Discussion board concepts and applications

Perceptions and Points-of-View

Who do you see as the key protagonists/stakeholders?

As with many debates over the use of natural resources, the key protagonists in this issue include the commercial interests that are involved (in this case the logging industry) and ancillary industries that rely on high value species such as red cedar for their existence as well as naturalists and sustainable development advocates who caution that existing levels of exploitation will have dire consequences for the biodiversity of rainforest environments. This debate becomes more complex when commercial logging companies invest in plantations that are devoted to a single species on land with otherwise marginal agricultural value, with such monoculture representing yet another potential threat to the biodiversity of surrounding natural resources (Kanowski 2001). At one extreme are the commercial interests that are involved. For instance, Middleton warns that, "The plight of the world's tropical rainforests has been high on the global environmental agenda for decades and yet experts remain ignorant of many of the basic details on how fast they are being destroyed, how many species are being lost, and what consequences we should expect as a result of our folly" (2000, p. 44). While the value of these natural resources in clear to those who are actively involved in harvesting them, environmental activists argue that the long-term implications of these exploitive practices is destroying resources that may have vastly more important economic value in the future, as well as degrading the biodiversity of these regions at present. As Middleton puts it, "In short, humankind is busy obliterating our planet's most complex ecosystem with only very limited ideas about the end results. It is like destroying a unique library having only flicked through the odd book" (2000, p. 44). At the other extreme are those would advocate for a complete moratorium on commercial logging practices until more sustainable approaches can be developed.

In order to forge a meaningful balance between the fundamentally competing interests that are involved, it is vitally important to ensure that these and related sustainable environmental development issues are taken into account. Sustainable development is defined as being "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs" (Opie 1999, p. 211). When commercial industries are used as the sustainable development whipping boy by environmental activists and governmental agencies, the contributions they make to the larger society are frequently left out of the equation. Likewise, such one-sided approaches to forging sustainable development issues ignore the other stakeholders who are involved, which inevitably include the general public. In this regard, Benton and Funkhouser emphasize that, "The environmental problem is increasingly seen not as a technological problem, although it has technological dimensions, but as a perceptual and behavioral problem. Conceptualized in this way, solutions to environmental problems lie in the alteration of human behavior. Determining what the population 'knows' regarding ecology, the environment, and pollution; how they feel about it; what commitments they are willing to make; and what commitments they do make . . . are necessary antecedent steps that must be made before an attempt can be made to modify critically relevant behaviors" (1994, p. 368).

Who was right and who was wrong? Or who was more right or less wrong?

Certainly, the answer to this question would likely depend on who was asked and who was doing the asking. Because the commercial logging and associated industries are typically viewed as being the cause of many of the problems involved with developing sustainable approaches to managing natural resources, they usually receive the lion's share of the blame. As Benton and Fuckhauser emphasize, "Who are the major culprits? While the answer is that everyone shares some of the blame, certain parties are perceived to be greater contributors to the problem than others, and business is seen as perhaps the major cause" (p. 367). If those who are employed in these industries are asked this same question, though, they would likely respond that they are in fact managing these natural resources in sustainable ways and the attempts by governmental agencies and others to interfere with their operations and diminish their ability to provide employment are misguided, and "tree-huggers" simply do not understand all of the issues that are involved in this debate. Between these two extremes, of course, exists the entire continuum of subjective assessments concerning what and who is right in this debate, with the weight assigned to each assessment depending once again who is being asked and who is doing the asking.

Might the EPA's decision be different if they had adopted a 'collective social learning' approach? Why/why not?

Although hindsight may be 20-20, the application of a different decision-making model to this case is less clear. On the one hand, a collective social learning approach would have it bridged the gap between structure and agency, and have linked, at least to some extent, structuralist and rationalist accounts of individual participation" (Diani & Mcadam 2003, p. 26). Indeed, collective social learning has been shown to be a highly appropriate decision-making model with respects to environmental issues. For instance, according to Holden (2001), "Social learning theory has extended into social environmental learning" (p. 218). By extension, social environmental learning means developing the ability to "learn our way out" (Milbraith 1989) of what Holden describes as being "the vicious circle of ecological degradation and social erosion" (2001, p. 218).

On the other hand, then, in order to "learn out way out" of these types of complex problems that have widespread implications, Holden (2001) suggests that three types of change are required: (a) in involvement, (b) in cohesion, and (c) in awareness, an approach she points out is congruent with the growing body of research concerning sustainability indicators to date. To achieve changes in involvement will require a more informed general public as well as among those who are tasked with monitoring and overseeing these operations which is also consistent with raising awareness. It will also require a more collaborative approach to the decision-making process consistent with the need for greater cohesion among the primary stakeholders that are involved. Even the most well informed and involved stakeholders, though, will inevitable encounter a number of uncertainties in the decision-making process that will constrain their ability to formulate long-term environmentally sustainable solutions. In this regard, Arentsen, Bressers and O'Toole emphasize that, "Some uncertainty is inevitable in all public policy decision-making. Many environmental issues have, in addition, fundamental characteristics that cause uncertainties to play an especially large role" (2000, p. 597). Despite these constraints, it is reasonable to suggest that the EPA's decision may have been different if a different decision-making framework was used.

Might the EPA's decision be different if they had applied the 'acceptability diamond' framework proposed by Malone et al.