ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT VS. SUSTAINABLE SOCIETIES: Reflections on the Players in a Crucial Contest

Abstract

ness and romanticism than do many social scientists and humanists. The most exciting students of Earth's biophysical status learn from one another. Biologists (particularly ecologists), atmospheric specialists, and experts in public health should make their knowledge accessible and useful in local and state forums. Scientists must cease hiding behind walls of objectivity and become advocates of policies that remain consistent with their scientific knowl­ edge. Some (e.g. Ehrlich and Wilson) have been involved for decades, but mostly in national and international arenas. Communities, counties, and states-·perhaps less alluring stages-urgently need good applied science to defend their environments. The science departments of major state universities REFLECTIONS ON SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT 237 could fonn ad hoc oversight teams to scrutinize actions of state environ­ mental agencies and to offer constructive criticism. For decades, ecologists such as Holdgate, Kassas & White (69) have pre­ sented scholarly warnings of intensifying global environmental deterioration. . Malone (97), in 1976, described scientists as linking humanity to natural biosphere. Scientists, well aware of steady contamination of air, water, and soils, must become sophisticated about such critical social issues as population, food security, and access to natural resources. Malone urged scientists to illuminate issues relevant to environmental policy. He praised scientists who preferred the advocacy (97, p. 87). Slobodkin (130) warned that ecology will lose its relevance unless its research is driven by practical questions. Frustrated by failure of politicians to act with common sense on basis . of best available data, Myers (102) asserted that biologists were as com­ petent as economists to engage in policy making. But nonnal science, conducted by thoroughly institutionalized practitioners in laboratories of government, corporations, and universities, emphasizes uncertainty and, therefore, need for more research money. Two decades ago, Dasman (46, p. vii) suggested that need for effective application of ecological principles exceeded need for more research. The values and strategies enunciated by two recent and influential statements on role of science in protecting planet diverge dramatically from arguments of scientists (12, 13, 46, 100-102) who assert that current knowledge is capable of retarding, if not reversing, further deterioration of soils, water, and forests. The Ecological Society of America (ESA) (49) and US National Re­ search Council ( 140) both fashioned powerful cases for massive infusions of research money. ESA's Sustainable Biosphere initiative, launched in 1988, accepted as articles of faith reliance on investigator-initiated research and retention of disciplinary integrity, each of which confonns to research structure of universities. Complexities and uncertainties, rather than avail­ ability of data useful now in defending biosphere, were stressed to justify funding aimed at global change, biological diversity, and sustainable ecological systems (49). Congruent with ESA message were urgent calls by Wilson (150, 151), Holloway (71, p. 12), Resser, Lubchenko & Levin (120), and US National Research Council (140, pp. 37-40) for emergency recruitment of systema­ tists to conduct national inventories of species, especially in remaining tropical rain forests. Ludwig and coauthors (90, pp. 17-18) objected to simplistic assumptions that ignorance is problem (19, pp. 640-42) and that more of such research would yield remedies to resource exploitation. The wild species of Brazil's Pantanal and Atlantic rain forests are plundered and destroyed by squatters and poachers who seek survival and by ranchers, resort developers,