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PEACE ECOLOGY This page intentionally left blank PEACE ECOLOGY ✺ RANDALL AMSTER First published 2015 by Paradigm Publishers Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © 2015 , Taylor & Francis. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Amster, Randall. Peace ecology / Randall Amster. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-61205-297-7 (paperback : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-315-63294-0 (eBook) 1. Human ecology. 2. Environmental ethics. 3. Peace-building. I. Title. GF41.A455 2014 304.2—dc23 2013049384 Designed and Typeset by Straight Creek Bookmakers. ISBN 13: 978-1-61205-297-7 (pbk) ISBN 13: 978-1-61205-296-0 (hbk) For my mother, who always supported my ideas, and my father, who always challenged me to support them. This page intentionally left blank ✺ CONTENTS Acknowledgments viii Introduction From the War Economy to Peace Ecology 1 Chapter One Scarcity, Abundance, and Structural Peace 25 Chapter Two The Triumph of the Commons 46 Chapter Three Back to Basics: Reclaiming Life’s Essentials 69 Chapter Four Free at Last: Empathy, Solidarity, and the Gift Economy 92 Chapter Five Flirting with Disaster: Community Resilience in Times of Crisis 110 Chapter Six Resource Conflicts, or Sustainable Collaborations? 129 Chapter Seven Transborder Peace Ecology 152 Chapter Eight Collective Reenchantment 177 Conclusion Restabilizing the Habitat, and Ourselves 193 References 206 Index 221 About the Author 227 VII ✺ ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This book was written in a time of great turmoil, both personally and politi- cally. After nearly two decades of living in the desert, my family and I em- barked on a cross-country move to a vastly different climate, environmentally and culturally speaking. During the course of writing this book, I changed jobs, went from a farm to the city, homeschooled a child, and endured vari- ous ailments and growing pains. Yet all of these personal vicissitudes pale in comparison to those in evidence on the global stage. With each passing day, domestic and international politics grow cruder and more Machiavellian. Economic crises that are largely fomented by elite interests are used to further retrench the minimal safety net clung to by underpaid working people—and those are the fortunate ones, when compared to the plight of de facto slaves and those casually dispossessed by war and corporate colonization. All the while, the planet’s life-giving capacities are impinged by a ruthless machine of human consumption, hell-bent on drilling, digging, blasting, and fracking its way to a continued state of ostensible plenty that flouts the laws of nature at every turn. The rapacious destabilization of climate systems is merely one way this manifests, and the specter of inevitability begins to set in as irrevers- ible thresholds are crossed. In many ways, writing a book on peace ecology during such an era has represented a therapeutic release from the relentlessness of the world’s machi- nations, presenting a clean slate from which to nudge reality down a gentler, VIII ACKNOWLEDGMENTS IX saner fork in the road. At the same time, a sense of cognitive dissonance would often threaten to set in, as the remoteness of peace in our time and ecological balance in the world remain evident, and as the prospect of living a truly peaceful and environmentally sustainable life in this era continually recedes toward the vanishing point. Such are the interior dilemmas an author is wont to indulge, providing grist for the mill and, perhaps more importantly, serving as a reminder of how high the stakes are and why it matters to keep trying to right the ship while there is still time—even through the relatively remote act of writing a book. I have no illusions that any single work will be instrumental in turning things around, but I do know that we all have the power to raise our voices—and doing so, indeed, just might. This book was produced from a place of connection and compassion, for the world and its living creations, even as the process of writing can be isolating and solipsistic. None grasp this duality more than those who live with the author, and so my first debt of gratitude goes to my family—my partner, Leenie, and my sons, Arlo and Zeno, who are always my inspiration for writing at all. A circle of supportive friends and colleagues is necessary for a project like this, providing guidance and reassurance in ways as to which most remain unaware. Myriad scholars and activists offered daily inspiration across the years and through the airwaves, reflected if at all in the bibliog- raphy but again largely unaware of their influence. More tangibly, authors are only as good as their editors, and Jennifer Knerr at Paradigm Publishers was a consistently thoughtful sounding board throughout this process. The anonymous reviewers likewise provided cogent feedback that greatly improved the manuscript. Any errors or misconceptions are of course my responsibility, but that is of minor consequence compared to the risk of not venturing out. Specific support was provided by many people, often in the form of locating references and honing ideas. I am certain to omit some, but the list includes Geoff Boyce (University of Arizona), Dan Millis (Sierra Club), Jay Walljasper (On the Commons), Tom Fleischner (Natural History Institute), Luis Fer- nandez (Northern Arizona University), the incredible students in my classes over the years, and the Interlibrary Loan coordinator at Prescott College. Others generously provided quotes and/or living examples of the themes covered here, including Pancho Ramos Stierle (Casa de Paz), Nipun Mehta (ServiceSpace), Tree (Free Farm), Stephanie Knox Cubbon and Hannah X ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Renglich (PeaceMeal), and Annie Symens-Bucher (Canticle Farm). Still others bestowed their blessing on this work through their generous endorsements, for which I am grateful: John Clark, Chellis Glendinning, Betsy Hartmann, Dennis Lum, and Kent Shifferd. I greatly admire all of you and am pleased beyond mere words to have your support. Finally, I want to acknowledge venues where earlier versions of the concepts covered here were incubated and developed. Portions of the Introduction are published here with the permission of Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Various online media outlets provided a forum for the cultivation of core ideas, including Truthout, Common Dreams, Huffington Post, Counterpunch, New Clear Vision, and the Journal of Sustainability Education. Prior to and during the course of this project I gave numerous public presentations and conducted workshops on themes directly related to the nexus of peace and ecology, at conferences held by the Peace and Justice Studies Association, the National Peace Academy, the Wisconsin Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, and the Ahimsa Center at Cal Poly Pomona; additional similar events were held at venues including Barry University, Wilfrid Laurier University, Georgetown University, University of Baltimore, University of Manitoba, Prescott College, Fort Lewis College, Naropa University, and the Prescott Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. I am grateful for the dialogue and feed- back I have received in all of these outlets over the years, and I look forward to more such positive exchanges as this work makes its way into the hands of readers who, ultimately, will be the real unsung heroes of the story as the ideas presented here will, I hope, yield concrete actions. ✺ INTRODUCTION FROM THE WAR ECONOMY TO PEACE ECOLOGY The desert is a stark, solitary, and seemingly lifeless landscape—unless one knows where to look. Living in the southwestern United States for nearly two decades has taught me to appreciate the subtle ways that life ekes out an existence in harsh environs. Desert living tends to cultivate a resilient capacity to make do with the available resources at hand, and to be able to sustain oneself during lean times that include extended drought and inter- mittent vegetation. Perhaps the most profound lesson from the desert is the deeply rooted sense of life’s inherent interconnectedness and the overarch- ing mutual interdependence that allows each species to sustain itself. In the desert, nothing can survive in isolation; the food chain involves a complex ebb and flow between animal and plant populations, and in the case of the latter the roots literally run deep in search of scarce water supplies. Life is hardened in the desert, conditioned by extremes of hot and cold, drought and flood, abundance and scarcity—in many ways coming to represent the conditions of life everywhere on a finite planet with a rapidly destabilizing environment. This book represents an effort to reconcile the localized lessons I have gleaned during an era rife with rampant global change. As human cultures grow and evolve, so too does our understanding of the ways in which the various facets of our lives are interconnected. From the impetus of globalization and new networks of technology and 1 2 INTRODUCTION communication, to the challenges of resource depletion and planetary climate change, there is a nascent yet pervasive understanding that we are all part of a whole system. The potential for this emerging sensibility to promote greater unity and empathy is palpable, even as conceptual and pragmatic difficulties with a “one world” model are likewise prevalent.