I thought Dennis Palmini's clearly presented message was worth forwarding
to a group concerned with the environment.


>Date: Mon, 5 Jun 1995 14:51:14 +0600
>From: dpalmini at uwspmail.uwsp.edu
>To: Multiple recipients of list <bene at straylight.tamu.edu>
>Subject: Re: win-win or lose-lose?
>
>>It seems to me that environmentalists have to take a stand on this one
>>thing: win-win strategies will *only* be possible where and when human
>>population growth ceases.
>>
>>Dennis Paulson
>
>
>I agree with Dennis Paulson that a basic problem is large numbers of people
>with their demands on the environment for resources, as a dumping ground for
>pollutants, and for 2nd-home, recreational uses that continue to chop up
>backcountry and convert wild lands to tamed, economically productive lands.
>
>Yes, we need to slow, even stop, population growth, perhaps even reduce the
>level of human population. And we ARE making some gains in reducing population
>growth rates (see an interesting article in Scientific American, Dec 1993,
>Bryant Robey, et. al. "The Fertility Decline in Developing Countries").
>
>It has taken 10,000 years to build up to a current human population of 5.5
>billion people. Butwe may add that many people again over the next century
>(one-hundredth of the time it took to reach the first 5.5 billion), even if we
>do reduce population growth rates. Whatever the growth rate, there are
>going to be several billion additional people on the planet before population
>peaks out. And each of those additional persons will want to be clothed,
>housed, fed, entertained, recreated, etc. These people will demand, in
>markets and thru the political process, that their wants and needs be met.
>That is going to put immense additional pressures on the environment. And
>there's the rub: what do you propose to do about it?? How are we going to deal
>with this onrushing tide of people and economic demands while preserving
>environmental values? How can we protect most effectively what we have?
>
>An important factor here is "developmental lock-in". Once development has
>taken place, it will not be reversed to provide habitat for the Karner Blue
>butterfly or for Kirtland's warblers. The costs of undoing development are
>immense (I mean the economic, trauma, personal readjustment, etc. costs: the
>full range of costs). Once development has taken place, that natural habitat
>is essentially lost forever. (Again, for a good discussion, see Noah's Choice
>by Charles Mann and Mark Plummer, out this year (or was it 1994?)).
>
>We are going to have to be pro-active: we need to work a lot harder to
>preserve natural areas (dedicate some lands to wild uses or "passive
>management") and surrender other areas for development/intensive management
>to support the additional population. And yes, I know the basic theory of
>the design of reserves, core areas, buffer zones, connecting corridors, etc.
>These principles--though this state of knowledge appears at present to be
>to some degree conjectural and uncertain--must be employed to their fullest in
>the design of connecting wild areas.
>
>And yes, we also need to rework market incentives in favor of increased
>financial penalties for polluting, reduce the subsidies for under-cost timber
>harvests, etc., etc.
>
>It is also worth noting that while "good science" is indeed essential, it will
>not of itself tell us what public policies to follow, it will not of itself
>guarantee success. Too much of conservation biology science, for example, is
>still uncertain. And even if we had perfect scientific knowledge, the choice
>of public policies, of whose interests to preserve and to forego, of how much
>wild areas to protect and to sacrifice, these are in large part questions of
>social values, of acceptable trade-offs, about which natural science has
>little to say.
>
>We are also going to have to do this all this in the context of democratic
>persuasion and political processes. So we had better look for "win-win"
>solutions (or as close to those as we can come) if we want to succeed! But
>democratically-based government regulation will be a fundamental tool that
>we'll have to use.
>
>This is not an easy or simple prescription. It will require our best
>intelligence. What we need are carefully thought out studies, cautious and
>careful discussion of how to accommodate these additional people while
>retaining as much as we can of our natural heritage.
>
>Dennis Palmini
>Univ Wisconsin-Stevens Point
>dpalmini at uwspmail.uwsp.edu

Dennis Paulson, Director phone: (206) 756-3798
Slater Museum of Natural History fax: (206) 756-3352
University of Puget Sound e-mail: dpaulson at ups.edu
Tacoma, WA 98416