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Part 1
Managing Environmental Conflicts
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Half Full or Half Empty?
The human species may be half way to ruining our planet â or we may be half way to harnessing its rich resources. In the industrialised countries, at least, we tend to regard the two statements as mutually exclusive. But they are not irreconcilable. In fact, they are both true at the same time. Yet whether we are moving âforwardsâ or âbackwardsâ, progressing or regressing, developing or destroying, is a matter of endless and often angry debate. The protagonists might just as well argue over whether a glass of water is half full or half empty. The conflicting positions hinge on different expectations of exactly the same conditions:
⢠On the one hand, we cannot afford to take risks with the ways in which we manage our environment, since it is the human speciesâ only habitat. Without it we have no future.
⢠On the other hand, we must make the most of our opportunities to maximise the worldâs resources, for our own good and for those who come after us.
Both responses indicate concern for the continuation of the earthâs living systems and of its human burden. Both positions are argued with equal conviction on behalf of this generation (ourselves and our children) and the next (our childrenâs children). But the argument between the two positions â positions not in themselves inherently opposed â is at risk of taking priority over constructive action on either one.
The environmental debate may be said to have begun in earnest when the World Commission on Environment and Development sent up their smoke signals that everyone, not only those who are ecologists and conservationists, bears responsibility for the condition of the natural resources of the globe (WCED 1987). The Commission drew the worldâs attention to the fact that the rate of human resource use now exceeded the earthâs self-managing capacity, and its management had now become a matter of human intervention. The International Union of Conservation Organisations came to the same conclusion four years later (IUCN 1991). Since then, many interests have accepted some responsibility for monitoring the condition of the planet; only each of them is monitoring a different aspect, often from a different point of view. Decisions based on both the risks and the opportunities for environmental management become more difficult, when even the very sources of information are polarised.
To the regular reviews of the health of the global economy by the OECD and the World Bank have been added the annual reports on the state of the environment from non-government organisations such as the Worldwatch Institute (Brown 1989â93). Since the 1992 World Conference on Environment and Development, the United Nations Commission for Sustainable Development has taken the responsibility for reports on progress towards Agenda 21, a blueprint for global environmental management for the 21st century (CSD 1994). Countries report annually on their progress towards Agenda 21, and on the world conventions on biodiversity and climate change. Local authorities world wide conduct their own monitoring of economic development and environmental management (usually separately) for their own purposes, at the local scale. Streams of reporting on the states of the worldâs economy and environment are now in place at the global and the local level. Managing the economic and natural aspects of the one global environment has been set up in parallel, and often opposing, streams of decision making.
When government and non-government organisations monitor the same environments, the way in which the balance is calculated can be very different. The Club of Rome report Limits to Growth, which blew one of the first danger whistles, has been brought up-to-date with more optimism than in 1972, noting some wins and some losses (Meadows et al 1992). Control of pollution is up; but so is the worldwide scale of pollution. Nuclear war did not eventuate and new nuclear power facilities are slowing down; but the nuclear wastes from military and power generation are accumulating with no disposal solution in sight. Overall, the review of all the evidence leads Meadows et al to conclude:
⢠the human rate of use of many essential resources and generation of many kinds of pollutants is no longer physically sustainable;
⢠the decline is not inevitable, if there were a comprehensive revision of growth policies, and a rapid increase in efficiency of use of materials; and
⢠a sustainable society is still technically and economically possible.
The Worldwatch State of the World results for 1993 make for depressing reading. They continue the record of the spread of cities over productive land; degradation of global water cycles, soil and forest resources; and the exponential population growth. More importantly, the same authors have offered some hope of an effective, long-term response (Brown 1991). There has been some meeting of minds between the polarised âhalf full, half emptyâ positions (implying âkeep going, thereâs plenty leftâ as opposed to âstop everything, we are running outâ) on biodiversity, climate change and the state of the ozone layer. The predictions of climate change and of the need to prevent global warming and ozone depletion are formally accepted by most countries (UNCED 1992). As these conventions were being prepared, Mt Pinatubo in the Philippines sent out a cloud of aerosols, greatly adding to the risk of ozone loss. Just as those from the âhalf emptyâ position were saying âwe told you soâ, an unexpectedly warm Arctic summer limited the potential damage (World Resources Institute 1993a). The same phrase then issued from the other side. The lesson is surely that we are moving beyond accepting simplistic divisions, to the recognition of the need to understand the dynamic interplays between social, economic and natural environments.
There are efforts in train to review all three of the worldâs natural resource bases, the social, the economic and the environmental, in relation to one another, after the style of Figure 1.1. United Nations Human Development indices are being calculated for access to environmental as well as to economic resources (UNDP 1993). OECD is working on environmental indicators which can be related to their economic reports; and on the environmental aspects of living conditions (OECD 1993a,b,c). The World Bank reports have begun to consider human and environmental health as important outcomes of economic development (World Bank 1993). Acceptance is increasing that, since the primary goals of most of the worldâs nations â sustainable development, social justice and supportive human environments â are highly interdependent, they need to be integrated in that nationâs policy decisions (Brown 1994). In Figure 1.1, sustainable development is represented as a balance struck between environmental and economic management (Z); social justice as the result of an equitable balance between the production and distribution of resources (X); and supportive human environments as the outcome of social decisions which respect the physical and biological environment (Y). Polarised positions between any of the joint parties would destroy the opportunity for achieving any one of the shared goals.
Figure 1.1 Holosphere of integrated decision-making
(Brown 1994, after Labonte 1993)
Strong dichotomies are still maintained, however. The debate between proponents of conservation and proponents of development, those who believe the world is going to the dogs, and those who believe there are no worries, constantly echoes back and forth between the worldâs regional, national and local scales. At the global-regional scale, âNorthâ and âSouthâ continue to be considered as having opposing interests in the development of economic and of environmental resources, respectively. âEastâ and âWestâ continue to be represented as opposites in social and cultural matters. Yet Eastern Europe and Russia have economies closer to the resource-degraded âSouthâ than to the rest of the high-production northern hemisphere. The resource management of the Asian economic tigers, Japan, Korea and Singapore is closer to that of the industrialised West than to the traditional East. Canada and Australia, on opposite sides of the equator, are each othersâ closest national counterparts with regard to the management of their social, economic and environmental resources.
At the national-regional scale, urban and rural concerns are still routinely treated as if they can be separated. Cities are increasingly being managed as corporate environments, often without advice from, or liaison with, the environments supplying their life-support systems such as food, water, air and raw materials â and, most important, their recreational breathing space. As rural areas are managed as mines of natural resources for the denser populated areas, increasing soil degradation, water contamination and air pollution puts these resources in increasing jeopardy.
At national and provincial scales, departments compete for management resources and for the ears of politicians, leaving departments of industry and of environment on collision course. The fresh resources finding their way into departments of environmental management in most modern governments are often dissipated in defending their right to exist. National lobby groups polarise the arguments, since they consider that this will strengthen their case. The few examples of cooperative problem solving have been dramatically successful. For example, the 2000 cooperative community groups established as part of the Australian National Landcare Program to regenerate environmental resources, are a joint initiative of national farmersâ and conservationist lobby groups (DPIE 1994). The Ontario economic development agencies, the Ontario Public Health and conservation organisations combined with industry to resolve the management of Ontarioâs toxic wastes (Hancock 1991). Hollandâs âwhole countryâ approach to sustainable development, the National Environmental Policy Plan-Plus, links government, industry, agriculture and households, who all contribute resources to a cross-party long-term environmental strategy (Carley and Christie 1992).
But it is the social mechanisms at the local-regional level that are most frequently called upon to balance the supposed opposition between economic and environmental resource priorities. Local residents remember how their environment was, and are well aware how it is now, either better or worse. They are also the most immediately affected by ec...
