Economic Expansion = Ecological Destruction

Imagine a native land filled with your own unique culture and way of living.  What resources do you depend on? How long could this be sustained?  Now imagine yourself as an animal in this land or indigenous person and you are forced to move out of this home.  Where do you go?  How do you make a living?  What resources do you have?  Imagine living in a whole new world. 

What does this have to do with economic expansion?

Most people understand the benefits of economic expansion.  We get new roads so we can travel farther, more land is used to produce more crops, people have more money to buy and sell items with, new technology is developed to further expand/make more efficient these things, etc.  Economic expansion though creates greediness that leads to ecological destruction.  We see destruction of forests for farmland, cutting of trees for lumber sales, new crops sold for profit, native people forced out of their homes, animals lose their habitats, and plant life ceasing to survive.  Foreign peoples travel to undeveloped lands in order to create more developed worlds.  This involves the destruction of native lands in order to expand their territories and make a profit from the land.  This need for economic expansion leads to more than businesses, technology, and easier ways of living.

Richard Reed discusses one group that felt the effects of economic expansion in his book Forest Dwellers, Forest Protectors: Indigenous Models for International Development.  The Guaraní live in the forests of Paraguay and they felt the impact from the loss of their lands.  They lost their way of farming, the types of crops they could grow, the animals they once hunted, etc.  Not only this, but many were impacted socially and had to move to different areas and thus lost important kinship ties.    They suffered from illness and had to find new ways to make money in order to survive.  These people were forced into the new Paraguayan society rather than promoting their indigenous power and independence. 

To learn more go to http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/10496

This sounds terrible.  What should we learn from this?

Money isn’t everything!  This is an example of greediness leading to a dependency on technology.  We expand production, make more profits, etc. through the ease of technology and in the process we see the destruction of important environments, the people native to these areas, the plant life and animals they use to survive, and ultimately slowly destroy their culture.  Not only do they lose independence, but our dependence on economic expansion and the technology we use to do this also makes us lose independence.  I will leave you with a question to consider…

Is our domination of nature creating a dependency on technology?  Is this really what we want our society to do?  How will this impact future generations (will we all end up feeling like the Guaraní)?