Sustainability, sustainable development and forest resources

SUMMARY

There are competing views on sustainability which mainly stem from differences in assumptions upon which each of these views is based. Perhaps the most debated assumption is the extent to which manufactured capital and natural capital are substitutes. Neo-Malthusians, the Club of Rome, and other Stationary-State theorists fill the ranks of the legion of pessimistic economists who fear any negative changes in the total stock of natural capital. Diametrically opposed to these doomsayers stands Solow (1986) and other optimistically inclined neoclassical economists who look favourably on the ‘Backstop Technology Theory’ of resource use. Falling inconspicuously between the polar extremes, there is a third group of theorists who incorporate certain aspects of each of the other two groups in addition to employing the principles embodied by Hartwick's Rule.

The term sustainable development (SD) is also subject to considerable debate. This paper examines various concepts of sustainability and SD. Policy makers need operational guidelines to help them determine the degree to which these concepts are useful in specific situations. The paper addresses this need by focusing on forest resources in general and those of California in particular. A simulation/linear programming forest resource assessment model was applied to California's private forests to demonstrate that strict decade-to-decade ‘even-flow’ stability of production may result in lower aggregate levels of output over a prolonged planning period, with ending levels of the stock resource that are scarcely greater than when output is permitted to vary over the planning period. The model was also used to show that greater levels of output and ending stocks are possible when the land base for sustainability assessment is not a restrictively small geographical area or a single class of ownership. The application of the concepts becomes significantly more complex when amenity values and public ownership are considered.

Key words:

• sustainable development
• sustainability
• forest management
• linear programming