Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
protection.
49
It has been argued that, even if it were possible to de
ne
environmental capacity, this would not provide a trump card against
development.
50
To the contrary, consideration of whether activities that
would yield tangible economic and social bene
ts should be restricted so
that the intangible bene
ts of a functioning biosphere might be pre-
served, or the non-instrumental value of an environment recognised,
leads us back inexorably to the ethical and political debate over what is
valuable to us.
51
Scienti
c exploration of how ecosystems are affected by
human activities certainly has a vital role to play in informing this
debate, but it provides no more of a valid basis for dictating how society
should proceed than that which economic arguments presented in
favour of development lay claim to. Effective capacity constraints on
economic growth will be established not
by the properties of nature, as
discovered by science, but by social judgements about the value of
aspects of the environment
'
.
52
I agree that there are serious dif
'
culties with relying on the identi-
nable capacities to retard ecological degrada-
tion. Enormous weight has been placed on limits-based concepts which,
for reasons explored in the
following section
, they cannot support. In any
event, it will only be possible to establish ecologically appropriate con-
straints on human activities if the hegemony of economic values has
cation of objectively de
rst
been challenged in ethically-informed political debate. I argued in
Chapter 2
that such a debate and re
ectiononthetruenatureofour
relationship with natural systems as the fortunate bene
ciaries of their
rapidly diminishing largesse rather than their masters should lead to
acceptance of the supervening value of ecosystem health for human well-
being.
53
The proposed objectives and structure of an ecological planning
system that are set out in
Sections 5.2.4
and
5.3
are informed by, and
intended to effect, this re-evaluation.
culties
The obvious attraction of the capacity concept is that, if it could be made
operational, it would provide a relatively simple basis for evaluating
5.2.3 Ecological and ethical dif
49
Owens and Cowell,
'
Land and Limits
'
, 1st edn, pp. 111
-
3; Haughton and Counsell,
'
Regions, Spatial Strategies
'
,pp.80
-
1; Owens,
'
Land, Limits and Sustainability
'
, 443
-
4;
Rydin,
'
Land Use Planning and Environmental Capacity
'
, 751
-
3.
50
Owens and Cowell,
51
'
Land and Limits
'
, 1st edn, p. 111.
Ibid
.
52
Rydin,
'
Land Use Planning and Environmental Capacity
'
, 751.
53
Chapter 2,
Section 2.5
.
