Human perception of the environment shapes policy and action

What people think of the environment determines what they do to it, according to a University of Missouri-Columbia researcher. If they think protecting biodiversity is important, they might protect an area known to be diverse. If they value agriculture, on the other hand, they might turn it into farmland. Perceptions about a place shape public policy and actions toward it.

"People’s environmental perspectives drive their behavior," said Michael Urban, assistant professor of Geography, who recently studied how public perception influenced the transformation of prairie to farmland in central Illinois. "Do we value waterways as roads or as unique ecosystems? Is it right to dump chemicals into a stream? Are there social benefits to altering the landscape? How do you juggle these things? The answers to those questions ultimately drive public policy."

When Urban analyzed the role of public perception in Illinois’ prairie-to-farmland transformation, he found that people turned the land into what they imagined it to be. In the early 19th century, they thought of the prairie as dangerous, forbidding and devoid of productive potential. Popular literature demonized it, and malaria outbreaks terrified prospective settlers. Few people wanted to live or farm in the region. By the mid-19th century, however, improvements in water drainage technology, combined with the lure of cheap land, created new interest in central Illinois. People began to see the prairie as fertile and pressured the state to pass new laws and revise the constitution to make swamp draining legal and inexpensive. Nearly 90 percent of the state’s estimated 33,590 square kilometers of wetland was drained, and nearly all tall-grass prairies were eliminated.

"Changes in the imagined landscape of central Illinois were generated by the growing promise that agricultural drainage and soil fertility could lead to unrivaled prosperity and productivity," Urban said. "Popular perceptions of landscape are complicated and dynamic, and they are constantly being redefined through a process of social negotiation. This process is partially driven by powerful and influential individuals like local boosters and journal editors, and partly reflected in media outlets."

Urban believes that public perception of the environment continues to drive behavior today. He was recently awarded a grant by the Fulbright Scholar Program to lecture on this topic in China for the 2006-2007 academic year. He plans to focus on environmental ethics and management.

"There’s so much development happening so fast in China right now," he said. "It’s a big area and it has a huge economy. Everyday we read the stories about pollution or loss of biodiversity in China. Whatever they decide to do or not to do will have huge implications for the world. Maybe we can help them avoid some of the mistakes we’ve made."

Urban’s study of the central Illinois prairie was published in the October 2005 issue of the Journal of Historical Geography.

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Michael Urban
Department of Geography

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