7 f.).
"Theoretically, this paper contributes to the literature on the intersection of global rights, the environment, and development policy. New global rights discourses and international law point towards the ‘natural’ and sustainable relationships between particular cultural groups and the environment, and are there to ‘protect’ indigenous peoples from exploitation and loss of resource control (Brondo/Woods 2007: 15)."
I think this study illustrates the struggle for land rights, gaining economic independence, and the critique on neoliberalism very well.

Romantic imaginations of the "savage" living in the wilderness had furthered the rise of anthropology. Although much of the collected data supported only colonial needs for power and control centuries ago, scientists witnessed the rise of Human Rights: Nowadays, technological knowledge is communicated as well as indegenious knowledge. The chance to learn and study soft developmental strategies to support human diversity should evaluate indegenious knowledge not to further neoliberal capitalism. Inuit hunting settings and patterns, which were safe for hundreds, or even thousands, of years, are endangered by the climate change. The source of nurishing one´s own familiy or group is disturbed by changing conditions of animal presence and natural environments. Sheila Watt-Cloutier was heard on March 01, 2007 by the IACHR, which is the Inter-American Comission on Human Rights. A filed petition of December 2005 attempts to limit greenhouse gas emissions in North America to support Human Rights. Finally, I would like to mention the IPCC, short for Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
"The role of the IPCC is to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation."

Perhaps the warning of flooded Takuu Islands will change minds. In any case humankind needs organizations like Takuu Islands Association.


Mediography
Datum: 2007-07-08 Uhrzeit: 6:35 PM

Articles (PDF)
Brondo, Keri V./Woods, Laura (2007) Garifuna Land Rights and Ecotourism as Economic Development in Honduras´ Cayos Cochinos Marine Protected Area.
URL: http://eea.anthro.uga.edu/index.php/eea/article/view/25/27 2007-07-07 3:27 PM

Internet
Associated Content/Inuit Allege US Pollution Violates Human Rights: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/165871/inuit_allege_us_
pollution_violates.html
BBC News/Science/Nature/6408441: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6408441.stm
Cayoscochinos and Honduras Coral Reef Fund: http://www.cayoscochinos.org/index.
php?page=location〈=eng
EAnth Internet Resources: http://www.eanth.org/onlineresources2.php?resource=internet.php#top
CNN/World/Takuu 2001: http://archives.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/auspac/03/08/PNG.takuu. transportation/index.html
Ecological and Environmental Anthropology: http://eea.anthro.uga.edu/index.php/eea/index
Environmental News Network: http://www.enn.com/index.html
Hearing Watt - Cloutier: http://www.cidh.oas.org
IACHR: http://www.cidh.oas.org
iapad: http://www.iapad.org
IPCC: http://www.ipcc.ch/about/about.htm
msnbc Arctic natives: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17388742
PlanetArk: http://www.planetark.com
Reconstruction: http://reconstruction.eserver.org/072/contents072.shtml
Takuu Film: http://takuufilm.blogspot.com
Takuu Islands: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takuu
Takuu Islands Association: http://members.tripod.com/~Lakoa_Fitina/takass.html

Please comment on broken or missing links >>.

Amber, Sybil 2007 Anthropo Logic Journals. Vienna: Blogger. URL: http://anthropologicjournals.blogspot.com