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- Raymond A.
Rogers
- Faculty of
Environmental Studies
- York
University
- Toronto,
Ontario
The Voyage Out and the
Voyage Back: Ecological Knowledge and Canada's East Coast
Fishery
Towards a Definition of
'Ecological Knowledge'
The purpose of this paper is to set
out some points of discussion related to 'ecological
knowledge' and then provide a rationale which supports those
points of discussion. If 'ecological knowledge' or
'traditional knowledge' are to play an important role within
the conservation practices of the Northwest Atlantic
fishery, a recognition of some basic parameters need to be
hashed out:
- First, there needs to be an
in-depth discussion about the causes of the management
failure in the fishery and the knowledge-based
assumptions which informed that failure (nature as
factory, for example), so that there is an answer to the
question: "What is the problem to which 'ecological
knowledge' is the solution?"
- In order not to "essentialize"
the participants in the fishery who have 'ecological
knowledge,' there needs to be a discussion of the social
relations which are associated with 'ecological
knowledge,' and a recognition of how changing relations
in the fishery inform conceptions of 'ecological
knowledge.'
- So that it is possible to
locate discussion of 'ecological knowledge' within larger
debates over the relationship between ideology and power,
it is necessary to include the realities which are not
fishery-related, but which play a role in
"subdu[ing] the lived actualities of people's
experience," as Dorothy Smith argues.
- A case can be made that
conservation that operates as a specialty within the
context of the realities of late modem industrial society
is not viable. In the comprehensive management phase of
the fishery, conservation operated as an on/off switch
for destructive behaviour imposed by an external
authority as some upper level of exploitation at the last
minute. This project failed because all it managed to do
was generate conflict and inefficiency without achieving
its conservation goals. The privatization schemes attempt
to overcome the failure of 'command and control'
management by aligning fishery activity more closely to
the market, but there is every indication that there are
series failings related to equity and conservation with
this approach as well. DFO wants to get out of the fish
business and it is doing it by turning it over to private
interests. The opportunity that 'ecological knowledge'
presents is that it can form the basis of an alternative
management approach associated with community-based
conservation which can challenge the privatization
option. The 'localizing' of management would require a
profound redefinition of the role of knowledge in this
process. Rather than conservation operating as a
specialty which regulates development or based on market
indicators (where conservation becomes
development), a localized perspective would struggle to
overcome the difference between a conservation
perspective and a development perspective by linking not
only conservation goals, but also development goals, with
'traditional knowledge.' Conservation and development
would then be part of the general woof and weave of a
view of the world that is linked to community and
locality. As long as the metabolism of development and
the metabolism of conservation operate in different
frames of reference, there is every indication that
conservation will fail. Overcoming this contradiction by
giving over to the development paradigm promises only to
exacerbate the situation. Therefore what 'ecological
knowledge' requires is not only a redefinition of
conservation, it needs to redefine development as
well.
Conservation, Development and
'Ecological Knowledge' in the Fisher
Standing on the wharf one day back
in the early 1980s, Dale Richardson and I watched Arthur
Swansburg come in and tie up his boat under the haul-out
building after a night's fishing. We had already unloaded
our fish and were waiting for our settlement slips from the
fish buyer. "That Arthur," said Dale of the painfully thin
man, now in his seventies. "I was setting my gear on those
humps outside of the Hake Hole, which I have trouble enough
finding when I have the Loran bearings for then-L Just as I
am getting my gear ready, Arthur calls me on the set to tell
me to watch out for a string of his gear which he had just
set there. All he has is a compass and a watch, and there he
is finding his way to a patch of bottom three hours off
shore and not much bigger than my back yard. If you could
somehow get what Arthur knows about fishing into the new
electronic fishing gear, it would be scary how many fish you
could catch."
Whereas the fish-catching
capability of the rapidly industrializing East Coast fishery
automatically built upon previous forms of knowledge which
fishers had developed in the context of earlier
relationships with nature, the fishery science which formed
the basis of the resource management regime developed by the
Canadian Government after the declaration of the 200-mile
limit has no such connection to previous forms of knowledge
embedded in the experience of the participants in the
fishery. This contrast in the lineage of knowledge forms
sets up the interesting contradiction: the forces of
development are, to some extent, "embedded" in the
experiential knowledge of participants, while conservation
perspectives are part of "disembedded" knowledge forms
"imported" from various scientific disciplines and computer
models and do not relate to participant
experience.
Whereas we might normally think
that development is dominated by the disembedding forces
related to modern economic and technological realities, and
that conservation is involved in re-embedding humans within
nature, the knowledge forms which defined the relationship
between regulators and participants in Canada's East Coast
fishery challenges these assumptions about the relationship
between conservation and development. However, this
statement is accompanied with the rather large caveat that
the embedding of experiential knowledge within development
is circumscribed by the structural changes in the fishery
which saw the creation of a large mid-shore and offshore
dragger fleet and its accompanying of corporate priorities,
and the increasing marginalization of inshore fishers in the
creation of fisheries policy.
Nonetheless, this contradiction in
the contrasting conceptions of knowledge in conservation and
development can raise interesting questions for us now in
the aftermath of ecological and economic collapse. Just as
the inclusion of participant's local knowledge within the
forces of development was no guarantee of ecological
viability -indeed, one can argue that the inclusion of
'traditional knowledge' in the forces of development
accelerated ecological collapse - so the inclusion of local
knowledge within conservation perspectives does not
guarantee increased protection unless there is a massive
rethinking of the management regime of which that knowledge
becomes a part (TURFS, CARs, and CMT, as mentioned in the
"backgrounder" to the seminar). Quite simply, the fact that
knowledge is being assessed in this instrumental and
self-conscious manner in the current seminar highlights
problematic role of knowledge generally in theaftermath of
ecological collapse.
Another interesting question has to
do with the context of discussions regarding the inclusion
of 'traditional knowledge" in management regimes. As I came
of age as a fisherman, I learned a lot from people like
Arthur and Dale, while at the same time investing in the
latest electronic gear (Sounders, Radars, Autopilots,
Navigational Aids). On the "voyage out," we integrated
traditional knowledge with modern industrial capability in
the name of increased catches and increased profits, and
dreams of prosperity. On the "voyage back7' with empty fish
holds, we sailed into harbours none of us recognize. By
integrating traditional knowledge with industrial
capability, we had made ourselves strangers in our own
homes. We had made ourselves "newly-stupid" by collapsing
the fishery. This new condition required massive
re-education and re-locations programs set out in The
Atlantic Groundfish Strategy (TAGS), a program in which
traditional knowledge had no place.
Where this participant experience
does have a place these days is in the discussion of the
role of 'ecological knowledge' and 'traditional knowledge'
in conservation discussions. This attention to 'traditional
knowledge' in conservation discussions is occurring at a
time when - in contrast to its ascendant integration into
development on the "voyage out" in which there was an
unwitting betrayal of the 'local' - the "voyage back" is
occurring at a time when there is a painfully obvious
alienation from local realities. Therefore the role of
boosterism and grief are also an important part of this
discussion as we struggle with ideas of 'ecological
knowledge' and 'traditional knowledge.'
Central also to this discussion is
the recognition that - as with a great deal of conservation
discourse - questions of 'ecological knowledge' arise out of
its opposite: namely, the massive historical forces which
line up under the term of privatization, deregulation, and
free trade in the name of economic globalization. So in
contrast to this emergent neo-liberal agenda, "Is
'ecological knowledge' a residual vision of the world
arising from a set of relations that is disappearing?" Can
'traditional knowledge' be reclaimed from the role it has
played as development's teacher? Historical forces have been
at work on what we call 'ecological knowledge' throughout
the expansion in the fishery, and how are we to understand
its social location now, given that it is embodied in a
particular group of people who have played a historical role
in the collapse of the fishery?
Perspectives on Ecological
Failure
C. S. Holling has described the
approaches used by regulators such as DFO as being informed
by a "pathology that permeates much of natural resource
management and precludes long-term sustainability." Vandana
Shiva has described the fracturing of conservation from
development - where conservation is informed by biodiversity
and development is informed by monoculture - as a
"schizophrenic" split which has to be overcome if
biodiversity conservation is to succeed. David Orr has
defined the split between conservation and development as
being informed by, on the one hand, a biophilic love of all
things (conservation), and on the other, by a biophobic fear
of things that cannot be controlled (development).
Discussions in the philosophy of technology highlight the
massive de-skilling and increased passivity which is
generated by advances in technology. This de-skilling and
passivity are not only task-oriented, but also have to do
with what John Livingston refers to as "experiential
malnourishment." If ecologically-based management is to
avoid what Holling describes as the "gridlocks and train
wrecks" which litter the terrain of resource management, the
assumptions of this approach need to be based on "more
resilient ecosystems, more flexible agencies, more
self-reliant industries, and more knowledgeable citizens."
Central to the idea of "knowledge" her is the contrast
between the long-term co-evolution of conceptions of human
identity and nature which are associated with 'traditional
knowledge' (indigenousness) and the one-way dominance of the
rational model of resource management
(exoticness).
The wager which informed the
management approach of the Canadian Government following the
declaration of the 200-mile limit in 1977 was that we could
have a modem industrial fishery, and that the comprehensive
management framework set out in Policy for Canada's
Commercial Fisheries (1976) could regulate that fishery
by developing a top-notch biological information base and
management structure. This wager failed. And when the
failure is examined, all aspects of the management approach
appear implicated in that failure. And in wider societal
terms, issues also arise which point to the failure the
'enlightenment project' itself, of which rational management
is a part.
In general terms, it is possible to
argue that conservation initiatives fail because they
insufficiently problematize the deeply-historical
assumptions of the development paradigm If conservation
based on 'ecological knowledge' is to succeed where other
approaches have failed, it will need to address issues
related to conceptions of human identity and nature. If the
current goal of development is to pump surplus labour out of
humans and surplus resources out of nature through processes
which increasingly privatize political power in the economy,
the goal of conservation requires a social project which
extricates humans and nature from this disenfranchised
position, and gains access to the buried politics of the
economy, so that it becomes possible to establish public
care in viable social terms. This project would be central
to conceptions of 'ecological knowledge.'
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