Removable and Place-Based Economies: Alternative Futures for America’s Deserts - Design with the Desert: Conservation and Sustainable Development - page 304

recreation, and scenic protection.* Similarly, the Yuma East Wetlands project has pro-
duced a cooperating web of groups, including the City of Yuma, the adjacent Quechan
tribe, and farmers, initially skeptical or opposed to recreating marshes along the Colorado.
Ultimately, sustainability requires refocusing on what profits the group and the place—a
Leopold-like land ethic—with individual profit as a result rather than the exclusive goal.
In short, it requires economics to prioritize place-based benefits rather than removable
ones.
More than in any other region, widespread development in deserts is based on
importation of some resources and exportation of others. Experts on economic development,
construction, sustainability, and public policy have, in many ways, ducked the key question
of regional carrying capacity. It is almost un-American to suggest that carrying capacity
might mean that some areas cannot and should not be inhabited. However, without
careful, realistic life-cycle analysis of exportive systems, both the importing and exporting
communities can be destabilized. Place-based development, close-to-source acquisition of
resources, and carefully limited removal of resources are essential components of whatever
future development occurs in the deserts of the world.
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