This section considers the relatively recent rise in importance of sustainability in shaping public policy, and relates this discussion to the evolution of different approaches to sustainable resource and environmental management, and the formalized consideration of intergenerational equity.
Concepts of sustainability
The Brundtland Report defined sustainable development as ‘development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future gener- ations to meet their own needs’ (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987, p. 43). According to O’Riordan, sustainability can be con- sidered ‘most conveniently’ as the ‘replenishable use of renewable resources’
where the ‘rate of ‘take’ equals the rate of renewal, restoration or replenishment’
(cited in Turner, 1993, p. 43). Although O’Riordan suggests that ‘it is tempting to dismiss the term sustainable development as an impossible ideal . . . [however,]
the phrase has stuck. . . . Like it or not, sustainable development is with us for all time’ (cited in Turner, 1993, p. 37). Turner, who along with several col- leagues examined the variation in use of this term among various jurisdictions throughout the world, suggests that sustainable development has been used to categorize a wide range of resource management approaches that reflect very different worldviews of sustainability. Turner arranged these approaches into a four-category typology.
It must be emphasized that none of these types is well represented on the ground at the present time. The theoretical basis for these various types is the
‘sustainability inheritance asset portfolio’. This concept incorporates four broad values or asset categories that represent various types of sustainable resource management practices. The assets categories are: (i) manufactured capital (Km);
(ii) natural capital (Kn); (iii) human capital (Kh); and (iv) moral or ethical capital (Ke). In theory, each of these assets can be traded with each other to form an array of assets that creates human wealth and well-being.
More recently, Ross and Bissix (2000) expanded Turner’s (1993) typology to capture the full range of natural resource exploitation practices and sustain- able development possibilities found throughout the world (see Fig. 8.2). It is this expanded typology that is outlined here. The most stringent sustainability para- digm is the ‘very strong sustainability’ paradigm (VSS). The second most rigor- ous type is the ‘strong sustainability’ type (SS) and the third is the ‘weak sustainability’ (WS) paradigm. The least demanding type identified by Turner is the ‘very weak sustainability’ (VWS) paradigm, which has been renamed in this expanded typology as ‘weak exploitation’ (WE). The two types added to this continuum by Ross and Bissix are the ‘strong exploitation’ (SE) paradigm and the ‘very strong exploitation’ (VSE) type. The latter two, as inferred, were added to reflect the non-sustainability of the vast majority of present-day natural resource management practices. It should be noted that a theoretical key or dividing line in the separation of the sustainable paradigms from the exploitation types lies in the second law of thermodynamics. According to Turner, his fourth type, the VWS type, violates this second law, which recognizes that matter cannot be created or destroyed. From a strictly biophysical perspective then, this paradigm of so-called sustainable development is not sustainable at all.
The very strong sustainability paradigm
This first sustainability paradigm assumes that the global economy has already exceeded ecological limits and concerted effort is needed on a global scale to restore the world’s ecological balance. Such a scheme requires strict limits on energy and resource consumption to avoid or minimize further environmental
VSE SE VWS WS SS VSS
SUSTAINABLE FORESTRY UNSUSTAINABLE
FORESTRY
Fig. 8.2. The extended sustainability typology. VSE, very strong exploitation; SE, strong exploitation; VWS, very weak sustainable (or WE, weak exploitation); WS, weak sustainable;
SS, strong sustainable; VSS, very strong sustainable.
damage. The aggregation of environmental damage throughout the globe, which gives rise to the need for a very strong sustainability paradigm, is known as the ‘scale effect’. This scale or accumulative effect is most evident in the build-up of greenhouse gases, the depletion of the ozone layer and the wide- spread fallout of acid precipitation. Although the VSS paradigm acknowledges a serious environmental management problem, it is important to note that this paradigm does not presume the end of development but does stress its root meaning that emphasizes qualitative development over growth. Within this sustainable development paradigm, considerably more emphasis is placed on the accumulation of moral, human and ecological capital development as opposed to a concentration on the production of economic assets.
In this context, Trainer (1998) critiques present economic development practices that he suggests are ‘totally indiscriminate’ (p. 173). The economy as Trainer puts it is unconcerned about what is produced, and argues that much of it is pointless and extravagant. In a moral and equitable world, such a shift to a more ecologically sound developmental process can only be achieved by a sub- stantial reduction of ‘environmental’ consumption by the rich countries so that the poor have sufficient room to improve their standard of living.
The strong sustainability paradigm
The SS paradigm requires that natural capital in general must be protected and is non-substitutable or tradable with other capital values. While in some circum- stances fluctuations in natural capital on a local or regional scale may be accept- able, overall losses in natural capital in one area must be compensated by gains elsewhere. Similar to the VSS paradigm, this type does not in itself argue against development, especially when defined in terms of improved quality rather than quantitatively; it does suggest, however, that development must be separated from environmental degradation or is linked to meaningful gains in restoration ecology. In this circumstance, forestry, for example, is concerned with ensuring that the broad forest landscape improves in scope and vitality even while harvesting continues.
The weak sustainability paradigm
This paradigm’s focus is not about the ‘preservation of specific attributes of the ecological community but rather the management of the overall system to meet human needs, [to] support species and genetic diversity [but not specific species and particular genetic diversity, that] enable[s] the system to adapt to changing conditions’ (Turner, 1993, p. 11). The WS paradigm provides both upper and lower limits to the exploitation of natural assets. The upper limitation specifies the non-substitutability of certain natural capital assets such as keystone species and fundamental ecological processes as well as protecting the assimilative capacity of vital life support systems such as rivers and the air we breathe.
Having said this, a substantial amount of natural resource exploitation is toler- ated to maintain living standards. This defines the lower limits of sustainable
activity. While generally condoning resource exploitation, this approach to sus- tainable development nevertheless accepts some level of constraint on natural resource economic activity, which also implies limits to population growth as well as to the exploitation of natural resource stocks.
These conservation initiatives are generally consistent with the principle of ‘ecosystem stability and resilience’. Turner (1993) suggests that a ‘set of physical indicators will be required to monitor and measure biodiversity and ecosystem resilience’, which also implies a system of safe minimum standards.
Turner also points out that there is presently no scientific consensus over how biodiversity should be measured and hence what safe minimum standards are necessary. This makes the implementation of even this modest level of sustainable development problematic in the real world.
The weak exploitation paradigm
The WE paradigm (formerly VWS) necessitates only that the total amount of natural and human capital remains constant over time. This standard requires society to be as well endowed at the end of any period as it was at the start. It assumes, however, perfect substitutability between the various capital assets such as natural, manufactured, human and moral assets. Within this framework, the free-flow trading of capital assets must be sufficient to offset depreciation, but no particular focus is placed on the conservation of biophysical matter. Trans- forming a forest, for example, by clear-cutting and processing trees into chop- sticks is justifiable as long as the social value of the chopsticks is as great as the value of the standing forest (Bissix, 1999). Although programmes that fit within the WE paradigm are held out to be models of sustainability, they do in fact violate the second law of thermodynamics, which in a practical sense renders them unsustainable.
The strong exploitation paradigm
The SE paradigm sees the short-term exploitation of natural resources as having greater benefit than any foreseeable future value. For example, the clearance of a natural ecosystem and replacing it with a short-lived cash crop system corresponds to the SE paradigm. Historically in Europe, North America, Australia, New Zealand and in Chile, as well as in many developing countries, the preponderance of monoculture plantations, where soil degradation can be safely assumed over the long term, attests to the acceptance of short-term gains as an acceptable trade-off for the degradation in natural capital over the long term (see, for example, Dudleyet al., 1995). In Britain and Denmark especially, the farming community has long heralded the output capacity of their agricul- tural systems but has largely ignored the vast inputs necessary to the system in terms of fertilizer, energy, etc., and the long-term degradation of its farm production and ecosystem potential.
The very strong exploitation paradigm
The most obvious large-scale example of the VSE paradigm is the worldwide destruction of tropical forests (see Dudleyet al., 1995). The clear management ideology operating here is that tropical forests are more useful as wood products rather than as fully functioning ecosystems. While poverty, inequitable land tenure, poorly educated peasants and unabated population growth contribute in part to tropical forest exploitation and the destruction of biodiversity, such societal pressures seem inconsequential compared with the damage result- ing from the international forest products trade, much of which is conducted unethically if not always illegally (see Dudleyet al., 1995).
In general, when considering the representation of natural resource manage- ment practices within these various typologies, it is readily seen that the vast majority fall within the exploitation typologies rather than the sustainability types. This results from an overwhelming lack of incentive to reduce, conserve and recycle natural resources and the failure of the marketplace to incorporate the full environmental costs of production. Given the failure of the marketplace to make appropriate adjustments, it is seductive to think that a more substantive role for government and state intervention is necessary. The following discussion regarding the interactive roles of the marketplace and the state (government) in abating environmental damage is provided to make a more informed assessment of this suggestion.
Ecological modernization
Drawing on conclusions from previous discussions, that little if any natural resource management is conducted on a global scale in a truly sustainable way, it seems reasonable to have little hope for future sustainable natural resource and environmental management. Despite this, there is in fact both room for optimism and reason for despair in the way that Western culture has approached environmental management since the 1960s.
Many see the 1960s as the birth of the environmental movement. This was the era when Earth Day was conceived, Rachel Carson’s seminal bookSilent Spring became required reading on many university campuses throughout North America, and local, regional and federal governments began to take note of environmental concerns and initiate action. Governments took direct action on environmental problems; environmental action groups sprung up to address issues of local and national concern, and the age of so-called ‘end-of-pipe’
environmental clean-up strategies was born. End-of-pipe terminology refers to the set of government regulations and industry strategy used to mitigate environmental problems after their creation. Typically agencies or departments of the environment focused on remediating specific pollutants generally using command and control measures, or other regulatory strategies. For example, methods were utilized to regulate and reduce particulate matter emissions in industrial smokestacks, industrial waters were purified before release into river
systems and, later, catalytic converter systems were required and added to auto- mobile exhausts to reduce toxic air emissions. Most end-of-pipe strategies shared a common concern. The dominant theme was to deal with the problem after its creation rather than deal with the pollution production problem head-on. Many end-of-pipe strategies suffered the common concern of media transfer. Solutions directed at one form of pollution abatement such as that from smokestacks merely transferred the problem to create a landfill conundrum and, in turn, a water pollution concern. The net gains in environmental quality consequently were disappointing.
In the late 1980s, and throughout the 1990s, a different approach to environmental management was superimposed on the pollution problem. It was during this period that the global scale of the environmental problem was beginning to be better appreciated and, as a consequence, new approaches to environmental management were deemed necessary. A more integrated resource and environmental management approach was conceived whereby the pollution problem was considered at the start of the production design process and the goal of elimination or reduction was built into the complete production and product use process. Such an approach had a number of important benefits.
Such comprehensive and integrative thinking and action began to lower the level of pollution per unit produced; it also reduced the overall amount of energy con- sumed, lowered the amount of raw materials necessary and increased, in some instances, profit margins. Instead of pollution abatement always being con- sidered as a cost centre, it was now a possibility to consider environmental management as a profitable corporate strategy. Sawmills, for example, looked to ways of utilizing sawdust and woodchips as an energy source rather than mounding up unsightly piles that eventually created leachate problems.
Woodchips were sold to pulpmills and utilized in the pulping process, and a new generation of saws, using harder thinner blades, created less waste and increased production per harvested tree.
Decoupling development from environmental degradation
Given the advances in production efficiency and environmental management at the level of the firm, it is possible to conceive of ways to combine these improvements at the local, regional, national and international levels to maintain growth and at the same time reduce pollution. This is the goal of decoupling development from environmental degradation. Pearce (Turner, 1993), for example, argues that it is possible to ‘decouple’ the seemingly inseparable connection between economic growth and increased environmental decline and cites the reduction in energy requirements of a number of OECD (Organiza- tion for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries that accompanied real growth in gross domestic production (GDP) between 1970 and 1987.
Pearce describes several policy mechanisms useful for stimulating sustainable development and this process of decoupling development from environmental degradation. He specifically focuses on various incentive systems, pricing
mechanisms and fiscal policies, as well as information and education programmes.