The Land Ethic

Born on 11^th January1887 in Iowa Burlington, Aldo Leopold is one of the most accomplished and decorated authors. Due to his passion for environmental conservations, he published numerous articles that are related to environmental conservation and this enabled him be placed on the National Wildlife Federation's Conservation Hall of Fame. Apart from The Land Ethic, other publications on under his belt are Game Management and A Sand County Almanac. The purpose of this essay paper will be to discuss whether Aldo Leopold's view are still accurate and relevant in the current day and how does Leopold's view mesh with my personal views.

In the book The Land Ethic, the author states that land ethics is where communities living in a certain geographical location extend their boundaries to embrace the adjacent soils, waters, animals and plants. This is simply known as land. In addition to that, the author has explained that this extension of boundaries initially made men land conquerors and the more land the community owned the more it was considered wealthy; however with time and the "embracement" of civilization, this communities became land owners. Other important points that the author has mentioned in relation to land ethics is that the reason most people own land are for economic gains and most of them tend to care less about environmental conservations, something which should be discouraged. In the modern day, the issue of land is not exactly the same as portrayed by the Aldo Leopold. Due to rapid population as well as economic growth, most land that was initially owned by the community has been subdivided and sold to individuals who have constructed properties on them. It is also evident that in most nations around the world greed and corruption are no longer viewed as a vice but it has been embraced in most day to day activities of governments activities; therefore for those communities that were reluctant to sell their land to individual developers, most of their land was illegally acquired by tycoons with the help of corrupt government officials. The end result of this is that there is a high rate of deforestation as a result of clearing of the forest cover for personal gains. It is important to note that the end result of deforestation has been increase in global warming and the number of natural calamities.

In Africa for instance, in the 1970's, 1980's and 1990's  powerful government officials and some heads of state had the tendency of dishing out forest land as "gifts" to the political associates who supported them in the quest to ascend to power. This led to the formation of environment conservation movements like the Green Belt Movement (GBM) which is headed by Nobel Prize winner, Professor Wangari Maathai from Kenya.

The author states that land should be "loved", conserved and respected by persons of all ages, races and economic status; however this is not the case in the modern day world. Having looked at the environmental changes that have occurred in relation to land in the recent past, my personal views and those of author are different. This essay paper has given points that indicate why in the modern day world land ethics does not exist. Greed and corruption are the norm of the day in the corridors of most land offices as most people are "thirsty" of grabbing any available space for investment. This has been propelled further by the fact that the despite the rapid increase of the human population, the size of land remains constant. All is not lost thou, the world super powers and environment conservation movements can team up to promote land ethics and conservation of the forest cover. By so doing, land ethics will once again be restored.