War On the Land: Ecology and Politics in Central America

by Bill Weinberg, William M. Weinberg, William J. Weinberg

Book by Weinberg, Bill

Paperback

First published September 15, 1991

Reviews

[Tomek · Rating 4 out of 5]

A must-read for anyone interested in either conservation or political social justice movements in Central America. Weinberg does a brilliant job of demonstrating that these issues are two sides of the same coin and that the two movements ignore each other at their own peril. As he points out, political abuse of power and social inequity invariably lead to centralization of land rights in the hands of an elite few (often by force and theft), which causes environmental degradation in and of itself, but also forces rural poor off their lands, resulting in further deforestation and environmental degradation as new land is cleared. This positive feedback loop is closed because the rural poor are forced into marginal lands which can only support them for a short time, thereby forcing them to clear more land and preventing them from producing enough to close the growing economic gap which alienated them in the first place.

Unfortunately, the book is a bit dated (published in '91), so an updated version would be appreciated. Many of the questions posed by the transformative events during the 80s have been, to some extent, answered over the past 25 years. I personally bemoaned the fact that there was no discussion of Mexico (does anyone know of a similar book addressing the social and environmental issues in Mexico?), though I realize that it is not typically considered part of Central America. Conversely, Weinberg spends a disproportionate number of pages on particular countries, especially Nicaragua.

While I was initially excited after reading the introduction, I became worried that he would not tie the concepts laid out in the case studies in the subsequent chapters. It's pretty clear that Weinberg has a background in sociology and history, but lacks a solid knowledge of ecology given his focus on historical events rather than scientific research as case studies to support his claims. Fortunately, his last chapter lays out a description of his solution to the inextricable issues of social inequity and environmental degradation in Central America. As he notes, "Revolutionary movements which fail to profoundly reevaluate modern industrial civilization's obsession with mega-scale development and top-down planning may find themselves depleting their nations' resource bases and alienating their own populace to the same degree as the repressive oligarchy they sought to replace. Similarly, environmental movements which fail to confront the root causes of environmental destruction and instead merely adapt to repressive power structures will eventually lose any semblance of legitimacy or effectiveness. In order to succeed, evolutionary movements must become ecological and ecological movements must become revolutionary...radical environmentalism does not question...that the root cause of ecological destruction is too many people that wild areas can be saved in a sort of political vacuum without addressing the social issues which are so inextricably involved. Perhaps what is needed is less 'radical environmentalism' than 'revolutionary environmentalism," which would, "not merely take the mainstream movement's assumptions to a more radical level, but dispense with them completely in favor of a view that sees profound social and political transformation as both a principal instrument and inevitable result of restoring ecology."