Arable Land as a Percent of Total Land (World Bank, 2015)
The greatest adjustment we had made to the top of our hourglass was changing our framing question so that it is less descriptive and more evaluative. We did this as an effort to distance ourselves from a cause and effect relationship, which would have been a more shallow investigation, and move towards evaluating the consequences of this relationship. This transition caused us to re-evaluate our sources and derive different information from them. Instead of reading for information to see if there is a relationship between Judeo-Christian theologies and environmental policy, we now read to see who suffers when this relationship is acted upon as well as replacing environmental policy with ecologic crisis. Using Lynn White’s “The Historical Roots of our Ecologic Crisis” as our guiding text we were able to determine that one of White’s primary arguments is that ecologic crisis and Judeo-Christian theologies first existed separately. When this article was published, technology progressed to a point where humans were able to take from the earth at rates that were far greater than resources were able to be replenished. This level of exploitation of resources can cause significant issues on a human scale causing crises such as famine, scarcity of potable water, and reduction in arable land. When looking at such crises, many of them could not be applied to South Korea, because it is a high income country (World Bank, 2015). However, while percent of arable land has been steadily increasing on a worldwide scale, South Korea’s arable land has suffered an almost ten percent decrease since its peak in 1967 (World Bank, 2015). This data lead us to question who is suffering when this type of change occurs? Taking this framing question to the next step, we determined the steps to bring us into the context of South Korea. We have accumulated three relevant datasets from the World Bank which is the percentage of: urban population to total population, arable land to total land, as well as agriculture, forestry, and fishing inputs to overall GDP. Between these three graphs we noticed a trend showing that percentage of arable land decreased as well as agriculture, forestry, and fishing percentage of the nation’s GDP. This correlating relationship shows that the decreasing amount of arable land has directly affected agricultural and rural communities. However, while arable land and agriculture industry are decreasing, urban population grows at an exponential rate. This supports our assumption that White’s argument is accurate and is the cause of the decrease of arable land in South Korea. To focus our study, we have decided to ask how these Judeo-Christian western influences perpetuated themselves in South Korea specifically within agrarian practices. By answering this question through a series of analyses we hope to uncover exactly how Judeo-Christian theology has affected Korea’s arable land.
Moving forward, we would conduct a series of investigations in Korea to find out who is most greatly affected by this relationship. First we would conduct surveys within the first week to determine how far removed the current generation is from agrarian lifestyles. This would be done by asking people in various communities how far removed they are generationally from an agrarian lifestyle, specifically how far back is any family member that relied on farming, forestry, or fishing as their primary resource. We would also conduct a simultaneous survey to help us understand how the general public feels about Judeo-Christian theology and whether or not these sentiments are specific to an urban or rural setting. These surveys would be conducted throughout the entire project to various people in different urban and rural settings, beginning with incredibly urban settings and moving towards more rural environments as we continue our study. While in cities, we would also conduct ethnographic interviews with prominent Judeo-Christian leaders to learn more about their experience as a Korean person with Judeo-Christian faith. As we move outward from urban centers, we would continue the study by continuing the surveys mentioned as well as interviewing those who are still a part of the agrarian lifestyle and what they feel is the cause of arable land decline. Whilst in rural areas we would also like to conduct a LUCC type investigation on various farm lands similar to the type of investigation we conducted in the first section of labs, this is to visualize the change of farmlands overtime and how it correlates with the rise of Judeo-Christian religions. In addition, we would also examine agrarian practices over time to see how crop cycles have changed throughout South Korea’s recent history and whether or not farmers of Korea have adopted western style farming practices. These components make up the possible future of our situated project. As we expand outward again to look at potential global implications of our situated research we are brought back to our focus question which asks, “how have western practices perpetuated itself within South Korea specifically within agrarian practices?” We are able to assert that western practices have perpetuated themselves within the agrarian practices of South Korea through the increase in popularity of Judeo-Christian religions within South Korea. The World Values Survey data presents that the majority of the Koreans surveyed believe that the country as whole “depends too much on science and not enough on faith” (World Values Survey, 2011). The decrease in arable land and the increase of urban population supports the idea that Lynn White proposes that Judeo-Christian theologies promote the exploitation of natural resources and modern technology allows this exploitation to take place at an unsustainable level. In a global context the Lynn White thesis has been contested since its publishing in 1967. We’re not here to say that the example of South Korea can be universally applied on a global scale, but we can assert that there may be more truth to White’s thesis than is conventionally accepted. Scaling up the example of South Korea is unreasonable because the example in and of itself is quite unique. This being said, it can be used to laterally compare and assess to other areas that are experiencing growth in Judeo-Christian religions in order to demonstrate what can happen if this issue is not taking seriously from the start. At this point there isn’t much we can do to alleviate the deep rooted causes of the loss of arable land and urban growth in Korea or other such places. What can be done is developing more sustainable agricultural practices in areas where arable land is decreasing. The introduction of healthy crop cycles to avoid causing land to be drained of nutrients. Effective policy from governments to aid agricultural workers in developing more sustainable practices would be beneficial to all parties involved. Solutions to this issue are unable to be applied in a one size fits all type of change, simply because the ecological crisis that is a result of embedded Judeo-Christian theologies takes shape in different ways for different areas. For Korea ecological crisis takes the form of decrease in arable land, but in other countries ecological crisis could take the form of increased difficulty in finding potable water, or increased levels of pollutants in the air. The most logical next steps for this situated research is to look into other localized issues that could be connected to Lynn White’s thesis.
Urban population (% of total)
Agriculture, forestry, and fishing, value added (% of GDP)