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A Holistic Approach to Sustainability

Based on Cosmocentric Pluralism

Christopher B. Barrett Department of Economics Utah State University Logan, UT 84322-3530 cbarrett@b202.usu.edu

Raymond E. Grizzle Randall Environmental Studies Center Taylor University Upland, IN 46989-1001 rygrizzle@tayloru.edu

February 1997

Abstract: This paper advances a holistic ecological approach based on a three-compartment model. This approach favors policy initiatives that lie at the intersection of the three major areas of concern common to most environmental controversies: environmental protection, provision of basic human needs, and advancing economic welfare. In support of this approach, we propose a "cosmocentric pluralism" that subsumes within it core elements of anthropocentrism, biocentrism, and ecocentrism. After presenting the basics of our model, we then explain why it is important to identify and promote a holistic ecological approach to sustainability. Here we employ the economic concept of path dependence, emphasizing that there exist multiple paths society can follow in environmental ethics and policy but once one has been chosen, implicitly or explicitly, there may be little opportunity to reverse such choices.

We share seniority of authorship equally. We are grateful for support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Global Stewardship Initiative of the Pew Charitable Trusts, Taylor University, and the Utah Agricultural Experiment Station, for the research assistance of Matt Klein, and for helpful comments by Eugene Hargrove, Jim Nash, Paul Rothrock, Ed Squiers, two anonymous referees and participants at the Sustainable Societies Workshop at the University of Minnesota in February, 1996, and the roundtable on Global Stewardship: From the Academy to the Public Square, held in Gloucester, MA, in October, 1996. The usual disclaimer applies. This paper was approved as UAES journal paper 4889.

A Holistic Approach to Sustainability

Based on Cosmocentric Pluralism

Bryan Norton has argued that a consensus is emerging among environmentalists on how we should treat nature.1 That consensus is based on widespread acceptance of much ecological theory and a common desire to protect nature to some extent, if often for different reasons. For example, bird watchers and duck hunters both advocate protection of wetlands, even though many members of these two groups may strongly disagree on other environmental questions. Their conditionally common cause is based on shared valuation of ducks (albeit for different reasons) and mutual acceptance of ecological studies showing that ducks and other birds are dependent on wetlands. There is growing recognition of such consensus among communities exhibiting quite different values, a consensus based in this country largely on increasingly widespread acceptance and understanding of ecological science and on participative decision-making.

Consensus does not, however, extend throughout the range of environmental controversy. Consequently, Norton has pursued the notion of "contextualism" as an explicit attempt at integrating socioeconomic and environmental concerns, which are commonly pitted against one another in sustainability debates. This paper extends Norton's arguments, as well as those of others who advocate a pluralistic approach to achieving consensus and resolving controversies about environmentally sustainable development. The first step is to recognize the multiple aims within the community of stakeholders. Thus in section one we first identify distinct sets of objectives pursued by different parties to contemporary policy debates, further refining a previously proposed conceptual model.2 Identification of multiple interests leads directly to the second section of the paper, wherein we review the distinct major value systems underpinning different objectives in contemporary debate over sustainability. In an important sense, the language of value systems, or "centrisms", is itself a source of controversy, in which anthropocentrists, biocentrists and ecocentrists are too often unnecessarily pitted against one another. As we discuss in the second section, there are two distinct, albeit connected, senses of centrisms, which are commonly confounded in contemporary debate. Distinguishing among these more clearly may help the various parties to sustainability debates find common ground.

In the third section we introduce our notion of a "cosmocentric" approach that is both holistic and pluralistic. We argue the importance of a shift in value systems, toward cosmocentric pluralism, by invoking the economic concept of path dependence, which emphasizes that there exist multiple paths society can follow in environmental ethics and policy but once one has been chosen, implicitly or explicitly, there may be little opportunity to reverse such choices. The largely confrontational approach prevailing in the contemporary industrial world creates considerable risks; we believe there exists a more durable, effective and just approach. In closing, we briefly discuss two promising policy initiatives, one domestic and one foreign, that fit the spirit of cosmocentric pluralism.

I. Intersecting Concerns in the Contemporary Sustainability Debate

We consider the contemporary sustainability debate excessively polarized, devolving too often into a struggle between pro- and anti-environment camps, each possessing remarkable political power and wealth. Marginalized groups (e.g., poor human communities or unprotected species) are too often left out. An explicit objective of this paper is thus to promote a more inclusive, consensual approach to conceptualizing and pursuing environmentally sustainable human societies.

A broadly acceptable definition of "sustainable development" is notoriously elusive. As Lélé points out, "the concept of sustainability originated in the context of renewable resources such as forests or fisheries, and has subsequently been adopted as a broad slogan by the environmental movement."3 The common denominator beneath any serious definition of sustainable development includes (i) the maintenance of ecological conditions necessary to maintain an ecosystem supportive of human life, and (ii) some notion of intergenerational equity, i.e., that current generations cannot expend so much natural capital as to leave future generations predictably worse off than contemporary folk. For many people, including us, sustainable development is somewhat more expansive, also depending upon (iii) achievement and maintenance of social cohesion among humans, based on mutual respect, care and justice, to maintain a social system supportive of human life, and (iv) safeguards to protect the intrinsic value and associated collective biotic rights of extrahuman creation.

The crux of the challenge to making environmentally sustainable policy is thus the resolution of different communities' divergent interests in ecosystem maintenance and intragenerational and intergenerational distribution. One can crudely distinguish between three categories of relevant human concerns commonly expressed in most debate about sustainability: protecting the natural environment, advancing economic welfare, and providing basic human needs.4 Some people are concerned that human overexploitation of the natural environment ultimately threatens human survival (although such instrumental aims may not be the only reason for advocating environmental protection).5 Others argue that some depletion of natural resources is inevitable, and therefore that economic growth is necessary to stimulate savings and thereby the accumulation of manmade capital that is (at least partly) substitutable for natural capital so as to ensure that future generations enjoy at least the same standard of living prevailing today.6 Still others decry the inattention paid to intragenerational distributional issues in the previous two perspectives.7 Their concern is that environmental protection and economic growth can be exclusive, injuring today's poor to benefit future human generations descended from today's elites or nonhuman elements of the biosphere.

Pursuit of any one of these goals generally affects each of the others, due primarily to feedback effects, as we discuss later in this section. Areas of intersection among these distinct, if crudely defined, concerns capture the existence of strategies that can advance all three objectives simultaneously. Meanwhile, there also exist approaches that advance one or perhaps two concerns at the expense of the other concern(s). The latter class probably best represents the modal approach to environmental policy in the twentieth century, in which environmental protection and/or basic human needs provision have often been sacrificed at the altar of aggregate economic growth. One can thus envision a Venn diagram comprised of three intersecting spheres, each representing a different one of those three stylized concerns. This builds on a similar, two-component approach, based on environmental protection and economics, already on offer.8 The expansion to a third dimension is necessary because social scientists and philosophers have long recognized the relationship between economic welfare and the satisfaction of basic human needs to be weak.9 Neoclassical economic welfare arguments largely ignore distributional issues, tending toward utilitarian assessments that celebrate aggregate growth.10

Myopic pursuit of any one of the three goals in our simple heuristic often has unforeseen adverse effects on one or both of the others. And those adverse effects often have subsequent contagion effects on the initial goal due to the inextricability of human distributional questions, economic growth and environmental conservation. For instance, the particular form of industrial economic growth pursued in the twenty-five years following World War II has had adverse (and generally unanticipated) spillover effects on the environment (e.g., atmospheric acid deposition, water pollution, and toxic waste disposal). Many believe it has likewise degraded the satisfaction of basic human needs for underprivileged groups within industrial and pre-industrial economies.11 Moreover, in places like the former Soviet Union and the transition states of eastern Europe, the adverse environmental effects of a previous generation's myopic pursuit of economic growth are now coming back to retard economic growth.

Less commonly recognized are the adverse effects of some forms of environmental protection. For example, the western "fences and fines" approach to wildlife conservation and parks management has largely failed to safeguard biodiversity in rural Africa and has imposed a significant cost in terms of foregone economic growth and reduced standards of living among communities on the peripheries of most protected areas. In Kenya alone, 2.8 percent of GDP is spent annually to conserve biological diversity through protected parks, forests and nature reserves, while 30 percent of its population remains mired in abject poverty and communities around protected areas overwhelmingly favor degazetting those lands to permit agricultural production for subsistence cultivation.12 Among poor, rural Africans one thus commonly hears western environmentalists referred to as "green imperialists".

Economists use the term "externalities" to describe situations in which the full costs (or benefits) of a choice are not borne by the decision-taker. Actions to advance economic welfare, basic human needs provision or environmental protection often create externalities. Externalities result in socially inefficient decision-making13 and, in some cases, outright harm done to disenfranchised persons and species. Where there are feedback effects, as certainly seems the case in the interaction of human and nonhuman systems in the biosphere (even though we understand these effects only dimly), satisfaction of different objectives appears co-requisite to the lasting achievement of any one objective. No one can be satisfied indefinitely without satisfying the rest. In other words, each objective-environmental protection, the advance of economic welfare, and meeting basic human needs-has both intrinsic and instrumental value. Especially because we so poorly understand the complex feedback loops within human societies and between human society and the extrahuman environment, failure to view the environmental challenge in such a holistic fashion often sows the seed of failure. In our view, holism is necessary to sustainability.

Economists' standard answer to the problem of externalities is to internalize them by one of two means. The first option is to move decision-making authority to a higher level, encompassing both the original decision-taker and those affected secondarily. Quite aside from the undistinguished history of command-and-control approaches to environmental regulation,14 there exists the more fundamental problem that no authority credibly and equitably represents all species, places and generations. Not only is there no world human government, there is certainly no clear mortal master of the universe. The conglomeration of all parties under one decision- making authority is not feasible with respect to issues transcending space, species, and time. Selective regulation can be and has been effective on some issues, but government authority is not a magic bullet to externalities problems.

The second approach to internalize externalities follows from the Nobel prize-winning Coase theorem, which demonstrates that, in the absence of transactions costs and in the presence of a complete set of property rights, markets will create appropriate incentives for individuals to resolve externalities freely through market transactions. On this basis there has been considerable excitement in recent years for market-based solutions based on tradable permits and the like. Incentive-based approaches to environmental protection-most commonly taxes or transferable property rights- therefore rightly emphasize the need for accountability for the consequences of one's actions. The problem arises, however, that transactions costs are real and insuperable across species, generations, and, sometimes, cultures. If those to whom one must be accountable cannot transact, market incentive-based approaches fail to resolve the externality problem fully.15 The economic (Pareto) efficiency of market exchange is predicated on a socially acceptable ex ante distribution of rights within and across generations. The valuation of environmental and resource services and stocks can vary considerably with hypothetical changes to the intergenerational distribution of property rights.16 But we haven't institutional (especially legal) mechanisms for assigning and protecting future generations' rights, so it is not at all clear that one should accept partial (in the sense that there is no intergenerational market) market equilibria as either economically efficient or just.

The challenge of sustainability arises precisely because the two textbook approaches to the problem of externalities will not do the trick. There is no technocratic solution. Other means must be found to hold decision- makers accountable to society for the consequences of their actions. There must be institutions beyond - not in place of - government and the market.

We thus see a primary role for (natural and social) scientific inquiry, open popular discussion of principles of justice, and pluralistic legal and political mechanisms to limit the power of any individual or group. Science can identify the true nature of the sustainability challenge by improving our understanding of the complex web of natural-social interdependence and by identifying prospective paths through which distinct goals can be mutually supported. Simply put, science can check demagoguery and foolishness. So can widespread popular discussion of principles of (distributive and procedural) justice, thereby building a case for choosing mutually acceptable strategies over others which might yield more gains for one constituency but less for one or more of the others. Pluralism ensures that all perspectives can be voiced. We do not mean to idealize pluralistic institutions, science, or moral philosophy, but rather to emphasize the inherent complementarity of the three and the necessity of looking to extragovernmental and extramarket institutions for support in achieving sustainable societies.17 The light of scientific scrutiny and participatory processes tends to induce greater adherence to ethical standards. A commitment to truth and open public scrutiny improves scientific discovery (hence, replication and peer review). A widespread commitment to procedural and distributive justice and substantive, scientific input helps keep participatory processes from devolving into chaos. Thus, like many before us, we believe that science can be complemented by ethics and that modern ethical studies can likewise benefit from closer contact with the social and natural sciences, and that participative political processes are important to this integration.18 Hence, our advocacy of a holistic approach emphasizing the search for common ground based on a shared understanding of the interrelationship between different species and subpopulations of species.19

Science can help uncover common ground (e.g. Norton's consensus argument), but scientific discovery alone will not suffice, since the fundamental problem is the existence of externalities which cannot be reconciled through any mechanism-whether government- or market-based-if humans act purely out of self-interest. The articulation and promotion of suitable, pluralistic institutional procedures, and environmental ethics are equally important to the productive resolution of environmental controversy.20 Most fundamentally, clear ethical standards of justice are necessary because of the wildly unequal distribution of decision-making power within the ecosystem; a small subpopulation of a single species (Homo sapiens) wields unusual power to exercise unchecked discretion. However, in the presence of an ethic to which individuals subscribe, people do become accountable: to their conscience, their God, or whatever the source of their ethics. Empirical evidence indicates that people do then freely undertake profit-sacrificing environmental stewardship that can improve economic efficiency by reducing environmental externalities.21 Many people clearly hold such an ethic already. A central objective of environmental protection movements must be to define and promote a holistic ecological ethic so as to enlarge the population which values environmental protection and the satisfaction of basic human needs sufficiently to generate an environmentally and socially sustainable society. Participatory decision-making processes are a requisite, institutional step in that direction.

Our three-compartment model based on cosmocentric pluralism suggests that for policies to be sustainable in the long-term, they must formally and simultaneously consider the legitimate goals of protecting the environment, meeting basic human needs, and advancing economic welfare. Where policies are designed and implemented at the intersection of multiple goals, they at least avoid imposing negative externalities on the intersecting goals and possibly advance both simultaneously. Policies that intersect all three policy objectives are not only holistic and pluralistic, in the sense that they are consistent with distinct legitimate concerns, but they are also far more likely to prove sustainable.22 The further a policy set is from the area of intersection in our imaginary Venn diagram, the more serious the negative externalities involved and the higher the probability of nearer-term system collapse.23

Before concluding the section, let us address an anticipated objection. Some would challenge our belief that one can reconcile pursuit of economic welfare, the satisfaction of basic human needs, and environmental protection. This question lies at the heart of the debate about sustainability and is itself a subject deserving of a paper much longer than this one. Thus we do not attempt a complete treatment here. Instead, we make just one simple, fundamental point in our defense: no one really understands well the relationship between these three objectives. As Hammond points out, "[human] carrying capacity is dependent on technology and social organization and hence changes over time . . . the relation of economic growth to consumption, and of consumption to environmental harm, is more complex, and more context-specific, than might first appear."24 There is empirical evidence to support both the claim that the maintenance (even improvement) of ecosystem health is consistent with economic growth and the counterclaim that they are incompatible.25 Similarly, there is both empirical and theoretical evidence that the satisfaction of basic human needs contributes directly to the protection of environmental resources (e.g., forests, soils, water, wildlife) and that economic growth can improve the lot of the poor and satisfaction of basic human needs; but these claims are likewise contested. Empirical and theoretical evidence suggests our three stylized spheres of interest may indeed intersect, although the matter is by no means settled. With the matter open to reasonable dispute, we think it unwise not to pursue vigorously the potential regions of mutual satisfaction.

II. Value Systems and Sustainability

The simple Venn diagram model described in the preceding section provides a way of visualizing and reconciling the multiple mundane objectives involved in contemporary debates about sustainable development. Given complex and poorly understood feedback mechanisms within human societies and between human society and the natural environment, the most holistic and pluralistic approaches appear most sustainable in practice. There is an important parallel in environmental ethics. A holistic and pluralistic approach to value systems may likewise help foster sustainable human societies, especially since widespread acceptance of and respect for ethical standards is central to resolving the difficult externalities problems involved in seeking sustainable paths of human development, as argued in the previous section.

This section briefly summarizes the four dominant value systems found in contemporary environmental discourse. An objective in this section is to show that there is probably more common ground between opposing camps than is commonly recognized. We will then argue in section three for a holistic, pluralistic approach to value systems in sustainability debates.

Environmental ethical perspectives may be classified in a variety of ways. One common dichotomous division is between monistic and pluralistic approaches. In the limit, monists search for central principles that form the basis for a unified ethic from which all moral judgements can be derived. Pluralists, meanwhile, explicitly recognize as valid a variety of approaches and ethical frameworks which can be used to address moral issues. Therefore, pluralists commonly arrive at moral judgements in less structured ways.26 In a recent critique of the monistic approach, which often seems to dominate mainstream environmentalism, Norton concludes: "...if a monistic theory is to account for all environmental obligations, it must account for the differences, as well as the similarities, in treatment that should be accorded differing elements of nature. To deny this will be to homogenize environmental policy, ignore irreconcilable conflicts of interest in nature, and insist that one ontologically grounded moral theory applies throughout the universe."27 We concur that a pluralistic approach embracing a wide range of underlying perspectives is essential for addressing sustainability controversies in the real world. Indeed, we argue in the next section that given imperfect information about the universe and the future and in recognition of human error and finitude, only pluralistic approaches are feasible. Moreover, and paradoxically, pluralism might better accommodate the ultimate aims of many monists better than non-pluralistic processes because of the problems of imperfect human agency.

The monism-pluralism axis is but one dimension of the environmental ethics literature. Another distinguishes among three distinct ethical perspectives: biocentrism, ecocentrism, and anthropocentrism.28 One well-represented view within mainstream environmentalism currently is biocentrism. Perhaps the most influential statements of biocentric thought can be found in the writings of Paul Taylor.29 His "biocentric outlook" consists of four major beliefs which can be summarized as: (i) humans are members of the Earth's community; (ii) all species are integral elements in a system of interdependence; (iii) all organisms are centers of life, each pursuing its own good; and (iv) humans are not inherently superior to other living things. We maintain that only the fourth belief is problematic to most opponents of biocentrism. Moreover, when considering the "priority principles" Taylor proposes for resolving conflicting claims among species, belief four may not even be necessary. In like manner, others have argued that some components of "biocentric" beliefs can be held by those who do not consider themselves biocentrists. For example, Hargrove notes that even though the notion of "intrinsic value" for living things (as opposed to conceiving of them only in instrumental terms) has been identified primarily with biocentrism, it can also be a part of other perspectives.30 Biocentrism is not fully disjoint from anthropocentrist or ecocentrist perspectives; there is an important area of intersection.

The second major perspective is ecocentrism, essentially an expansion of "life-centered" biocentrism to include abiotic components of the environment. Ecocentrism offers a perspective that emphasizes systemic values, caring less ab out individual life forms than about their interactions. Ecocentrism has partly evolved out of biocentrism, but it also can be traced to Aldo Leopold's "land ethic."31 Ecocentrists share biocentrists' belief in the intrinsic worth of non- human elements of the biosphere. By emphasizing interactions, however, ecocentrists also share anthropocentrists' instrumental valuation of the natural environment. Ecocentrism thus shares important common ground with both biocentrism and anthropocentrism, even if proponents' styles sometimes clash.

The final two perspectives to be considered are both labeled "anthropocentrism", or "human-centered" valuation. Anthropocentrist thought has dominated moral philosophy for nearly all of its history. Anthropocentrism comes in at least two varieties: "strong" and "weak".32 "Strong" (or "heavy") anthropocentrists emphasize human dominion over nature and treat the nonhuman environment primarily as a bundle of natural resources to be managed and exploited for maximal human gain. This is the view that is captured in much of natural resource economics. In the strong anthropocentric tradition, the moral value of things is reducible without remainder to the value it creates for human beings, whether through the generation of monetary income through resource exploitation, of pleasure through amenities use, or of psychic utility through the existence of ecosystems in their natural state. The key to this line of thinking is that environmental protection is purely a means to the ends of human utility maximization, and thus is not always worth pursuing. The ecosystem has only instrumental value, not intrinsic worth. While most environmentalists may abhor this view, it can be reconciled with biocentric, ecocentric and weak anthropocentric approaches, as captured in the example in this paper's opening paragraph, of duck hunters' instrumental valuation of wetlands preservation.

"Weak" (or "broad" or "longsighted") anthropocentrism, by contrast, focuses not on immediate human gratification so much as on the satisfaction of basic needs for the whole human community, present and future, and maintenance of the ecosystem of which we are a part. The metric of analysis is consequently more complex. As in the "basic human needs" literature in international development,33 the emphasis here falls on ensuring all humans enjoy adequate standards of nutrition, health, shelter, water and sanitation, and education. Somewhat more generally, Sen's capabilities and freedoms approach captures the essence of this concern to try to provide all persons, across space and time, with the capabilities to choose to (not) satisfy basic human needs.34 Weak anthropocentrists, like ecocentrists, tend to pay attention to the complex interactions between and dynamics of human societies and natural environments. Given uncertainty about dynamics and interactions, the weak anthropocentric approach often favors caution with respect to resource exploitation ("safe minimum standards"), sometimes best expressed in the emerging field of ecological economics. Moreover, like ecocentrists and biocentrists, weak anthropocentrists often ascribe intrinsic value to nature. But, where nonhuman species threaten the satisfaction of basic human needs (e.g., elephants that trample crops, malarial mosquitoes), weak anthropocentrists may oppose environmental protection. African conservationists' opposition to the CITES ivory ban and widespread refusal by developing country governments to ban chemical insecticides partly reflect such thought. Weak anthropocentrists like Norton therefore oppose the homogenization of environmental policy implied by monist thought. The weak anthropocentrist worldview is distinct from the strong version in that social activists assert the moral imperative of care for marginalized communities - which might include unrepresented future generations - and generally reject the cost-benefit analysis that guide strong anthropocentrist decision-making, and they acknowledge nature's intrinsic value. The weak anthropocentrist position is perhaps best understood as a systemic one with a preferential option for humanity.

Too often commentators emphasize the differences between these distinct ethical traditions, not their similarities. For instance, undergraduate environmental science textbooks typically include a chapter on ethics that juxtaposes extreme positions. Terms like "frontier" vs. "environmental" ethics or "throwaway" vs. "sustainable earth" worldviews are sometimes used to label the extremes.35 This stylized representation symbolizes and perhaps feeds what we consider a disturbing tendency toward polarization in academic and policy debates on environmental policy. This makes genuinely inclusive and pluralistic processes more difficult to maintain, even as it becomes more obvious that authentically participative approaches are central to achieving sustainable societies. Scholars and teachers might attend more carefully to explaining philosophical differences without discouraging dialogue and mutual respect.

III. Cosmocentrism: A Holistic, Pluralistic Approach

In an important sense, the language of value systems, or "centrisms", is itself a source of the controversy, in which anthropocentrists, biocentrists and ecocentrists are too often unnecessarily pitted against one another. There are two distinct, if connected, varieties of "centrisms", although they are commonly confounded in contemporary debate. Niebuhr suggests a distinction between centrisms that (1) indicate ultimate values that are to take priority in cases of conflict, and those that (2) reflect the scope of the values to be represented in inquiry and normative assessment.36 This is a subtle but crucial distinction, on which we build our case for cosmocentric pluralism.

We offer the concept of "cosmocentrism" as a holistic and pluralistic synthesis that admits diversity of perspectives on sustainability matters and focuses on their complementary interaction and the need to protect the whole system, not just its privileged, or particular underprivileged, components. Our cosmocentrism is a "variety one" centrism; it is valuation-oriented. More precisely, cosmocentrism assigns ultimate value to protecting the whole of creation. In that sense it is holistic in the spirit of ecocentrism; the integrated whole has a reality independent of and greater than the sum of its parts. But cosmocentrism is also necessarily pluralistic because each component of the biosphere has value and protection of the whole of creation is achieved only through stewardship of its constituent parts, much as care for an automobile requires simultaneous care for each of its multiple, interconnected systems.

Components' values, however, are not inherently equal under cosmocentrism. In particular, although humans are not exclusively valuable, as implied by strong anthropocentrism, neither are they of equal value with all other species, as suggested by biocentrists. For a variety of reasons, including humans' unique capacity and responsibility to steward the rest of creation, the value of humankind is superior to that of otherkind. Moreover, because all components have value, so too do they possess rights, but "biotic rights are not the same full set of rights that human enjoy or equal rights with humans."37 Values and rights derive from what Nash labels "ecological relationality", a contextual approach that considers both the intrinsic and the instrumental values of all creatures, the latter based especially on the corporate interests of the ecosystem.38 The complex ecology by which biotic and abiotic elements are related physically necessarily relates them morally. The challenge, however, is that within the biosphere only humankind is capable of exercising and acting on moral judgements. The challenge of sustainability thus arises primarily because of limited human appreciation of (i) the roles of nonhuman species and abiotic elements in complex ecosystems and (ii) our own delicate place in these systems, which do not exist for our satisfaction so much as for our stewardship and because of limited mechanisms for ensuring a morally defensible human relation to nature. Hence "conservation", a word with insightful etymology: "con-", meaning "together" and "servare", meaning "to keep". Together we keep the biosphere. And in togetherness, common ground takes precedence.

Hence too the inherent pluralism of a cosmocentric approach. Just as biodiversity is necessary to preserve the richness of the physical environment, we put forward the corollary that diversity of value systems might be equally essential to preserve the richness of the moral and spiritual environment which motivates humanity to take proper care of the biosphere.39 The reality of the whole is comprised of multiple parts and perhaps multiple explanations and dynamics, none of which alone allows humankind to approach complete understanding. Cosmocentrism is therefore pluralistic in practice because no mortal being knows fully how to protect the whole ecosystem. Implementation of a cosmocentric value system therefore requires the interaction of multiple value systems that collectively ensure reasonably holistic choice by constraining the range of decision-makers' choice. An environmental monist implicitly places great faith in the capacity of a human decision maker to understand and follow the ultimate principle. The irony is that these same environmentalists routinely point to anthropogenic causes of current environmental problems, even while holding great expectations of humanity's ability to understand and act upon an ultimate principle applied to an unprecedentedly complex system. We are less sanguine, believing the ecosystem too complex to be well understood by humans any time soon, and humans too fallible to be trusted unconditionally. Hence the practical need for pluralism, to erect a system of checks and balances.

Cosmocentrism is clearly an abstraction since the whole of creation cannot represent itself in the ongoing human debate about our relationship with nature. Instead, people champion the cause of other species and of the biosphere's abiotic components, and reasonable people disagree about the nature of the interactions and dynamics of the biosphere's constituent systems. Humans' extraordinary cognitive skills and moral nature endow us with an ability and a responsibility to exercise choice on behalf of a broader universe of biotic and abiotic elements. In this important, practical sense, all debate about sustainability is anthropocentric, in the second sense of centrisms, for environmental controversy reflects the scope of values articulated by human agents acting on behalf of themselves and nonhuman principals. The human values articulated in a dialogue that is inherently anthropocentric in Niebuhr's second sense may thus include perspectives that are biocentric or ecocentric in his first sense. We believe that failure to recognize this subtle but crucial distinction has fed divisiveness that threatens the urgent project of environmentally sustainable human and economic development. The recent Daly-Sagoff debate captures the essence of this confusion, which Daly couches in terms of a disagreement between deontologists and consequentialists.40 Sagoff is concerned with the ideal of sustainability, i.e., a variety one centrism; Daly on the practical means of implementing sustainability, i.e., a variety two centrism. Indeed, their exchange also highlights the value of a pluralistic approach; would debate or policy have been improved by omitting either of their insightful commentaries?

IV. Choosing the Right Path

Humanity enjoys disproportionate power to impose its will on the environment and thereby to influence the future path of the whole ecosystem, humanity included. Indeed, this highlights a subtle irony: it is humanity's awesome power over creation that motivates even the most ardently biocentric of environmentalists. Yet this points to the immutable anthropocentrism of implementation to which we have already referred. Humanity is both within nature (in biophysical terms) and above it (in decision-making capacity and authority). Yet because individual humans exhibit idiosyncratic preferences, suffer limited cognitive capacity, and are fallible and finite-lived, it is unlikely that any individual or subgroup could or would pursue an appropriately balanced path. Whatever the principal one imagines lies behind contemporary sustainability challenges, there is an associated human agency problem. When one admits the multifaceted human agency problem in representing nonhuman interests, it becomes plain that only a pluralistic process can deliver environmental protection consistent with a cosmocentric ethic. Our approach thus advocates pluralistic political processes for the admission and celebration of diverse perspectives. Pluralism of that sort is the means by which we overcome divisiveness and achieve unity, the identification and pursuit of goals common to all the participating perspectives.

Continued poor understanding of the complex web of interrelationships that link all elements (including humans) of a community may lead to disbelief in the existence of a common ground and to intolerance of others' world views. This clearly poses a challenge to any holistic approach. Our concern is that initiatives that fail to integrate the diverse, legitimate interests of distinct stakeholders are a siren's call of sorts, attracting attention and resources but ultimately making it difficult to shift from what may prove to be an unsustainable path to another that might be sustainable. This section makes the case for careful and critical assessment of policy paths.

It might seem an attractive intermediate step to pursue policies compatible with any two of the three objectives depicted as intersecting spheres in our heuristic model of section one, and, to a certain extent, that may be true. Only through designing and experimenting with strategies that seem to show promise do we discover whether a policy approach lies at the intersection of all three spheres, any pair, or is not at an intersection at all. We therefore support pursuit of intermediate strategies on an experimental basis and on a modest scale. We are, however, concerned that in peoples' enthusiasm to find a durable solution we do not collectively dive head first into a mirage from which it can be difficult to extricate ourselves.

The principle risk involved in following a strategy compatible with only two of the three objectives is the "path dependence" of policy and technology. The notion of path dependence emerges from nonstationary game theoretic models in which an agent's optimal present choice depends on the history of the game, i.e., the path followed. The economic concept of path dependence derives from two sources: (1) the existence of positive feedback effects associated with fixed costs,41 economies of scale,42 learning effects,43 or any combination of these; and (2) the existence of alternative choices at some juncture. Path dependence emphasizes that at any point in time there exist multiple feasible approaches to achieving a particular set of objectives, but these approaches compete for resources. Moreover, the triumph of one path over others becomes self-sustaining in that its relative efficiency increases endogenously as its acceptance spreads. Turning back thus becomes especially costly and unlikely and development strategies become canalized.44

We anticipate path dependence in the articulation and dissemination of environmental ethics and in policy formulation. Most people find it difficult to value several competing ethics simultaneously; there is a large degree of exclusivity to one's ethical beliefs. And once one has grown comfortable with a particular ethical system, it is often quite difficult to shift to another system.45 Policies likewise create their own constituencies, not least of which among the officials tasked with implementing a policy and the policy's beneficiaries. We are thus concerned that unsustainable strategies, and the ethical codes that give rise to them, become difficult to reverse once strongly supported. Hence the need for care in choosing the right path.

Consider, for example, the economic development strategies in vogue during the early post-World War II years. These emphasized industrialization, the transfer of economic surplus from agriculture to industry, and state central planning of economic growth. Countries attaining independence during this period-disproportionately from Africa and South and Southeast Asia-tended to follow a statist approach to development which helped bring both environmental and social crises. Reversing the spiral of agricultural and environmental degradation, rapid population growth and sociopolitical instability is proving difficult in these nations.46

The boundaries of the areas of intersection among the three compartments in our model are clearly unknown; the search for a sustainable path is necessarily stochastic. In our experience, the approaches with which we are familiar that come closest to achieving the desired holism and pluralism we advocate would be (1) integrated conservation and development projects (ICDPs) currently in vogue in the developing world, and (2) integrated coastal zone management (ICZM) efforts in the U.S.

While we have been critical of the present design of ICDPs,47 they properly couple conservation efforts with measures to relieve endemic poverty and social problems in human communities and policies to foster economic growth in the host region. ICDPs "aim to achieve conservation goals by promoting development and providing local people with alternative income sources that sustain rather than threaten the flora and fauna in natural habitats".48 ICDPs have emerged to replace the old "fences and fines" approach to protected area conservation, which often punished the poor for animal poaching or slash-and-burn cultivation. They involve quasicontractual arrangements wherein residents of communities on the periphery of a protected area surrender access to, or curtail illegal offtake of, native species and their habitats in exchange for alternative sources of income and sustenance. At their best, ICDPs are highly participatory, community-based exercises in establishing and maintaining a shared commitment between conservation professionals, development specialists, and impoverished communities to respect and promote each others' objectives.49 Such initiatives are relatively new and have generally been enthusiastically embraced by environmental managers, although there are indications of problems in several respects that raise doubts about particular designs' long-term effectiveness as sustainable strategies.50 Still there are multiple, context-driven designs for ICDPs that, in aggregate, constitute a major, promising range of experiments toward identifying sustainable strategies.

In the United States, the Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM) program appears to lie at the intersection of all three spheres of our model. In his comprehensive handbook, Clark describes ICZM as ". . . a unitary program-it has to both manage development and conserve natural resources and, while doing so, it has to integrate the concerns of all relevant sectors of society and of the economy. Also it is most important that coastal economic development be generated for the people of a country, not just for those who are already rich and powerful."51 An important implication of ICZM is that existing laws do not necessarily have to be altered in order to move to a more holistic form of management. It may only be necessary to better coordinate their implementation. This is particularly relevant for the situation in industrialized countries like the U.S. with extensive environmental legislation which consists of a wide diversity of sometimes narrowly focused laws.

ICDPs and ICZM are the only examples of which we are aware of policy efforts that explicitly adopt an ecological ethic holistic enough to be respectful of the distinct world views of different community members and the needs to search for and seize common ground. At the very least, these initiatives might be viewed as the first pragmatic steps in this direction. At best, the most successful ones may provide transferable lessons in how to cultivate and implement a holistic ethic of sustainability among human communities of divergent interests.

We predict that the greatest success will likely emerge from multiple, simultaneous, experimental approaches that keep bets on any single strategy modest until its ramifications are reasonably well understood. Having established the design, implementation, and results of an approach, policy makers can then reinforce success. In this way path-dependence can be used toward positive ends, with success becoming self-sustaining. There is anecdotal evidence of this occurring in U.S. watershed management as state departments of natural resources try multiple- management regimes, then move most (if not all) sites over to the approach that brings the best results, thereby spatially extending and institutionally deepening the most sustainable strategy.

V. Conclusions

Contemporary debate about environmentally sustainable societies is too often a confrontational struggle between strong anthropocentric ("save it so we can use it") and extreme biocentric ("all species are of equal worth and must be preserved") perspectives. Ecologically and morally, however, humans as a species have a much broader range of relationships to other species than purely adversarial. We, like others before us, argue that fuller consideration of the complex relationships within humankind and between humans and other species leads to a more holistic ecological ethic than one typically witnesses in the environmentalism of the contemporary industrial world. A holistic ecological ethic respects the different world views, recognizes the potential for mutually compatible strategies, and seeks them out. This may require a fairly radical shift in value systems; our cosmocentric pluralism is one possibility.

The whole of creation is in need of protection if its human and nonhuman systems are to prove sustainable for generations to come. There is increasing recognition of the complex interconnectedness and dynamics of all components of the planet. But the human agents for different value systems, and thus for different elements of the biosphere, routinely fail to communicate and coordinate effectively. The whole of creation is thus like a body without the nervous system that ensures a proper working relationship among the body's organs. A nervous system is necessary for the optimal functioning of the body as a unit. Not only does lack of communication lead to coordination failures in contemporary sustainability efforts, it too often begets disrespect which sows the seeds of future communication and coordination problems. A dialogical approach is necessary, in which science, pluralistic political processes, and the promulgation of widespread appreciation of the ecological and moral demands of sustainable societies play a central part.

Notes (The note number is linked to the text location that first references this note.)

1 B. G. Norton, Toward Unity Among Environmentalists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991); B. G. Norton, "A New Paradigm for Environmental Management" In R. Costanza, B.G. Norton, and B.D. Haskell (eds.), Ecosystem Health: New Goals for Environmental Management (Washington: Island Press, 1992). See B. K. Steverson, "Contextualism and Norton's Convergence Hypothesis," Environmental Ethics 17 (1995): 135-150 for a recent critical assessment of Norton's ideas.

2 R. E. Grizzle, "Environmentalism Should Include Human Ecological Needs." BioScience 44 (1994): 263-8; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA), Note to Correspondents (April 12), (Office of Communication, Education, and Public Affairs, 1994). The model is also a formal representation of what others have suggested (e.g. I. Serageldin and A. Steer, eds., Making Development Sustainable: From Concepts to Action (Washington D.C.: The World Bank, 1994); Indicators of Sustainable Development, The Wuppertal Workshop - 15-17 November 1995 (UN Commission on Sustainable Development, 1995).

3 S.M.Lélé, "Sustainable Development: A Critical Review," World Development 19 (1991):609.

4 We use the term "human needs" as essentially synonymous with "human rights" as the latter appears in the current environmental ethics literature (e.g., J. W. Nickel and E. Viola, "Integrating Environmentalism and Human Rights," Environmental Ethics 16 (1994): 265-273). Our definition of human needs follows P. Streeten, S.J. Burki, M.Ul Haq, N. Hicks, and F. Stewart, First Things First: Meeting Basic Human Needs in Developing Countries (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981) and includes the assurance of adequate standards of nutrition, health, shelter, water and sanitation, and education.

5 Herman Daly is one of the most articulate voices for this position. See, for instance, his recent Beyond Growth: The Economics of Sustainable Development (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996)

6 Robert Solow is perhaps the best known proponent of this view. See his "An Almost Practical Step Toward Sustainability," invited lecture at Resources for the Future, 1992.

7 See, for instance, S.M.Lélé, "Sustainable Development: A Critical Review,"; R.C.d'Arge, R.B.Norgaard, M.Olson Jr., and R. Somerville, "Economic Growth, Sustainability, and the Environment," Contemporary Policy Issues 9 (1991): 1-23; P. Dasgupta, An Inquiry Into Well- Being and Destitution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993); or C.B.Barrett, "Fairness, Stewardship and Sustainable Development," Ecological Economics 19(1996):11-17.

8 In his Toward Unity Among Environmentalists, Norton uses such a two-compartment model. His view seems to be that our "human needs" and "economic welfare" concerns can be combined into a "socioeconomic" sphere.

9 P. Streeten, et al., First Things First, 1981; A. Sen, On Ethics and Economics, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987); United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Human Development Report 1995 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995); M. Nussbaum and A. Sen, eds., The Quality of Life (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993).

10 Most social scientists and humanists appear surprisingly unaware that the traditional yardstick of macroeconomic performance, growth in gross domestic product (GDP) or gross national product (GNP), not only omits net changes in natural resource stocks (a point about which many environmentalists have agitated), but it also imposes an explicitly weighted utilitarian social welfare function, in which individuals' weights are equal to their income the previous period. Humans' social value is directly attributable to income in the usual measure.

11 G. Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1973); National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB), Economic Justice For All: Pastoral Letter on Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy (Washington, D.C.: NCCB, 1986).

12 On the Kenyan case, see M. Norton-Griffiths and C. Southey, "The Opportunity Costs of Biodiversity Conservation in Kenya," Ecological Economics 12 (1995):125-39, and J.S. Akama, C.L. Lant, and G.W. Burnett, "Conflicting Attitudes Toward State Wildlife Conservation Programs in Kenya," Society and Natural Resources 8 (1995):133-44. More generally, see M. Wells, K.Brandon and L. Hannah, People and Parks: Linking Protected Area Management with Local Communities (Washington: World Bank, 1992), C.B.Barrett and P.Arcese, "Are ICDPs Sustainable? On The Conservation of Large Mammals in Sub-Saharan Africa" World Development 23 (1995):1073-1085, or L. Taylor, "Sustainable Development: An Introduction," World Development 24 (1996): 215-225.

13 In the language of neoclassical economics, competitive market equilibria are not Pareto optimal in the presence of externalities. Without the jargon, externalities distort decision makers' incentives, causing too much activity that injures others and too little activity that benefits others.

14 P.J. Hill, "Can Markets or Government Do More for the Environment?" In M. Cromartie (ed.), Creation At Risk? Religion, Science, and Environmentalism (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1994).

15 G.B. Asheim, "Sustainability: Ethical Foundations and Economic Properties." World Bank Policy Research working paper 1302; J. von Amsberg, "Excessive Environmental Risks: An Intergenerational Market Failure," European Economic Review 39 (1995):1447-64.

16 See R.B. Howarth and R.B.Norgaard, "Intergenerational Resource Rights, Efficiency, and Social Optimality," Land Economics (1990): 1-11.

17 For example, what we know and how we interpret our knowledge depends fundamentally on both our individual ethics and our collective rules of interaction, which together determine the power relations in society. Pluralistic rules and individual ethical commitments to pluralism provide a check on science.

18 For an economist's perspective on this see A. Sen, On Ethics and Economics.

19 J.P. Platteau has analogously emphasized the importance of "generalized morality" to the establishment of efficient capitalist markets, where all market failures cannot be fully resolved by government authority or by the careful definition of property rights (J.P. Platteau, "Behind The Market Stage Where Real Societies Exist-Part I: The Role of Public and Private Order Institutions," Journal of Development Studies 30 (1994): 533-77; and "Behind The Market Stage Where Real Societies Exist-Part II: The Role of Moral Norms." Journal of Development Studies 30 (1994):753-817.

20 See R.J. Lilieholm and J. Romm, "Pinelands National Reserve: An Intergovernmental Approach to Nature Preservation," Environmental Management 16 (1992): 335-43 for a description of a pluralistic approach that seems to be succeeding in New Jersey's Pinelands National Reserve.

21 D. Colman, "Ethics and Externalities: Agricultural Stewardship and Other Behaviour: Presidential Address." Journal of Agricultural Economics 45 (1994): 299-311.

22 This consistency can be of either strong or weak varieties. Strong consistency advances all goals simultaneously. Weak consistency does no harm to any goal and will thus include strong consistency as a proper subset. To maximize the set of sustainable strategies, we invoke weak consistency based on a "do no harm" standard.

23 This is one way to understand the marked difference between eastern Europe and North America in rates of environmental deterioration due to heavy industrialization. Both regimes were environmentally unsustainable in the long run but clearly not to an equal degree.

24 A. L. Hammond, "Limits to Consumption and Economic Growth: The Middle Ground," Philosophy & Public Policy 15, No. 4 (1995): 9-12.

25 See, on the one side, d'Arge et al., "Economic Growth, Sustainability, and the Environment," J. M. Antle and G. Heidebrink, "Environment and Development: Theory and International Evidence," Economic Development and Cultural Change 43 (1995): 603-25; or G. M. Grossman and A.B. Krueger, "Economic Growth and the Environment." Quarterly Journal of Economics (1995): 353-77. On the other side of the debate, see K. Arrow, B.Bolin,R.Costanza, P.Dasgupta, C.Folke, C.S.Holling, B.O. Jansson, S. Levin, K.G. Maler, C.Perrings, and D. Pimentel, "Economic growth, carrying capacity, and the environment" Science 268 (1996): 520- 521; or H.E.Daly, Beyond Growth.

26 See, for example, E. C. Hargrove's Foundations of Environmental Ethics (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1989, p. 8) assessment of our search for an environmental ethic: "...our environmental ethic, when we really have one, will be a collection of independent ethical generalizations, only loosely related, not a rationally ordered system of ethical prescriptions."

27 B.G. Norton, "Why I am not a nonanthropocentrist," Environmental Ethics, 17 (1995): 357. Also see Hargrove's Foundations of Environmental Ethics for similar argumentss, and a "weakly anthropocentric" perspective.

28 Each of these perspectives forms the basis for particular ethical movements like "Deep Ecology," "Eco-Feminism," etc. Instead of treating all the various movements, we only consider the fundamental underlying perspectives.

29 P. Taylor, Respect for Nature: A Theory of Environmental Ethics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986). J. P. Sterba, "From Biocentric Individualism to Biocentric Pluralism," Environmental Ethics 17 (1995): 191-207, provides a concise review of the influence of Taylor's arguments, and offers some revisions of his "priority principles."

30 See Hargrove, Foundations of Environmental Ethics, or J. A. Nash, Loving Nature: Ecological Integrity and Christian Responsibility (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1991), p. 10.

31 See J. Baird Callicott, "I. Overview" in Encyclopedia of Bioethics, revised edition (New York: Simon & Schuster Macmaillan): 680-83, for a review of the ecocentrism literature.

32 For example, see Hargrove's Foundations of Environmental Ethics, B. G. Norton, "Environmental Ethics and Weak Anthropocentrism." Environmental Ethics 6 (1984):131-48, or F. Ferré, "Persons in Nature: Toward an Applicable and Unified Environmental Ethics," Zygon 28 (1993): 441-53

33 For example, see P. Streeten et al., First Things First.

34 See Sen's Commodities and Capabilities (Amsterdam: North Holland, 1985), "Well Being and Capability", in M. Nussbaum and A. Sen, eds., The Quality of Life, or Inequality Reexamined (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992).

35 See, for example, D.D. Chiras, Environmental Science: Action for a Sustainable Future (Redwood City, CA: Benjamin Cummings, 1994), pp. 494ff; and G.T. Miller, Jr., Living in the Environment (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing, 1994), pp. 683ff. See M. Oelschlaeger, Caring for Creation: An Ecumenical Approach to the Environmental Crisis (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994), p. 3, for a similar criticism of such simplistic "binary opposition" perspectives.

36 H.R. Niebuhr, Radical Monotheism and Western Culture (London: Faber and Faber, 1960).

37 J.A.Nash, "Biotic Rights and Human Ecological Responsibilities," Society of Christian Ethics Annual (Boston: Society of Christian Ethics, 1993), p. 152.

38 Nash, "Biotic Rights".

39 See R.E. Grizzle and C.B.Barrett, "The One Body of Christian Environmentalism," Zygon, forthcoming.

40 See Mark Sagoff, "Carrying Capacity and Ecological Economics," BioScience 45 (1995): 610-620, and Herman E. Daly, "Reply to Mark Sagoff's 'Carrying Capacity and Ecological Economics'", BioScience 45 (1995): 621-624.

41 In particular, with irrecoverable fixed costs, often called sunk costs.

42 Economies of scale are present when a uniform expansion of input quantities generates a disproportionately great increase in output. This implies average costs fall with output.

43 Learning effects occur when doing something improves one's efficiency at that something. This leads to externalities economists label "learning by doing" (K. A. Arrow, "The Economic Implications of Learning by Doing," Review of Economic Studies (1962): 155-73).

44 Path dependence is particularly associated with the development of technologies, such as the QWERTY typewriter keyboard (P. David, "Clio and the Economics of QWERTY." American Economic Review 75 (1985): 332-7), light-water nuclear reactors, or the gasoline engine (W. B. Arthur, "Competing Technologies, Increasing Returns and Lock-In By Historical Events," Economic Journal 99 (1989): 116-31). It has also been used to explain geographic patterns of industrialization (P. R. Krugman, Development, Geography and Economic Theory (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995), environmental decline (E. Goodstein, "The Economic Roots of Environmental Decline: Property Rights or Path Dependence?" Journal of Economic Issues 29 (1995): 1029-43), and policy choice in agrarian economies (C. B. Barrett, "The Microeconomics of Coalition Alignments: Some Insights on Food Price Policy," Utah State University Economic Research Institute Study Paper 95-01, 1995).

45 Hence, the current furor in the United States over "values-based" education and the prominent place of personal trauma in inducing shifts in individuals' ethical beliefs.

46 K. M. Cleaver and G.A. Schreiber, Reversing The Spiral: The Population, Agriculture, and Environment Nexus in Sub-Saharan Africa (Washington: World Bank, 1994) develop this theme in detail for sub-Saharan Africa.

47 C. B. Barrett and P. Arcese, "Are Integrated Conservation-Development Projects (ICDPs) Sustainable?"; C. B. Barrett and P. Arcese, "How Long Until Crisis in African Wildlife Integrated Conservation and Development Projects (ICDPs)? Simulation Results From The Serengeti Ecosystem." Utah State University Economic Research Institute Study Paper #96-03 (1996).

48 M. Munasinghe, "Economic and Policy Issues in Natural Habitats and Protected Areas." In M. Munasinghe and J.A. McNeely (eds.), Protected Area Economics and Policy: Linking Conservation and Sustainable Development (Washington: IUCN and World Bank, 1994).

49 M. Wells, K.Brandon and L. Hannah, People and Parks: Linking Protected ARea Managements with Local Communities (Washington: World Bank, 1992); P.C. West and S.R. Brechin (eds.), Resident Peoples and National Parks: Social Dilemmas and Strategies in International Conservation (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1991); D. Western, R.M. Wright, and S.C. Strum, Natural Connections: Perspectives in Community-Based Conservation (Washington: Island Press, 1994).

50 K. E. Brandon and M. Wells, "Planning for People and Parks: Design Dilemmas," World Development 20 (1992): 557-70; M. Wells, K. Brandon, and L. Hannah , People and Parks: Linking Protected Area Management with Local Communities; C. B. Barrett and P. Arcese, "Are Integrated Conservation-Development Projects (ICDPs) Sustainable?" and C. B. Barrett and P. Arcese, "How Long Until Crisis in African Wildlife Integrated Conservation and Development Projects (ICDPs)?"

51 J. R. Clark, Coastal Zone Management Handbook (Boca Raton, FL: Lewis Publishers, 1996, p. 2).

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