Is developing strategies and practices that create a world economy that the planet can support indefinitely?

Key Concepts

1. Explain the differences between renewable and non-renewable natural resources.
2. Outline the ways that appropriate management practices can increase the harvest of biological resources.
3. Describe at least two case studies of the degradation of potentially renewable resources and explain why those damages occurred.
4. Distinguish between economic growth and economic development and outline the nature of a sustainable economy.

Non-Renewables

Inhaltsverzeichnis Show

• Key Concepts
• Non-Renewables
• Selective Breeding
• Enhancement of Recruitment
• Enhancement of Growth Rate
• Management of Mortality Rate
• Maximum Sustainable Yield
• Patterns of Over-Exploitation
• Reasons for the Abuse of Natural Resources
• Growth, Development, and Sustainability
• Sustainable Development
• Sustainable Economies
• Symptoms of Non-Sustainability
• References Cited and Further Reading
• What is environmental marketing strategy?
• Which term refers to the larger societal forces that affect the demographic economic natural technological political and cultural forces?
• Which term refers to the actors and forces outside marketing that affect marketing management's ability to build and maintain successful relationships with target customers?
• Which targeting strategy focuses on common consumer needs?

Renewables

• wild animals that are hunted as food or for bio-materials, such as deer, moose, hare, ducks, fish, lobster, and seals
• forest biomass that is harvested for lumber, fiber, or energy
• wild plants that are gathered as sources of food
• plants cultivated as sources of food, medicine, materials, or energy
• the organic-based capability of soil to sustain the productivity of agricultural crops

• sunlight, of which there is a continuous input to Earth
• surface water and groundwater, which are renewed through the hydrologic cycle
• winds, which are renewed through the heat-distribution system of the atmosphere
• water currents and waves, which are renewed through the heat-distribution system of the oceans, as well as the tidal influence of the Moon

Selective Breeding

Enhancement of Recruitment

• Planting: In intensively managed agricultural, aquacultural, and forestry systems, managers may try to achieve an optimally spaced monoculture of the crop. This is done so that the productivity will not be limited by competition with non-crop species or by individuals of the crop growing too closely together. The recruitment of plant crops is often managed by sowing seeds under conditions that favour their germination and establishment, while optimizing density to minimize competition. Sometimes young plants are grown elsewhere and then out-planted, a practice that is used to cultivate paddy rice, develop fruit-tree orchards, and establish plantations in forestry.
• Regeneration of Perennial Crops: Some management systems encourage perennial crops to regenerate by re-sprouting from surviving rhizomes or stumps after the above-ground biomass is harvested. This regeneration system is used with sugar cane and with stands of ash, aspen, maple, and poplar in forestry. In some cases, the regenerating population may have to be thinned to optimize its density.
• Stock Enhancement: Recruitment of many fishes, particularly salmon and trout, is often enhanced by stripping wild animals or hatchery stock of their eggs and milt (sperm). The eggs are then fertilized under controlled conditions and incubated until they hatch. The larval fish (called fry) are cultivated until they reach a fingerling size, when they are released to suitable habitat to supplement the natural recruitment of wild fish.
• Site Preparation: Certain practices favour the recruitment of economically preferred tree species in forestry. For instance, some pines recruit well onto clear-cuts that have been site-prepared by burning, as long as a supply of seeds is available. Seedlings of other tree species establish readily onto exposed mineral soil and are favoured by mechanical scarification that exposes that substrate by disrupting the organic surface mat.
• Managing the Sex Ratio: Recruitment of some hunted animals can be maintained by allowing only adult males to be harvested. For example, most species of deer are polygynous (males breed with more than one female). Consequently, a hunt can be restricted to males, on the assumption that the surviving bucks will still be able to impregnate all of the females in the local population.
• Harvest Season: Recruitment of some animals can be managed by limiting the hunting season to a particular time of the year. For example, restricting the hunt of waterfowl to the autumn allows ducks and geese to breed during the spring and summer so that recruitment can occur. Hunting in the springtime interferes with that reproduction.

Enhancement of Growth Rate

• Agricultural Systems: In intensive agricultural systems, high-yield varieties of crops are grown and managed to optimize their productivity. The management practices typically combine some or all of the following: fertilizer addition to enhance nutrient availability, irrigation to reduce the effects of drought, tillage (ploughing) or herbicide use to decrease competition from weeds, fungicide use and other practices to control diseases, and insecticide use and other practices to lessen damage caused by insects and other pests.
• Forestry: The intensity of management used in forestry varies greatly, but crop-tree productivity can be increased through silvicultural practices such as thinning young stands to reduce competition among crop trees, using herbicide to control weeds, and using insecticide to cope with infestations of insects.
• Aquaculture: High-yield varieties of fish, crustaceans, or mollusks may be grown at high density in ponds or pens, where they are well fed and protected from diseases and parasites through the use of antibiotics and other chemicals.

Management of Mortality Rate

• Natural mortality associated with predators, parasites, diseases, and accidents can be decreased in various ways:
  • Diseases, Parasites, and Herbivores: Mortality of crop plants caused by herbivorous insects may be managed by using insecticide or by changing the growth conditions to develop a habitat that is less favourable to the pest. Livestock are commonly affected by parasites, a problem that may also be reduced by using a pesticide. For example, sheep infested with ticks are dipped in chemical baths that kill the pests. Similarly, mortality caused by disease may be reduced by using medicines that treat the symptoms, by administering antibiotics to deal with bacterial infections, or by changing cultivation methods to decrease vulnerability. All such practices allow diseases, parasites, and herbivores to be controlled over the short term, but none are long-term solutions to these causes of productivity loss and mortality.
  • Natural Predators: It is uncommon for coyote, wolf, cougar, or bears to be important predators of livestock, but many farmers still consider any losses to these species to be unacceptable. Some hunters feel the same way about mortality that natural predators cause to hunted wildlife, such as deer, moose, and caribou. Consequently, in many regions these large predators have been relentlessly persecuted by shooting, trapping, and poisoning. An alternative to killing the predators is to restrict their access to livestock using fences or guard animals such as dogs and donkeys.
• Harvesting mortality must also be closely managed to ensure that the total mortality (natural plus anthropogenic) stays below the threshold for depleting the resource. For an ideal population, the maximum sustainable yield (MSY) is the largest amount of harvesting mortality that can occur without degrading the stock. Theoretically, a harvest rate less than MSY would leave a “surplus” of the stock to natural sources of mortality, while any greater than MSY would impair regeneration. Note that any harvest rate equal to or less than MSY would theoretically sustain the resource. Harvest-related mortality is influenced by many factors, including the amount and kinds of harvesting equipment and personnel, and the time the units spend harvesting. Resource managers can adjust the mortality by controlling the total harvesting effort, which is a function of both the means (such as the kinds of fishing boats and their gear) and the intensity (the number of boats and the amount of time each spends fishing) of harvesting.
  • Technology: Equipment has a great influence on harvesting rate. Consider, for example, the various methods of catching fish, summarized in Figure 12.2. These technologies vary greatly in efficiency, which might be indicated by the amount of fish caught per-person fishing, per-unit of energy expended, or per-unit of investment in equipment. In general, much greater harvesting mortality is associated with the more intensive technologies, such as drift nets, trawls, and seines, compared with simpler methods such as hand-lines. The more efficient methods may also have a much greater by-catch of species that are not the target of the fishery and are often thrown away. Similarly, a hunter armed with a rifle is more efficient than one using a bow-and-arrow, and trees can be harvested more quickly using a feller-buncher than a chainsaw or an axe. (A feller-buncher is a large machine that cuts and de-limbs trees and then stacks the logs into piles.).
    

  • Selection of Species and Sizes: The great variation in selectivity of harvesting methods, with regards to both species and size, can be an important consideration in resource management. In a fishery, for example, a change in the net-mesh diameter influences the sizes of animals that are caught. Usually, it is advantageous to not harvest smaller individuals, which may not yet have bred and often have a smaller value-per-unit-weight than bigger animals. In forestry, size- or species-selective cutting might be used in preference to clear-cutting, perhaps to encourage regeneration of the most desirable tree species. Those methods also reduce environmental damage, by keeping the physical structure of the forest relatively intact. o Number of Harvesting Units: An obvious way to manage mortality associated with harvesting is to limit the number of units that are participating in a harvest. In a fishery, for example, the government could limit the number of fishers by issuing only a certain number of licenses. Usually, the kind of technology that the harvesters can use is also specified, such as the number of boats using a particular fishing gear. o Time Spent Harvesting: The harvesting effort is also influenced by the amount of time that each unit works. Often there is strong pressure on regulators to allow harvesting to occur for as long as possible, because of the great economic value of investments made in machinery and personnel. Even so, in some cases, the harvesting time is closely regulated. For example, certain herring fisheries in coastal waters of western North America are only allowed to operate for as little as several hours per year.
• Regulatory tools are legal and administrative procedures that managers use to achieve a measure of control over the harvesting effort, and therefore over the mortality associated with exploitation. Relatively direct controls include licenses that regulate the numbers of participants, the technology they may use, their resource quotas, and the times and places they may harvest. Indirect tools can be used to influence the profitability of different harvesting strategies, such as the following:
  • fines for non-compliance, which decrease profit by raising costs
  • taxes on more harmful harvesting methods, or subsidies on less harmful ones, which influence profit by increasing or reducing costs, respectively
  • buyouts of inappropriate or excess harvesting capacity (either equipment or licenses), which increase profit for the remaining harvesters by improving their relative allocation

Maximum Sustainable Yield

• extensive deforestation of many parts of the world, which has resulted in losses of timber and fuelwood resources as well as environmental damages such as erosion and regional changes in climate (Chapter 23)
• extensive degradation of the quality of agricultural soil, resulting in declining crop yields and sometimes the abandonment of previously arable land (Chapter 24)
• widespread depletions of groundwater by over-use for irrigated agriculture, which is rapidly drawing down local and even regional aquifers (Chapter 24)
• exhaustion of fisheries, such as those of cod and other groundfish off the Atlantic Provinces, and salmon and herring off British Columbia (Chapter 14)
• depletion of many hunted resources – various species of fish, antelope, deer, furbearers, waterfowl, whales, and others (Chapter 14)

Patterns of Over-Exploitation

Reasons for the Abuse of Natural Resources

• The world’s dominant cultures have developed an ethic that presumes that humans have the “right” to take whatever they want from nature for subsistence or economic benefits. This is an expression of the anthropocentric world view (Chapter 1). Particularly noteworthy is the so-called Judeo-Christian ethic (White, 1967), which is based on the Biblical story of creation. In that story, God directed humans to “be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it,” and to “have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth” (Genesis 1:28). From a purely ecological perspective, this is an arrogant attitude, but it is typical of the world’s dominant cultures and religions. Modern technological ethics have developed from this commanding world view and are now used to legitimize the rapid mining of natural resources and the collateral ecological damage.
• Individual people and their societies are intrinsically self-interested. This attitude is responsible for many cases of over-exploitation of resources in order to optimize short-term profit. At the same time, ecological damage associated with the resource depletion is discounted as being unimportant. This is easily done because, in most economic systems, the consequences of ecological damage are usually shared broadly across society (by degradation of the common environment, or by tax monies being used to fix the problem), rather than being considered the responsibility of the persons or corporations who cause the damage.
• Natural resources are perceived as being boundless. Many people believe that nature and its resources are unlimited in their extent, quantity, and productivity. This is referred to as the cornucopian world view (Chapter 1; a cornucopia is the mythical horn of plenty that yields food in boundless amounts). In actual fact, Earth has limited stocks of resources available for use by humans, and most of these are being rapidly depleted.
• Investments of money in some sectors of the economy may accumulate profit faster than the growth rate of renewable resources. Consequently, apparent profit can be increased over the shorter term by liquidating natural resources and then investing the money earned in a faster-growing sector of the economy (see In Detail 12.1). Following this line of reasoning, the growth of many regional and national economies has been jump-started by economic “capital” gained through the non-sustainable mining of natural “capital.”
• Not all of the true costs of over-exploitation are taken into account. The economic strategies suggested above only work if the ecological costs of over-exploitation are not paid for. In fact, some kinds of environmental damage can be interpreted as being “good” for the economy because they add to the gross national product (GNP). For example, the wreck of the Exxon Valdez in Alaska and the cleanup of the spilled petroleum were responsible for billions of dollars of “growth” in the GNP of the United States over several years (see Chapter 21). In actual fact, however, the environmental damages represent a depletion of natural capital and contribute to a “natural debt.” When conventional economics (meaning economics as it is usually practiced) calculates the apparent profit gained through over-exploitation, it does not properly account for costs associated with resource depletion and other environmental damages. In theory, at least, ecological economics (a type of economics advocated by many enlightened economists and environmentalists) would fully cost those damages. An economic systems that tallies all costs, including those of environmental damage, is known as a full-cost accounting system.

1. the objective is to gain short-term profit rather than to achieve long-term resource sustainability
2. the social perspective is that of individual people or corporations and not the society at large
3. the natural resource is perceived to have value only if it is harvested and converted into cash, and
4. only the costs of extraction are considered in the calculation of profit, while the costs of ecological damage and resource degradation are paid by society as a whole (in economic terms, they are treated as externalities).

1. Luinenberg, O. and S. Osborne. (compilers) 1990. The Little Green Book: Quotations on the Environment. Vancouver, BC: Pulp Press Publishers. ↩

Growth, Development, and Sustainability

• increasing the efficiency of use of non-renewable resources – for example, by recycling and re-using metals and other materials; by minimizing the use of energy for industrial, transportation, and space-heating purposes; and by improving the designs of other materials and products
• increasing the use of renewable materials in the economy, such as products manufactured from trees or agricultural biomass
• rapidly increasing the use of renewable sources of energy, such as electricity generated using hydro, solar, wind, or biomass technologies (see Chapter 13)
• improving social equity, ultimately to such a degree that all citizens (and not just a minority of wealthy people) have access to the necessities and amenities of life

Sustainable Development

• manufactured goods, including buildings, clothing, computers, and vehicles
• services, such as those provided by entertainers, farmers, physicians, and teachers
• natural resources used in the economy, including non-renewable ones (metals and fossil fuels) and others that are renewable (foodstuffs, fish, and timber)

• the depletion of natural resources, including its longer-term implications for the survival of future generations
• pollution and its ecological and human health effects
• disturbances that cause damage to natural ecosystems
• endangerment and extinction of species
• impairment of ecosystem services, which are a major part of the life-support system of the planet
• social effects of environmental damage, including unacceptable economic disparities (including poverty) and the disenfranchisement of indigenous people and socioeconomic groups

Sustainable Economies

Symptoms of Non-Sustainability

• Rapid Growth of Economies: Because of increases in both population and per-capita use of materials and energy, almost all economies are growing. This well-known fact is reflected by trends in many economic indicators, such as stock markets, growth indexes, and the gross domestic product (GDP). GDP is the value of all goods and services produced by a country in a year; it is equal to gross national product (GNP) minus net investment from foreign nations. Overall, the Canadian GDP grew by about 110% between 1981 and 2012, compared with a 40% increase in population (Figure 12.3). This implies an increase of per-capita GDP during the period, which reflects an improvement of individual wealth in terms of access to goods and services in the economy.

• Depletion of Non-Renewable Resources: All stocks of metal ores, petroleum, natural gas, coal, and other non-renewable resources are finite, being limited to what is present on Earth. These resources are being rapidly consumed, and their exploitable reserves will eventually become depleted. However, discoveries of additional exploitable stocks will extend the economic lifetimes of non-renewable resources, as will efficient recycling. Nevertheless, global stocks of non-renewable resources are being rapidly depleted (see Chapter 13).
• Depletion of (Potentially) Renewable Resources: Around the globe there are crises of depletion of renewable resources. In many regions, for example, once- enormous fish stocks are collapsing, deforestation is proceeding rapidly, the fertility of agricultural soil is declining, supplies of surface water and groundwater are being depleted and polluted, and hunted animals are becoming scarcer. Not all stocks of renewable resources are being severely depleted, but the declines are becoming more common and widespread (see Chapter 14).
• Depletion of Non-Economic, Environmental Resources: Some resources that are necessary for the health of economic systems are not assigned value in the marketplace—that is, they are not valuated in dollars, and are not actively traded. Nevertheless, these resources are important to the health of the ecosystems that sustain the human economy. Examples of such non-valuated environmental resources include: (1) the ability of ecosystems to cleanse the environment of toxic pollutants such as sulphur dioxide and ozone, (2) ecological services such as the production of atmospheric O2 and consumption of CO2 (the latter being an important anthropogenic pollutant), and (3) ecosystem functions that support the productivity of conventional resources, such as the plant and algal productivity that ultimately allows the growth of stocks of hunted deer, fish, and other animals.
• Depletion of Other Ecological Values: Some ecological values are not directly or indirectly important in the human economy, but they still have intrinsic (or existence) worth. This makes these values significant, regardless of any perceived importance to human welfare (see Chapter 1). The most important examples of these ecological values are associated with biodiversity, especially the many species and natural ecosystems that are indigenous to particular regions. These biodiversity values are increasingly being threatened and lost in all regions of the globe (Chapter 26). Such losses would never be tolerated in an ecologically sustainable economy (that is, one in which resources are used in ways that do not compromise their future availability and do not endanger species or natural ecosystems; Chapters 1 and 27).

1. What are the differences between non-renewable and (potentially) renewable natural resources? Give examples of each.
2. How can the productivity of biological resources be increased through management?
3. Describe three cases of the “mining” of (potentially) renewable natural resources. Why did the over-exploitation occur?
4. What are the key differences between conventional economics and ecological (environmental) economics?

1. What are the differences between economic growth and development? Relate economic growth and development to the notion of sustainable development. Do you believe that the Canadian economy is making much progress toward sustainable development? Explain your answer.
2. Can you think of any examples of economically valuable, potentially renewable resources that have not been severely depleted through excessive use or inappropriate management? Explain your answer.
3. List three environmental values that do not directly contribute to the human economy, but are nevertheless important to the healthy functioning of ecosystems. Could these services be valuated (measured in dollars) in order to allow their degradation to be considered a true “cost” of doing business? What would be the benefits of such an ecological cost-accounting?
4. In this chapter, we defined sustainable development as “progress toward an economic system based on the use of natural resources in a manner that does not deplete their stocks nor compromise their availability for use by future generations of humans.” We also defined ecologically sustainable development as “considering the human need for resources within an ecological context, and including the need to sustain all species and all components of Earth’s life-support system.” Discuss the key similarities and differences in these two kinds of economic sustainability.

1. Show how natural resources are important in your life by making a list of resources that you use daily for energy, food, or as materials in manufactured products.
2. You have been asked to help develop a plan for sustainable forest management on a large tract of land. What practices would you recommend to ensure that the timber harvesting does not deplete the resource? What about other economic resources, such as fish, hunted animals, and opportunities for outdoor recreation? How would your plan also accommodate the need to sustain native species and natural ecosystems?

References Cited and Further Reading