Document(s) 1 of 7

Foreword

ECOHEALTH AT LAST!

For an ecologist of early vintage, the emergence of ecohealth is an historical step. It involves the appropriation of ecological knowledge and methodology by the prescriptive sector of the social sciences. Indeed, until the fifties, ecology was monopolized by biology: the International Biological Programme (IBP) had clearly confined its scope by exclusively aiming at the behaviour of plants and animals "in the wild." This position was justified by the fact that very few explicitly ecological research papers were set within man-occupied spaces.

Forest ecology had nevertheless taken its stance, even if it was geared to economic considerations. Agricultural ecology had made very few inroads. Human ecology, in spite of the excellence of its founder's treaty (Thomas Park in 1924), remained in the shadows. Urban ecology hardly existed.

One had to wait for the dramatic entry of anthropologists, sociologists, economists, architects, and urbanists to break the monopoly of Biology. This master science, not unlike Physics, was submerged in "the heart of matter," in molecular biology. Botanists and zoologists no longer breathed the maritime air, nor wet their feet, nor submitted to tropical heat or alpine cold. They seemed to think that the tasks of taxonomy and field ecology were done.

The human sciences, on the other hand, were justly appropriating the arsenal of facts and processes discovered by the ecologists and the interpretations that they had offered. On the occasion of a symposium (Future Environments of North America) held by the Conservation Foundation of Washington in 1965, the great economist Kenneth Boulding had vehemently exclaimed: "You ecologists, you don't know what a good thing you have!"

Health is not the absence of illness in Jean Lebel's perspective. It is better defined as a harmonious participation in the resources of the environment, which allows individuals the full play of their functions and aptitudes. It can hardly maintain itself if the exploitants that we are do not assume full responsibility for a vigilant economy.

This generation is in the act of gravely menacing the heritage of its descendents. The present text ably describes the damages that are visible at the planetary level. It emphasizes the help that IDRC offers, at the four corners of the planet, in spaces where uncontrolled natality inhibits a traditional wisdom that must adjust to the perception of science.

This is a big step beyond missionary paternalism. However, one might have welcomed a parallel environmental problematic of the industrial countries with that of the Third World to whom an avoidance of our errors should be assured.

A reading of this book is so very profitable that one wishes to go beyond its premises. If the author should be more in the foreground, he would hardly be blamed. Should he also retrace his own itinerary, he would all the better engage in a perspective of Canadian accomplishments.

In an epoch where the aid of industrialized countries to areas of poverty aims at an increase therein of their purchasing power, and not a reinvestment of profits achieved, it is very useful to read such an objective account as this one. Jean Lebel, actor and witness, offers us a truly innovative analysis.

Pierre Dansereau
Professor of Ecology
Institut des sciences de l'environnement
Université du Québec à Montréal

Pierre Dansereau, professor emeritus of ecology at the Université du Québec à Montréal, has had a long career, from the forties onward, in teaching and in research. He has occupied various positions at the universities of Montréal, Michigan, Columbia (New York), Lisbon, and Dunedin (New Zealand). He was assistant director of the New York Botanical Garden and is the author of several books and other publications in the fields of plant taxonomy and genetics, plant ecology, biogeography, and human ecology.

Document(s) 1 of 7