Environmental Management: Principles and practice

Environmental concern between the First and
Second World Wars
There was serious drought in the USA midwest Dust Bowl, especially between 1932
and 1938. The soil eroded, and wind-blown dust was visible as far away as Chicago
and Washington DC. Large numbers of farming families were displaced. The
folksinger Woody Guthrie and novelist John Steinbeck (1939) were among those
who publicized the degradation and misery. At first seen as subversives, they helped
provoke public and government concern. To counter these problems President Franklin

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D.Roosevelt promoted integrated development of natural resources, and in 1933
established the US Soil Erosion Service, and in 1935 its successor, the US Soil
Conservation Service, to fight land degradation.
The 1939–1945 war hindered the growth of concern for the environment,
accelerated the development of resources and led to the production of new threats
like DDT and atomic weapons. During the first decade or so after 1945 efforts
focused on economic and industrial reconstruction, on raising agricultural
production, and on the Cold War. A few publications on the environment began
to appear from the late 1940s (Dale and Carter, 1954; Osborn, 1948; Leopold,
1949; Thomas, 1956; Vogt, 1948). Of these it was especially Aldo Leopold (1949)
who stimulated many of the 1960s–1970s environmentalists. In 1949 the UN
held one of the first post-war environmental meetings, the Conservation
Conference at Lake Success, New York State, and during the early 1950s helped
establish the International Union for the Protection of Nature, which in 1956
changed its name to the International Union for Conservation of Nature and
Natural Resources (IUCN).
Environmental concern in the 1960s and 1970s
NGOs began to speak out on environmental issues in the late 1950s. By the mid-
1960s there had developed what has been variously called an environmental(ist)
movement, environmentalism, the ecology movement, an environmental revolution,
the conservation movement. In the 1960s and 1970s, particularly in California, public
interest law firms (e.g. the Environmental Defense Fund or the Natural Resources
Defense Fund), supported by grants or foundations, acted on behalf of citizens or
groups of citizens (previously action had to be undertaken by individuals) to protect
the environment (Harvey and Hallett, 1977:62). Understanding of the structure and
function of the environment was improved by initiatives like the International
Geophysical Year (1957–1958), the International Biological Program (1964–1975)
and the International Hydrological Decade (1965–1974), plus expanding research.
The USA Civil Rights movement, hippies, the anti-Vietnam War movement, European
anti-nuclear weapons protests and the 1960s–1970s ‘pop culture’ in general
encouraged people to ask awkward questions about environment and development
(McCormick, 1989). After a peak of interest in the early 1970s media coverage and
public interest declined after 1974 until the mid-1980s (Sandbach, 1980:2–6;
Simmons, 1989:6; Atkinson, 1991b).
In the 1970s, environmentalists, although active in publication, litigation and
protest, were relatively non-political (in New Zealand, Germany and the UK politically
active Green Movements were developing) (McEvoy, 1971; Morrison, 1986; Dunlap
and Mertig, 1992). The focus was on over-population (Ehrlich), conservation of
wildlife, and problems associated with technology (Farvar and Milton, 1972). Many
of the publications between the mid-1960s and mid-1970s were dogmatic: warning
of coming crisis, so that some environmentalists became known as ‘prophets of doom’
or ‘ecocatastrophists’ (White, 1967; Commoner, 1972).

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In 1965 the US Ambassador to the UN, Adlai Stevenson, used Buckminster
Fuller’s metaphor Spaceship Earth in a speech; Boulding (1971) also used it, and the
catch-phrase spread the idea that the world was a vulnerable, effectively closed system.
The International Biological Program, and later the UNESCO Man and Biosphere
Program, helped establish an awareness that global-scale problems were real and the
Earth’s resources were finite. By 1970 some identified population growth as the
primary cause of environment and development problems—neo-Malthusians (Ehrlich,
1970; Ehrlich et al., 1970). The more extreme neo-Malthusians went so far as to
discuss the possibility of triage (withholding assistance from over-populated countries
with little chance of improvement, to concentrate resources on recipients who might
with help achieve control).
Hardin (1968; 1974a; 1974b) published an essay on the fate of common property
resources in the face of population growth. His ‘tragedy of the commons’ argument
was that people will tend to over-use commonly owned resources, in all probability
destroying them, because without overall agreement each user seeks to maximize
short-term interests and does not assume sufficient responsibility for stewardship
(see Box 8.1). Hardin’s views have been widely attacked on several grounds, one
being that he was describing more of an open-access resource situation than common
property resource exploitation. (Open-access resources are not managed, and so might
be damaged.) Harrison (1993) noted that seldom is use of commons a free-for-all;
communities do generally have some controls and manage things. Neo-Malthusian
views have been criticized as simplistic and invalid (Boserüp, 1990:41; Todaro, 1994:
339). There were, however, more moderate critics of western neglect of the
environment, like Maddox (1972) or Ward and Dubois (1972).
Two early 1970s publications helped shake the west’s complacency: Blueprint
for Survival (Goldsmith et al., 1972) and The Limits to Growth (Meadows et al.,
1972). The latter was intended to promote concern and further research, and explored
a range of possible future scenarios which depended on how population and other
key-development parameters were managed (McCormick, 1989:75). A second Club
of Rome report was published by Mesarovic and Pestel (1974) and a heated futures
debate developed, with some advocating slow or even zero (economic) growth and
others, like Kahn et al. (1976) or Simon (1981), of the view that a free market would
overcome environmental difficulties before limits were met, making it unnecessary
for zero growth (Freeman and Jahoda, 1978; Hughes, 1980). Critics have termed
excessive optimism about limits ‘cornucopian’ (Cotgrove, 1982). A sequel to The
Limits to Growth appeared 20 years later: Beyond the Limits (Meadows et al., 1992)
—its message: that the world has already overshot some of the limits flagged in
1972 and, if present trends continue, severe problems are virtually certain within 50
years. However, Meadows et al. (1992) still felt catastrophe could be avoided, provided
the right approaches were adopted soon.
In Small Is Beautiful Schumacher (1973) warned that the west had promoted
giant organizations, increased specialization, economic inefficiency, environmental
damage and inhuman working conditions. The remedies he offered included ‘buddhist
economics’, ‘intermediate technology’ (technology using smaller working units, local
labour and resources) and respect for renewable resources.

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