Wilderness: The Last Social Construct

Stewardship for the Earth starts with a change of mindset

There is no wilderness anymore. I say this with such certainty because I truly believe it.  “Wilderness,” or “true” nature, like gender, money or countries, is a social construct—it only exists because humans agree it does.  

We know what wilderness should look like. It is that sweet, clear stream babbling through a forest; it is a doe leaping across a rustling plain. But where on this Earth can we find unspoiled land, this “wilderness,” a place truly untouched by humans? A place left pristine, away from our destruction? Our influence reaches far beyond our feet on the ground—we emit pollution that reaches into the atmosphere, creating problems for areas that humans may not have set foot on. Even the darkest corner of Siberia is subject to the growing amount of carbon dioxide in the air, exhaled by our factories, cars and mouths. We have, directly or indirectly, touched every part of the Earth, rendering the idea of “wilderness” quite unclear.  Equally unclear is the path we should take to save the human race.

Humans have created the idea of wilderness for a variety of reasons, one of which is to slightly ease our collective conscience when we ravage the rest of the Earth. We have altered the land dramatically, making us conquerors of Earth.   

Wilderness, then, may function as a politically or socially naive dream that the human race is still clutching at like a child’s stuffed animal. We are nostalgic for a past we never knew and longing a future we aren’t sure will exist.

As such, we face a struggle. There is much debate over preserving wilderness versus conserving it. To preserve is to leave the land untouched, sans development, housing or much human activity. Conservation means that land use must be efficient and scientific, analogous to sustainability. Do we leave swaths of Earth alone, far away from the danger we pose? Or do we play the hand we have dealt ourselves and innovate a new way of conquering that doesn’t end in our eventual demise?

I believe that humans are meant to live in harmony with the land. We aren’t meant to just set a certain chunk aside to grow on its own. We should not appreciate the land for its resources to take, but for its inherent value. To this end, humans must rework the way we view land.  

I wish that we, as a society, could be able to preserve and conserve, but realistically, we will not be able to preserve enough land to make an ecological difference—too many people do not see nature as having intrinsic value. The term “wilderness” only gives a facade of ecology and sustainability, leaving consciences clear enough to devastate the rest of the Earth. There is no untouched land. Wilderness is something humans have agreed upon, but it doesn’t exist. It is a fictitious remnant from our ancestors, something we may never see again.

We need a shift from wilderness preservation to sustainable development. Sustainable development allows for a better way to forge ahead, still protecting nature and the land while being realistic about human greed. We must think of Earth as natural capital, something to protect and use wisely, instead of squeezing out as much as we can from it.

It is hard to accept that you’ve ruined something beyond repair. It’s even harder to accept that fact, entrenched in a mainly capitalist way of life, when it costs a lot of money to try to fix it. Sustainability efforts are expensive and difficult to implement, especially because they aren’t a priority. Paying workers a fair wage and using resources in a way that doesn’t degrade the environment costs more than we are used to. Humans have set themselves into a certain pattern and expectancy for what we want, when we want it--and for cheap. Furthermore, big money is tied up in things that aren’t sustainable: oil, plastic, endless consumer items. While Earth’s resources are finite, desire is not.

A comprehensible idea of “sustainability” will have to come out of a place of human collaboration the likes of which we are currently not seeing. Like the Paris Accord, sustainable development will not be functional unless it is collaborative. Ultimate sustainability would involve coexisting with the land in a manner that does not drain the Earth of all it has to offer.

Regarding the implications of this change, namely the argument of job loss, I agree with J. Baird Callicott when he writes in his 1991 text, “The Wilderness Idea Revisited,” that “the same jobs will be lost after the ten to twenty years it will take to log out the old growth.”  Postponing conservationist development out of fear or avarice will be deadly to the human race. 

Mother Earth will survive. Humans may not. If she must take us off the Earth, then we are our own undoing. If we are smart, dare I say sustainable, about green economics and development, then we can be another species on the Earth once more, instead of a ruling conqueror.