10 - People, floodplains and environmental change

Summary

This final chapter further develops the theme of human–environment interactions in alluvial contexts. It aims to show how environmental change at a variety of temporal scales and human response can be viewed not as being deterministic, but, owing to sociocultural factors, as semi-predictable if enough is known about human perceptions of environmental change and the socioeconomic structure of society. A simplistic neo-classical model is used as the springboard for exploring the many social, cultural and political factors which cause this to be so. It is argued that at the root of past simplistic views of human–environment interactions has been a deep-seated conceptualised dichotomy between humans and environment most poignantly illustrated in the false dichotomy of the ‘human versus climate’ debate over the causes of alluviation.

Palaeohydrology, climate and resources

In 1967, Sir Mortimer Wheeler commented caustically on the ‘established belief in recurrent changes of climate, the imprecise usage of the term such as “wetter”, “drier”, “warmer”, “more genial”: “wetter” etc. than what?’ (Wheeler in Raikes, 1967). In chapters 3, 4 and 8 various methods of reconstructing past river flow and climate were introduced. The reasoning employed in palaeohydrology is typical of that used in the interpretation of environment–climate interactions (Figure 10.1). Deductive reasoning is used to determine level 2 information. Implications for levels 3, 4 and 5 are considerably more speculative.