Humanisation of nature

Also called: Humanised nature · Topic: Human Geography: Nature, Scope and Approaches · NCERT: Class 11, Ch 1 "Geography as a Discipline"; Class 12, Ch 1 "Human Geography: Nature and Scope"

Meaning

Humanisation of nature is the slow process by which people, using better technology, change the natural world to suit their needs, until the land carries clear marks of human work. NCERT describes it as people moving "from a state of necessity to a state of freedom". The idea matters because it is the core of possibilism (the view that nature offers choices and people pick among them). It also explains the man-made landscapes, such as canals, farms, ports and railways, that UPSC asks about.

Explanation

How it happens (cause → process → result)

• Cause: society and technology grow.

• As society and culture develop, people build better technology.

• Process: people depend less on nature.

• Better tools reduce how much people need to depend directly on nature.
• People move "from a state of necessity to a state of freedom".

• They create new possibilities from the resources nature gives them.

• Result: nature carries human marks.

• Over time, the natural world shows the imprints of human effort. Nature is still there, but people now depend on it only indirectly.

Naturalised humans vs humanised nature

• Naturalised humans: in early societies with simple technology, people adjust their lives to nature. They fear nature and worship it.
• Humanised nature: in societies with advanced technology, people change nature to suit themselves.
• The poet's dialogue (Class 11, Geography as a Discipline): "You created the soil, I created the cup; you created night, I created the lamp."
• Nature gives the raw material (soil, night).
• The human adds skill and makes something useful (a cup, a lamp).
• This line sums up possibilism: nature offers, and people shape what it offers.

What it produces: the cultural landscape

• Cultural landscape is the land as human work has shaped it. It is the visible mark people leave on the physical landscape (the land as nature made it).
• Imprints from the highlands to outer space:

Setting	Human imprint
Highlands	Health resorts
Plains and rolling hills	Fields, orchards, pastures
Cities and their edges	Urban sprawl (cities spreading outwards over farmland)
Coasts	Ports
Oceans	Ocean routes (shipping lanes)
Space	Satellites

• Carl Sauer wrote "The Morphology of Landscape" (1925). It made the cultural landscape the central idea of American geography.
• Sauer led staff and students at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1923 to 1957. His approach, called cultural geography, stressed how humans change the landscape and rejected environmental determinism [2].
• Exam line: culture is the agent, the natural area is the medium, and the cultural landscape is the result.

The thinking behind it: possibilism

• NCERT says: "The earlier scholars termed this as possibilism."
• Possibilism: the environment offers a range of options. People choose how to change nature based on their cultural and technological inheritance (what their society has passed down to them) [3].
• Paul Vidal de la Blache founded possibilism and the French regional school. He was appointed to the Sorbonne (Paris) in 1898 [2].
• Genre de vie (way of life) is the mix of tools, habits and work that a group builds up by living with its physical surroundings (its milieu) [2].

• Pays means small regions. Each small region has its own genre de vie.

• Lucien Febvre, a historian, coined the word "possibilism" in La Terre et l'évolution humaine (1922). His phrase was "there are no necessities, but everywhere possibilities" [2][3].

Where it occurs

• Trondheim, Norway (about 63°N), NCERT's story of Kari: Trondheim lies just south of the Arctic Circle (66.5°N). Winters bring fierce winds, heavy snow and months of darkness, because the sun stays low or barely rises. Technology answers each of these limits:

Limit set by nature	Kari's technological answer
Dark, snowy roads	Drives to work in the dark on winter tyres
Bitter cold	Works in an office heated to 23°C, on a campus under a glass dome
Climate too cold for tropical plants	Keeps an orchid on the desk
Local crops limited by cold	Eats bananas and kiwis flown in from warmer places
Distance	Works online with colleagues in New Delhi; can fly to London and back in a single day
Ageing	At 58, Kari is fitter than many 30-year-olds

• Indira Gandhi Canal, Rajasthan (greening the Thar):
• Its water comes from the Harike Barrage, where the Beas and Sutlej rivers meet in Punjab [5].
• It runs south-west for about 640–650 km and is the longest canal in India [4].
• It irrigates about 607,000 hectares (1.5 million acres) of desert in western Rajasthan. The main canal was completed in 1987 [4].

• Under an inter-state agreement, water from the Ravi, Beas and Sutlej is shared with the canal, mainly to irrigate the Thar [4].

• Konkan Railway, through the Western Ghats:

• The company was formed in 1990 to link Roha (near Mumbai, Maharashtra) to Thokur (near Mangaluru, Karnataka) [6].
• The route is 740 km long and has 91 tunnels, with 84.496 km of tunnelled route. That is about 11% of the total length [6].
• Seven long tunnels need forced ventilation (fans that push air through) [6].
• It was dedicated to the nation on 1 May 1998 [6].

• Rivers, cliffs and steep ghats once blocked travel along this coast. Tunnels and long bridges turned them into a working rail corridor.

• Terraced hill farms: hill slopes are cut into flat steps. Each step holds soil and water, so crops can grow on steep land and less soil is washed away.

• Contrast case, Abujhmarh (Bastar region, Chhattisgarh): NCERT's Benda lives here, directly off the forest with very simple tools. This is the opposite of humanised nature.

Don't confuse with

• Naturalisation of humans / naturalised humans: people adjust to nature (Benda, Abujhmarh). In humanisation of nature, people change nature (Kari, Trondheim).
• Environmental determinism (19th century): nature controls human life, and people fear and worship it. Humanisation of nature treats humans as active agents who make choices.
• Neo-determinism (Griffith Taylor, "stop-and-go determinism"): humans can change nature, but only within the limits nature sets, like a driver who obeys traffic lights. It is a middle path, not full human freedom.
• Physical landscape vs cultural landscape: the physical landscape is the land as nature made it. The cultural landscape is the result of humanising nature: the land carrying human imprints.

Prelims Hooks

• "From a state of necessity to a state of freedom" describes the humanisation of nature (NCERT Class 12).
• Trap: the word "possibilism" was coined by Lucien Febvre, a historian, in La Terre et l'évolution humaine (1922), not by Vidal de la Blache [2][3].
• Kari, Trondheim, Norway (about 63°N) = possibilism / humanised nature. Benda, Abujhmarh, Chhattisgarh = determinism / naturalised humans.
• "The Morphology of Landscape" (1925) → Carl Sauer → cultural landscape → Berkeley school [2].
• Genre de vie = way of life; Pays = small regions. Both are ideas of Vidal de la Blache (Sorbonne from 1898) [2].
• Order of schools: environmental determinism → possibilism → neo-determinism (Griffith Taylor) → quantitative → radical, behavioural and humanistic schools.

Mains Points

• India's engineered landscapes are examples of humanised nature (GS-I).
• The Indira Gandhi Canal turned part of the Thar into farmland [4].
• The 91 tunnels of the Konkan Railway carried a railway through the Western Ghats [6].

• Urban sprawl, terraced farms, ports and satellites can all be read as a cultural landscape, a record of how people and nature interact (Sauer, 1925). This is useful in answers on urbanisation and land-use change.

• Humanisation is uneven.

• The Benda–Kari contrast shows that freedom from nature depends on technology, income and access.

• Tribal and remote communities in India still live close to determinism. So possibilism needs an equity lens (a check on who actually gets the choices).

• Humanising nature has costs, and nature still sets limits (GS-III).

• Canal command areas (the farmland a canal waters) suffer waterlogging and salinity (salt build-up in soil). Hill routes face landslides. Climate change brings disasters.
• This supports neo-determinism: development within ecological limits, which links to sustainable development.

Related concepts

• Possibilism
• Cultural landscape

Read more

• Humanisation of nature, cultural landscape and possibilism