Folk Knowledge and Environmental Sustainability: AFS Webinar March 10

Upcoming on March 10, 2021, six folklore/folklife specialists will be presenting briefly in a Webinar for the American Folklore Society, followed by open discussion. The topic of the Webinar is "Folklife, Heritage and the Public Sphere." It is free and open to all, but attendees must register by going to the AFS website. I was asked to speak on public folklore, heritage, and environmental sustainability. I've written a draft of my ten-minute presentation, which looks like it will be the last of the six:

“Public Folklore, Heritage, and Environmental Sustainability”

I begin with a story about folklife, heritage, the environment, and traditional, local ecological knowledge. This is the kind of heritage that is expressed in everyday occupational life. Although there’s a tourist product involved, my story is about scientific versus folk knowledges. I will ask you to bear my story in mind as I reference the 2005 UN Millennium Assessment Report on Ecosystems and Human Well-being and its more recent manifestation in the 2018 UN Regional Assessment for the Americas report from the Intergovernmental Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). These collaborative, science-informed documents are major international efforts intended to guide policy and decision-makers towards wise and sustainable use of environmental resources, including cultural resources. I will end with a few discussion prompts for you about my folklife story and how it aligns and does not align with the UN and IPBES policy recommendations. 

         First, the story. In 1979 I bought a summer house on an island off the coast of Maine. In retirement I live here year round. The island where I live contains a working waterfront that is central to the state's lobster fishing industry which today is worth nearly half a billion dollars. More lobster is landed on this island than any other port on the east coast, quite an accomplishment for an island of less than three thousand people. You have all tasted lobster I hope; it is one of the great delights of this world. Lobster fishing on the Maine coast has been integral to the folklife of its inhabitants since the 1840s. The lobster fishery is a classic example of a commons. Until the 1930s it was an unregulated commons; anyone could set their baited traps in the waters near the shore and haul them up hand over hand with a pulley, using a traditional locally built skiff called a peapod on account of its shape. By the end of the 19^th century lobstering was Maine’s most valuable fishery. In the early 20th century the industry grew larger. Live and canned lobster was exported out of state, while boats became motorized, the trap ropes were hauled up with power winches, and productivity increased exponentially to meet the demand. But without a good understanding of how lobsters reproduce, the lobster population went through boom and bust cycles in the 20^th century until conservation measures were introduced. Some of these were science-informed state regulations such as bans on fishing during certain times of the year. This is still the most frequent conservation measure for fisheries, even though it is a blunt instrument. Only this past summer the state of Massachusetts initiated a so-called “pause” in lobster fishing, despite the likelihood that the population decline was not because of overfishing but the result of lobsters migrating northward on account of the warming ocean. Other conservation measures have been introduced by the fishermen and women themselves, such as limitations on the number of boats permitted in a given area; and the catch, release, and v-notching of egg-bearing females. Taken together these measures smoothed the up-and-down population cycles somewhat but did not eliminate them.

In the early 1990s, when the lobster population was in steep decline, the Maine state fish and wildlife scientists diagnosed the cause as overfishing and proposed to the legislature a severe moratorium on lobster fishing. A local lobsterman and citizen scientist, Ted Ames, was skeptical. A moratorium over a period of years might keep the fishery afloat but it surely would sink the fishermen. Like most of the people on the island he was convinced that the lobster population was down because scallop draggers were wreaking havoc with the ocean bottoms where the female lobsters laid their eggs. Ames knew lobsters had favorite spawning grounds but he didn’t know just where they were, so he interviewed the elder island fishermen and in their oral histories he found out where the spawning grounds most likely were to be. So Ames and the local representative to the state legislature proposed an alternative: that instead of imposing a blanket moratorium they prohibit all fishing in a few designated areas. The legislature agreed to give it a try, the lobster population rebounded, and Ted Ames received a MacArthur Genius Grant. With the money he started a lobster research institute.

         Next I discuss the 2005 UN Millennium Assessment Report on Ecosystems and Human Well-being and its more recent manifestation in the 2018 UN Intergovernmental Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. These assessments and recommendations impose an economic calculus upon human well-being and the environment. Their framework is economic rationality, which thinks of the environment as a natural resource for human beings; that is, as natural capital. Natural capital provides ecosystem services including materials for food, clothing, shelter, fuel, manufacturing, and recreation. These ecosystem services are quantifiable and valued in market dollars. However, in somewhat of an afterthought, these international, intergovernmental experts acknowledged that ecosystems provide human beings with qualitative cultural services. Some of these so-called cultural services are education, beauty and inspiration; physical and mental health; and what they term “identity support“ through sense of place, purpose, and the sacred. Also among the cultural services that ecosystems provide are Indigenous, traditional and local knowledges. This is one place where folklife culture fits, as for example in the knowledge that the old salts from the island provided about the lobster spawning beds. The IPBES report admits that the value of cultural services is often difficult to quantify, measure, and enter into an economic calculus of cost-benefit equations for policy and decision-making, especially when conflicts arise among stakeholder populations having different worldviews. The IPBES punts here, and I quote:

 

While attempts at monetization of ecosystem services may lead to some insights on the values of nature, broader considerations related to spirituality, cultural identity or social cohesion are not easily characterized in this value system, making them too often underrepresented in decision making and in scientific assessments at subregional and regional levels… (Chap. 2, p. 88). Thus a multiplicity of valuation methodologies will be needed, as well as methods for combining the results in ways that do not selectively favor one worldview over [an]other. Such methodologies and strategies for combining results are not yet fully developed.… (Chap. 1, p. 24).

 

The pecuniary value of the old salts’ ecological knowledge is calculable in terms of the dollar equivalent of the catch; but there are cultural aspects of lobstering that are incalculable. My late friend Hap Collins spoke of taking pleasure in the beauty of fishing when you're out in your lobster boat on the ocean alongshore at dawn, the ocean fog is clearing off, the air is warming and the water is calm, you have a cup of coffee in your hands and you're approaching the area where your traps are and you anticipate your catch of the day. I know something of what Hap meant because I went fishing with him and I experienced it for myself. The MA and IPBES reports acknowledge the incalculable value of what we would call an affecting presence, yet they think of it as another aspect of natural capital for the benefit of human beings; and don’t quite know how to factor in its importance. Does it make any sense to speak of an economy of contemplation?

Finally, some prompts. Consider my lobster fishing story in light of the UN and IPBES assessments and recommendations. What are the consequences for public folklorists of thinking of folklife and the environment as natural capital, providing ecosystem services whose pecuniary worth can be measured? Was it a given that the government would agree to give Ted Ames’ proposal a try? Would a different state legislature have sided with the state fish and wildlife scientists, laughing off Ames’ oral history project and the old salts’ superstitions? What are the advantages and disadvantages of thinking of the environment as natural capital that delivers to humans ecosystem services, including cultural services? Should public folklorists concerned with heritage endorse and work within this predominant contemporary policy paradigm that considers the environment to consist primarily of economic assets with measurable market values that enter into cost-benefit analyses during resource allocation planning and decision-making? More generally, how dependent is human well-being on economic success beyond a level of basic comfort? Should the well-being of other living creatures be considered? And is it folly to ignore that thinking of the environment as natural capital is what got us into our current environmental emergency—global warming, extinctions, pandemics—in the first place? Is it wise to think that having failed spectacularly in trying to control nature, the solution is for us to try to control nature more? Are other frames more desirable (e.g., deep ecology; rewilding; commons; environmental justice; etc.) and if so to what ends? You may recall the proverbial expression that the world does not owe you a living. Does it still make sense to think about rights and obligations relationally and interdependently: if the ecosystem owes us, what do we owe the ecosystem?

 

Craft Heritage and the Sustainable Marketplace

Last month the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage began an online marketplace for “authentic craftwork created by artisans representing communities from recent Festival programs: Armenia, Peru, Mexico and Brazil, along with other countries around the globe, with more to come in the future.” Most of the crafts are traditional and reflect something of a community-of-origin aesthetic. A father-and-son duo from Brazil, to take but one example, “share [with whoever will buy them] hand-painted and woodblock prints that are traditionally used as covers for cordels, or epic poems,” according to the Center’s press release. The woodblock prints feature stylized natural objects such as birds and stars. But instead of being used as cordel covers, they are framed and for sale to anyone who would like to display them in their homes. The financial arrangement is intended to benefit the artists, less the costs of marketing and sales. It appears that some of the traditional uses for these crafts also continue, while others are endangered. In addition to benefiting the artists, these sales are intended to help sustain the craft traditions themselves. The buyers are like tourists at the Festival, who may purchase what they like, not only for display but possibly also as an investment that could appreciate in value, the way some folk art has done over the decades.

In the past here and elsewhere I’ve written critically about tourism and the heritage marketplace, wondering about the differences between the community aesthetic that produced such crafts and the tourist aesthetic that purchases them. I also worried about the effect of the tourist marketplace on the motives of the artisans and on the traditions. Folklorist Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett pointed out in the early days of heritage tourism that marking someone or something as cultural heritage added value to the person or product. I wrote about the dangers of confusing values with value: that is, confusing the cultural values of a community craft tradition with the pecuniary value of an art object in the heritage economy. I was concerned about the emphasis on exemplary artisans, in those instances when the object or skill was something functional  that nearly everyone in the community was expected to be able to accomplish. I recalled conversations from my time serving on grant-awarding panels for the Folk Arts Division of the National Endowment for the Arts, where passing on traditions within communities was favored over anything that smacked of commercialism. And yet what is to happen with craftwork that has outlived its usefulness within the community? Should it become extinct, or perhaps be kept alive as part of a diversity of cultural expression, for possible future usefulness?

Lobster fishing in a peapod, Maine, early 20th century.

In this connection I think now of the fifteen-foot, highly maneuverable rowboats that were in use for lobstering along the rocky coast of Maine, peapods as they were called on account of their shape. They were rowed from a standing position. Seaworthy craft, well-fashioned and graceful, they arose in the 19th century but nearly became extinct by World War II as lobster boats became motorized and traps attached to ropes were hauled up with power winches instead of by hand. A gradual increase in interest among tourists and newcomers and a repurposing of them primarily for recreation has insured their revival. No doubt heritage adds to their appeal; and besides, it is not as if peapods were not bought and sold in the marketplace when they functioned as lobster boats.

In the first half of the century a man living on the Maine coast might learn a number of craft skills with which to make a living. I knew one such, Hap Collins (d. 1990), who had learned how to mill shingles, how to fish for lobster, how to build rowboats, how to twitch logs out of the woods with work horses, how to build chimneys out of fieldstone or brick, and how to play the fiddle. In his old age he earned part of his living making paintings and model boats and selling them to tourists. I think of Hap and how he would embrace the online marketplace for his goods without a second thought. 

Sound and Sustainability among the Whales

         How is sound related to sustainability among whales, and how is whale sustainability related to the sound commons?

         By now most people have heard, or heard about, the songs of the humpback whales. Baleen whales such as the humpback and right whales “sing” to communicate their whereabouts in the ocean, just as birds do in the air and on land. That is, like many other animals and insects they use sound for a variety of purposes including giving warning, attracting mates, and keeping the social group together. Public interest in whale “song” focuses on two other aspects of whale song: whether these utterances are signals like alarm bells or if they make up a language; and whether they offer any kind of aesthetic experience to whales, as music does to humans. While those are very interesting questions, there is not enough reliable evidence to answer them; whereas there is good evidence for their use as functional signals.

        When other sounds interfere with the sounds animals make, it becomes hard for animals to communicate with each other. When sound interference is frequent, or even constant, the habitat becomes unforgiving and animals cannot survive in it very well if at all. They must either adapt, as birds raise the pitch range of their songs in the presence of vehicular traffic noise, or move into a different habitat. Shipping noise, from powerful engines and turbines, and from naval sonar, travels long distances through the ocean water—much farther than it would on land—and interferes with baleen whale sonic communication. It's not the only way whale sustainability is compromised by human activity; hunting whales, now banned by most but not all nations, and inadvertent entanglements in fish netting, are two prominent examples. More subtle, perhaps, is the effect of shipping noise; but it is no less harmful for that. Shipping noise also interferes with sound communication among toothed whales, such as orcas (killer whales), that use sonic echolocation in hunting for their prey.  

Orca (killer whale), courtesy Wikimedia Commons

    Orcas, for example, emit sound signals that bounce back from fish such as salmon. When an orca locates its prey it continues to give off these signals, the sound indicating where and how close the prey is as the orca closes in on it. Shipping noise drastically limits the distance over which these signals can operate effectively. It causes orcas and other toothed whales to alter their migration routes but it may also confuse them and cause them stress, resulting in illness and unusual behavior resulting in death. The same is true of shipping noise and baleen whales.

Right whales are in the news where I live because lobster lines (ropes) are a hazard that entangles them and kills them; estimates indicate that only 450 of the North Atlantic Right Whale species still exist. Eliminating the lobster fishery in New England, a multimillion dollar business, would have a catastrophic impact on the economies of many coastal towns and surrounding areas that are overly dependent on lobster fishing. The fish and game management regulators that would limit the lobster catch must weigh the interests of the human populations versus the interests of biodiversity, ecosystem services and the survival of a whale species. There is no similar balance of interests when it comes to shipping noise, however. Ships traveling in known whale habitat are asked to slow down and limit their noise, while activists campaign, with some success, against the indiscriminate use of naval sonar exercises. 

        The sound commons, in this case the ocean, is a soundscape freely accessed and open to all with as little sound interference as possible. At certain times and places, on account of limited access, or competition among those who would access it, the soundscape must be managed. Sometimes this can be done chiefly or entirely by those who do access it. Many medieval agricultural commons were managed in this way. The soundscape of one’s own living quarters usually is managed this way, as family members agree to limit each other’s access. But sometimes self-management fails, and outside management is the only possible solution. Noise ordinances are one example, but these are not always effective and they may also be unjust. Usually the best management involves input both from the outside experts and those who compete for access to the sound commons. In the case of whales, of course, their input is implicit rather than explicit. Yet they occupy a sound commons, and humans would be wise to manage it for everyone’s benefit, rather than damaging it in exchange for short-term human economic gains. In the end, damaging the biodiversity of the Planet compromises human survival as well.