| Description |
Humanity faces numerous existential challenges in the 21st Century. The most serious of these challenges is environmental deterioration. The complexity of human-environment relationships means that as the vagaries of climate change come to the fore, the world will be privy to extreme ecological changes. In light of this, social and economic structures will have to either change or be remade in order to avoid social and ecological catastrophe. The purpose of this work is to discuss and propose frameworks and methodologies that ought to be used to understand human interactions with the environment in order to produce knowledge that can be wielded to create a secure future. It is being written with the intent that its content will be impactful outside of the academy by pointing out the origins of problems that must be overcome to create social equity and foster environmental rejuvenation while confronting climate change. Human existence; the physical survival of the species to exist by producing food, clothes, and other objects; hinges on interaction with the environment. Food is central to the survival of life on the planet. Considering this, it is pertinent to analyze instances where massive agricultural mobilization has occurred in order to learn from its pitfalls and successes. This is especially important as climate change poses a severe food security threat. One such instance is India's Green Revolution. Although the Green Revolution was successful in dramatically increasing India's food production. its benefits were not shared across class lines and led to massive environmental damage. As such, it is advantageous to understand why and how the Green Revolution increased economic inequality and created positive feedbacks loops of environmentally deleterious processes. Moreover, there is plenty of academic debate regarding whether the Green Revolution was beneficial or detrimental for India. Thus, the Green Revolution offers an abundance of information regarding historiographical developments which must be examined to help unveil how scholars can compile accurate histories which can be learned from. This work will analyze the philosophies undergirding historiography as a whole, followed by extrapolating how they have influenced environmental historiography. This will unveil where methodologies go theoretically awry, where they are correct in their analysis, and how they can be built upon to compose accurate histories. The identification of faulty methodologies will in turn help identify what topics need to be accounted for-such as land ownership, economic systems, and farming practices-along with methodologies that ought to be utilized-such as historical materialism, energy tracing, and the Laws of Thermodynamics-in understanding human-environment interactions. Ultimately, the work proves how the application of dialectical materialism is essential in order to gain a holistic and detailed understanding of human-environment relationships. |
