Land-use, abuse, and institutional attempts for correcting human-nature relationships: Europe vs The Americas

Abstract

Warnings regarding pollution, soil-fertility losses, mass extinction, Climate Change, and their effects on humans are widely known since > 50 years, still land-abuse pervasively remains. Looking into history and geography is needed for understanding the origins, environmental constrains, and ways for abandoning land-abuse. We explored all these guided by the following questions: (a) How the mentality transposed from the West into the Americas became dominant favoring non-sustainable land-managements? (b) How does the environment constrains the sustainability of mass agriculture? (c) Which events carried out by European decision makers, scientists, and activists generated their current support for more sustainable land-uses? We analyzed the importance of primogeniture and profit for transmitting land-abuse practices across generations. We looked into cultural adaptations and environmental constraints to agriculture among Temperate Oceanic Forests, Alpine Humid Tundras, and Neotropical Rain, Wet, and Dry-forests. Finally, we chronologically analyzed (A.D.1938-2018): major agricultural decisions collectively taken by West-European countries, and the development of environmentally-oriented thought and social movements. Primogeniture and profits culturally fixed the subordination of nature and people to a role of mere commodity-producers, making difficult for environmentalism to penetrate decision-making. Low-scale, sustainable agriculture remains traditionally practiced by Neotropical and Alpine indigenous peoples inhabiting fragile ecosystems, but became abandoned by lowland Europeand-Americas' landlords. European environmentalism is related to research-and-teaching of Ecology and Conservation in universities training prospects of both activists and decision makers. Instead, Americas' environmentalists are grass-rooted movements influenced or led by indigenous peoples. Paying traditional, indigenous agriculture is a recent European practice to be encouraged for the Americas.