Sarah Lumley - Sustainability and Degradation in Less Developed Countries: Immolating the Future?

SUSTAINABILITY AND DEGRADATION IN LESS
DEVELOPED COUNTRIES

For my daughters Serena and Clea,
and for all the children everywhere,
now and in the future.

Contents

Hypothesis Tables

Numerous people have made direct or indirect contributions to this book, including my teachers, my students, my colleagues, my friends and my family. They are too many to mention by name but I would like my thanks to go to them all. Particular acknowledgement is due to the following: Dr Bill Stent, Director of Economics in the former Victorian Department of Conservation and Environment; my friends and former colleagues there, Annette Bould and Athena Andriotis; Professor Greg OBrien, Dean of Law and Management at La Trobe University; Dr Rob Dumsday, La Trobe University; Ms Claire Thomas, Victorian Department of the Treasury; Mr Mike Smith, Former Director of Resources at the Department of the Premier and Cabinet; former colleagues at the EPA, Victoria; colleagues at ViSCA, Leyte; former colleagues in Geography at Deakin University; past and present colleagues in Geography at the University of Western Australia (UWA) including Associate Professor Dennis Rumley; Dr Brian Shaw; Dr Ian Alexander; Dr Marion Hercock; my colleagues in the School of Agricultural and Resource Economics at UWA; friends and colleagues in other UWA departments including Anthropology, English, Philosophy, Botany, Soil Science, and Asian Studies; research colleagues Associate Professor Pierre Horwitz and Dr Sue Nikoletti at Edith Cowan University, and Dr Matthew Tonts, UWA; Mr Jonathan Thomas, The Resource Economics Unit, Subiaco; Dr Jay Gomboso, WA Department of Conservation and Land Management; Professor Rob Fraser, London University; Dr Laura McCann, Columbia University, Missouri; my PhD students, Annette Baumann, Trudy Hoad, Fiona McKenzie, Ron Sheen and Nuri Dewi Yanti; Masters student Allan Dobra; Ian Baker; Lai and Cedric Baker; Neil and Molly Garland; Joan Phillips; Dr Charlotte Brack; Doris Tate and Graeme Henry; Bette Moore; Mark Ducksbury; Leni Brockmuller; Barbara Pedersen; Andrea Hinwood; Cathy and John Loughridge, and Dr Margaret Lumley. Special thanks are due to Andrew Kemp for rescuing my graphics. Lastly I must recognise the support of my sisters Philippa Thornton and Caroline Lumley; my parents Roma and Reg Lumley; my nieces Kate, Juliet, Emma and Georgina; my nephews James and Jonathan; and, of course, my delightful and long-suffering daughters Serena and Clea, who are always supportive of their mothers desire to write arcane texts.

where natural resources are concerned, we sacrifice a pretty accurately predictable future to present greed. We know, for example, that if we abuse the soil, it will lose its fertility, that if we massacre the forests, our children will lack timber and see their uplands eroded, their valleys swept by floods. Nevertheless, we continue to abuse the soil and massacre the forests. In a word, we immolate the present to the future in those complex human affairs, where foresight is impossible; but in the relatively simple affairs of nature, where we know quite well what is likely to happen, we immolate the future to the present.