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<text id=93TT1763>
<title>
May 24, 1993: Sustainable Follies
</title>
<history>
TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1993
May 24, 1993 Kids, Sex & Values
</history>
<article>
<source>Time Magazine</source>
<hdr>
ENVIRONMENT, Page 56
Sustainable Follies
</hdr>
<body>
<p> How are African elephants similar to minke whales? Neither
animal is in immediate danger of extinction, but both are
protected by international hunting bans because past efforts to
exploit the beasts commercially have driven their populations
into precipitous decline. Countries that have well-managed
elephant herds, including Zimbabwe, South Africa and Botswana,
are eager to sell ivory, just as Norway and Japan want to kill
whales. But conservationists are loath to exempt specific nations
from the ivory-trade ban for fear that any traffic in tusks will
bring a reprise of the rampant cheating that occurred before sales
became illegal in 1989.
</p>
<p> When it comes to exploiting nature, humans seem to be like alcoholics:
either on the wagon or on a binge. The fashionable and optimistic
belief that humans can reap nature's bounty in a controlled
fashion--an ideal known as "sustainable use" that has long
been the prevailing philosophy of conservationists as well as
many businessmen--is turning out to be a chimera.
</p>
<p> Though many of the world's fisheries are ostensibly managed
on a sustainable basis, important species are in danger. Among
them: bluefin tuna, cod and haddock in the Atlantic; certain
varieties of grouper and snapper in the Gulf of Mexico; and
sardines and anchovies in the Pacific. The United Nations and
World Bank sponsored the Tropical Forestry Action Plan to sustain
forests, but instead the plan spurred further deforestation.
When asked by an environmentalist what he meant by sustainable,
a World Bank agronomist replied, "Fifty years of timber production."
Even the rubber tappers of Brazil's Amazon rain forest, who
along with their martyred leader, Chico Mendes, became symbols
of the sustainable use of tropical forests, overexploit their
ecosystem. Writing in the journal BioScience, John Browder notes
that in search of food and sources of cash, these seringueiros
can kill off wildlife and cut forests as much as settlers do.
</p>
<p> Sustainable use is not some fringe idea, but rather the central
organizing principle for global environmental policy, a concept
refined over two decades at international conferences. It is
often paired with "sustainable development"--the notion that
economic development, if carried out in a careful manner, can
proceed without exhausting the natural resources needed by future
generations. As recently as last June during the Earth Summit
in Rio de Janeiro, governments tried to forge an action agenda
based on sustainable development.
</p>
<p> Now, however, scientists are beginning to acknowledge that theories
of sustainable use and development almost never work in practice.
"What we are seeing is that conservation and development are
not the same process," says the Wildlife Conservation Society's
John Robinson, a leading revisionist on sustainable use. "If
you are interested in development, you cannot get there by doing
conservation, simply because the most diverse ecosystems are
usually not the most productive in human terms." This means
that development almost always brings losses of biological
diversity. Instead of preserving the variety of a rain forest,
for example, humans have the urge to chop down the trees and
plant uniform crops.
</p>
<p> What's good for society in the long run is of no immediate concern
to people who use up natural resources. Given the high cost
of modern fishing equipment, an individual fisherman is driven
to catch every last fish rather than limit catches and ensure
long-term supply. And no matter how good the plan to manage
an ecosystem, some people will cheat.
</p>
<p> Environmentalists cling to the idea of sustainable development
because it enables them to present themselves as advocates of
economic progress and, as Robinson puts it, "the concept allows
them to play with the big boys and have an impact on huge development
projects." If sustainable development proves illusory, environmentalists
will be left with a huge problem: there is no big idea ready
to fill the void. With human numbers expected to double in the
next 60 years, policymakers must now find some new trail map
that will enable humanity to walk the ledge between rising material
expectations and the wholesale collapse of the biosphere.
</p>
<p> Robinson believes environmentalists will have to embrace anew
the politically incorrect concept of pure preservation for some
vital areas. For their part, policymakers must try to guide
development away from sensitive ecosystems and toward regions
where inevitable losses of diversity are more "acceptable."
An economics that accurately accounted for the costs of destroying
species would also help. Most likely, though, a sustainable
future will not come from policy wonks, but rather from a broad
change in values as ordinary people react to ecological disasters
around them.
</p>
<p> By Eugene Linden
</p>
</body>
</article>
</text>