FROM THE ORIGINS OF THE ENVIRONMENTALISM IN SPAIN.

Transcripción

1 AGROECOSYSTEM, PEASANTS AND CONFLICTS: ABOUT ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY IN SPAIN AT THE BEGINNING OF XXITH CENTURY 1 ANTONIO ORTEGA SANTOS 2 INTRODUCTION In the past few years, the environmental history of Spain has experienced an increase of methodologies, projects and working groups, as a result of the concern of the environmental impact of the capitalist as a civilization. Elements that have been incorporated into the organization of this paper are the energetic balance of agrarian systems, inequity of access to goods and environmental revenues, the struggle for the natural resources of human communities since the middle of the 19th century. The Environmental History in Spain, is a topic that evolves form the work of the agrarian history dating back to the 1980 s, creating a proposal of the interpretation of the metabolism between agro ecosystems and rural communities and establishing a key element of the paradigm of the environmental history. In addition, the interests for privatization have emerged, through a historical prospective, the access of common environmental goods, social resistance to the privatization of goods that gave way to a merchantilization of rural economies and giving monetary value to raw materials subject to customary ways of management. This socio environmental turn connects Spanish environmental history with other emergent historiography on a world-wide scale. It connects with the environmental historiography of the South that has linked environmental history with the interdisciplinary of political ecology, ecological economy, among other paradigms. This article proposes to examine the origin, implantation and the future of the environmental history of the Spanish historiography. It will focus on the increasing working groups that have broken the mold of the conventional methodology, and has opened up to a more interpretive capacity of the influences of historiographies of other non European realities. FROM THE ORIGINS OF THE ENVIRONMENTALISM IN SPAIN. The consideration of this matter referred to, as the forms by which the resources have been handled by human societies, is recent in the field of the Spanish historiography. It appears in the context of rising interest due to the forest and fishing industries that was developed by geographers, historians, and economists in the last two centuries. 1 Forthcoming Global Environment 2, September Profesor Titular, Departamento de Historia Contemporánea, Universidad de Granada, Spain, Telephone: , Fax: , aortegas@ugr.es. Translation from Julia Salazar. 1

2 An original study in this field is that of Luis Urteaga 3. His innovative and original dimension explains the capacity to integrate the environmental issue in the creation of a new paradigm that has incorporated the culture of the environment in contemporary times. The second matter has not had a contemporary historiographic continuity, however, surely, what is of relevant values is first of the cited elements. The scientific paradigm from the late XVII, tied in proposals that could remove obstacles in order to the increase the anthrophization of nature. This anthrophized nature seems to be in an area from which to extract goods and inputs for the productive system (key element in the proposed transformation of agricultural systems which offered the paradigm of the Enlightenment). Based on some roots of classical thinking that they based on the anthropocentric world view, only needed to transit towards a "ecological triumph" that was absent from the disturbing role of human activity on the environment. But there were also voices against "the order and harmony of the natural creation." L. Urteaga proceeds to "rescue" historiographical author (Sarmiento, Cornide, Sáñez of Reguart, Larruga, Cavanilles etc.) who reported that since the eighteenth century as fishing practices and forests management of forests, under a so-called modernization, involving economic losses (reduction of labor, low productivity increase), which came into collision with reasoning "conservationists". In the latter case, their complaints lacked adequate understanding of the limited character of available resources and depleting practices that new forestry or fishing activities had posed on marine ecosystems or Spanish forest. Of particular concern is the case of the forest policy of enlightened despotism of Spain in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Proposing a so-called "scientific management" which was suggested to break the crisis by the plundering of historic Spaniards forests. We are certain about the energy crisis by shortages of availability of lumber in the eighteenth century, although we base our knowledge on fragments of information, based on a multiplicity of scattered testimonies regarding the difficulty of firewood supply in many communities. The work of Luis Urteaga outlines elements of the forest history agenda of the in the 90 `s, advancing as study objects: the impact of forest legislation on traditional management systems, incompatibility forest management and livestock, policies restocking planting, conflicts over the ownership of forest lands. Above all, the impact of the extension of a scientific forestry as scientific ownership of the forests, which often collided with the projects of agricultural expansion on mountain terrain, involving anthropic intense action on the environment through the use of pruning or rotation processes of new land. As a summary, we can say that there is a concern in many pre-ecological authors of the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth. They were creators of a school of thought that with 3 Urteaga, L. (1987) La tierra esquilmada. Las ideas sobre la conservación de la naturaleza en la cultura española del siglo XVIII. SERBAL/CSIC. 2

3 the growing merchantilization of the environmental goods, inherit the illustrated project, disappeared under a supposed drafted modernization and productivity of agricultural field. Faced with this innovative risk, but isolated fundamental concerns regarding the environment in Spain, other knowlegable fields have contributed to cyclical consolidated a substrate for the emerging environmental history of the 90 `s. Since the Geography of Landscape have been making either micro-analytical studies or studies regarding the cross-cutting nature sense of geography as scientific paradigm, if. there are some elements common to all of them to be highlighted. A first element is its interest spread by the "forest", in both its quantitative dimension to ascertain the availability of land vocation forest regions or counties, the study of the economic impact of the uses and use derivatives of these natural 4. Yet, a work nucleus that has made exceptional contributions related to forest science as a design program of landscape in that rationalized political and scientific action with the power to order management for "forest woodlands 5. Attention has been given to the dimension of jurisdictional change that the liberal revolution printed on the ownership of forest resources in Spain as a strategy from which to strengthen the management of forestry extractive spaces of the Iberian Peninsula 6. Geography, Science and Forestry study of the impact of policy actions on the structure of forest uses-with a role of the corps of engineers` forest acting as agents of the forest policy state 7 -policy which elements that have been connected to the initiation of this historiographical tendencies 8. However, the socio-environmental burst into historiography, as an exercise in critical thinking during the 1990ś. It emerges from the field of political ecology as a proposal demanding an alternative development model to the existing criteria based on social and environmental sustainability of community practices on the environment, respect for cultural and biological diversity with the groups that have handled the ecosystems 9. This is the scenario for the defense of equity at the global level, as a result of a multiplicity of local actions that seek efficiency of 4 C. Manuel Valdés Tierras y montes públicos en la sierra de Madrid. Sectores Central y Meridional. Serie Estudios Ministerio Agricultura, Pesca y Alimentación. 1996; C. Manuel Valdes, et al Los Planes de Aprovechamiento Forestales en los montes de la provincia de Madrid, in La Sociedad Madrileña durante la Restauración, Madrid, Comunidad Madrid/Revista Alfoz, vol. I, pp ; C. Manuel Valdés et al La propiedad pública forestal en el cambio de siglo: la relación de montes no catalogados de 1897 in Actas del VI Coloquio d Geografía Rural, Madrid, Universidad Autónoma, 1991, pp J. Gómez Mendoza Ciencia y política de los montes españoles ( ), Madrid, 1992, ICONA; J. Gómez Mendoza et al. La gestión territorial y ambiental de un parque metropolitano: el Parque Regional de la cuenca alta del manzanares (Madrid) in Actas del VII Coloquio de Geografía Rural Córdoba, Asociación Geógrafos Españoles, 1994, pp J. Gómez Mendoza El marco jurídico y las formas de explotación de los montes de España in Ponencia del VI Coloquio de Geografía Rural UAM, pp J. Gómez Mendoza et al Actuaciones Forestales públicas desde Objetivos, Criterios y resultados in Agricultura y Sociedad nº 65, pp V. Casals Costa Defensa y Ordenación del Bosque en España: Ciencia, Naturaleza y Sociedad en la Obra de los Ingenieros de Montes durante el siglo XIX in Geocrítica nº 73, Universidad de Barcelona, Cátedra de Geografía Humana; V. Casals Costa Los Ingenieros de Montes en la España Contemporánea, , Ed. del Serbal, 1996, Barcelona. 8 H, Groome El desarrollo de la política forestal en el Estado Español: desde el siglo XIX hasta la guerra civil in Arbor nº 474, CSIC, 1985, Madrid, pp.59-89; H. Groome El desarrollo de la política forestal en el estado español: desde la guerra civil hasta la actualidad in Arbor nº 505, CSIC, 1988, Madrid, pp ; H. Groome Historia de la Política Forestal del Estado Español. Agencia del Medio Ambiente de la Comunidad de Madrid, 1990; 9 J. Martínez Alier De la Economía Ecológica al Ecologismo Popular. Barcelona, 1992, Ed. Icaria. 3

4 their socio-social actions, and that creates a picture in which social groups are fighting for the allocation and distribution of goods inside social systems. The arguments for environmental goods and incomes 10, that are not more than a phenomenon, that allows to view the struggle for survival and endo-exosomatic reproduction of human groups. There are distributive disputes envisioned in the entire paradigm for the study of environmental conflicts (that will be dealt with later) become one of the elements of greatest historiographic innovation in the field of environmental spanish history. Contributions that Joan Martinez has made to the Spanish environmental history are varied and complex. He produces a new rank with respect to the work of a historian, transcending from the local to the global. It includes a work plan to the ecological history that inserts it into the concerns of environmental global y glocal from speeches based on interdisciplinary. Lost contemporary thinkers who were holding economic-ecological importance of the radical agrarian systems-on function and dynamics of sustainability-energy charged for the reproduction of peasant groups. Peasant Communities invested by the work of Joan Martinez Alier an emancipator discourse and vindictive old-new social practices rooted in environmental ethics. It is a new form of environmentalism, the environmentalism of the poor. Political Ecology, Ecological Economics and Environmental History flow together as scientific proposals giving particular attention to changes in energetic dynamics and reproductive dimensions of agro-ecosystems in contemporary time, that have focused on more materialistic approaches on collective forms of social action or on the complexity of the energy of the operation of current Spanish farming systems. Since developing work on the role of agricultural property as reproductive social space 11 in the s, environmental historiography moved towards increasing the attention to the energy dimension of agricultural systems as a theory 12. The intention was to confirm their historic sustainability moving towards traditional organic economies to the emergence of industrialized agriculture based on the introduction of new technological and scientific packages that are characteristic of the green revolution. The study advances with regards to the material and energetic flow of of the agricultural systems (which were later developed with the proposal of the IFF in Vienna on MEFA), as well as levels of 10 J. Martínez Alier Hacia una historia socioecológica: algunos ejemplos andinos in González de Molina, M. y Sevilla Guzmán, E. Ecología, Campesinado e Historia. Col. Genealogía del Poder nº 12, Col. La Piqueta, Ed. Libertarias, 1993, Madrid, pp ; J. Martínez Alier Indicadores de sustentabilidad y conflictos distributivos ecológicos in Ecología Política nº 10, CIP/Icaria, 1995, pp ; J. Martínez Alier y J. Sánchez Cuestiones distributivas de la economía ecológica in Ecología Política nº 9, CIP/Icaria, Alcalá de Henares, pp J. Martínez Alier La Estabilidad del Latifundismo. Ed. Ruedo Ibérico, 1968, París; J. Mártinez Alier Peasants and Labourers in Southern Spain, Cuba and Highland Peru en Jounal of Peasan Studies, vol. 1,nº 2, Frank Cass, Londres, pp P. Campos Palacín y J.M. Naredo La energía en los sistema agrarios in Agricultura y Sociedad nº 15. Ministerio de Agricultura, 1980, Madrid, pp ; P. Campos Palacín y J.M. Naredo La degradación de los recursos naturales en la dehesa. Análisis de un modelo de dehesa tradicional in Agricultura y Sociedad nº 26, Ministerio de Agricultura, 1983, Agricultura y Sociedad nº 26, Ministerio de Agricultura, Madrid, pp ; P. Campos Palacín y J.M. Naredo El valor económico total de los sistemas agroforestales in Agricultura y Sociedad nº 71,Ministerio de Agricultura, Madrid, pp ; J.M. Naredo y P. Campos Palacín Los Balances Energéticos de la Agricultura Española in Agricultura y Sociedad nº 15, Ministerio de Agricultura, 1980, Madrid, pp ; J.M. Naredo La Evolución de la Agricultura en España ( ) Biblioteca de Bolsillo, Servicio de Publicaciones, 1996, Universidad de Granada. 4

5 fertilization of these agro-ecosystems 13 as practices of more or lesser historical sustainability, but subject to the limitations obliged by the metabolism of Mediterranean ecosystems before management practices imposed by the paradigm of modernization. In this historiographical change, the precedent that supports the entire trajectory of work on the metabolism of contemporary farming systems is the work of Pablo Campos and Jose Manuel Naredo. The imposition of the green revolution, as a technological and productive package, denotes a break from pre-industrial farming system, prevailing in Spain up until the second half of the twentieth century. A period of transition towards industrialized agriculture, carried out in Spain, in a short period of time, however we only have limited and fragmented empirical information and unofficial records. The irruption of industrialized agriculture implies a loss at the expense of the natural fertility of the soil, both for the transformation of crop rotations for the restructuring of the livestock shelters to an expanding agriculture. A change in agricultural model that is based on the progression of non-renewable inputs, increased dependence on foreign inputs in the agricultural sector and with a low energy efficiency of the livestock sector while growing dependence on imported feed. These are jobs that reveal a huge empirical dimension effort in the sustainable agricultural program of, having forced the leap from the peasant economy in the first quarter of the twentieth century to industrial agriculture, with a strong input from mechanization to subsidize the entry of fossil fuels in this farming activity. This work offers offers energetic balance of the performance of ecosystems, of vast empirical dimension, in the absence of useful official statistics for the historical period of Franco. This allowed us to establish how these ecosystems work energetically in order to determine how they can be designed for work programs in Mediterranean mountains during the 90 s in order to generate an income of welfare for rural communities that reside in the area. It altered biological cycles of reproduction of agro-ecosystems, redefining traditional systems of crop rotation in order to increase production beyond the limiting factors in environmental Mediterranean ecosystems 14. FROM THE SOUTH: THE SOCIAL TURN OF ENVIRONMENTAL IN SPAIN However the Spanish environmental history has incorporated methodologies, fields of study and revisions of paradigm that come from realities outside European, which gave way to the proposals born in Spain, which had increased socio environmental content when it came time to explain the changes in contemporary society. It claims those social practices of the creation of 13 R. Garrabou y J. M. Naredo (eds.) La Fertilización en los sistemas agrarios. Una perspectiva Histórica. Fundación Argentaria Visor, 1996, Madrid. 14 J. M. Naredo y P. Campos Los balances energéticos de la economía española in Agricultura y Sociedad nº 15, Madrid, 1980, Ministerio Agricultura y Pesca, pp ; P. Campos y J. M. Naredo Los energía en los sistemas agrarios in Agricultura y Sociedad nº 15, Madrid, 1980, Ministerio Agricultura y Pesca, págs ; P. Campos Palacín El valor económico total de los sistemas agroforestales in Agricultura y Sociedad nº 71, Ministerio Agricultura y Pesca, pp ; P. Campos Palacín La degradación de los recursos naturales en la dehesa. Análisis de un modelo de dehesa tradicional in Agricultura y Sociedad nº 26, Ministerio de Agricultura y Pesca, pp ; P. Campos Palacín Hacia la medición de la renta de bienestar del uso múltiple de un monte in A. Ortega Santos et al (eds. 2002): Las Montañas del Mediterráneo, Granada, Exma. Diputación Provincial de Granada, pp

6 reclamation forms and of the emancipative argument in the presence of the pressure from the state /or local power structures. This hooks in with the third wave of environmentalism, proposed by Rama Guha, and reinterpreted the non sustainability of the developing models North South. However this does not stay within the analytical framework, yet the discussion is leaning towards a social mobilization, towards the forms of environmental struggles for the defense of the goods/space of reproductive or symbolic value for the rural and and or urban communities. Rural Communities couldn t control the management of natural resources under the pressure of Nation- State Forestry Laws and the influences of Capitalist Market. In other areas, the influence of Transnational Companies of Colonial Empire were the actors of this change in the access and allocation of natural goods 15. One of the transmitters that have enriched the planning of the Spanish environmental history comes from the Hindu historiography during the 1980`s. In this area, monographs, regional studies or research projects are focusing on land use forest management, irrigation systems and the reappearance of social struggles between local groups, colonial authorities and corporate commercial entities. These agricultural surveys reflect the changes in land tenure, social inequality and roles of colonialism as scenes by which a strong element of reclamation of social action 16. Removing the biomass of natural areas through forestry laws and placing entire forest resources at the service of commercial interests, and lead to a process of social response against the disposition and privatization of such property. These are the key elements the work of Ramachandra Guha and Madhav Gadgil 17 which offer methodologies to study other European realities 18. In recent times, well indicated authors in the recent times, the field for the arrival of new forms of struggle including new languages of conflict and environmental value against the historical phenomena s of a long history. It is the environmentalism of the poor 19, as a defense of linked goods, to the reproduction of material facing the ecologies of the north. The disputes over the allocation of assets and resources within and between societies, is an area of conflict. It is the 15 For a more extender overview, David Arnold op. cit; y Michael J.G. Parnwell y Raymond L. Bryant (eds.), Environmental Change in South East Asia. People, Politics and sustainable development. Londres, 1996, Routledge Press; Richard Grove et al Nature and the Orient: The Environmental History of South and Southeast Asia. Delhi, 1998, Oxford University Press. 16 Arun Agrawal y K. Sivaramakrisnan, Agrarian Environments. Resources, Representation and Rule in India. Londres, 2000, Duke University Press; 17. Ramachandra Guha The unquiet woods. Ecological change and peasant resistance in Himalaya. Berkeley, 1990, University of California Press; Madhav Gadgil y Ramachandra Guha State Forestry and Social Conflict in British India in Past and Present nº 123 Oxford, 1993, Past and Present Society, pp ; Madhav Gadgil y Ramachandra Guha This fissured land. An Ecological History of India. Berkeley, 1992, University of California Press; Madhav Gadgil y Ramachandra Guha, R. Ecology and Equity. The use and abuse of nature in Contemporary India, New York, 1995, Routledge Press; Ramachandra Guha The prehistory of community forestry in India in Environmental History vol.6, nº 2, Cambridge, 2001, White Horse Press, pp Madhav Gadgil y Ramachandra Guha Los hábitats en la Historia de la Humanidad in Ayer nº 11, Madrid, 1993, Marcial Pons, pp Joan Martínez Alier El Ecologismo de los pobres. Conflictos ambientales y lenguajes de valoración. Barcelona, 2005, Ed. Icaria. Ramchandra Guha y Joan Martínez Alier Varieties of Environmentalism. Essays North and South. Londres, 1997, Earthscan Publications. 6

7 study of distributive conflicts 20, which enriches interdisciplinary of the work of environmental history, setting a foot in the field of the Political Ecology 21, and the Ecological Economy. It is a debate, which has been well summarized by Rama Guha, among those omnivorous ecosystems and the people of the ecosystems. It creates a model of developed capitalist that rests on increasing global socio asymmetries as a possibility for individuals to have access to productive resources and reproductive rights. An "environmental scenario" in which the conflict arises within intra-society or inter-society, resulting in new and old forms of environmental refugees 22. Retrieving the complex vision of the conflicts, far away from the institutionalized paradigm full of social history. It connects with the everyday forms of resistance`s Scott 23, reinforcement with a Ghandian speech of passive resistance 24, yet accompanied with a formative capacity of developmental strategies of endogenous character s and rejection to industrial or agricultural models imposed from outside the community. They are fighting against a "looting of the economy" which has not only unstructured economies in the south yet has squandered its natural and human capital, a stock that today's societies do not have for future development. If the interdisciplinary work in India marked the agenda of the environmental history, similar conditions exist in the other turn of socio environmental from the south 25 : Latin America 26. Political Ecology, Environmental History, Ethnicity identity as a marker of the struggle for the defense of natural resources are elements that added to the study on environmental conflicts and the of History Agricultural-Forestry define the stage of work in recent years. Relationship between Humankind and Environment, attending to the changes occurred in the discovery and impact to the management of natural resources, is the main objective of different monographs. Research applied to Mexico 27, Argentina 28 and Brazil 29 mean a greater depth in thinking and results. It incorporates philosophical thought 30, on environmental issues, on changes in the 20. Joan Martínez Alier Indicadores de sustentabilidad y conflictos distributivos ecológicos in Ecología Política nº 10; Alcalá de Henares; 1995, CIP/Icaria, pp About the interdisciplinary field between Environmental History and Political Ecology, Joan Martínez Alier De la Economía Ecológica al Ecologismo Popular. Barcelona, 1992, Ed. Icaria; Joan Martínez Alier. Hacia una Historia Socioecológica. Algunos ejemplos andinos in Manuel González de Molina y Eduardo Sevilla Guzmán, E. (eds.): Ecología, Campesinado e Historia. Madrid, 1993, Col. Genealogía del Poder, Ed. Libertarias, pp , Review Ecología Política available 22 Ramachandra Guha. From Experience to Theory: Traditions of Socio-Ecological Research in Modern India in Egon Becker y Thomas Jahn (eds.): Sustainability and the Social Sciences. A Cross-Disciplinary Approach to Integrating Environmental Considerations into Theoretical Reorientation. New York, 1999, Zed Books, pp James Scott Weapons of the weak. Everyday forms of peasant resistance. New Haven 1995, Yale University Press. 24 For obtaining an overview about social resistance Ramachandra Guha El Ecologismo de los Pobres in Ecología Política nº 8, Madrid, 1994, CIP/Icaria, pp Guillermo Castro Herrera The environmental crisis and the task of environmental history in Latin America in Environment and History 3, Cambridge, 1997, White Horse Press, pp An excellent approach fro searching bibliography applied to the study of environmental actions in Latin America www1.lanic.utexas.edu/la/region/environment y también en 27 Fernando Ortiz Monasterio Tierra profanada: historia ambiental de México. Ciudad de México, 1987, Instituto Nacional de Antroplogía e Historia; Alejandro Tortolero Villaseñor Tierra, Agua y Bosques. Historia y Medio Ambiente en el México Central. Ciudad de México, 1996, Centre Français d`études mexicaines et centroaméricanes; 7

8 uses of land, as well as the impact of extractive activities in colonies in Latin American ecosystems 31 In the latter aspect, the proposal of Reinaldo Funes regarding the case of Cuba, makes it very evident as industrial complexes since the nineteenth century or even earlier, were tools in the service of economic growth models that were implemented in ecosystems without regard to its destructive consequences because they are associated with intense historical processes of deforestation 32. There are entering the field of ecology politics. Since the original work of E. Leff 33, the debate on the creation of an alternative development capitalist model reviewing the contradictions of the same environmental and rejects the imposition of dispossession and marginalization of the same 34. According to this author in a recent work, political ecology in the case of Latin America emerge in the hinterland between ecological economics to analyze processes significance, recovery and appropriation of nature, unresolved by the economic valuation of the nature or the allocation of environmental standards. In this scenario, the conflict arises as controversy over the environmental assessment of the nature, focusing on a politicization of ecology 35. It is an area where nature is reification in his role, against the natural conditions of existence, against natural disasters, the greening of social relations. Guillermo López Castro (coord.): Sociedad y Medio Ambiente en México. Zamora, 1997, El Colegio de Michoacán; Lane Simonian (1995), op. cit ; Alejandro Tortolero Villaseñor Tierra, Agua y bosques en Chalco ( ). La innovación tecnológica y sus repercusiones en un medio rural in Margarita Menegus y Alejandro Tortolero Villaseñor (coord): Agricultura Mexicana., crecimiento e innovaciones. México, 1999, Instituto Mora, Colegio Michoacán, Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, pp Elio Brailovsky y Dina Foguelman Memoria Verde. Historia Ecoógica de la Argentina. Buenos Aires, 1991, Ed. Sudamericana; Gustavo Zarilli Capitalism, Ecology and Agrarian Expansion in the Pampean Region, in Environment and History 6, Cambridge, 2001, White Horse Press, pp ; 29. Warren Dean Brazil and the struggle for rubber: a study in environmental history. New York, 1987, Cambridge University Press; Warren Dean With Broadax and Firebrand. The Destruction of Brazil`s Atlantic Forest. Berkeley, 1995, University of California Press; Shawn Miller Fruit less Tress. Portuguese Conservation and Brazil`s Colonial Timber. Stanford, 2000, Stanford University Press. 30 José Augusto Padua Un Sopro de Destruiçao. Pensamento Político e Crítica Ambiental no Brasil Esclavista ( ). Río de Janeiro, 2002, Jorge Zahar Editor. 31 Referentes about Colombia must be otained at (Instituto de Estudios Ambientales) or for the case of Chile at or applied to the study of management of natural resources, CIECO- México, or for a general approach to environmental studies in the different states 32 Reinaldo Funes Monzote La conquista de Camagüey por el azúcar El impacto ambiental de un milagro económico in Tiempos de América 8, Castellón, 2001, Centro de Investigaciones de América Latina, pp. 3-28; Reinaldo Funes Monzote De Bosque a Sabana Azúcar, Medio Ambiente y Deforestación en Cuba, México, 2004, Siglo XXI. 33 Enrique Leff Ecología y Capital. Racionalidad Ambiental, Democracia Participativa y Desarrollo Sustentable. México, 1986, Siglo XXI Editorial; Enrique Leff Los problemas del conocimiento y la perspectiva ambiental del desarrollo. México, 1986, Siglo XXI; Enrique Leff Medio Ambiente y Desarrollo en México. México, 1990, UNAM- M.A. Porrúa; Enrique Leff y Julio Carabias Cultura y Manejo Sustentable de los Recursos Naturales. México, 1993, UNAM-M.A. Porrúa; 34 David Barkin Riqueza, Pobreza y Desarrollo Sustentable. México, 1998, Centro de Ecología y Desarrollo-Editorial Jus. 35 Enrique Leff La Ecología Política en América Latina. Un Campo en construcción in Alimonda, H. (comp.), Los Tormentos de la Materia. Aportes para una Ecología Política Latinoamericana. Argentina, 2007, CLACSO, pp

9 According to Escobar, on one hand we have an organic nature, vs, the capitalization and technicalization of nature by a dominate culture, based on science and the market. There is resistance to hegemonic dominance of uniformity, to the objectivity of cosification, otherness ethnic forms vindicate their compromise with social justice and the equality in the difference 36. In this case, the appearance of the environmental conflicts has been raised as a topic of enormous historiográphical future 37. There some proposals that mark the social struggles regarding goods and natural resources, being connected but going out of the paradigm of the social history. They re-defined the forms of struggles and the element - levers that motivate the leap to the argument against the State, Local Power and Transnational Companies 38. Faced with proposals by Folchi, claiming that the environmental conflict emerges from the perception of the damage without considering the position of the individual, versus the access to goods. Historiography on environmental conflicts complicates the process, taking into account the dynamics of exclusion and dislocation, implemented by state legislative apparatus, with regards to the community management practices. In many cases, the Chilean example may be a good illustrative well, we analyze the conflicts facing a stage of industrial development, mining or against a model of forest management that appear as triggers an inherent tendency to the disposition of assets in the socio - rural / urban areas 39. But some environmental struggles have emerged numerous jobs with a huge capacity to reflect the wide dissemination of these conflicts, up until now hidden, speeches of protest and social mobilization for the defense of property ownership and environmental concerns. Social mobilization and collective action on which they build a vindictive discourse for the emancipation that can generate new ways of managing natural resources. From the earliest work in this particular field of Arturo Escobar 40 and Sonia E. Alvarez 41 to the most recent H. Collison 36 From the perspective of Ethnoecology, you can see the most relevant proposal, linked with environmental history, explained by Víctor Toledo, available at and Review Etnoecología, 37 For the study of environmental conflicts, (Observatorio Latinoamericano de Conflictos Ambientales) and Mauricio Folchi Donoso Conflictos de contenido ambiental y ecologismo de los pobres: no siempre pobres, no siempre ecologistas in Ecología Política nº 22, Barcelona, 2001, Icaria, pp Mauricio Folchi Donoso La insustentabilidad del boom minero chileno, Política y Medio Ambiente in Ecología Política nº 23, Barcelona, 2003, Ed. Icaria, pp ; René Montalba-Navarro y Noelia Carrasco, N. Modelo Forestal Chileno y Conflicto Indígena ecologismo cultural mapuche? in Ecología Política nº 26, Barcelona, 2003, Ed. Icaria, pp ; Mauricio Folchi Donoso La insustentabilidad de la industria del cobre en Chile: Los hornos y los bosques durante el siglo XIX in Revista Mapocho 49, Chile, 2001, Biblioteca Nacional de Chile, pp ; Elizabeth Dore Environment and Society. Long-Term Trends in Latin American Mining in Environment and History 6, Cambridge, 2000, White Horse Press, pp Arturo Escobar Cultural Politics and Biological Diversity. State, Capital and Social Movements in the Pacific Coast of Colombia in Richard G. Fox. y Orin Starn (eds.): Between Resistance and Revolution. Cultural Politics and Social Protest. New Jersey, 1997, Rutgers University Press, pp

10 42 have claimed the role of socio environmental sustainability that ethnic-peasant groups have extended in time and space given the context of Latin America. The logic of the monetary valuation of environmental goods, imposed the dynamics of global market, articulated the depredation of these assets and have force international market actors in a setting of environmental claims. For some disputes, they aquire defense logic from substantial strategies, linked to reproductive needs of human groups or given the present scenario, take on a range of environmental battles, with programs close to the environmental movement in the north 43. ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY IN SPAIN: AN EMERGING FIELD FOR UNDERSTANDING THE FUTURE Today, in the beginning of the twenty-first century, The Environmental History in Spain is incorporating some elements of constitutive origins, outlined in the first part of the article, however incorporated in some of their lines of research programs with this Southern,.social environmental twist. In any case, there is a source mark "land" in the field of environmental history that Spain has obviated the nuances and objects of the study of urban environmental history. To a large extent, researchers and emerging groups of the 80 `s have transited since the forest land history- to environmental history, expanding the methodologies and proposals regarding the study of energy balances of farming activity in recent decades. It hasn t been an easy road, but in the last decade, scientific encounters have been held permitting the unification and the definition of the lines of work in environmental history in Spain. Since May 1999, with the celebration of the first Meeting of Environmental History in Spain, to the second meeting celebrated in 2001 (Huesca) and consolidated in the third meeting, held parallel to the III Latin American and Caribbean Environmental History Symposium (Carmona, April 2006). In order to arrive to this point, there has been much necessary contribution 44. In this context, they have been conforming with a series of lines of work which take a closer look at the existing elements in the 80 s having been enriched with methodology and new objectives of 41. Sonia E. Álvarez Reweavng the fabric of collective action: Social Movements and Challenges to Actually Existing Democracy in Brazil in Richard G. Fox y Orin Starn (eds.): Between Resistance and Revolution. Cultural Politics and Social Protest. New Jersey, 1997, Rutgers University Press, pp Hellen Collinson (ed.): Green Gerrillas. Environmental Conflicts and Initiatives in Latin American and the Caribbean. Montreal, 1997, Black Rose Books. 43 For a tipology of peasant-environmental conflicts, in a more complex perspective, David Soto Fernández et al La protesta campesina como protesta ambiental, siglo XVIII-XX in Historia Agraria nº 47 (Agosto), Murcia, 2007, SEHA/Servicio Publicaciones Universidad de Murcia, pp One of the first step in the building up of environmental history in Spain is Joan Martínez Alier y Manuel González de Molina, M. (eds.): Historia y Ecología, Revista Ayer nº 11, Madrid, 1993, Ed. Marcial Pons, (incorporating new methodologies proponed by Joan Martínez Alier, Rama Guha y Madhav Gadgil, Carolyn Merchant, Joachim Radkau; PieroBevilacqua). 10

11 study. As occurred in the early years of the emergence of the environmental history, a central axis in the history of the forest, applied the study to the changes in the forms of ownership (change from communal forms to the state-private ownership of forest land in the late twentieth century) and changes in the ways of handling natural resources. These works have given little attention to the impact of these transformations for the functioning of ecosystems. In this element, we can incorporate publications originating from Galicia 45, Basque Country, Navarra 46 and Andalucía 47 along with other regional or provincial publishings 48. But within them, the socio functionality of natural resources for reproduction of rural communities is not being incorporated. In the previously cited proposal, the common goods hardly emerge as an area of reproductive provisions for rural communities. The common goods were the objecst for which liberal policies implemented legislative levers that made them hold to the emerging capitalist market practices, they were transformed into generating inputs for the agricultural-industrial production system. This dynamic made the same management was more efficient in monetary terms, not social environmentalists terms 49. This trend will be reviewed and enriched by other publishings about goods in the 90 s, surpassing the Hardin s paradigm with regards to the hegemonic view at the 45. Aurora Arteaga Rego y Xesús Balboa López Montes Públicos y Desamortización en Galicia in Agricultura y Sociedad nº 57, Madrid, 1990, Ministerio de Agricultura, pp ; Aurora Arteaga Rego y Xesús Balboa López La individualización de la propiedad colectiva: Aproximación e Interpretación del proceso en los montes de Galicia in Agricultura y Sociedad nº 65, Madrid, 1992, Ministerio Agricultura, pp ; Xesús Balboa López (1990): O Monte en Galicia, Ed. Xerais, Vigo; Ofelia Rey Castelao Montes y Política Forestal en la Galicia del Antiguo Régimen. Santiago de Compostela, 1995, Universidad de Santiago de Compostela; Eduardo Rico Boquete Política Forestal e Repoboacions en Galicia, , Santiago de Compostela, 1995, Universidad de Santiago de Compostela; o el más reciente Grupo de Estudio de la Propiedad Comunal La devolución de la propiedad vecinal en Galicia ( ) in Historia Agraria nº 33, Murcia, 2004, Servicio Publicaciones Universidad de Murcia, pp Iñaki Iriarte Goñi Bienes Comunales y Capitalismo Agraria en Navarra. Madrid, 1997, Serie Estudios, Ministerio de Agricultura, Pesca y Alimentación; José Manuel Lana Berasain Los aprovechamientos agrícolas comunales en el Sur de Navarra entre los siglos XIX-XX in Agricultura y Sociedad nº 65, Madrid; 1992, Ministerio de Agricultura, pp José Ignacio Jiménez Blanco Presente y Pasado del Monte Mediterráneo en España in Sánchez Picón, A. (ed.): Agriculturas Mediterráneas y mundo campesino. Cambios históricos y retos actuales. 1994, Instituto de Estudios Almerienses, pp ; José Ignacio Jiménez Blanco Privatización y apropiación de tierras municipales en la Baja Andalucía, Biblioteca de Urbanismo y Cultura, 1996, EMEMSA/Ayuntamiento de Jerez de la Frontera; Antonio Ortega Santos Common woodlands in mediterranean societies: commercial management versus forms of peasant resistance in Andalucía (Spain), in Mauro Agnoletti y Sven Anderson (eds.): Forest History. Internacional Studies on Socioeconomic and Forest Ecosystem Change, New York; 2000, CABI Publishing, pp ; Antonio Ortega Santos La desarticulación de la propiedad comunal en España, siglos XVIII-XX: una aproximación multicausal y socioambiental a la historia de los montes públicos in Ayer nº 42 Madrid, 2001, Ed. Marcial Pons/Asociación de Historia Contemporánea, págs ; Antonio Ortega Santos La Tragedia de los Cerramientos. Desarticulación de la Comunalidad en la Provincia de Granada. Alzira, 2002, Centro Francisco Tomás y Valiente/Fundación Instituto de Historia Social. 48 José Ramón Moreno Fernández El Monte Público en la Rioja durante los siglos XVIII-XX: aproximación a la desarticulación del régimen comunal. Logroño; 1994, Diputación Provincial de Logroño.; José Ramón Moreno Fernández El Régimen Comunal y la reproducción de la comunidad campesina en las sierras de La Rioja, Siglos XVIII-XX in Historia Agraria nº 15, Murcia, 1998, Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Murcia, pp Grupo Estudios Historia Rural Más allá de la propiedad perfecta. El proceso de privatización de los montes públicos españoles ( ) in Noticiario de Historia Agraria nº 8, Murcia, 1994, Servicio de Publicaciones e Intercambio Científico, Universidad de Murcia, pp

12 time of designing the managing of common goods, rejects the approach that gives bonus to economic returns premium on profitability socio environmental, hegemonic in the works cited above. To review the socio environmental profitability in the forms of natural resource management requires information in field on energy balances of agro-ecosystems, thereby allowing to take a glance at the metabolic function that forest areas meet for the overall agro ecosystem. This second axes of the bases of the history deals with the Spanish environmental study of the flow of nutrients and energy in the different ecosystems, followed by the methodological proposals of members of the Institute for Social Ecology in Vienna. From the earliest work in this field, they opt for a rereading of the constituent elements and defining the development model of capitalism transformed in the context of the industrial revolution 50. The economies of southern Europe continued its own line of adaptation and integration into world markets. Economies confined in ecosystems with serious limitations on availability of resources, water and nutrient respect to the economies of the north 51. Recently, this trend has been deploying an intense production that extends both micro and macro level, studies based on historical sources permitting an account of balance of flows, material and energy to a nation-state scale. In the first case, restricted areas are taken- municipalities or counties for a empirical approach, applying intensity and virtuosity with a whole array methodological already available to other areas of the world 52. This strategy in addressing the balance sheets of energy flow and allows reconstruction with a thin line enabling the functioning of the metabolism of these ecosystems and above all, to trace with precision the historical sustainability in these agroecosystems 53 that have been submitted to the legislative ups and downs of the agrarian policies of the XIX century. But along with these projects, implementation of micro socioenvironmental methodology, we have a set of combined publications that rebuild the function of the Spanish economy in key analysis of materials and energy flows. Far from the ideas of the traditional liberal economy approaches they move toward problems linked to the actual level of oikonomía recovering more 50 In a more complex theoretical perspective about the integration of peasant-rural communities in emergence of capitalism in Andalucía, Eduardo Sevilla Guzmán y Manuel González de Molina Ecología, Campesinado e Historia. Col. Genealogía del Poder nº 22, Madrid, 1993, Ed. La Piqueta. 51. Manuel González de Molina Condicionamientos Ambientales del Crecimiento Agrario Español, Siglos XIX y XX in Josep Pujol et al: El pozo de todos los males. Sobre el atraso de la Agricultura Española Contemporánea. Barcelona, 2001, Ed. Crítica, pp ; Manuel González de Molina Environmental constraints on Agricultural Growth in XIXth Century Granada (Southern Spain) in Ecological Economics Vol. 41, nº 2, Ámsterdam, 2002, Elsevier Science, pp For more information Gloria Guzmán Casado y Manuel González de Molina, M.: Sobre las posibilidades del crecimiento agrario en los siglos XVIII, XIX y XX. Un estudio de caso desde la perspectiva energética in Historia Agraria nº 40, Murcia, 2006, SEHA/Universidad de Murcia, pp ; Manuel González de Molina Tras los pasos de la insustentabilidad. Agricultura y Medio Ambiente en perspectiva histórica, siglo XVIII-XX. Barcelona, 2006, Ed. Icaria. 12

13 material vision of economic activity. From the original work, Jose Manuel Naredo 54 has proposed one of the most innovative revisions from this field of work. In addition, this idea is being continued by Oscar Carpintero 55, for which the Spanish economy has been sustained in the unsustainability from a model of high consumption of materials and non-renewable resources used in the second half of the twentieth century. This idea was highlighted in the case of agriculture by the work of P. Campos and J. M,. Naredo in the 80 `s, at both levels, the economic dependency and the environmental consequences of this model to the global ecological crisis. In the same way, there has been a contribution of ideas from the field of economics. In the case of Spain, some of these contributions come from working groups in Catalonia, agglutinated around E. Tello and R. Garrabou. It has been detected from the early works that addressed the change in the ownership structures of land in this territory 56 has been culminating into projects that give converage to the study of change of historic landscape as construction. A process that involves changes in the social metabolism of agroecosystems 57. The central element of input into the discussions on global unsustainability from the field of ecological economic history lies in Enric Tello s last publication 58. Since the criticism of the plots on knowledge of economic reality and its commitment to financial approach ( crematística ) face of oikonomía, E. Tello proposes recovery of other economic thought. This allows alternative thinking, a critical understanding of socioenviromental dimension closest to the problems of global environmental crisis, measurable impacts of socio-economic systems in the environment 59. The action on human tecnosfera 54. José Manuel Naredo La Modernización de la agricultura española y sus repercusiones ecológicas in Manuel González de Molina y Joan Martínez Alier. (eds.) Naturaleza Transformada. Barcelona, 2001, Ed. Icaria, pp ; José Manuel Naredo La Evolución de la Agricultura en España ( ), Granada, 2004, Ed. Universidad de Granada; José Manuel Naredo y Pablo Campos Los balances energéticos de la economía española in Agricultura y Sociedad nº 15, Madrid, 1980, Ministerio Agricultura y Pesca, pp ; Pablo Campos y José Manuel Naredo Los energía en los sistemas agrarios in Agricultura y Sociedad nº 15, Madrid, 1980, Ministerio Agricultura y Pesca, pp Oscar Carpintero Entre la economía y la naturaleza. Madrid, 1999, Libros de la Catarata. Oscar Carpintero El metabolismo de la economía española. Recursos naturales y huella ecológica ( ) Lanzarote, 2005, Fundación Cesar Manrique. 56 Ramón Garrabou et al : Sharecropping and the management of large rural estates in Catalonia, in The Journal of Peasant Studies 28,3, 2000, pp ; Ramón Garrabou y Enric Tello Constructor de Paisatjes. Amos de Masies, masovers y rabassaires al territori del Vatlles, in V.V.A.A.: Joseph Fontana. Història i projecte social. Reconeixement d`una trajectòria. Barcelona, 2004, Ed. Crítica, pp Enric Tello: La formación histórica de los paisajes agrarios mediterráneos: una aproximación coevolutiva, in Historia Agraria 19, SEHA/Universidad de Murcia, pp, ; Xavier Cussó et al. Balances Energéticos y usos del suelo en la agricultura catalana. Una comparación entre mediados del siglo XIX y finales del siglo XX in Historia Agraria nº 40 Murcia, 2006, SEHA/Universidad de Murcia, pp ; Marull, J. et al : Análisis estructural y funcional de la transformación del paisaje agrario en el Vallés durante los últimos 150 años in Areas 25, 2006, Murcia, pp Enric Tello La Historia Cuenta. Del crecimiento económico al desarrollo humano sostenible, Ed. El Viejo Topo, Barcelona, Enric Tello : La mundialización capitalista y el ecosocialismo de andar por casa Mientras Tanto 76, 2000, pp ; Enric Tello : Globalización del comunismo? Huelas y Deudas Ecológicas Mientras Tanto 80, 2001, pp ; 13

14 implies a change in the metabolism of human societies that requires a review of epistemology on which to settle the concepts of development, growth and efficiency on a global scale. Vital needs versus supply capacity of the remote allows companies to draw the contrast on which sits the lack of sustainability overall in the North-South. A third element that sits in the historiography Spanish environmental proposals are those of divulgate elaboration 60. Works such as Manuel Gonzalez de Molina 61 became essential for members of the education system and research when it comes to drawing attention and reflect on the path followed by the environmental history in recent decades. Claiming the ability to understand the complexity of western society involves restoring environmental balance criticism of the civilization that this form has meant that in terms of predatory resources on a global scale and putting into question a way of life threatened by a global ecological crisis plunges rooted in the industrialization model. Among these proposals synthesis, also noteworthy numbers included in the case of the review Ayer 62 in which to work alongside John McNeill on the international system and environmental change in the twentieth century -linking to the agenda proposed by the latest U.S. environmental history - presents a variety of jobs that make some of the patterns in which it works in the Spanish context. Since the least extended publications on neomalthusianism 63 to the proposals for a little widespread urban environmental history 64, publishings about biological indicators 65 or more extended work on forest history or environmental history applied to energy balances in agro ecosystems 66. This inclusive gamble of the constituent elements of the environmental history were structured as a new paradigm in the book edited by Manuel Gonzalez de Molina and Joan Martinez Alier 67, which compiled the best works representing the trends in the environmental history in Spain and America. This is the result of the synergy arising from scientific meetings Enric Tello: Economía y Ecología de las Sociedades Humanas: una nueva cultura para la justicia global in S. López Arnal et al. (coord.): El valor de la ciencia. El Viejo Topo, Barcelona, 2001, pp Jesús Alonso Millán: Una Tierra Abierta. Materiales para una Historia Ecológica de España. Madrid, 1995, Compañía Literaria. 61.Manuel González de Molina Historia y Medio Ambiente. Madrid, 1993, Eudema Historia; Manuel González de Molina Hombre y Naturaleza en el siglo XIX. La raíces de la crisis ecológica. Madrid, 1996, Santillana Historia Hoy 62 Alberto Sabio Alcutén (ed.): Naturaleza y Conflicto Social. La Historia Contemporánea desde el medio ambiente en Ayer nº 46, Madrid, Macial Pons/Asociación Historia Contemporánea. 63 Enric Masjuan Procreación Consciente y discurso ambientalista: anarquismo y neomaltusianismo en España e Italia, in Ayer nº 46, Madrid, 2002, Marcial Pons/Asociación Historia Contemporánea, pp Joan Martínez Alier Los indicadores de insustentabilidad urbana como indicadores de conflicto social Ayer nº 46, Madrid, 2002, Marcial Pons/Asociación Historia Contemporánea, pp José Manuel Martínez Carrión Biología, historia y medio ambiente. La estatura como espejo del nivel de vida de la sociedad española Ayer nº 46, Madrid, 2002, Marcial Pons/Asociación Historia Contemporánea, pp Manuel González de Molina; Gloria Guzmán Casado y Antonio Ortega Santos Sobre la sustentabilidad de la agricultura ecológica. Las enseñanzas de la historia Ayer nº 46, Madrid, 2002, Marcial Pons/Asociación Historia Contemporánea, pp Manuel González de Molina y Joan Martínez Alier (eds.): Naturaleza Transformada. Estudios de Historia Ambiental en España. Barcelona, 2001, Ed. Icaria. 14

15 before commented, this volume is structured on several themes. One of the first elements is a proposed updating of the studies for conventional agricultural history. Either in its perspective dynamic economic development studies-analysis applied to local / regional or study on climate and its impact on a Mediterranean agriculture designed from the recognition of limiting factors for growth in the contemporary world 68, attending to the adaptive management of the environment. A second thematic terrain is scarce work on issues of industry and environment in Spain. Limited references applied on mining activities and its environmental impact throught out an historical perspective or studies applied to pollution episodes for industrial uses of natural resources 69.. Only few authors incorporate studies on the impact of population growth on vegetation and potential of industrial uses of the countryside 70. Within this volume sets out a series of work still progressing which is the fourth axe on which the Spanish environmental history: common goods as a tool for designing sustainable rural economies. This current tendency, within the environmental history, proposes a rereading of the changes in forms of ownership with regards to communal goods, specially public-state woodlands, subject to a wider range of the disentailed processes. Above all is reinterpretation of the functionality of these forest areas, that are linked to the reproductive needs of rural communities. If the first case, Iñaki Iriarte breaks down with precision the shift in the form of ownership 71, in the second article 72, written by the author of this article. I propose a view of 68. José Manuel Naredo La modernización de la agricultura española y sus repercusiones ecológicas in Manuel González de Molina y Joan Martínez Alier (eds. ): Naturaleza Transformada. Estudios de Historia Ambiental en España. Barcelona, 2001, Ed. Icaria, pp ; Manuel González de Molina El modelo de crecimiento agrario del siglo XIX y sus límites ambientales. Un estudio de caso in Manuel González de Molina y Joan Martínez Alier (eds.): Naturaleza Transformada. Estudios de Historia Ambiental en España. Barcelona, 2001, Ed. Icaria, pp ; Vicente Pinilla Navarro Desarrollo agrícola y medio ambiente. La Agricultura Aragonesa ( ) in Manuel González de Molina y Joan Martínez Alier (eds.): Naturaleza Transformada. Estudios de Historia Ambiental en España. Barcelona, 2001, Ed. Icaria, pp ; Fernando Sánchez Rodrigo Clima y Producción Agrícola en Andalucía durante la edad moderna ( ) Manuel González de Molina y Joan Martínez Alier (eds.): Naturaleza Transformada. Estudios de Historia Ambiental en España. Barcelona, 2001, Ed. Icaria, pp Andrés Sánchez Picón Transición energética y expansión minera en España in Manuel González de Molina y Joan Martínez Alier (eds.): Naturaleza Transformada. Estudios de Historia Ambiental en España. Barcelona, 2001, Ed. Icaria, pp ; Juan Diego Pérez Cebada Lluvia ácida y deforestación en la mina: el primer expediente de compensación por daños causados por efecto de la contaminación atmosférica (1847) in Manuel González de Molina y Joan Martínez Alier. (eds.): Naturaleza Transformada. Estudios de Historia Ambiental en España. Barcelona, 2001, Ed. Icaria, pp Jesús García Latorre et al. The man-made desert effects of economic and demographic growth on the ecosystem of arid sotuheastern Andalusia in Environmental HistoryReview vol. 6, nº 1, 2001, American Society for Environmental History, pp ; Juan García Latorre et al. Dealing with aridity: Socioeconomic structures and environmental changes in an arid mediterranean region in Land Use Policy nº 18, Amsterdam, 2001, Elsevier Science; pp Juan García Latorre et al Almería: hecha a mano: una historia ecológica. 2007, Fundación Cajamar. 71 Iñaki Iriarte Goñi Explotación forestal, medio ambiente y derechos de propiedad de los montes municipales de Navarra ( ) in Manuel González de Molina y Joan Martínez Alier (eds.): Naturaleza Transformada. Estudios de Historia Ambiental en España. Barcelona, 2001, Ed. Icaria, págs

16 environmental change in the forest woodlands that bring about complications to the problem of the commons, just as it has up until now. Common goods 73 appear as a key element in the reproduction of the rural communities, and the pressures of the liberal laws - agrarian and forestry-, what they did was to implement a rupture of the customary practices for management of these spaces, Following the methodological tools proposed by R. Guha and Gadgil, in the common mediterranean mountains is consummated a transition from one mode of peasant use of natural resources in a way to mode of industrial use. This industrial mode of use promotes the action of bureaucratic administrative state to impose such a dynamic productive forest areas that redefined them as suppliers inputs for agricultural or industrial system in capitalist expansion 74. However, the main connection with the southern historiography occurs in the field of environmental history spanish with the widespread commitment to the study of environmental conflicts. For several years, researchers from Andalusia are spreading a series of publishings that reflect the construction of a scientific management of natural resources in the hands of forest science and the state forestry administration throughout the nineteenth century. This proposal meant the disappearance socio-use of natural resources. These practices of natural pluriactitivy became a principal tool for the strategies of reproduction of peasant groups. Assuming that no social group or civilization has been ecologically innocent throughout history, the use of peasants to extinguish by the alienation-privatization implemented by state forest administrative apparatus, involving a social response up until the obscure social history. Since the first synthesis of work on forest criminality 75, it was interpreted as a social practice of rejecting the privatization of ownership or use of forest areas, some emerging research that began rescuing the historiography opacity of the conflicts that have been subjected and struggles over natural resources. They gave way to a rereading in key environmental many episodes already dealt with by conventional social history. Retrieve languages and catalogue of disputes -to paraphrase Tilly-, logic of confrontation between social actors, dynamics of class conflict in front of environmental conflicts, peasant struggles against local authorities for privatization or state-monetarism of common uses, are just some of the elements that make it 72.Antonio Ortega Santos Montes comunales en sociedades mediterráneas: modos de uso de los recursos naturales en Andalucía Oriental, siglos XVIII-XX in Manuel González de Molina y Joan Martínez Alier (eds.): Naturaleza Transformada. Estudios de Historia Ambiental en España. Barcelona, 2001, Ed. Icaria, págs About the interaction between commons and environmental history, see Manuel González de Molina, Antonio Ortega Santos y Antonio Herrera González de Molina Bienes comunales desde la perspectiva socioambiental in De Dios, S. et al (eds.): Historia de la propiedad en España. Bienes Comunales. Pasado y Presente. Madrid, 2002, Centro de Estudios Registrales, págs Antonio Ortega Santos Where have all the flowers gone? Aprovechamientos forestales y desarticulación de la comunalidad en la provincia de Granada, siglos XIX-XX in Eduardo Araque Jiménez y José Domingo Sánchez Martínez (eds. 2007) Los montes andaluces y sus aprovechamientos: experiencias históricas y propuestas de futuro, Jaén, Universidad de Jaén, pp Francisco Cobo Romero et al. Privatización del monte y protesta social. Una primera aproximación a los delitos forestales ( ) in Agricultura y sociedad nº 65, Madrid, 1992, Ministerio de Agricultura y Pesca, págs ; Francisco Cobo Romero et al. Propiedad Privada y protesta campesina. Aproximación a la criminalidad rural en Granada in Areas nº 15, Murcia, 1993, Universidad de Murcia/ Fundación Caja Murcia, págs

17 possible to consider these proposals as the most radically up to date historiagraphs that is being carried forward in and out of Europe 76. But now studies on environmental conflict aims to rethink the intra-and interrelationships around the historic management of natural resources, taken by human groups under communal forms of ownership and management history. Property disputes that reflect social stakes by maintaining and enhancing sustainable development practices in line with the productive needs of the community and allowing reinforce discourses and practices of community identity. Environmental Conflict intended to rethink the position of citizens before the resource has been changed by legislative action of nation-state, as rural communities not only react collectively organized by attacks by agents outside the community (state powers local, commercial-industrial sectors, etc). Peasants, farmers, livestock sectors were social agents that articulated a response to the "privatization" of commons not only from a mere attitude of rejection. Their strategies reproduction moved from communal customary forms a turnout forced the market to acquire workforce, fertilizers, raw materials, etc. Preservation of peasant management of resources compared to the increasing imposition of an industrial management of natural assets, forcing the adjournment of the logic of using the logic of exchange in the relationship of communities with the environment. This study of the environmental history involves the compression of the environmental struggles (rural and urban) on a global scale as manifestations of political inequity and un sustainability implemented in different geographic areas and socio realities. It involves not only repositioning of the reactive size yet proactive speeches and the logic of environmental disputes, and when it comes to the unification of the interests of the different social groups in against the distribution of goods in rural communities. This complex but rich panorama of the environmental history of Spain is growing, with a sets of working groups in different specific areas, as well as a distinguished lines of work that 76 Antonio Ortega Santos y Manuel González de Molina, M. Bienes Comunes y Conflictos por los recursos en las sociedades rurales, siglos XVIII-XX in Historia Social nº 38, Valencia, 2000, Fundación de Historia Social, págs ; Antonio Ortega Santos Common woodlands in mediterranean societies: commercial mamagement versus forms of peasant resistance in Andalucía, Spain, in Mauro Agnoletti y Sven Anderson, S. (eds.): Forest History. International Studies on Socieconomic and Forest Ecosystem Change. New York, 2000, CABI Publishing, págs ; Antonio Ortega Santos Über die historische nachhaltigkeit der kolletiven bäuerlichen Aktiosformen. Sozioökologische Konflikte in Ost-Andalusien (18 bis 20.Jahrhundert) (Sobre la sustentabilidad histórica de las formas de acción colectiva campesina. Conflictividad socioambiental en Andalucía Oriental (siglos XVIII-XX) in Marie Luise Allemeyer et al. (eds.): Von der Gottesgabe zur Ressource: Konflite um Wald, Wasser and land in Spanien und Detschland Seit der Frühen Neuzeir (De la Conservación a la Ecología. Estudios históricos sobre el uso de los recursos naturales y la sustentabilidad), Essen, 2007, Klartext-Verlag, págs ; David Soto Fernández et al. La protesta campesina como protesta ambiental, siglo XVIII-XX in Historia Agraria nº 47 (Agosto), Murcia, 2007, SEHA/Servicio Publicaciones Universidad de Murcia, págs

18 apply methodologies and interpretative proposals directly on how they co-evolution of human societies and the environment in contemporary time. 18