Geography Reference
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conservation of sites only becomes sustainable in the longer term if a range of
economically viable and sustainable options are afforded to communities contigu-
ous to those sites (e.g. Batisse
1990
). A clearer link between resource management
and economic development needs to be established; this link however often remains
elusive without external financial inputs. Indeed, the preservation of pristine envi-
ronments often depends on the transfer of rentier income generated elsewhere.
Moreover, many of these touted 'solutions' themselves imply negative externalities:
for example, both international eco-tourism and wind turbine construction projects
generate high carbon emissions. Ensuring ecological integrity or ecosystemic
health in one place may still imply degradation someplace else.
Clearly, it becomes very difficult for any jurisdiction to maintain itself on exclu-
sively ecological principles. We have no choice but to interpret sustainability in
fairly loose ways. Although
whole islands and archipelagos
have been ensconced
on the UNESCO World Heritage or Biosphere Reserve Lists, no
whole country
has
been, and is not likely to be.
Conclusion
This exploratory paper has proposed to move away from the 'vulnerability-resil-
ience' continuum that grips much of the debate on the economic viability of smaller
(often island) jurisdictions today, replacing it with an alternative but similarly
bimodal conversation: one between economic (high-density) and ecological (low-
density) criteria of development. In so doing, one invites a reconsideration of the
impact of physical geography on development, as well as the changing relationship
between 'nature' and 'human culture'.
There are various, possibly significant, policy lessons and implications lurking
in this text. One of these concerns the appropriateness of a development policy
predicated on population growth. The notion that population growth is good 'in
principle' needs to be critiqued, and the Malthusian concerns with population
growth re-proposed for serious discussion. Meanwhile, the export of human
resources for long term sustainability is a policy more easily practised by sub-
national island territories and jurisdictions, since these are locked into political
relationships with larger, continental states countries willing to receive - or unable
to legally thwart - this 'surplus', and which are themselves beyond entertaining
holistic ecological development routes.
Acknowledgements
My thanks to the Research Institute for Society and Nature (RIHN), Kyoto,
Japan and the Japanese National Commission for UNESCO for their invitation to present an earlier
draft of this chapter at an international symposium on the theme 'The Futurability of Islands: Beyond
Endemism and Vulnerability', held in Kyoto, Japan, October 22-23, 2008. My thanks to organizers
Ken-Ichi Abe, Ryo Nakamura, Daniel Niles, Narifumi Tachimoto, Tokushiro Takazo and Takakazu
Yumoto; as well as participants John Cusick, Mark Gardener, Simon Haberle, Matthew Prebble and
Alma Ridep-Morris, for their collegiality. My sincere thanks also to Geoff Bertram, Stefan Gössling
and Sandy Kerr for useful comments on an earlier draft. The usual disclaimers apply.
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