My first exposure to Ecology was as a junior high student in Manila in the 70s. It didn’t matter what I thought of the nuns offering this strange sounding subject, there were no other electives on offer. And so I got to know Eugene P. Odum’s Fundamentals of Ecology – I quickly learned to skim the lead paragraphs, mark the italics and scan the diagrams. Bluffing was essential to fit in volleyball and all such important things in life back then.
But decades later I still have the book, 1971 Edition, well thumbed through an undergraduate degree in Environmental Planning in the 80s, and a Masters in Natural Resource Management in the UK in the 90s. If it were less bulky I would have put it in my backpack (just in case) when I went on field for another degree to research on ecological anthropology. The edges are extra-frayed from designing countless community and college courses around it. As I write now, I’ve taken it down from our shelf in Australia, where it has waited patiently through my years of raising a family.
There have been other books, to be sure (with shorter explanations), but for me none as massive, indispensable and reassuring as the work of Eugene P. Odum. Concepts like optimum population, waste recovery, planning for regions, internalizing true costs, consideration of the whole… these are classics to be reviewed as the world gets into more and more trouble by ignoring how the natural word regulates itself. Chapter through chapter it tells us that solutions can be found, there is work to be done and by now we should know what we are doing.
Whatever happened to the nuns, you might ask? Who would have thought that the Orders of Siervas de San Jose and the Maryknoll Sisters would turn out to be pioneers in environmental education and social justice? If not for the bit on family planning on page 516, they would probably have introduced the Pope to Eugene long ago.
THE ECOLOGY OF THINGS 