Managing natural resources for sustainability

TitleManaging natural resources for sustainability
Publication TypeBook Chapter
Year of Publication1987
AuthorsRepetto, R
EditorDavis, TJ, Schirmer, IA
Book TitleSustainability Issues in Agricultural Development: Proceedings of the Seventh Agriculture Sector Symposium
Pagination167-181
Date Published1987
PublisherWorld Bank
CityWashington, DC
LanguageEnglish
ISBN0-8213-0909-9
Call NumberS604.5.A35 1987
Keywordsagricultural conservation; agriculture; agriculture and state; biodiversity; biological diversity; congresses; desertification; development; economics; forestry; irrigation; management; natural resources; salinization; soil erosion; sustainability; Third World countries; tropical; waterlogging; watersheds
Abstract

I believe that sustainability with respect to natural resource management has a solid economic underpinning. It implies maintaining the productivity of the resource base. In fact, it implies more. In precisely those countries where populations are rising more rapidly, the poorest, the relative importance of natural resources in total productive capital is greatest. If those larger populations are to be enabled to improve their standards of consumption, the productivity of the asset base must increase. Yet, in these same countries and others, a wide range of natural resources are becoming less productive through depletion and deterioration. There is an issue of intergenerational equity. I do not propose to plunge into the arcane subject of social rates of time discount--one I gladly leave to more sophisticated theorists. But I raise the question: Is it fair to leave for a population that will inevitably be much larger (whatever to be much better off) a natural resource base that has been depleted and rendered significantly less productive than it is today? (author)

URLhttp://www.worldcat.org/oclc/925356016
Research Notes

Local system: LIAS1348242

Local system: (OCoLC)15791230

Bibliography note: Includes bibliographies

Conference Name

7th Agriculture Sector Symposium