When I was enrolling for classes this semester, I was thrilled to see an African American Studies course that included ecology. It seemed like the perfect course to align with my interests, and it felt like a sign for it to be offered my last semester in college. This course taught me so much, and I feel like I became a better environmental scientist over the course of the semester. From learning about the importance of ecology in the Haitian Revolution, to discussing where the concept of land ownership came from, I left every class having learned something new.

Something I’ve been thinking about a lot after this course is how strange the concept of land ownership can be. Take WAWA for example, that plot of land is owned by someone, and they’ve decided to use that land for something amazing. Land ownership and autonomy give them the ability to do this, but ironically, land ownership and autonomy are some of the reasons as to why there was a need for WAWA in the first place. People buy and develop land, decimating the environment, leading to other people buying land to leave it undeveloped and protected. You can’t truly advocate for the Earth and protect land unless it is yours. We’ve been operating this way for so long; most people don’t even see how strange this concept is. Land never belongs to humans; it belongs to the Earth. 

Humans are completely at the mercy of the Earth despite how much we try to control things. You can’t treat the land terribly and expect to have control over it forever. We need to learn from indigenous communities who never had the concept of land ownership. Buying land and doing whatever you want with it while expecting to continue to gain from it is delusional. That’s a parasitic relationship that leaves the host dead. Look at all the consequences we can already see from trying to exploit the Earth as if we own it. Wildfires ravage California and Australia every year, sea levels are rising, and we are in the midst of a sixth mass extinction. Humans will not outlive the Earth. It will wipe us out if things don’t change, and I think people need to start looking at land ownership as land partnership. Humans need to develop and maintain a symbiotic relationship with the Earth if we want to see improvement.