The extent of environmental degradation the world over during recent decades has kindled wide interest and sparked animated debate both in scientific and lay circles. The guidelines and basics of the issues involved were delineated by noted environmentalist and scholar, Ramachandra Guha, in a lecture last weekend while on a visit to Chennai.

According to him, Environmentalism is a modern concept that has grown from the evils of the Industrial Revolution. If ancient scriptures or poets like Kalidasa or Virgil spoke about nature, it was merely in their status as observers of nature and not environmentalists. The concept has sprouted three dominant environmental philosophies. Much like the political dogmas of Conservatism, Liberalism and Socialism, environmentalists are dogmatic followers of either Scientific Conservation, Agrarian or 'Back to the Land' policy or, thirdly, Wilderness Thinking or Primitivism. 

Scientific Conservation is woven around the principle of 'Sustained Yield', something that German scientists developed out of their experiences during the World War. They found their country was among the world leaders in deforestation. Ship building coupled with use of wood to power trains had stripped the German forests bare. The scientists calculated annual forest yield, identifying the different species and assessing their growth, so that only the annual yield was cut and the capital remained untouched. It was realized that left to purely market forces, resources would be exhausted soon. So the 'Sustained Yield' philosophy came to be applied to the management of other resources too like fisheries, livestock, water, minerals and so on. This Scientific Conservation approach to industrialization sees as its enemy the illiterate, 'pre-scientific' humans, especially the peasants. Its key words are efficiency, sustained yield, science and expertise.

Speaking of Agrarianism or Back to the Land philosophy, Dr. Guha described the poet Wordsworth as one of the earliest agrarian philosophers and Gandhiji the greatest of all time. They strongly opposed un-mindful industrialization. While Wordsworth spoke of London's smoke spewing chimneys polluting men's minds along with water, air and land, Gandhiji dreaded to think of the consequences of India's industrialization on the world, considering that a tiny island kingdom's economic imperialism could keep half the world in chains. This philosophy regards as its main enemies the machine and a materialistic approach to life.

Protagonists of Wilderness Thinking or Primitivism assign to nature identity and rights independent of its use or the pleasure to mankind. For them, human population has to be reduced to less than half its present number for other species to flourish. Dr. Guha said John Muir, who safeguarded California's redwood forests from destruction, was the first wilderness thinker, who formulated a philosophy around the non-human wild and accorded rights to the non-human world. The words and phrases most used by these thinkers are: pristine, primordial, virgin unspoiled nature, and equality to all species.

But are any of these philosophies sustainable in their pure form? No, says Dr. Guha who feels each has its own advantages and disadvantages. He calls himself a 'Conservative Liberal Socialist' and a 'Scientific Agrarian Primitive'.