Early Settlers Clear Land in NB (Photo from Fundy NP)
When Europeans first arrived in the new world, they brought an idea of ownership to the land. The right to own came through the right to improve – to break ground and subdue the natural world made one master of this new domain. The first land titles negotiated with the indigenous populations changed a right to fish, hunt and cultivate into an endless opportunity to change and alter the landscape. This change took place through interpretation. Native American’s had no notion that anybody, let alone the new Europeans could own the rights to change, alter and sculpt the land. They didn’t believe that the bundle of rights associated with a piece of land could be transferred with a signature from one hand to another. This notion of ownership was cultural. Boundaries changed from ecological demarcations. A place to fish, a place to hunt, and a meadow changed to a reference point on a land registry marked between neighbors, the compass and a surveying scope. This right to the land allowed for the modification of a landscape, to improve and alter the land as an individual, not as a community, or as a member of the ecological system as a whole. The land changed. A hill became a house, a meadow became pasture and the forest a woodlot. The title of ownership was for the individual and offered a right to a place against all others.
The natives often asked early settlers about the wood supply in Europe. One of the key drivers of Native American migration was the search for fuel wood and t
hey wondered if the new arrivals were forced from a land depleted and bare. And their intuitions were correct, early settlers often wrote about how even the poorest peasant could afford the warmth of the noblest Englishman, yet never did they imagine that this new land would someday reflect their lust for commodities, and hold the emptiness of endless desire.
I just spent a few weeks in Alberta connecting with Canadian tree-planters in order to garner support for our projects abroad, and as I fly across the country I see the landscape as a sea of fragmented parcels, each with the right to change and exploit. For with the new owners of the land also developed the idea of profit, commodities and a wealth that depended on having as opposed to not needing. These ideas didn’t exist within the landscape, but came with the people. These ideas were made, and the culture to change a landscape grew with the population that the land supported.
A Land Divided - Flying Over the Fragmented Landscape
As long-descendants from those who once changed a right to live in a place to a parcel of ownership, we are faced with new challenges. Our land-use practices have released carbon stored in the land and sea into the atmosphere, altering the sky above in reflection of the land below. We will never give back the rights once granted, we will never return to an agreement of ownership that sees ecosystem services safe from the reach of our practices, but we can create new rights and we can create a right to stewardship and landscape restoration. By using conservation easements, we can limit land use-rights and protect the trees, rivers and meadows that regulate our climate. We can value these acts of stewardship and build new relationships between the urban and the rural – the people and a place.
The historic relationships between community and forests are no longer sustainable. We are losing a fight against the hostile environment we created. The solution to climate change calls not only for the evolution of science, but the evolution of a culture. We must build new relationships with the land and support the forests we all depend on. We must work to put conservation easements on land, allowing sustainable farming and forestry practices to continue. We must support the loss of production by quantifying, valuing and paying for the carbon or ecosystem services these efforts sustain, and we must unit members of the carbon cycle to balance the greenhouse gasses we emit with those we store.
We must build our culture to reflect and value the natural world. We must learn from the past, and create a culture of conservation stewardship for the future. If you’d like to get involved with Community Forests International, please contact info@forestsinternational.org and help build the culture of conservation.
