Conservation enlightenment: 1880–1930
The era of conservation enlightenment, roughly from 1880 to 1930, defines the initial period of modern IREM development in North America. This period, dominated by dam building and multiple objective resource development, was very much a paradox. On the one hand, the enlightenment’s leaders in the USA – President Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot – drew widespread atten- tion to the concentrated and unconstrained power of various industrialists and financiers that caused natural resource depletion and serious environmental damage. On the other hand, their natural resource development initiatives played into the industrialists’ hands by promoting large publicly funded projects.
The net result during this era was that old as well as new industrialists amassed or consolidated large fortunes as these projects often encouraged monopolistic markets with their generous profit margins and resultant political power (Richardson, 1973).
Recession and uncertainty: 1920–1939/1942
The second period of ‘recession and uncertainty’ overlaps the ‘new deal’ prom- ises of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the USA and its legacy. This era marked a substantial departure fromlaissez-faireresource management policy that pre-dated the Great Depression and also denoted a shift of emphasis away from integrated resource management activity. The US government saw its natural resources, especially in the more undeveloped West, as a strong incen- tive for economic renewal, and such exploitation took place with little regard for conservation or the environment. One possible exception was the massive mobilization of otherwise unemployed youth in a nationwide programme of natural resource development. This took place under the stewardship of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). The CCC worked on a variety of projects;
for example, they built numerous log cabins and lodges in America’s national parks; they planted millions of trees; and built numerous irrigation projects. This period, prior to the Second World War, first concentrated on rebuilding a shat- tered economy and then focused its attention on an arms build-up when war seemed inevitable.
The Second World War: 1939/1942–1945
The third era, the Second World War, is really the antithesis of IREM, where concentrated national security interests predominated over concerns for conservation. Most, if not all, natural resources were assessed for their potential contribution to the war effort. The US Department of the Interior was, neverthe- less, the scene of a number of interesting political encounters over development versus conservation. For example, one particular battle erupted over the fate of the Olympic National Park’s forests; in this instance, sufficient support for conservation was mustered to save its forests from Washington State’s woodcutters (Richardson, 1973).
National reconstruction: 1946–1970
Following the war, from 1946 to 1970, ‘national reconstruction’ dominated the resource management agendas of numerous countries. As will be seen in the following chapter, this era focused on a transition from a war-based economy to an increasingly consumer society that capitalized on a vastly enhanced production capacity. For example, in the UK’s farming sector, the expansion in consumer goods production was substantially bolstered by an increasing reliance on government intervention in the marketplace (see Chapter 8, ‘Market and State Functions’). This era marked a period of increasing economic optimism, a developing middle class with greater consumer capacity, and growing, but often unacknowledged, environmental degradation. Even the Willamette River in Oregon, for example, a river of the far west often considered rugged and unspoiled, was transformed from a wild, seasonally variable and pristine river to one dominated by large dams constructed for flood control and power generation. It was also highly contaminated by agricultural and industrial wastes.
Modern environmental epochs: 1970 to the present
Following this rebuilding period, the late 1960s and the early 1970s were char- acterized by the rise of the environmental movement and the development of various overlapping environmental epochs (distinguishable time periods) – each redefined the way we dealt with environmental problems. Rather than replace the dominant environmental management strategies of the preceding epoch, each perspective superimposed its worldview on existing practices. Mazmanian and Kraft (1999) identify three dominant epochs: (i) regulating for environmen- tal protection; (ii) media and strategy integration; and (iii) toward sustainable communities. Each epoch has its own characteristic problem identification and policy objectives, implementation philosophy, points of intervention, and policy approaches and tools of operation. Each epoch had its own information management and data management needs, predominant political/institutional context, and key events and public actions (pp. 10–13).
Regulating for environmental protection
The ‘regulating for environmental protection’ epoch from 1970 to 1990 was dominated by so-called ‘end-of-pipe’ strategies that were dependent upon the imposition of command and control regulations for enforcement (see Chapter 8,
‘Sustainability and Ecological Modernization’).
Media and strategy integration
The second epoch, from 1980 to the 1990s, reflected a swing away from regulation to market-based and collaborative policy mechanisms. Imple- mentation was subjected to, among other strategies, cost-effectiveness tests and incentive-based fees and charges, taxes, and emissions trading. During this period, known as the era of media and strategy integration, the emerging resource management science developed during the preceding epoch addressed its failures. The first era, for example, failed to account for intermedia transfer (i.e. the transfer of one environmental problem such as air pollution to ground and water pollution). The approach of this succeeding epoch focused more directly on solving environmental problems at the source, before they were created, rather than attempting to clean up environmental problems after they were created. Emphasis was placed, for instance, on reducing solid waste through more discriminating consumer behaviour and better packaging rather than dealing with the solid waste problem after it was generated. Automobiles, as one example, were redesigned to aid recycling once they reached the end of their useful life.
Towards sustainable communities
Mazmanian and Kraft (1999) saw the third epoch (from the 1990s to the pres- ent) as an emerging conservation re-enlightenment; a period characterized by community, regional, national and international mobilization to reduce natural resource waste, identify and fix environmental problems, and promote a greater sense of social equity. Despite Mazmanian and Kraft’s apparent opti- mism, we argue that there is little evidence to support a notion of more sensitive environmental behaviour on a broad scale. Based on indicators such as CO2
emissions, ozone depletion and water pollution, for instance, there is much evidence that seems to point to a world of largely unabated natural resource exploitation, increasing environmental degradation and ever-increasing social inequity. While the evidence for a single, unequivocal conclusion is contro- versial, there is, regardless, growing opposition to global trade liberalization, which is seen as increasingly driving natural resource exploitation and assault- ing presently established and much needed environmental regulations (see Chapter 8, ‘Globalization’, and ‘Good Governance and Sustainable Develop- ment’). As a consequence of a more pessimistic view, this text’s authors prefer to think of this present period as one of a ‘globalization–sustainability tension’.