Historicizing Sustainability: German Scientific Forestry in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
2010; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 19; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/09505431.2010.519866
ISSN1470-1189
Autores Tópico(s)European history and politics
ResumoAbstract German scientific forestry is generally referred to as a starting point for the concept of sustainability and the variety of interpretations it has found in recent public and scientific discourses. Its early history in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, however, is treated, more or less, as a ‘founding narrative’ with all the typical aspects of this literary device: simplicity, a degree of mysticism and a teleological relation to the current state of the art. But there is more insight to be gained from the history of scientific forestry, and sustainability in particular, than the affirmative creation of tradition. The origins of sustainability were fraught with conflict. Focusing on timber production and financial revenue for the state treasury, scientific forestry simplified the biological composition of forests, re-organized their internal structure along the lines of legibility and accountability, and restricted access for users other than scientifically trained personnel. The modernization and streamlining of Central European forests provoked resistance and violent clashes. After about four decades, foresters also noted environmental changes in the forests such as increased vulnerability to drought, storms and forest pests. The history of forest management planning, introduced in the 1820s, and of experimental forestry in the 1860s, exemplifies how techno-scientific systems communicate with socio-cultural and natural environments. However strongly a science-based reform programme tries to disentangle itself from the politics of nature, such programmes, as well as the terminology by which they are fed into and received by public discourse, are subject to historical change and power struggles. Keywords: Sustainabilityforestryenvironmental historyecological conflictsGermany Notes The proposal was echoed in several quality newspapers and journals, but also received the attention of the German government: ‘What lies beneath the rainforest’, The Independent, 31 October 2009, available at http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/what-lies-beneath-the-rainforest-1812289.html (accessed 6 February 2010); Jess Smee, ‘Oil or trees? Germany takes lead in saving Ecuador's rainforest’, Spiegel [online], 23 June 2009, available at http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,631994,00.html (accessed 6 February 2010). It is not a mere coincidence that this map resembles urban street patterns. Eighteenth-century forestry was a branch of ‘good police’, a form of territorial governance aiming at the management of the life and ‘well-being’ of a population, as Michel Foucault described it: ‘Making the town into a sort of quasi-convent and the realm into a sort of quasi-town is the kind of great disciplinary dream behind police’ (Foucault, 2007 Foucault, M. 2007. Security, Territory, Population. Lectures at the College de France 1977–78, Houndsmill/Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. [Google Scholar], p. 341; see chapters 12 and 13). A veritable trading infrastructure existed since the early eighteenth century. A former high-ranking official in the Bavarian treasury department, Ignaz von Rudhart (1827 Rudhart, I. V. 1827. Zustand des Königreichs Bayern nach amtlichen Quellen, Vol. 2, Stuttgart: Cotta. [Google Scholar], p. 238), estimated that about two-thirds of the timber that was rafted on the Rhine to the Netherlands came via the River Main. In the eyes of the Forestry Department forests were a long-term investment. Good financial results were important but not necessarily in the short-term. The data are taken from the Bavarian State Archiv Würzburg Forstamt Heigenbrücken B 111 and B113. Bavarian State Archiv Würzburg Forstamt Hain 373, Report of the District Forester, 4 November 1848. Bavarian State Archive Würzburg 1791, Report of the District Forester of Zellhausen (Kur Hesse), 30 July 1848. Bavarian State Archive Würzburg Forstamt Hain 373, Report of the District Forester, 17 March 1848. Ibid. Letter of Complaint by the community administration of Laufach, 28 March 1848. Bavarian State Archiv Würzburg, Regierung v. Unterfranken 1791, minutes of the finance department meeting, 5 November 1848. The years preceding Gayer's book saw a series of heavy storms severely damaging German forests. In October 1870, 8.5 million cubic metres fell prey to storms (Plochmann and Hieke, 1985 Plochmann, R. and Hieke, C. 1985. Schadensereignisse in den Wäldern Bayerns zusammengestellt aus der forstlichen Literatur seit dem 18. Jahrhundert, München: Ministerium für Ernährung, Landwirtschaft und Forsten. [Google Scholar], 142ff). In the nineteenth century, nature (Natur) was the term referred to by German foresters as an overarching structure of the biosphere. While the term ecology (Ökologie), was introduced by the German Darwinist Ernst Haeckel in 1866, other more differentiated terms such as eco-system (A. Tansley) or natural environment, Umwelt (J. v. Uexküll), were created in the twentieth century (Trepl, 1994 Trepl, L. 1994. Geschichte der Ökologie, 2, Weinheim: Beltz-Athenäum. [Google Scholar]; Haber, 2001 Haber, W. 2001. “Ökologie und Nachhaltigkeit. Einführung in die Grundprinzipien der theoretischen Ökologie”. In Nachhaltigkeit in der Ökologie. Wege in eine zukunftsfähige Welt, Edited by: Di Blasi, L., Goebel, D. and Hösle, V. 66–95. München: Beck. [Google Scholar]). Cameralism is an eighteenth-century Central European variant of the mercantile economic theory. Cameralism focused on the duty of the princely government (chamber, camera) to enhance the commonwealth of the population of a territory. A main topic was the ‘good police’ as the right of the state to establish order in all fields of society, in particular the exploitation of natural resources (Urproduktion) and agriculture. Cameral sciences were institutionalized in eighteenth-century universities for the academic training of civil servants. Often the curriculum comprised forestry.
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