Posts Tagged ‘logging’
|Good intentions, bad legacies: A history of why natural resource management sometimes fails
Friday, October 23rd, 2009
In the latest issue of Ecology and Society (open access), Colin Beier and colleagues provide an interesting case study of the Tongass National Forest (Alaska), examining the social-ecological dynamics of resource systems and why they often fail–in the long term–to deliver either improvements in public welfare or ecological sustainability. It’s important to note that they’re talking about a paradigm typical of 19-20th Century USA (i.e., post-colonial people of European descent in North America).
What I like about this case study is its generality to several kinds of natural resources and the lessons it offers when considering development in the modern world.
You’ll see at the end that they describe a solution similar to the growing Indigenous and Community Conserved Areas (ICCA) movement promoted by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). And you’ll see an example of the changing focus of The Nature Conservancy as they work to promote sustainable development alongside conservation.
An excerpt:
Government efforts to stimulate the development of natural resources for public benefit often seek to implement a vision at grand scales that, over time, creates a cycle of dependency that undermines the original social purpose as well as the resource base that was intended to be sustained. In the United States, this has occurred with respect to agriculture, forestry, fisheries, water, and many other types of resource systems. Similar cycles of dependency have emerged through international aid programs to developing nations that were intended to create self-sufficiency through resource development. Although the goals of these programs are often socially admirable and provide an economic stimulus to initiate changes that would otherwise lack the resources to emerge —i.e., to escape from poverty traps —they often result in challenging social traps that can constrain options for future generations. Why have these governance efforts failed so consistently, and what lessons can be learned that would enlighten efforts to address new frontiers of resource governance and public welfare in a rapidly changing world?
What did they find?
Tags: industry, logging, Tongass
Posted in community conserved areas, environmental history, sustainable development | No Comments »
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