Environmental Management: Principles and practice

BOX 8.1 Common property resource: the relationship between the
returns to labour on a given resource (e.g. cropland or a fishery) and
the number of labourers exploiting it
Under private ownership for any additional employee hired beyond N*, the cost to
the producer W will be greater than the employees marginal product, and the difference
will represent a net loss to the owner. To maximize profit requires the hire of N*
workers, with a total output equal to AP* multiplied by the number of workers, N*.
Under a system of common property each worker is able to appropriate the
entire product of their work, which is equivalent to the average product of all
workers. Worker income will continue to exceed the wage (W) until enough
workers are attracted to cause the average product to fall to the level of the
wage, at which point the labour force = Nc. The implication is that aggregate
welfare will fall and resource use is inefficient (and causes degradation).
Sources: Drawn from several sources, including Todaro, 1994:338–339
Environmental concern in the 1980s and 1990s
Two seminal publications of the 1980s were the World Conservation Strategy
(IUCN, UNEP, WWF, 1980) and the Brandt Report (Independent Commission on
International Development Issues, 1980). The Brandt Report stressed that many
world problems would be solved only if it was recognized that rich and poor
countries had a mutual interest—the solution of developing countries’ problems
was not just a question of charity but of global interdependence. The World
Conservation Strategy promoted conservation for ‘sustainable development’ (the
first time the latter phrase was widely publicised). The World Commission on

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ENVIRONMENTALISM AND SOCIAL SCIENCE
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Environment and Development set out in 1984 to re-examine environment and
development problems and to formulate proposals for solutions. The Commission’s
findings (the Brundtland Report—World Commission on Environment and
Development, 1987) highlighted the need for sustainable development and urged
a marriage of economics and ecology. The Brundtland Report may be said to have
initiated a new relationship between social science, natural science, economics
and policy making, and is probably one of the most important publications of the
twentieth century.
By the late 1980s the World Bank had adjusted its policies to give greater
support to environmental management (Warford and Partow, 1989), oil prices had
fallen, and a Green Movement had emerged, particularly in Europe, and embarked
on policy advocacy. By 1988 environmental matters were on the agendas of politicians
and decision makers with a higher public profile than ever before. Although green
activity in politics has declined from a peak in the early and mid-1980s (Bramwell,
1994), it is by no means weak.