Toward an Appraisal of World Resources: New Views of Conservation Problems

Abstract

rIT HE balanced appraisal of world resources, which is the only solid basis for an answer to the currently perplexing question of population outdistancing resources, is slowly taking shape, but it will be long in assuming clear outlines. This is revealed in the first world effort to assess resources, made by more than six hundred scientists who took part in the United Nations Scientific Conference on the Conservation and Utilization of Resources from August 17 to September 6 at Lake Success. In 500 papers setting forth the experience of 50 nations the scientists reported on their recent efforts at conservation of resources and shared their problems of technology and social action that urgently cry for solution. Although the Conference was unfortunately lacking in representatives from some major nations-principally Germany, Japan, and the Soviet Unionit marked a useful step in the direction of resources appraisal. It was the initial canvass of conservation problems on a world scale, and it was long overdue. Gifford Pinchot and Theodore Roosevelt made plans for such a gathering to be held in The Hague in 1909, but the plans were halted by William Howard Taft, and for one reason or another the project has been delayed 38 years.' In 1947 the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations began plans for a conference, with the explicit understanding that it was to be concerned solely with the exchange of ideas and experiences and was not to be policy-making. The emphasis on scientific reports to the exclusion of policymaking resulted in peripheral treatment in the basic papers of many of the troublesome issues of international policy relating to soils, water, and minerals but did not prevent the papers for plenary sections from dealing with policy. It also removed a major incentive for the collection and reporting of uniform estimates of resources and their depletion. The proceedings of the United Nations Conference therefore fall far short of presenting either a comprehensive inventory of world resources or a searching consideration of the public policy necessary to deal with dwindling reserves and with what apparently is an increasingly unbalanced ratio of