This document discusses lessons that can be learned from pre-industrial societies regarding sustainability and conservation. It notes that ancient hunter-gatherer societies experienced resource shortages until around 8,000 BCE, after which no major extinction events occurred until modern times. Pre-industrial societies developed cultural practices like hunting restrictions, sacred species and habitats, myths, and quotas to prevent overexploitation and maintain community memory of past mistakes. In contrast, industrial societies prioritize growth, profit, and selective information dissemination over conservation. The document argues for recognizing the intrinsic value of nature, upholding intergenerational equity, and developing an eco-socialist model with principles like zero discounting and civic democracy.

1. DeGrowth & Conservation:
Lessons from Pre-Industrial Societies
Debal Deb
Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies
Kolkata, India
www.cintdis.org

2. Humans began migrating across the Beringia land bridge
ca. 12500 YBP.
Humans did not manufacture advanced
spearheads until 13000 YBP.
Cave bear and Woolly mammoth declined 14800 YBP.
Bison populations crashed 37000 YBP.
“It's unlikely that a few thousand humans
running around thecontinent with pointed
sticks in hand could eliminate more than 130
big mammals in less than 400 years.”

3. Ancient Hunters experienced
incidents of RESOURCE CRUNCH
resulting from
imprudent resource use modes
until ca. 8,000 YBP
Ever Since 8000 YBP,
No Extinction Event Recorded
Until the Advent of Modernity.

4. Pre­Industrial Societies
* Remember Consequences of
Their Resource Use Modes
* Learn from Past Mistakes
* Design Cultural Restraints on
Individuals
Community Memory is contained
in Folk tales, Mythologies,
Proverbs, Omens & Auguries in
Pre-Industrial Cultures.

5. • Hunting Ethics
e.g. Specific Life History Stages
• Closed Seasons (for hunting/fishing)
• Ritual Domestication
• Cultural Restraints on Harvest
e.g. Customary Quotas of Harvest
Customary Protection of Useful Species

7. The Indigenous Worldview
recognizes (in symbolic and
metaphoric terms)
* the Intrinsic Value of Many
Species, regardless of Their
“Utility”
* the Future Potnetial Value of
Many Species that are Currently
of “No Use”

8. Totem and Tabu

9. Sacred Species

10. Sacred Habitats –
as Groves, Ponds, Rivers, Hills and Landscapes
were Once Widespread on All Inhabited Continents
Vestiges of Sacred Groves – in Europe
Sacred Groves and Landscapes – in Asia, Africa, North
America and South America
Sacred Landscapes – in Australia.

12. Sacred Habitat - An Element of the Cultural Landscape

13. Ventilago sp, A Rare Liana in a Sacred Grove, W. Bengal

14. Casearia varica, a Rare Tree from a Sacred Grove in Bengal

15. Turtles in Baneswar Sacred Pond, Cooch Behar

16. Sacred Heronry

17. When “scientific” forestry takes over...

18. Industrial Societies Have
No Community Memory.
Therefore, They Allow No Restraint
A Centralized Information Industry
entails:
* Generation of Selective Information
* Selective Information Dissemination
* Selective Public Attention to Events

19. Big-Fish Stocks Fall 90 Percent Since 1950, Study
Says
National Geographic News
May 15, 2003
Only 10 percent of all large fish—both open ocean
species including tuna, swordfish, marlin and the large
groundfish such as cod, halibut, skates and flounder—are
left in the sea, according to research published in today's
issue of the scientific journal Nature.
"From giant blue marlin to mighty bluefin tuna, and from tropical groupers to Antarctic cod, industrial
fishing has scoured the global ocean. There is no blue frontier left," said lead author Ransom Myers, a
fisheries biologist based at Dalhousie University in Canada. "Since 1950, with the onset of industrialized
fisheries, we have rapidly reduced the resource base to less than 10 percent—not just in some areas,
not just for some stocks, but for entire communities of these large fish species from the tropics to the
poles.”
Ref: R. A. Myers & B. Worm 2003. “Rapid worldwide depletion of predatory fish” Nature 423: 280-3.
“Rational” Harvest for Individual Profit Leads to Exhaustion

20. Community Memory is Essential
to ensure
(a) Restraint over Resource Use
(b) Intergenerational Equity
Hence, the Community is Anathema to
(a) Private Profit
(b) Industrial Growth

21. Eppur si Muove…
Despite the Advent of Modernity,
• Communities continue to exist
• Customary management systems
• persist
• Biophilia remains alive
…. in remote villages of South Asia

22. Biophilia in Practice

23. Rescuing a Bat

24. Recognition of Intrinsic Value of Nature
Conservation for Future Generations
Hunting Ethics Seasonal Restrictions
Sacred Species Sacred Groves
Myths & Totems Omens & Auguries

25. Recognition of Intrinsic Value of Nature
Obviates
DISCOUNTING of Natural Resources
in all Pre-Industrial Societies
Discounting is a Tool
of Neo-Classical Economics
to Boost Growth of Capital

26. If we take a discount rate of five
percent, then the cost to society of a
$100,000,000 cleanup in 250 years'
time (at today's value) is just $270. At
an eight percent discount rate, the
cost drops to just nine cents! Through
discounting, then, future
environmental problems of immense
size can be made simply to fade away.
– Mario Petrucci 2002. “Sustainability – long view or long
word?” Social Justice 29: 106.
The Spurious Arithmetic of Discounting

27. Zero Rate ofZero Rate of
Interest /DiscountingInterest /Discounting
Entails ConservationEntails Conservation
Price = Rent ÷ Interest rate
With interest rate → 0, price → ∞
 Nobody can buy [the right to
destory] any ecosystem.

28. ‘What matters is not how much they have
but how much more they have than others’
– Barry Schwartz 1986. The Battle for Human Nature.
Norton. New York, p. 165.
* The difference between ‘need’ and
‘want’ is never transcended.
* The perception of want is governed by
the desire to attain material well-being
relative to all others.
* The horizon of want perpetually recedes
with techno-industrial progress.
The Red Queen Race for Happines

29. Signs of Prosperity?

30. Bhopal:
Genocide
for
Development

31. Global Carbon dioxide Levels (800 - 2000AD)

32. Another Form of Civilization:
Existing and ALIVE !
A Civilization in which
• The individual’s right to deprive others
of Nature’s services is abrogated;
• The intergenerational right of all
community members is upheld;
• Natural “resources” cannot be price-
tagged;
• “Enoughness” prevails over
“Moreness”.

33. 100
80
60
40
20
0
▬ ▬ ▬ ▬ ▬ ▬ ▬ ▬
Time →
De-growth
phase
No-growth phase

34. Tenets of Eco-Socialist Society
1. Zero Rates of Profit and Interest
Natural objects will be conserved for future
generations; will preclude accumulation
and wealth inequity.
2. Civic democracy
Participation of all members of society;
accountability for all actions that affects
the rights of community; access to
information and choice for all;
consideration of rights of all members,
including future generations.

35. Tenets of Eco-Socialist Society
3. Cooperative individualism
Encourage rational cooperation among
individuals to align with civic democracy;
foster growth of personal knowledge, enhance
individual creativity and facilitate dialogue
between the individual and the community.
4. Inclusive Freedom
Truncate certain exclusive individual freedoms
and ensure inclusive freedom of the whole
community and intergenerational social and
environmental justice.

36. Civic
Democracy
Communitarian
Ethos
Biophilia &
Ecocentric Ethos
Eco-Socialist
Ethics

37. “The defects of formal parliamentary democracy
result from the delegation of power. To make
democracy effective, power must always be vested in
the people, and there must be ways and means for the
people to wield the sovereign power effectively, not
periodically, but from day to day.
“Economic democracy is no more possible in the
absence of political democracy than the latter is in the
absence of the former.”
M N Roy (1954)

38. Villagers United to Protect their Sacred Groves

39. Power to the Community