Population,environment, and development

The strategies for reducing population growth include social development and improvement in the educational attainment of women. The decline in Kenya's growth rate was attributed to high female literacy and reduced infant mortality. Another strategy for enhancing fertility decline is to reduce child mortality, particularly from preventable causes such as diarrhea. The entire cost of such a strategy to reduce preventable disease would be about $1.33 per 300 million taxpayers in developed countries. Family planning services must be expanded. Prevention of maternal mortality and AIDS would bring major benefits. Strategies for environmental protection emphasized the already existing plan of action set out in the UNCED document Agenda 21 in Rio de Janeiro. The plan has suffered from inaction. The estimated cost of $625 million was considered to be several times smaller than the costs of inaction. The elimination of subsidies in tropical forests would have an immediate impact. Natural resource accounting at the national level would include the value of natural resources. Pricing would change radically for gasoline if the costs of urban smog, acid rain, low-level ozone pollution, and global warming were taken into account. Strategies for sustainable development pertained to the preceding strategies and others indicated in the Agenda 21 Action Plan. If funding were better targeted to the poorest 20% of global population with high fertility rates, the accomplishments would be heralded. 1.2 million are living in absolute poverty, and aid for nutrition, primary health care, water and sanitation, basic education, and family planning amounts to only 10% of expenditures. An increase to 20% would mean a contribution from Americans of $7.50 per person or 33% of $25 thousand million from all developed countries. Developing countries need to lower their military expenditures, privatize public enterprises, change inappropriate development policies, eliminate corruption, and improve national governance. The debt burden should be reduced.     

Water, environment and development

This paper for the most part constitutes the address which was made to the Consortium for International Development at their recent Presidential Symposium at Colorado State University on 30 July 1992. It raises some of the global issues in water resources development and management which are likely to confront the international community in the 1990s and beyond. The issues pose the challenge to institutions involved in the water resources field in both developed and developing countries.     

Culture,ethics, and the environment — Towards the New Synthesis

Summary This largely philosophical article argues that we need to examine the roots of our cultural worldview if we are to understand the causes of our global crises and current obstacles to desirable change. Calls for a new ethic are likely to be ineffectual in the absence of a challenge to the damaging dichotomy between fact and value that characterises our culture. However, the dominant worldview is under increasingly strong challege from organic systems thinking which has far-reaching implications, and which suggests that Western culture's dominant assumptions are not in accord with reality. If our culture, and individuals in it, are able to become more balanced, decisive desirable change could take place in society. This balance will involve the proper reintegration of ethical dimensions into thinking, based upon the recognition of the importance of the integrity of human communities and natural systems. This constitutes an emergent worldview and coherent philsophical framework to which many groups are already giving expression. It is imperative that this cultural change is understood and supported as it represents genuine hope for the future.After a teaching career in England and Canada, Stephen Sterling joined, as Assistant Director, the United Kingdom Council for Environmental Education (CEE). He was involved in writing the Education Report forThe Conservation and Development Programme for the UK, and has acted in an advisory capacity on a number of national and international documents on environmental education and environmental ethics. He has edited the CEE's journalReview of Environmental Education Developments for six years. The views expressed in this article are his own.     

Ethanol fuels: Energy security,economics, and the environment

Problems of fuel ethanol production have been the subject of numerous reports, including this analysis. The conclusions are that ethanol: does not improve U.S. energy security; is uneconomical; is not a renewable energy source; and increases environmental degradation. Ethanol production is wasteful of energy resources and does not increase energy security. Considerably more energy, much of it high- grade fossil fuels, is required to produce ethanol than is available in the energy output. About 72% more energy is used to produce a gallon of ethanol than the energy in a gallon of ethanol. Ethanol production from corn is not renewable energy. Its production uses more non- renewable fossil energy resources in growing the corn and in the fermentation/distillation process than is produced as ethanol energy. Ethanol produced from corn and other food crops is also an unreliable and therefore a non-secure source of energy, because of the likelihood of uncontrollable climatic fluctuations, particularly droughts which reduce crop yields. The expected priority for corn and other food crops would be for food and feed. Increasing ethanol production would increase degradation of agricultural land and water and pollute the environment. In U.S. corn production, soil erodes some 18- times faster than soil is reformed, and, where irrigated, corn production mines water faster than recharge of aquifers. Increasing the cost of food and diverting human food resources to the costly and inefficient production of ethanol fuel raise major ethical questions. These occur at a time when more food is needed to meet the basic needs of a rapidly growing world population.     

Sharing environmental space: the role of law,economics and politics

The concept of ‘environmental space’ has been put forward as a means for providing specific meaning to sustainability. The concept combines the idea of the existence of environmental limits with a strong principle of environmental justice. It has been used as a basis for the development of sustainable action plans for many European countries, and has attracted political interest. However, thus far, the concept has found limited application by governments. The paper identifies and discusses several issues that need to be addressed for the environmental space approach to be implemented. Three main options for the institutionalization of the approach are discussed: within the legal‐constitutional framework (as rights and obligations), within the economic system (as environmental property rights), and through green planning (as specific objectives and targets contained in national environmental plans or strategies). The paper discusses the ability of the three options to deal with the issues identified, assessing their relative advantages and disadvantages, and to what extent these options are complementary. Finally, conclusions are drawn about the viability of the concept of ‘environmental space’.     

Interdependence with the environment: Commitment,interconnectedness, and environmental behavior

Do individuals’ perceptions of their interdependence with the natural environment affect their environmental behaviors? From the perspective of interdependence theory, we introduce a scale to measure commitment to the natural environment. In Study 1, higher levels of commitment to the environment and greater inclusion of nature in the self separately predicted higher levels of pro-environmental behavior, even when controlling for social desirability and ecological worldview. In Study 2, participants primed to experience high commitment to the environment reported greater levels of pro-environmental behavioral intentions as well as pro-environmental behavior relative to participants primed to experience low commitment to the environment. Commitment to the natural environment is a new theoretical construct that predicts environmental behavior.     

Time preference,the environment and the interests of future generations

The behavior of individuals currently living will generally have long-term consequences that affect the well-being of those who will come to live in the future. Intergenerational interdependencies of this nature raise difficult moral issues because only the current generation is in a position to decide on actions that will determine the nature of the world in which future generations will live. Although most are willing to attach some weight to the interests of future generations, many would argue that it is not necessary to treat these interests as equivalent to those of the current generation. A common approach in this context is to use a system of discounting to evaluate future benefits and harms. This paper assesses the logic of discounting drawing on the writings of economists and philosophers. Much of the economic literature concerns the choice of an appropriate social discount rate. The social discount rate can be taken to reflect beliefs about the rights of future generations, a subject that has been extensively debated in the phioosophic literature. The writings of both economists and philosophers concerned with the weight to attach to the interests of future generations are reviewed and evaluated in this paper and the implications for environmental policy are discussed.     

Local participation, international politics, and the environment: the World Bank and the Grenada Dove

The process of locating waste disposal sites in the Eastern Caribbean country of Grenada illustrates important lessons in the implementation of new international mandates to invite stakeholder participation in projects with environmental and social impacts. This case study analyzes the participatory methods and results of the World Bank-funded project in Grenada, including an unexpected shift in the policy agenda toward habitat protection for the elusive Grenada Dove, the national bird of Grenada. We conclude that the impact of new requirements for stakeholder inclusion by funding agencies such as the World Bank and Global Environmental Facility has been palpable, but mixed. As the catalysts of more participatory methods, funding agencies still must give more careful consideration to the methods by which their participatory requirements are implemented. In particular they must develop more effective knowledge of and relationships with a broader range of stakeholders than are routinely considered by existing methods, allow for and learn from unexpected contingencies, and be flexible as to project goals and methods.     

Economic growth,national income and the blocked choices for the environment

Summary This paper explains why the identification of the increase of national income (or GNP) with economic growth, increase in welfare and economic success is theoretically wrong. This incorrect use of terms strengthens the one-sided orientation of economic policy on the growth of production, often at the expense of the environment. Two examples are given of how this course of affairs is blocking the social choices regarding a fundamental solution of the environmental problem. An overview is given of the possibilities of correcting the Gross National Product (GNP) figures for environmental losses. None of these are perfect, since shadow prices for environmental functions directly comparable with the market prices of goods produced can be construed only in exceptional cases. The conclusion is that the only way to arrive at national income figures corrected for environmental losses is to supplement the corrections for expenditures on preventive, restoratory and compensatory measures (defensive expenditures) with the estimated expenditures on measures required to meet physical standards, based on health and a sustainable economic development.Dr Roefie Hueting is Head of the Department of Environment Statistics at the Netherlands Central Bureau of Statistics and a Visiting Fellow at the International Institute for Environment and Society (IIUG). He is a previous contributor toThe Environmentalist (1985, pp.253–262). Dr Christian Leipert is a staff member at IIUG.     

Project XL: cheaper,cleaner, and smarter ways to protect the environment

Are you interested in making the job of complying with federal environmental requirements cheaper and smarter for your business? The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is committed to helping business and other sectors make more sense of environmental requirements through a number of innovative programs, one of the most far‐reaching being Project XL. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Pleas,plights and environment: Part I

Summary The depletion of the world's natural resources continues relentlessly. Plants and animals alike are being trapped into ever more numerous shrinking pockets, as man advances to incorporate virgin estates into areas of productivity. The immediate consequence of such an all-out attack in the tropical areas of under-developed countries is the destruction of habitats and the likely break-up of food webs. The attendant disastrous effects on the reproduction of species, hence, puts natural selection at a premium. This scenario has distinctly impressed different people in different places. This suggests diverse sensitivity even for causes voiced in public as matters of sheer truism. The study concentrates on the examination of the dialectic nature/nurture controversy to see whether this may account for the state of disharmony recorded between man and nature. Conversion of nature is traditionally considered a realm of the scientific establishment. The study tries to suggest that the humanities cannot be left out in any debate on the interpretation of the environment. The synthesis reveals a blatant refusal of social determinism as causal agent and, with some reservation, projects biological determinism into sharp focus for pertinent consideration. The cautious reconciliation with parts of sociobiological tenets was regarded as inevitable once grasped that will, knowledge, and sensitivity, were interpreted as the foundation of the main teleological argument.Dr Antonio Allem is trained as a plant taxonomist. His research has focused on the collection of plant genetic resources germ plasm. He has recently written (with J.F.M. Valls) a book entitledRecursos Forrageiros Nativos do Pantanal Mato-Grossense, published by the Departamento de Difusão de Tecnologia, EMBRAPA, Brasilia. He has an interest in the taxonomy of cultivated plants and has recently solved the origin of the cassava plant (Manihot esculenta, Euphorbiaceae). Dr Allem is a member of staff of thein situ conservation unit at Centro Nacional de Recursos Genéticos e Biotecnologia da Empresa Brasileira de Pesquisa Agropecuária.