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The Tragedy of the Common Narrative: Re-telling Degradation in the American West

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The End of Desertification?

Part of the book series: Springer Earth System Sciences ((SPRINGEREARTH))

Abstract

Stories—with a beginning, middle and end, and a moral message, have had a major role in how desertification, and range condition, have been understood on western rangelands in the United States. Stories that attempt to make sense out of vegetation change, whether the bad guy is the self-interested human exploiter or the low-statured ruderal species, take hold in the scientific and public imagination and influence interpretation of policy and management outcomes. The development of policy and management for western grazing lands was shaped by a declensionist narrative of human greed and unrestrained self interest that developed in a parallel and an eventually mutually reinforcing way with a similarly declensionist ecological narrative, creating a story that is deeply embedded in existing institutions for rangelands. This narrative underpins retention of half of the American West in government ownership, how grazing resources are allocated to graziers, and the way that rangeland conditions, including indicators of desertification or degradation, are assessed and monitored. Once such stories take hold, new ideas about ecological dynamics that have a non-linear story and more complex characters have a hard time supplanting or even augmenting old paradigms. This in turn supports policy and management decisions. The reader is warned against charismatic stories–stories encourage and conceal deep-rooted, untested assumptions, simplify complex relationships, and universalize truths that may hold true only in a single time and place.

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Aknowledgements

Thank you to Paul Starrs, Roy Behnke, and Sarah Robinson for their reviews of this manuscript.

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  1. University of California, Berkeley, USA

    Lynn Huntsinger

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  1. Lynn Huntsinger
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Correspondence to Lynn Huntsinger .

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  1. Great Wolford, Odessa Centre, Shipstpon-on-Stour, United Kingdom

    Roy Behnke

  2. Drylands Research, Milborne Port, United Kingdom

    Michael Mortimore

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Huntsinger, L. (2016). The Tragedy of the Common Narrative: Re-telling Degradation in the American West. In: Behnke, R., Mortimore, M. (eds) The End of Desertification? . Springer Earth System Sciences. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-16014-1_11

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