Carrying capacity as a tool of development policy: the Ecuadoran Amazon and the Paraguayan Chaco

Abstract

The remaining sparsely inhabited portions of the world (polar regions, deserts, tropical rainforests) have been “saved for last” for good reason. They are difficult to inhabit and have low average carrying capacity for human activities. Sparse populations are all that have ever been sustainably supported by the ecosystems of such areas. The concept of carrying capacity is an indispensable tool for planning the rational use of these areas, as has been demonstrated recently by Phillip M. Fearnside in his Human Carrying Capacity and the Brazilian Rainforest (1986) and earlier by G. Ledec, R. Goodland, J. Kirchner, and J. Drake, Carrying capacity. population growth, and sustainable deoelopment (1985). The present note aims to supplement these two works by showing how in two specific cases even very simple and crude estimates of carrying capacity can have significant policy implications. For humans the calculation of carrying capacity is far more complex than for other species. Other species have “standards of Living” that are constant over time (animals and plants do not experience economic growth, although consumption may vary over the life cycle). Also they have relatively uniform “standards of living” (i.e., per-capita resource consumption levels) throughout their populations at a given point in time (no class inequality, with a few exceptions such as social insects whose class structure is genetic rather than social). And the technologies of other species are also relatively constant genetically given endosomatic technologies that have co-evolved with the environment and are consequently well-adapted to it. Furthermore the level of international or inter-ecosystem “trade” among animals is