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Conservation movement

The conservation movement, also known as nature conservation, is a political, environmental, and social movement that seeks to manage and protect natural resources, including animal, fungus, and plant species as well as their habitat for the future. Conservationists are concerned with leaving the environment in a better state than the condition they found it in. Evidence-based conservation seeks to use high quality scientific evidence to make conservation efforts more effective.

The early conservation movement evolved out of necessity to maintain natural resources such as fisheries, wildlife management, water, soil, as well as conservation and sustainable forestry. The contemporary conservation movement has broadened from the early movement's emphasis on use of sustainable yield of natural resources and preservation of wilderness areas to include preservation of biodiversity. Some say the conservation movement is part of the broader and more far-reaching environmental movement, while others argue that they differ both in ideology and practice. Conservation is seen as differing from environmentalism and it is generally a conservative school of thought which aims to preserve natural resources expressly for their continued sustainable use by humans.

Early history
The conservation movement can be traced back to John Evelyn's work Sylva, presented as a paper to the Royal Society in 1662. Published as a book two years later, it was one of the most highly influential texts on forestry ever published. Timbre resources in England were becoming dangerously depleted at the time, and Evelyn advocated the importance of conserving the forests by managing the rate of depletion and ensuring that the cut down trees get replenished.

The field developed during the 18th century, especially in Prussia and France where scientific forestry methods were developed. These methods were first applied rigorously in British India from the early 19th century. The government was interested in the use of forest produce and began managing the forests with measures to reduce the risk of wildfire in order to protect the "household" of nature, as it was then termed. This early ecological idea was in order to preserve the growth of delicate teak trees, which was an important resource for the Royal Navy.

Concerns over teak depletion were raised as early as 1799 and 1805 when the Navy was undergoing a massive expansion during the Napoleonic Wars; this pressure led to the first formal conservation Act, which prohibited the felling of small teak trees. The first forestry officer was appointed in 1806 to regulate and preserve the trees necessary for shipbuilding.

This promising start received a setback in the 1820s and 30s, when laissez-faire economics and complaints from private landowners brought these early conservation attempts to an end.

In 1837, American poet George Pope Morris published "Woodman, Spare that Tree!", a Romantic poem urging a lumberjack to avoid an oak tree that has sentimental value. The poem was set to music later that year by Henry Russell. Lines from the song have been quoted by environmentalists.

Origins of the modern conservation movement
Conservation was revived in the mid-19th century, with the first practical application of scientific conservation principles to the forests of India. The conservation ethic that began to evolve included three core principles: that human activity damaged the environment, that there was a civic duty to maintain the environment for future generations, and that scientific, empirically based methods should be applied to ensure this duty was carried out. Sir James Ranald Martin was prominent in promoting this ideology, publishing many medico-topographical reports that demonstrated the scale of damage wrought through large-scale deforestation and desiccation, and lobbying extensively for the institutionalization of forest conservation activities in British India through the establishment of Forest Departments. Edward Percy Stebbing warned of desertification of India. The Madras Board of Revenue started local conservation efforts in 1842, headed by Alexander Gibson, a professional botanist who systematically adopted a forest conservation program based on scientific principles. This was the first case of state management of forests in the world.

These local attempts gradually received more attention by the British government as the unregulated felling of trees continued unabated. In 1850, the British Association in Edinburgh formed a committee to study forest destruction at the behest of Hugh Cleghorn a pioneer in the nascent conservation movement.

He had become interested in forest conservation in Mysore in 1847 and gave several lectures at the Association on the failure of agriculture in India. These lectures influenced the government under Governor-General Lord Dalhousie to introduce the first permanent and large-scale forest conservation program in the world in 1855, a model that soon spread to other colonies, as well the United States. In the same year, Cleghorn organised the Madras Forest Department and in 1860 the department banned the use shifting cultivation. Cleghorn's 1861 manual, The forests and gardens of South India, became the definitive work on the subject and was widely used by forest assistants in the subcontinent. In 1861, the Forest Department extended its remit into the Punjab.

Sir Dietrich Brandis, a German forester, joined the British service in 1856 as superintendent of the teak forests of Pegu division in eastern Burma. During that time Burma's teak forests were controlled by militant Karen tribals. He introduced the "taungya" system, in which Karen villagers provided labor for clearing, planting and weeding teak plantations. After seven years in Burma, Brandis was appointed Inspector General of Forests in India, a position he served in for 20 years. He formulated new forest legislation and helped establish research and training institutions. The Imperial Forest School at Dehradun was founded by him.

Germans were prominent in the forestry administration of British India. As well as Brandis, Berthold Ribbentrop and Sir William P.D. Schlich brought new methods to Indian conservation, the latter becoming the Inspector-General in 1883 after Brandis stepped down. Schlich helped to establish the journal Indian Forester in 1874, and became the founding director of the first forestry school in England at Cooper's Hill in 1885. He authored the five-volume Manual of Forestry (1889–96) on silviculture, forest management, forest protection, and forest utilization, which became the standard and enduring textbook for forestry students.

Conservation in the United States

The American movement received its inspiration from 19th century works that exalted the inherent value of nature, quite apart from human usage. Author Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) made key philosophical contributions that exalted nature. Thoreau was interested in peoples' relationship with nature and studied this by living close to nature in a simple life. He published his experiences in the book Walden, which argued that people should become intimately close with nature. The ideas of Sir Brandis, Sir William P.D. Schlich and Carl A. Schenck were also very influential—Gifford Pinchot, the first chief of the USDA Forest Service, relied heavily upon Brandis' advice for introducing professional forest management in the U.S. and on how to structure the Forest Service.

Both conservationists and preservationists appeared in political debates during the Progressive Era (the 1890s–early 1920s). There were three main positions.

 * Laissez-faire: The laissez-faire position held that owners of private property, including lumber and mining companies, should be allowed to do anything they wished on their properties. Environmental protection therefore becomes their choice. Businesses are pressured somewhat by the incentive of occupational preservation which requires that they not wholly destroy or consume the resources they rely upon. Said businesses need to innovate or pivot in the event that the exhaustion of a resource is imminent.
 * Conservationists: The conservationists, led by future President Theodore Roosevelt and his close ally George Bird Grinnell, were motivated by the wanton waste that was taking place at the hand of market forces, including logging and hunting. This practice resulted in placing a large number of North American game species on the edge of extinction. Roosevelt believed that the laissez-faire approach of the U.S. Government was too wasteful and inefficient. In any case, they noted, most of the natural resources in the western states were already owned by the federal government. The best course of action, they argued, was a long-term plan devised by national experts to maximize the long-term economic benefits of natural resources. To accomplish the mission, Roosevelt and Grinnell formed the Boone and Crockett Club, whose members were some of the best minds and influential men of the day. Its contingency of conservationists, scientists, politicians, and intellectuals became Roosevelt's closest advisers during his march to preserve wildlife and habitat across North America.
 * Preservationists: Preservationists, led by John Muir (1838–1914), argued that the conservation policies were not strong enough to protect the interest of the natural world because they continued to focus on the natural world as a source of economic production.

The debate between conservation and preservation reached its peak in the public debates over the construction of California's Hetch Hetchy dam in Yosemite National Park which supplies the water supply of San Francisco. Muir, leading the Sierra Club, declared that the valley must be preserved for the sake of its beauty: "No holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man."

President Roosevelt put conservationist issues high on the national agenda. He worked with all the major figures of the movement, especially his chief advisor on the matter, Gifford Pinchot and was deeply committed to conserving natural resources. He encouraged the Newlands Reclamation Act of 1902 to promote federal construction of dams to irrigate small farms and placed 230 e6acre under federal protection. Roosevelt set aside more federal land for national parks and nature preserves than all of his predecessors combined.

Roosevelt established the United States Forest Service, signed into law the creation of five national parks, and signed the year 1906 Antiquities Act, under which he proclaimed 18 new national monuments. He also established the first 51 bird reserves, four game preserves, and 150 national forests, including Shoshone National Forest, the nation's first. The area of the United States that he placed under public protection totals approximately 230000000 acre.

Gifford Pinchot had been appointed by McKinley as chief of Division of Forestry in the Department of Agriculture. In 1905, his department gained control of the national forest reserves. Pinchot promoted private use (for a fee) under federal supervision. In 1907, Roosevelt designated 16 e6acre of new national forests just minutes before a deadline.

In May 1908, Roosevelt sponsored the Conference of Governors held in the White House, with a focus on natural resources and their most efficient use. Roosevelt delivered the opening address: "Conservation as a National Duty".

In 1903 Roosevelt toured the Yosemite Valley with John Muir, who had a very different view of conservation, and tried to minimize commercial use of water resources and forests. Working through the Sierra Club he founded, Muir succeeded in 1905 in having Congress transfer the Mariposa Grove and Yosemite Valley to the federal government. While Muir wanted nature preserved for its own sake, Roosevelt subscribed to Pinchot's formulation, "to make the forest produce the largest amount of whatever crop or service will be most useful, and keep on producing it for generation after generation of men and trees."

Theodore Roosevelt's view on conservationism remained dominant for decades; Franklin D. Roosevelt authorised the building of many large-scale dams and water projects, as well as the expansion of the National Forest System to buy out sub-marginal farms. In 1937, the Pittman–Robertson Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act was signed into law, providing funding for state agencies to carry out their conservation efforts.

Since 1970
Environmental reemerged on the national agenda in 1970, with Republican Richard Nixon playing a major role, especially with his creation of the Environmental Protection Agency. The debates over the public lands and environmental politics played a supporting role in the decline of liberalism and the rise of modern environmentalism. Although Americans consistently rank environmental issues as "important", polling data indicates that in the voting booth voters rank the environmental issues low relative to other political concerns.

The growth of the Republican party's political power in the inland West (apart from the Pacific coast) was facilitated by the rise of popular opposition to public lands reform. Successful Democrats in the inland West and Alaska typically take more conservative positions on environmental issues than Democrats from the Coastal states. Conservatives drew on new organizational networks of think tanks, industry groups, and citizen-oriented organizations, and they began to deploy new strategies that affirmed the rights of individuals to their property, protection of extraction rights, to hunt and recreate, and to pursue happiness unencumbered by the federal government at the expense of resource conservation.

In 2019, convivial conservation was an idea proposed by Bram Büscher and Robert Fletcher. Convivial conservation draws on social movements and concepts like environmental justice and structural change to create a post-capitalist approach to conservation. Convivial conservation rejects both human-nature dichotomies and capitalistic political economies. Built on a politics of equity, structural change and  environmental  justice, convivial conservation is considered a radical theory as it focuses on the structural political-economy of modern nation states and the need to create structural change. Convivial conservation creates a more integrated approach which reconfigures the nature-human configuration to create a world in which humans are recognized as a part of nature. The emphasis on nature as for and by humans creates a human responsibility to care for the environment as a way of caring for themselves. It also redefines nature as not only being pristine and untouched, but cultivated by humans in everyday formats. The theory is a long-term process of structural change to move away from capitalist valuation in favor of a system emphasizing everyday and local living. Convivial conservation creates a nature which includes humans rather than excluding them from the necessity of conservation. While other conservation theories integrate some of the elements of convivial conservation, none move away from both dichotomies and capitalist valuation principles.

The five elements of convivial conservation
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 * 1) The promotion of nature for, to and by humans
 * 2) The movement away from the concept of conservation as saving only nonhuman nature
 * 3) Emphasis on the long-term democratic engagement with nature rather than elite access and tourism,
 * 4) The movement away from the spectacle of nature and instead focusing on the mundane ‘everyday nature’
 * 5) The democratic management of nature, with nature as commons and in context

Racism and the Conservation Movement
The early years of the environmental and conservation movements were rooted in the safeguarding of game to support the recreation activities of elite white men, such as sport hunting. This led to an economy to support and perpetuate these activities as well as the continued wilderness conservation to support the corporate interests supplying the hunters with the equipment needed for their sport. Game parks in England and the United States allowed wealthy hunters and fishermen to deplete wildlife, while hunting by Indigenous groups, laborers and the working class, and poor citizens - especially for the express use of sustenance - was vigorously monitored. Scholars have shown that the establishment of the U.S. national parks, while setting aside land for preservation, was also a continuation of preserving the land for the recreation and enjoyment of elite white hunters and nature enthusiasts.

While Theodore Roosevelt was one of the leading activists for the conservation movement in the United States, he also believed that the threats to the natural world were equally threats to white Americans. Roosevelt and his contemporaries held the belief that the cities, industries and factories that were overtaking the wilderness and threatening the native plants and animals were also consuming and threatening the racial vigor that they believed white Americans held which made them superior. Roosevelt was a big believer that white male virility depended on wildlife for its vigor, and that, consequently, depleting wildlife would result in a racially weaker nation. This lead Roosevelt to support the passing of many immigration restrictions, eugenics legislations and wildlife preservation laws. For instance, Roosevelt established the first national parks through the Antiquities Act of 1906 while also endorsing the removal of Indigenous Americans from their tribal lands within the parks. This move was promoted and endorsed by other leaders of the conservation movement, including Frederick Law Olmsted, a leading landscape architect, conservationist, and supporter of the national park system, and Gifford Pinchot, a leading eugenicist and conservationist. Furthering the economic exploitation of the environment and national parks for wealthy whites was the beginning of ecotourism in the parks, which included allowing some Indigenous Americans to remain so that the tourists could get what was to be considered the full "wilderness experience".

Another long-term supporter, partner, and inspiration to Roosevelt, Madison Grant, was a well known American eugenicist and conservationist. Grant worked alongside Roosevelt in the American conservation movement and was even secretary and president of the Boone and Crockett Club. In 1916, Grant published the book "The Passing of the Great Race, or The Racial Basis of European History", which based its premise on eugenics and outlined a hierarchy of races, with white, "Nordic" men at the top, and all other races below. The German translation of this book was used by Nazi Germany as the source for many of their beliefs and was even proclaimed by Hitler to be his "Bible".

One of the first established conservation agencies in the United States is the National Audubon Society. Founded in 1905, its priority was to protect and conserve various waterbird species. However, the first state-level Audubon group was created in 1896 by Harriet Hemenway and Minna B. Hall to convince women to refrain from buying hats made with bird feathers- a common practice at the time. The organization is named after John Audubon, a naturalist and legendary bird painter. Audubon was also a slaveholder who also included many racist tales in his books. Despite his views of racial inequality, Audubon did find black and Indigenous people to be scientifically useful, often using their local knowledge in his books and relying on them to collect specimens for him.

The ideology of the conservation movement in Germany paralleled that of the U.S. and England. Early German naturalists of the 20th century turned to the wilderness to escape the industrialization of cities. However, many of these early conservationists became part of and influenced the Nazi party. Like elite and influential Americans of the early 20th century, they embraced eugenics and racism and promoted the idea that Nordic people are superior.

World Wide Fund for Nature
The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) is an international non-governmental organization founded in 1961, working in the field of the wilderness preservation, and the reduction of human impact on the environment. It was formerly named the "World Wildlife Fund", which remains its official name in Canada and the United States.

WWF is the world's largest conservation organization with over five million supporters worldwide, working in more than 100 countries, supporting around 1,300 conservation and environmental projects. They have invested over $1 billion in more than 12,000 conservation initiatives since 1995. WWF is a foundation with 55% of funding from individuals and bequests, 19% from government sources (such as the World Bank, DFID, USAID) and 8% from corporations in 2014.

WWF aims to "stop the degradation of the planet's natural environment and to build a future in which humans live in harmony with nature." The Living Planet Report is published every two years by WWF since 1998; it is based on a Living Planet Index and ecological footprint calculation. In addition, WWF has launched several notable worldwide campaigns including Earth Hour and Debt-for-Nature Swap, and its current work is organized around these six areas: food, climate, freshwater, wildlife, forests, and oceans.

"Conservation Far" approach
Institutions such as the WWF have historically been the cause of the displacement and divide between Indigenous populations and the lands they inhabit. The reason is because of the organization's historically colonial, paternalistic, and neoliberal approaches to conservation. Claus, in her article "Drawing the Sea Near: Satoumi and Coral Reef Conservation in Okinawa", expands on this approach, called "conservation far", in which access to lands is open to external foreign entities, such as researchers and/or tourists, but prohibited to local populations. The conservation initiatives are therefore taking place "far" away. This entity is largely unaware of the customs and values held by those within the territory surrounding nature and their role within it.

"Conservation Near" Approach
In Japan, the town of Shiraho had traditional ways of tending to nature that were lost due to colonization and militarization by the United States. The return to traditional sustainability practices constituted a “conservation near” approach. This engages those near in proximity to the lands in the conservation efforts.and holds them accountable for their direct effects on its preservation. While conservation-far drills visuals and sight as being the main interaction medium between people and the environment, conservation near includes a hands-on, full sensory experience permitted by conservation-near methodologies. An emphasis on observation only stems from a deeper association with intellect and observation. The alternative to this is more of a bodily or "primitive" consciousness, which is associated with lower-intelligence and people of color. A new, integrated approach to conservation is being investigated in recent years by institutions such as WWF. The socionatural relationships centered on the interactions based in reciprocity and empathy, making conservation efforts being accountable to the local community and ways of life, changing in response to values, ideals, and beliefs of the locals. Japanese seascapes are often integral to the identity of the residents and includes historical memories and spiritual engagements which need to be recognized and considered. The involvement of communities gives residents a stake in the issue, leading to a long-term solution which emphasizes sustainable resource usage and the empowerment of the communities. Conservation efforts are able to take into consideration cultural values rather than the foreign ideals that are often imposed by foreign activists.

Areas of concern
Deforestation and overpopulation are issues affecting all regions of the world. The consequent destruction of wildlife habitat has prompted the creation of conservation groups in other countries, some founded by local hunters who have witnessed declining wildlife populations first hand. Also, it was highly important for the conservation movement to solve problems of living conditions in the cities and the overpopulation of such places.

Boreal forest and the Arctic
The idea of incentive conservation is a modern one but its practice has clearly defended some of the sub Arctic wildernesses and the wildlife in those regions for thousands of years, especially by indigenous peoples such as the Evenk, Yakut, Sami, Inuit and Cree. The fur trade and hunting by these peoples have preserved these regions for thousands of years. Ironically, the pressure now upon them comes from non-renewable resources such as oil, sometimes to make synthetic clothing which is advocated as a humane substitute for fur. (See Raccoon dog for case study of the conservation of an animal through fur trade.) Similarly, in the case of the beaver, hunting and fur trade were thought to bring about the animal's demise, when in fact they were an integral part of its conservation. For many years children's books stated and still do, that the decline in the beaver population was due to the fur trade. In reality however, the decline in beaver numbers was because of habitat destruction and deforestation, as well as its continued persecution as a pest (it causes flooding). In Cree lands, however, where the population valued the animal for meat and fur, it continued to thrive. The Inuit defend their relationship with the seal in response to outside critics.

Latin America (Bolivia)
The Izoceño-Guaraní of Santa Cruz Department, Bolivia, is a tribe of hunters who were influential in establishing the Capitania del Alto y Bajo Isoso (CABI). CABI promotes economic growth and survival of the Izoceno people while discouraging the rapid destruction of habitat within Bolivia's Gran Chaco. They are responsible for the creation of the 34,000 square kilometre Kaa-Iya del Gran Chaco National Park and Integrated Management Area (KINP). The KINP protects the most biodiverse portion of the Gran Chaco, an ecoregion shared with Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil. In 1996, the Wildlife Conservation Society joined forces with CABI to institute wildlife and hunting monitoring programs in 23 Izoceño communities. The partnership combines traditional beliefs and local knowledge with the political and administrative tools needed to effectively manage habitats. The programs rely solely on voluntary participation by local hunters who perform self-monitoring techniques and keep records of their hunts. The information obtained by the hunters participating in the program has provided CABI with important data required to make educated decisions about the use of the land. Hunters have been willing participants in this program because of pride in their traditional activities, encouragement by their communities and expectations of benefits to the area.

Africa (Botswana)
In order to discourage illegal South African hunting parties and ensure future local use and sustainability, indigenous hunters in Botswana began lobbying for and implementing conservation practices in the 1960s. The Fauna Preservation Society of Ngamiland (FPS) was formed in 1962 by the husband and wife team: Robert Kay and June Kay, environmentalists working in conjunction with the Batawana tribes to preserve wildlife habitat.

The FPS promotes habitat conservation and provides local education for preservation of wildlife. Conservation initiatives were met with strong opposition from the Botswana government because of the monies tied to big-game hunting. In 1963, BaTawanga Chiefs and tribal hunter/adventurers in conjunction with the FPS founded Moremi National Park and Wildlife Refuge, the first area to be set aside by tribal people rather than governmental forces. Moremi National Park is home to a variety of wildlife, including lions, giraffes, elephants, buffalo, zebra, cheetahs and antelope, and covers an area of 3,000 square kilometers. Most of the groups involved with establishing this protected land were involved with hunting and were motivated by their personal observations of declining wildlife and habitat.

World

 * Barton, Gregory A. Empire, Forestry and the Origins of Environmentalism, (2002), covers British Empire
 * Clover, Charles. The End of the Line: How overfishing is changing the world and what we eat. (2004) Ebury Press, London. ISBN 0-09-189780-7
 * Haq, Gary, and Alistair Paul. Environmentalism since 1945 (Routledge, 2013).
 * Jones, Eric L. "The History of Natural Resource Exploitation in the Western World," Research in Economic History, 1991 Supplement 6, pp 235–252
 * McNeill, John R. Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth Century (2000).

Africa

 * Adams, Jonathan S.; McShane, Thomas O. Myth of Wild Africa: Conservation without Illusion (1992) 266p; covers 1900 to 1980s
 * Anderson, David; Grove, Richard. Conservation in Africa: People, Policies & Practice (1988), 355pp
 * Bolaane, Maitseo. "Chiefs, Hunters & Adventurers: The Foundation of the Okavango/Moremi National Park, Botswana".  Journal of Historical Geography. 31.2 (Apr. 2005): 241–259.
 * Carruthers, Jane. "Africa: Histories, Ecologies, and Societies," Environment and History, 10 (2004), pp. 379–406;
 * Showers, Kate B. Imperial Gullies: Soil Erosion and Conservation in Lesotho (2005) 346pp

Asia-Pacific

 * Bolton, Geoffrey. Spoils and Spoilers: Australians Make Their Environment, 1788-1980 (1981) 197pp
 * Economy, Elizabeth. The River Runs Black: The Environmental Challenge to China's Future (2010)
 * Elvin, Mark. The Retreat of the Elephants: An Environmental History of China (2006)
 * Grove, Richard H.; Damodaran, Vinita Jain; Sangwan, Satpal. Nature and the Orient: The Environmental History of South and Southeast Asia (1998) 1036pp
 * Johnson, Erik W., Saito, Yoshitaka, and Nishikido, Makoto. "Organizational Demography of Japanese Environmentalism," Sociological Inquiry, Nov 2009, Vol. 79 Issue 4, pp 481–504
 * Thapar, Valmik. Land of the Tiger: A Natural History of the Indian Subcontinent (1998) 288pp

Latin America

 * Boyer, Christopher. Political Landscapes: Forests, Conservation, and Community in Mexico. Duke University Press (2015)
 * Dean, Warren. With Broadax and Firebrand: The Destruction of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest (1997)
 * Evans, S. The Green Republic: A Conservation History of Costa Rica. University of Texas Press. (1999)
 * Funes Monzote, Reinaldo. From Rainforest to Cane Field in Cuba: An Environmental History since 1492 (2008)
 * Melville, Elinor G. K. A Plague of Sheep: Environmental Consequences of the Conquest of Mexico (1994)
 * Miller, Shawn William. An Environmental History of Latin America (2007)
 * Noss, Andrew and Imke Oetting. "Hunter Self-Monitoring by the Izoceño -Guarani in the Bolivian Chaco".  Biodiversity & Conservation. 14.11 (2005): 2679–2693.
 * Simonian, Lane. Defending the Land of the Jaguar: A History of Conservation in Mexico (1995) 326pp
 * Wakild, Emily. An Unexpected Environment: National Park Creation, Resource Custodianship, and the Mexican Revolution. University of Arizona Press (2011).

Europe and Russia

 * Arnone Sipari, Lorenzo, Scritti scelti di Erminio Sipari sul Parco Nazionale d'Abruzzo (1922–1933) (2011), 360pp.
 * Barca, Stefania, and Ana Delicado. "Anti-nuclear mobilisation and environmentalism in Europe: A view from Portugal (1976–1986)." Environment and History 22.4 (2016): 497–520. online
 * Bonhomme, Brian. Forests, Peasants and Revolutionaries: Forest Conservation & Organization in Soviet Russia, 1917–1929 (2005) 252pp.
 * Cioc, Mark. The Rhine: An Eco-Biography, 1815–2000 (2002).
 * Dryzek, John S., et al. Green states and social movements: environmentalism in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and Norway (Oxford UP, 2003).
 * Jehlicka, Petr. "Environmentalism in Europe: an east-west comparison." in Social change and political transformation (Routledge, 2018) pp. 112–131.
 * Simmons, I.G. An Environmental History of Great Britain: From 10,000 Years Ago to the Present (2001).
 * Uekotter, Frank. The greenest nation?: A new history of German environmentalism (MIT Press, 2014).
 * Weiner, Douglas R. Models of Nature: Ecology, Conservation and Cultural Revolution in Soviet Russia (2000) 324pp; covers 1917 to 1939.

United States

 * Bates, J. Leonard. "Fulfilling American Democracy: The Conservation Movement, 1907 to 1921", The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, (1957), 44#1 pp. 29–57. in JSTOR
 * Brinkley, Douglas G. The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America, (2009) excerpt and text search
 * Cawley, R. McGreggor. Federal Land, Western Anger: The Sagebrush Rebellion and Environmental Politics (1993), on conservatives
 * Flippen, J. Brooks. Nixon and the Environment (2000).
 * Hays, Samuel P. Beauty, Health, and Permanence: Environmental Politics in the United States, 1955–1985 (1987), the standard scholarly history
 * Hays, Samuel P. A History of Environmental Politics since 1945 (2000), shorter standard history
 * Hays, Samuel P. Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency (1959), on Progressive Era.
 * King, Judson. The Conservation Fight, From Theodore Roosevelt to the Tennessee Valley Authority (2009)
 * Nash, Roderick. Wilderness and the American Mind, (3rd ed. 1982), the standard intellectual history
 * Rothmun, Hal K. The Greening of a Nation? Environmentalism in the United States since 1945 (1998)
 * Scheffer, Victor B. The Shaping of Environmentalism in America (1991).
 * Sellers, Christopher. Crabgrass Crucible: Suburban Nature and the Rise of Environmentalism in Twentieth-Century America (2012)
 * Strong, Douglas H. Dreamers & Defenders: American Conservationists. (1988) online edition, good biographical studies of the major leaders
 * Taylor, Dorceta E. The Rise of the American Conservation Movement: Power, Privilege, and Environmental Protection (Duke U.P. 2016) x, 486 pp.
 * Turner, James Morton, "The Specter of Environmentalism": Wilderness, Environmental Politics, and the Evolution of the New Right. The Journal of American History 96.1 (2009): 123-47 online at History Cooperative
 * Vogel, David. California Greenin': How the Golden State Became an Environmental Leader (2018) 280 pp online review
 * Vogel, David. California Greenin': How the Golden State Became an Environmental Leader (2018) 280 pp online review

Historiography

 * Cioc, Mark, Björn-Ola Linnér, and Matt Osborn, "Environmental History Writing in Northern Europe," Environmental History, 5 (2000), pp. 396–406
 * Bess, Michael, Mark Cioc, and James Sievert, "Environmental History Writing in Southern Europe," Environmental History, 5 (2000), pp. 545–56;
 * Coates, Peter. "Emerging from the Wilderness (or, from Redwoods to Bananas): Recent Environmental History in the United States and the Rest of the Americas," Environment and History, 10 (2004), pp. 407–38
 * Hay, Peter. Main Currents in Western Environmental Thought (2002), standard scholarly history excerpt and text search
 * McNeill, John R. "Observations on the Nature and Culture of Environmental History," History and Theory, 42 (2003), pp. 5–43.
 * Robin, Libby, and Tom Griffiths, "Environmental History in Australasia," Environment and History, 10 (2004), pp. 439–74
 * Worster, Donald, ed. The Ends of the Earth: Perspectives on Modern Environmental History (1988)

title: Conservation movement


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Autarky

Autarky is the characteristic of self-sufficiency, usually applied to societies, communities, states, and their economic systems.

Autarky as an ideology or economic approach has been attempted by a range of political ideologies and movements, particularly leftist ones like African socialism, mutualism, war communism, communalism, swadeshi, syndicalism (especially anarcho-syndicalism), and left-wing populism, generally in an effort to build alternative economic structures or to control resources against structures a particular movement views as hostile. Conservative, centrist and nationalist movements have also adopted autarky, generally on a more limited scale, to develop a particular industry, to gain independence from other national entities or to preserve part of an existing social order.

Proponents of autarky have argued for national self-sufficiency to reduce foreign economic, political and cultural influences, as well as to promote international peace. Economists are generally supportive of free trade. There is a broad consensus among economists that protectionism has a negative effect on economic growth and economic welfare, while free trade and the reduction of trade barriers has a positive effect on economic growth and economic stability.

Autarky may be a policy of a state or some other type of entity when it seeks to be self-sufficient as a whole, but it also can be limited to a narrow field such as possession of a key raw material. Some countries have a policy of autarky with respect to foodstuffs (as South Korea), and water for national-security reasons. Autarky can result from economic isolation or from external circumstances in which a state or other entity reverts to localized production when it lacks currency or excess production to trade with the outside world.

Etymology
The word autarky is from the Ancient Greek word αὐτάρκεια, which means "self-sufficiency" (derived from αὐτο-, "self", and ἀρκέω, "to suffice"). In Stoicism the concept of autarky represents independence from anything external, including independence from personal relationships, so as to immune one from vagaries of fortune. The Stoic sage is autarkic by being dependent only on his own virtue. In Epicureanism the concept of autarky represents having the fewest possible requirements for living a life of pleasure, free of pain (aponia).

Lexico, whose content is provided by the same publisher as that of the Oxford English Dictionary, says that autarky is a variant spelling of and pronounced the same as autarchy and that autarchy is another term for autocracy.

Ancient and medieval
Early state societies that can be regarded as autarkic include nomadic pastoralism and palace economy, though over time these tend towards becoming less self-sufficient and more interconnected. The late Bronze Age, for example, saw formerly self-sufficient palace economies rely more heavily on trade, which may have been a contributing factor to the eventual Bronze Age Collapse when multiple crises hit those systems at once. After that collapse, the ideal of autarkeia formed a part of emerging Greek political culture, emphasizing economic self-sufficiency and local self-rule.

The populist Chinese philosophy of Agriculturalism, prominent in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, supported egalitarian, self-sufficient societies as an antidote to rampant war and corruption.

During the Late Roman Empire, some rebellions and communities pursued autarky as a reaction both to upheaval and to counter imperial power. A prominent example is the Bacaude, who repeatedly rebelled against the empire and "formed self-governing communities" with their own internal economy and coinage.

Medieval communes combined an attempt at overall economic self-sufficiency through the use of common lands and resources with the use of mutual defense pacts, neighborhood assemblies and organized militias to preserve local autonomy against the depredations of the local nobility. Many of these communes later became trading powers such as the Hanseatic League. In some cases, communal village economies maintained their own debt system as part of a self-sufficient economy and to avoid reliance on possibly hostile aristocratic or business interests. The trend toward "local self-sufficiency" increased after the Black Plague, initially as a reaction to the impact of the epidemic and later as a way for communes and city states to maintain power against the nobility.

There is considerable debate about how autarkic cultures that resisted the spread of early capitalism were. Golden Age pirate communities have been dubbed both heavily autarkic societies where "the marauders...lived in small, self-contained democracies" and as an "anti-autarky" due to their dependence on raiding.

While rarer among imperial states, some autarkies did occur during specific time periods. The Ming dynasty, during its earlier, more isolationist period, kept a closed economy that prohibited outside trade and focused on centralized distribution of goods produced in localized farms and workshops. A hierarchy of bureaucrats oversaw the distribution of these resources from central depots, including a massive one located in the Forbidden City. That depot was, at the time, the largest logistical base in the world. The Incan Empire also maintained a system of society-wide autarky based on community levies of specific goods and "supply on command".

19th and early 20th centuries
In some areas of the antebellum South, the enslaved and free black populations forged self-sufficient economies in an effort to avoid reliance on the larger economy controlled by the planter aristocracy. In eastern North Carolina maroon communities, often based in swampy areas, used a combination of agriculture and fishing to forge a "hidden economy" and secure survival. The relative self-reliance of these maritime African-American populations provided the basis for a strongly abolitionist political culture that made increasingly radical demands after the start of the Civil War. Due to tense relations with some Union commanders and political factions during and after that war, these communities "focused their organizing efforts on developing their own institutions, their own sense of self-reliance, and their own political strength".

Autarkic ambitions can also be seen in the populist backlash to the exploitations of free trade in the late 19th-century and in many early utopian socialist movements. Mutual aid societies like the Grange and Sovereigns of Industry attempted to set up self-sufficient economies (with varying degrees of success) in an effort to be less dependent on what they saw as an exploitative economic system and to generate more power to push for reforms.

Early socialist movements used these autarkic efforts to build their base with institutions like the Bourse de travail, socialist canteens and food assistance. These played a major role in securing workers' loyalty and building those parties into increasingly powerful institutions (especially in Europe) throughout the late 19th and early 20th-centuries. Through these cooperatives, "workers bought Socialist bread and Socialist shoes, drank Socialist beer, arranged for Socialist vacations and obtained a Socialist education."

Local and regional farming autarkies in many areas of Africa and Southeast Asia were displaced by European colonial administrations in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, who sought to push smallholder villages into larger plantations that, while less productive, they could more easily control. The self-sufficient communities and societies ended by colonialism were later cited as a useful example by African anarchists in the late 20th century.

Communist movements embraced or dismissed autarky as a goal at different times. In her survey of anarchism in the late 1800s, Voltairine De Cleyre summarized the autarkic goals of early anarchist socialists and communists as "small, independent, self-resourceful, freely-operating communes". In particular, Peter Kropotkin advocated local and regional autarky integrating agriculture and industry, instead of the international division of labor. His work repeatedly held up communities "that needed neither aid or protection from without" as a more resilient model.

Some socialist communities like Charles Fourier's phalansteries strove for self-sufficiency. The early USSR in the Russian Civil War strove for a self-sufficient economy with war communism, but later pursued international trade vigorously under the New Economic Policy. However, while the Soviet government during the latter period encouraged international trade, it also permitted and even encouraged local autarkies in many peasant villages.

Sometimes leftist groups clashed over autarkic projects. During the Spanish Civil War, the anarcho-syndicalist CNT and the socialist UGT had created economic cooperatives in the Levante that they claimed were "managing the economic life of the region independent of the government". But communist factions responded by cracking down on these cooperatives in an attempt to place economic control back in the hands of the central government.

Right-wing totalitarian governments that have also strived for autarky, developing national industry and imposing high tariffs but have crushed other autarky movements. In 1921, Italian fascists attacked existing left-wing autarkic projects at the behest of large landowners, destroying roughly 119 labor chambers, 107 cooperatives and 83 peasant offices that year alone. Nazi Germany under economics minister Hjalmar Schacht, and later Walther Funk, still pursued major international trade, albeit under a different system, to escape the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, satisfy business elites and prepare for war. The regime would continue to conduct trade, including with countries like the United States, including connections with major companies like IBM and Coca-Cola.

After World War II
Economic self-sufficiency was pursued as a goal by some members of the Non-Aligned Movement, such as India under Jawaharlal Nehru and Tanzania, under the ideology of Ujamaa and Swadeshi. That was partly an effort to escape the economic domination of both the United States and the Soviet Union while modernizing the countries' infrastructure. In the case of Francoist Spain, it was both the effect of international sanctions after the Spanish Civil War (1939) and the Second World War and the totalitarian nationalist ideology of Falange. Post-war famine and misery lasted longer than in war-ravaged Europe. It was not until the capitalist reforms of 1950s with the approach to the United States that the Spanish economy recovered the levels of 1935 launching into the Spanish Miracle.

Small-scale autarkies were sometimes used by the Civil Rights Movement, such as in the case of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Boycotters set up their own self-sufficient system of cheap or free transit to allow black residents to get to work and avoid using the then-segregated public systems in a successful effort to bring political pressure.

Autarkic efforts for food sovereignty also formed part of the civil rights movement. In the late 60s activist Fannie Lou Hamer was one of the founders of the Freedom Farms Cooperative, an effort to redistribute economic power and build self-sufficiency in Black communities. "When you've got 400 quarts of greens and gumbo soup canned for the winter, nobody can push you around or tell you what to say or do," Hamer summarized as the rationale for the cooperative. The efforts were extensively targeted by segregationist authorities and the far-right with measures ranging from economic pressure to outright violence.

After World War II, Autonomist efforts in Europe embraced local autarkic projects in an effort to craft anti-authoritarian left-wing spaces, especially influencing the social center and squatters' rights movements. Such efforts remain a common feature of Autonomist and anarchist movements on the continent today. The Micropolis social centre in Greece, for example, has gyms, restaurants, bars, meeting space and free distribution of food and resources.

Around 1970, the Black Panther Party moved away from orthodox communist internationalism towards "intercommunalism", a term coined by Huey P. Newton, "to retain a grasp on the local when the rest of radical thought seemed to be moving global". Intercommunalism drew from left-wing autarkic projects like free medical clinics and breakfast programs, "explicitly articulated as attempts to fill a void left by the failure of the federal government to provide resources as basic as food to black communities".

In Murray Bookchin's Communalist ideal, he wrote that in a more liberated future "every community would approximate local or regional autarky".

The influential 1983 anarchist book bolo'bolo, by Hans Widmer, advocated the use of autarky among its utopian anti-capitalist communes (known as bolos), asserting "the power of the State is based on food supply. Only on the basis of a certain degree of autarky can the bolos enter into a network of exchange without being exploited". Widmer theorized that through "tactical autarky" such communes would be able to prevent the return of oppressive structures and a money economy.

Autarkic efforts to counter the forcible privatization of public resources and maintain local self-sufficiency also formed a key part of alter-globalization efforts. The Cochabamba Water War had Bolivians successfully oppose the privatization of their water system to keep the resource in public hands.

Contemporary
Today, national economic autarkies are relatively rare. A commonly-cited example is North Korea, based on the government ideology of Juche (self-reliance), which is concerned with maintaining its domestic localized economy in the face of its isolation. However, even North Korea has extensive trade with Russia, China, Syria, Iran, Vietnam, India and many countries in Europe and Africa. North Korea had to import food during a widespread famine in the 1990s.

Some would consider a modern example at a societal level is Rojava, the autonomous northern region of Syria. Despite a key alliance with the United States, supporters consider them largely cut off from international trade, facing multiple enemies, and striving for a society based on communalism, Rojava's government and constitution emphasize economic self-sufficiency directed by neighborhood and village councils. Rojavan society and economics are influenced by Bookchin's ideas, including the emphasis on local and regional self governance. Under changes made in 2012 property and business belong to those who live in or use it towards these goals, while infrastructure, land and major resources are commons run by local and regional councils. Bookchin however was concerned about the effects of isolationist autarky in respect to the closing off of a community and therefore always stressed the need for a balance between localism and globalism.

An example of a small, but true autarky is North Sentinel Island, whose native inhabitants refuse all contact with outsiders and live completely self-sufficient lives.

An example of a contemporary effort at localized autarky, incorporating the concept's history from black nationalism, Ujamaa, African-American socialism and the civil rights movement, is Cooperation Jackson, a movement aimed at creating a self-sufficient black working class economy in Jackson, Mississippi. The movement has aimed to secure land and build self-sufficient cooperatives and workplaces "to democratically transform the political economy of the city" and push back against gentrification. Cooperation Jackson also saw a gain in electoral political power when its involvement proved pivotal to the 2013 mayoral election of Chokwe Lumumba and the 2017 election of his son, Chokwe Antar Lumumba.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Autarky


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Gaian

Gaian may refer to:

Nonfiction

 * An adherent of Gaianism
 * A person who adopts technogaianism, a slant on Gaianism that embraces a symbiosis between the emergence of modern technology and ancient terrestrial evolutionary biology
 * A follower of Gaia philosophy
 * A shortened form of the Roman name Gaianus

Fiction

 * Gaian (demonym), a demonym commonly associated in science fiction with humans
 * A faction the player can choose to control in the computer game Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri
 * A user of the popular forum Gaia Online or the Avatar character used to represent the user
 * The House of Gaian, from the Tir Alainn Trilogy by Anne Bishop

title: Gaian


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Imperfect competition

In economics, imperfect competition refers to a situation where the characteristics of an economic market do not fulfil all the necessary conditions of a perfectly competitive market. Imperfect competition causes market inefficiencies, resulting in market failure. Imperfect competition usually describes behaviour of suppliers in a market, such that the level of competition between sellers is below the level of competition in perfectly competitive market conditions.

The competitive structure of a market can significantly impact the financial performance and conduct of the firms competing within it. There is a causal relationship between competitive structure, behaviour and performance paradigm. Market structure can be determined by measuring the degree of suppliers' market concentration, which in turn reveals the nature of market competition. The degree of market power refers to firms' ability to affect the price of a good and thus, raise the market price of the good or service above marginal cost (MC).

The greater extent to which price is raised above marginal cost, the greater the market inefficiency. Competition in markets ranges from perfect competition to pure monopoly, where monopolies are imperfectly competitive markets with the greatest ability to raise price above marginal cost.

Demand Curves
The imperfect market faces a down-ward sloping demand curve in contrast to a perfectly elastic demand curve in the perfectly competitive market. This is because product differentiation and substitution occurs in the market. It is very easy for a consumer to change their seller which makes the consumer sensitive to price. The Law of demand also plays a very vital role in this market. As price increases, quantity demanded decreases for the given product. The demand curve in perfectly competitive and imperfectly competitive market has been illustrated in the image on the left.

Conditions of Perfect Competition
Economists primarily use these assumptions of perfect competition for developing economic policy, including economic welfare and efficiency analysis.

 * Suppliers are price takers, not price makers;
 * Prices are influence by supply and demand such that P=MC, via Pareto Efficiency and the Invisible Hand;
 * Large number of suppliers in the market such that no one firm has significant market power;
 * Little to no barriers to entry and exit;
 * Buyers and sellers have full information;
 * Negligible search costs;
 * Product homogeneity and divisibility;
 * Lack of collusion between firms;
 * Absence of externalities including increasing returns to scale.

Conditions of Imperfect Competition
If ANY of the above conditions of perfect competition are dissatisfied, the market is imperfectly competitive. Moreover;

If ONE of the following conditions are satisfied within an economic market, the market is considered "imperfect":

 * Market firms are NOT price takers and hence have control over the pricing of their goods and services;
 * The market contains ONE seller or none;
 * There are barriers to market entry and exit;
 * There is information asymmetry between buyers and sellers;
 * The market's goods and services are heterogeneous or differentiated.

Importance of Imperfect Competition
Imperfect conditions theorists believe that in the aggregate economy no market has ever, or will ever, exhibit the conditions of perfect competition. Imperfect competition is inherent in capitalist economies. Firms are incentivised by profit, and hence undertake competitive strategies which reap the greatest revenue, by setting P > MC, at the cost of macroeconomic market efficiency. In the most extreme case of a monopoly, producers overcharge for their good or service, and underproduce. Thus, imperfectly competitive pricing strategies impact consumer preferences and purchases, business operation and revenue, and economic policy.

Economists are in dispute over whether economic policy should be based on assumptions of perfect competition or imperfect competition. The imperfect theorists' perspective argues that policy based on assumptions of perfect competition is not effective as no market exists in purely perfectly competitive conditions. The argument for assuming perfect competition in economic decision making prevails on the widespread use of its logic, and the present lack of substantial and consistent imperfectly competitive economic models.

Case Study: Foreign Trade
Utilising the assumptions of perfect competition, foreign trade policies advocate for minimal intervention. In a perfectly competitive market, subsidies are harmful, and improvements to terms-of-trade are the first point of call for import protections.

Conversely, imperfect competition assumptions promote intervention in the international trade market. Assuming imperfect competition allows for economic modelling of policies to contain imperfectly competitive firms' market power, or for enhancing monopoly power in situations of national interest.

Thus, assumptions of perfect competition or imperfect competition have implications for policy choices and the efficacy of their effect, domestically and internationally.

Range of Imperfectly Competitive Market Structures
There are FOUR broad market structures that result in Imperfect Competition. The table below provides an overview of the characteristics of each of these market structures.

Monopolistic competition
A situation in which many firms with slightly different products compete. Moreover, firms compete by selling differentiated products that are highly substitutable, but are not perfect substitutes. Therefore, the level of market power under monopolistic competition is contingent on the degree of product differentiation. Monopolistic competition indicates that enterprises will participate in non-price competition.

Monopolistic competition is defined to describe two main characteristics of a market:

1. There are many sellers in the market. Each vendor assumes that a slight change in the price of his product will not affect the overall market price. The belief that competitors will not change their prices just because a vendor in the market changes the price of a product.

2. The sellers in the market all offer non-homogenous products. Companies have some control over the price of their products. Different types of consumers will buy the goods they like according to their subjective judgment.

There are two types of product differentiation:

 * Vertical differentiation: a product is unambiguously better or worse than a competing product (e.g. products that differ in efficiency or effectiveness); Customers select a product by using objective measures (e.g., price and quality) to rank their choices from best to worst.
 * Horizontal differentiation: a product that only some consumers prefer to competing products (e.g. Mercedes Benz and BMW). Customers make subjective choices about what they want to buy, because they have no objective criteria to distinguish the quality of products. Location and taste are important criteria to determine whether they are consumers' special preferences.

Enterprises entering the monopolistic competition market may realize profit increase or loss in the short term, but will realize normal profit in the long run. If the price of the enterprise is high enough to offset the fixed cost above the marginal cost, it will attract the enterprise to enter the market to obtain more profits. Once the enterprise enters the market, it will occupy more market share by lowering the product price until economic profit reaches 0.

Furthermore, each firm shares a small percentage of the total monopolistic market and hence, has limited control over the prevailing market price. Thus, each firms' demand curve (unlike perfect competition) is downward sloping, rather than flat. The main difference between monopoly competition and perfect competition lies in the paradox of excess capacity and price exceeding marginal cost.

Oligopoly
In an oligopoly market structure, the market is supplied by a small number of firms (more than 2). Moreover, there are so few firms that the actions of one firm can influence the actions of the other firms. Due to the small number of sellers in the market, any adjustment of product quantity and pricing by an enterprise will affect its competitors and thus affect the supply and pricing of the whole market. Oligopolies generally rely on non-price weapons, such as advertising or changes in product characteristics. Several large companies hold large market shares in industrial production, each facing a downward sloping demand, and the industry is often characterized by extensive non-price competition. The oligopoly considers price cuts to be a dangerous strategy. Businesses depend on each other. Under this market structure, the differentiation of products may or may not exist. The product they sell may or may not be differentiated and there are barriers to entry: natural, cost, market size or dissuasive strategies.

In an oligopoly, barriers to market entry and exit are high. The major barriers are:

 * Patents;
 * Technology;
 * Economies of scale;
 * Government regulation (e.g. limiting the issuance of licences); and
 * Firm name recognition.

Duopoly
A special type of Oligopoly, where two firms have exclusive power and control in a market. Both companies produce the same type of product and no other company produces the same or alternative product. The goods produced are circulated in only one market, and no other company intends to enter the market. The two companies have a lot of control over market prices. It is a particular case of oligopoly, so it can be said that it is an intermediate situation between monopoly and perfect competition economy. Hence, it is the most basic form of oligopoly.

Monopoly
In a monopoly market, there is only one supplier and many buyers; it is a firm with no competitors in its industry. If there is competition, it is mainly some marginal companies in the market, generally accounting for 30-40% of the market share. The decisions of marginal companies will not materially affect the profits of monopolists. The monopolist has market power, that is, it can influence the price of the good. Moreover, a monopoly is the sole provider of a good or service and thus, faces no competition in the output market. Hence, there are significant barriers to market entry, such as, patents, market size, control of some raw material. Examples of monopolies include public utilities (water, electricity) and Australia Post. A monopolist faces a downward sloping demand curve. Thus, as the monopolist raises its price, it sells fewer units. This suggests that when prices rise, even monopolists can drive away customers and sell fewer products. The difference between monopoly and other models is that monopolists can price their products without considering the reactions of other firms' strategic decisions.

Hence, a monopolist's profit maximising quantity is where marginal cost equals marginal revenue. At this point:

 * Output is below the level of a perfectly competitive market; but
 * Price is above marginal cost.

A firm is a Monopsonist if it faces small levels, or no competition in ONE of its output markets. A natural monopoly occurs when it is cheaper for a single firm to provide all of the market's output.

Governments often restrict monopolies through high taxes or anti-monopoly laws as high profits obtained by monopolies may harm the interests of consumers. However, restricting the profits of monopolists may also harm the interests of consumers, because companies may create unsatisfied products that are not available in new markets. These products will bring positive benefits to consumers and create huge economic value for enterprises. Tax and antitrust laws can discourage companies from innovating.

Intensity of price competition
The intensity of price competition is another good measure of how much control a firm within a market structure has over price. The Herfindahl Index provides a measure of firm concentration within a market and is the sum of the squared market shares of all the firms in the market (Herfindahl Index = (Si)2, where Si = market share of firm i). Large companies are given more weight in the index (unlike the N-concentration ratio). The value of the index ranges from 1/N to 1 (where N is the number of firms in the market). Thus, the more concentrated the market is, the larger the value of the Herfindahl Index will be. The table below provides an overview of price competition and intensity in the four main classes of market structure.

Market Power
Markets that face a downward sloping demand curve are said to have market power. This terms means that the markets have a certain power to decide their own price. This does not mean that the firm can decide the quantity they wish to sell. The firm can decide the price and the quantity is determined by the demand curve. The firm should expect a decrease in quantity demanded if they choose to increase the price. This market power emerges from factors such as:

 * 1) Control over inputs: If an organisation has authority over an important input it will have market power. For example, the company that look over the operation of Sydney Harbour in Sydney has market power.
 * 2) Copyrights and Patent: The health industry does research and development of major drugs. The government often issues patents in this industry so that a company can be the only legal seller of a drug.
 * 3) Network Economies: A product's value increases as more and more people use it. This often creates a Monopoly in that market. For example, Instagram's popularity increased as its usage increased amongst consumers.
 * 4) Government License: Yosemite Hospitality in the US has a Government license to run a lodge in the Yosemite National Park. This was done so that the government has the power to preserve the national park but it still created a monopoly in this market.

title: Imperfect competition


text:
Political ecology

Political ecology is the study of the relationships between political, economic and social factors with environmental issues and changes. Political ecology differs from apolitical ecological studies by politicizing environmental issues and phenomena.

The academic discipline offers wide-ranging studies integrating ecological social sciences with political economy in topics such as degradation and marginalization, environmental conflict, conservation and control, and environmental identities and social movements.

Origins
The term "political ecology" was first coined by Frank Thone in an article published in 1935. It has been widely used since then in the context of human geography and human ecology, but with no systematic definition. Anthropologist Eric R. Wolf gave it a second life in 1972 in an article entitled "Ownership and Political Ecology", in which he discusses how local rules of ownership and inheritance "mediate between the pressures emanating from the larger society and the exigencies of the local ecosystem", but did not develop the concept further. Other origins include other early works of Eric R. Wolf, Michael J. Watts, Susanna Hecht, and others in the 1970s and 1980s.

The origins of the field in the 1970s and 1980s were a result of the development of development geography and cultural ecology, particularly the work of Piers Blaikie on the sociopolitical origins of soil erosion. Historically, political ecology has focused on phenomena in and affecting the developing world; since the field's inception, "research has sought primarily to understand the political dynamics surrounding material and discursive struggles over the environment in the third world".

Scholars in political ecology are drawn from a variety of academic disciplines, including geography, anthropology, development studies, political science, economics, sociology, forestry, and environmental history.

Overview
Political ecology's broad scope and interdisciplinary nature lends itself to multiple definitions and understandings. However, common assumptions across the field give the term relevance. Raymond L. Bryant and Sinéad Bailey developed three fundamental assumptions in practising political ecology:

 * First, changes in the environment do not affect society in a homogenous way: political, social, and economic differences account for uneven distribution of costs and benefits.
 * Second, "any change in environmental conditions must affect the political and economic status quo."
 * Third, the unequal distribution of costs and benefits and the reinforcing or reducing of pre-existing inequalities has political implications in terms of the altered power relationships that then result.

In addition, political ecology attempts to provide critiques and alternatives in the interplay of the environment and political, economic and social factors. Paul Robbins asserts that the discipline has a "normative understanding that there are very likely better, less coercive, less exploitative, and more sustainable ways of doing things".

From these assumptions, political ecology can be used to:
 * inform policymakers and organizations of the complexities surrounding environment and development, thereby contributing to better environmental governance.
 * understand the decisions that communities make about the natural environment in the context of their political environment, economic pressure, and societal regulations.
 * look at how unequal relations in and among societies affect the natural environment, especially in context of government policy.

Scope and influences
Political ecology's movement as a field since its inception in the 1970s has complicated its scope and goals. Through the discipline's history, certain influences have grown more and less influential in determining the focus of study. Peter A. Walker traces the importance of the ecological sciences in political ecology. He points to the transition, for many critics, from a ‘structuralist’ approach through the 1970s and 1980s, in which ecology maintains a key position in the discipline, to a 'poststructuralist' approach with an emphasis on the 'politics' in political ecology. This turn has raised questions as to the differentiation with environmental politics as well as the field's use of the term of 'ecology'. Political ecological research has shifted from investigating political influence on the earth's surface to the focus on spatial-ecological influences on politics and power—a scope reminiscent of environmental politics.

Much has been drawn from cultural ecology, a form of analysis that showed how culture depends upon, and is influenced by, the material conditions of society (political ecology has largely eclipsed cultural ecology as a form of analysis according to Walker.) As Walker states, "whereas cultural ecology and systems theory emphasize[s] adaptation and homeostasis, political ecology emphasize[s] the role of political economy as a force of maladaptation and instability".

Political ecologists often use political economy frameworks to analyze environmental issues. Early and prominent examples of this were Silent Violence: Food, Famine and Peasantry in Northern Nigeria by Michael Watts in 1983, which traced the famine in northern Nigeria during the 1970s to the effects of colonialism, rather than an inevitable consequence of the drought in the Sahel, and The Political Economy of Soil Erosion in Developing Countries by Piers Blaikie in 1985, which traced land degradation in Africa to colonial policies of land appropriation, rather than over-exploitation by African farmers.

Relationship to anthropology and geography
Originating in the 18th and 19th centuries with philosophers such as Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and Thomas Malthus, political economy attempted to explain the relationships between economic production and political processes. It tended toward overly structuralist explanations, focusing on the role of individual economic relationships in the maintenance of social order. Eric Wolf used political economy in a neo-Marxist framework which began addressing the role of local cultures as a part of the world capitalist system, refusing to see those cultures as "primitive isolates". But environmental effects on political and economic processes were under-emphasised.

Conversely, Julian Steward and Roy Rappaport's theories of cultural ecology are sometimes credited with shifting the functionalist-oriented anthropology of the 1950s and 1960s and incorporating ecology and environment into ethnographic study.

Geographers and anthropologists worked with the strengths of both to form the basis of political ecology. PE focuses on issues of power, recognizing the importance of explaining environmental impacts on cultural processes without separating out political and economic contexts.

The application of political ecology in the work of anthropologists and geographers differs. While any approach will take both the political/economic and the ecological into account, the emphasis can be unequal. Some, such as geographer Michael Watts, focus on how the assertion of power impacts on access to environmental resources. His approach tends to see environmental harm as both a cause and an effect of “social marginalization”.

Political ecology has strengths and weaknesses. At its core, it contextualizes political and ecological explanations of human behavior. But as Walker points out, it has failed to offer “compelling counter-narratives” to “widely influential and popular yet deeply flawed and unapologetic neo-Malthusian rants such as Robert Kaplan's (1994) 'The coming anarchy' and Jared Diamond's (2005) Collapse (385). Ultimately, applying political ecology to policy decisions – especially in the US and Western Europe – will remain problematic as long as there is a resistance to Marxist and neo-Marxist theory.

Andrew Vayda and Bradley Walters (1999) criticize political ecologists for presupposing “the importance ... of certain kinds of political factors in the explanation of environmental changes” (167). Vayda and Walter's response to overly political approaches in political ecology is to encourage what they call “event ecology”, focusing on human responses to environmental events without presupposing the impact of political processes on environmental events. The critique has not been taken up widely. One example of work that builds on event ecology, in order to add a more explicit focus on the role of power dynamics and the need for including local peoples' voices is Penna-Firme (2013) "Political and Event Ecology: critiques and opportunities for collaboration".

Relationship to conservation
There is a divergence of ideas between conservation science and political ecology. With conservationists establishing protected areas to conserve biodiversity, "political ecologists have devoted some energy to the study of protected areas, which is unsurprising given political ecology's overall interest in forms of access to, and control over resources". The arguments against enclosure of land for conservation is that it harms local people and their livelihood systems, by denying them access. As Dove and Carpenter state, "indigenous people have important environmental knowledge which could contribute to conservation". The objection by political ecologists is that land use regulations are made by NGOs and the government, denying access, denying the ability of local people to conserve species and areas themselves, and rendering them more vulnerable through dispossession.

"In a few cases, perhaps especially tragic local groups have been displaced to create national parks and reserves to ‘conserve’ the forest. Fortunately, most conservation bodies are now aware that, if a group has been using and managing a forest for several thousand years, throwing it off the land is more apt to destroy the forest ecosystem than to preserve it. (Sutton 2004: 302)"

Power perspective in political ecology
Power is inevitable at the core of political ecology. Political ecology in the view Greenberg and Park is a way of creating a synergy between a political economy that aligns power distribution with ecological analysis and economic activities in a wider version of bio-environmental relations. Political ecology explained by Bryant is the dynamic in politics that is associated with "discursive struggle" and material in the environment of less developed nations, showing how unequal relation in power makes up a political environment. In the view of Robbins, empirical exploration that shows the changes occurring in an environment in clear connection to power is termed political ecology.

With power taking the central role in political ecology, there is a need to clarify the perspectives of power and the contributors to these perspectives.

Actor-oriented power perspectives:
According to the actor-oriented power perspectives, power is exercised by actors which are contrary to the presumption of power being perceived as a force likely to pass individuals with no consciousness. Fredrick Engelstad, a Norwegian sociologist explained the concept of power as the combination of relationality, causality, and intentionality. The implication of this is that actors are perceived as power carriers in a significant way by which through action a certain intention (intentionality) is achieved, action occurs between at least two actors (relationality), and intended results are produced by action (causality). Viewing the power perspective from the angle of actor-oriented, Dowding submitted that power is linked to the agency, and this does not take away the importance of structure. Rather, while seen actor's use of power as a constraint, it is also propelled by structures.

The contributions made by actor-oriented power theory are given by Max Weber (1964) where he explained power to be people’s ability to the realization of their wills irrespective of the resistance posed by others. An instance given by Robert Dahl is the case where actor A exercises power over actor B by getting actor B to execute a task that actor B will otherwise not do. The extreme case of this is when some group of individuals is mandated to carry out the task contrary to their thought or will.

Svarstad, Benjaminsen, and Overå held that the theory of actor-oriented power help in providing conceptual distinctions with useful insight into the theoretical elements that are vital in studying political ecology. While there are actors who either exercise or try to put power into use in diverse ways, there are also actors who encounter resistance from their oppositions and other forces. An instance of these forces is resisting the fulfilment of actors' intentions by other opposition who are more powerful. It can also come in the form of institutional structural constraints emanating from the outcome of intended actions.

The use of power by actors who exercise environmental interventions and actors who resist such interventions are oftentimes the emphasis of scholars of political ecology. However, when environmental interventions result in environmental degradations, scholars of political ecology throw their support to actors who resist such exercise of environmental interventions. Actors exercising environmental interventions include corporate organizations, governmental and non-governmental organizations  while actors that resist them include groups such as peasants, fishermen, or pastoralists, by exercising counter-power using various kinds of resistance, or active involvement.

Neo-Marxist power perspectives

Amongst the foundations of political ecology is the political economy thought of Marxist which centered on the inequalities that emerged from global capitalism. However, the power perspectives of Marx are most likely highlighted even though there are several perspectives of power in political ecology influenced directly or indirectly by Marx. The Marxist main focus under capitalism is in relation to class and the stability of reproducing this class relation. Marx also placed human agency as the most important of his power concept with the human agency being socially conditioned as seen in his quote below:

"Men make their history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past (Marx 1852:5)".

Thus, Marx's power theory which formed his perspective of power is the understanding of human agency as being constrained by social structure. As structure produces the potential and extent for power exertion, the human agency is reproducing the structure. This is illustrated by Isaac (1987) using the powerful David Rockefeller (1915 to 2017) as quoted below:

"But a social theory of power must explain what kinds of social relations exist and how power is distributed by these relations, such that it is possible for David Rockefeller to have the power that he has. To do this is not to deny that it is he who possesses this power, nor to deny those personal attributes determining the particular manner in which he exercises it. It is simply to insist that the power individuals possess has social conditions of existence and that it is these conditions that should be the primary focus of theoretical analysis".

Poststructuralist power perspectives

The poststructuralist power perspective is the domain of Michel Foucault’s work with its application in political ecology. The poststructuralist power perspectives can be in three dimensions such as; biopower, governmentality, and discursive power.

Biopower indicates that to secure life, governments are concerned with the improvement of health and quality of life among populations. Foucault in his work explained how through the knowledge of power, people have learned how they should behave. In so doing, Foucault separates sovereign power from bio-power. Where sovereign power is termed "take life or let live", the bio-power "make life or let die". While human as specie is continuously elaboration in conformity to nature, the superior one will intervene, acting on the environmental condition if the species of human are to be altered. Therefore, bio-power aim in terms of governance and knowledge is to ascertain environmental issues as core concerns.

Political ecology emphasized that understanding how power works in environmental governance follows Foucault’s notion of “governmentality”. Foucault sees governmentality as the means employed by the government to make its citizens behave in line with the priorities of government. Fletcher separates governmentality into four kinds. First is "discipline" which ensures that the citizens internalize specific manners like ethical standards and social norms. The second is the "truth" which is a way of governing citizens using truth-defining standards like religion. The third is "Neoliberal rationality" which is a motivational structure formed and used to improve outcomes. The fourth is "Sovereign power" used to govern based on rules and punishment for faulting the rules. According to Fletcher, these governmentalities may conflict, work alone, or overlap. Also, the first two are dependent on humans believing government priorities, the second two do not but are seen as of importance.

Lastly, "discursive power" manifest when actors (corporate organization, governmental, and non-governmental organizations) make people or groups imbibe and add to the reproduction of the discourses they produce. Unlike in other fields, in political ecology, discourses are studied in line with a critical realist epistemology. There are instances where the formation of discursive power is traced to a state’s colonial era when efforts are made in the appropriation of new territories. Going by the basis of Foucault's political-ecological discursive power, it becomes imperative to mention that, there exist various perspectives to those of Foucault with wider space for human agency.

Comparing between bio-power, governmentality, and discursive power, both governmentality, and discursive power can be regarded as a theoretical perspective with significant importance while bio-power can be regarded as a topical concern identified by Foucault as the core of modern-day governments.

Political ecologists
Some prominent contemporary scholars include:

 * Anthony Bebbington
 * Piers Blaikie
 * Murray Bookchin
 * Harold Brookfield
 * Raymond L. Bryant
 * Michael R. Dove
 * Robyn Eckersley
 * Arturo Escobar
 * Andre Gorz
 * Félix Guattari
 * Susanna Hecht
 * Ivan Illich
 * Giorgos Kallis
 * Alain Lipietz
 * William Moseley
 * Richard Peet
 * Paul Robbins
 * Ariel Salleh
 * Farhana Sultana
 * Erik Swyngedouw
 * Bhaskar Vira
 * Michael Watts
 * Karl Zimmerer

Related journals
Scholarly journals that have been key to the development (and critique) of this field include:

 * Annals of the Association of American Geographers
 * Antipode
 * Capitalism Nature Socialism
 * Development and Change
 * Journal of Peasant Studies
 * Ecological Economics
 * Ecology
 * Economic Geography
 * Environment and Planning
 * Futures
 * Gender, Place & Culture
 * Geoforum
 * Human Ecology
 * Journal of Political Ecology
 * New Left Review
 * Progress in Human Geography
 * Progress in Physical Geography
 * Oryx (journal)

title: Political ecology


text:
Talk:Province of Olbia-Tempio

The institution of this province, together with other three new ones, has been discussed at a national institutional level. Official studies have been made and the matter is now being developed in its technical details by both the national and the regional governments. It seems that some of these provinces _will_ effectively be instituted, but until the precise moment when this will eventually be officially declared, many things might happen that could stop this process.

One of the obstacles is the scarce number of inhabitants, since this idea regards an area which is _already_ perhaps the less populated in Europe (or is however among the less populated). We could therefore risk to have a province for a similar number of inhabitants than the average italian City Council (Comune) has. This is in fact presumedly going to stop other proposed institutions of provinces. Olbia has indeed more chances of success (because of notable objective differences from Sassari, current capital, economical relevance), but, I repeat, it is a proposal, seriously taken into official exam, but not yet a legal act, so nothing more than a seriously considered proposal.

The writer 62.10.15.xxx seems to be very interested in adding a personal point of view, thus changing the sense of this and other articles regarding Sardinia. These changes had besides been already made a few days ago, and already reverted - I wrote he had added "nonsense", but practically he wrote false things. Another thing 62.10.15.xxx arbitrarily changes regarded language: in NO part of Sardinia Corsican language is spoken.

Thank you, Marj, for your help. - Gianfranco

Caro Gianfranco,

non è possibile che la provincia di Olbia-Tempio sia una delle meno popolose d'Europa:

1. In Italia esistono province meno popolose, nella stessa Sardegna (Ogliastra, Carbonia-Iglesias, Medio Campidano e forse anche Oristano dopo lo scorporo) ma anche altrove (Enna, Isernia e Regione autonoma Valle d'Aosta, che è una regione che svolge anche le funzioni provinciali);

2. Come fai a dire che una provincia italiana è la meno popolosa d'Europa se nel resto d'Europa, a parte che in Spagna, non esistono istituti chiamati province? Con cosa la paragoni? Con i dipartimenti francesi? Ma già le contee britanniche non sono assimilabili.

3. In Italia esistono 8103 comuni e la popolazione media di un comune è, dunque, sotto gli 8000 (ottomila) abitanti. Quindi non è vero che la provincia di Olbia-Tempio ha la popolazione media di un comune.

Oltretutto, city council non significa comune in quanto entità territoriale, ma in quanto entità amministrativa. Dire «the population of a city council» equivale a dire grosso modo «la popolazione di un consiglio comunale». Cioè i membri del consiglio?

title: Talk:Province of Olbia-Tempio


text:
User:Novalis

Dave Turner novalis@novalis.org

I do Free Software licensing, photography, cooking, glassblowing, and other misc stuff.

Also, your evil UK libel laws can't touch me.

On wikibreak; may be in occasionally to correct typos.

title: User:Novalis