CONSERVATION, DEVELOPMENT AND ENVIRONMENTALISM: HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE AND FUTURE IMPERATIVES

Abstract

Throughout history the city and the wilderness have been both idea and environment for urban man. The conflict between them is expressed in the earliest mythology and manifest today in the conservation versus development debate. The conflict is misdirected: conservation and development are interdependent. They are the same process on different time scales: the sustainance and security of life on earth. Their reconciliation is proposed in the concept of sustainable development.

The widespread concern about the environment in the industrialised, developed societies today combines scientific and emotional components. The scientific component is a new and valuable appreciation of, and commitment to, the global ecology. The emotional component is more an anti-technology mood, an historically cyclic phenomenon of complex origins. Modern environmentalism is a complex amalgamation of those environmental concerns with wide ranging socio-economic and political reforms. Those reforms frequently involve the concept of no-growth or very limited economic growth, especially in Western industrial society, and derive from a pessimistic world view historically common among intellectuals. It is environmentalism, not conservationism, which is in conflict with the concept of development.

A successful petroleum industry is vital to Australia's future security and welfare. The main threat to the industry comes from environmentalism, and the confusing myriad of legislation and regulation it has sponsored. Of particular significance is the policy of excluding exploration from conservation areas, rather than adopting a multiple and sequential land use approach. The single-usage approach to land management is inefficient balancing of resources and, correspondingly, is poor conservation practice. Multiple land use is a fundamental tenet of the sustainable development and the National Conservation Strategy of Australia.

APEA, and business and industry generally, must improve communications with the public. The significance of primary resources in the daily life and national economy must be retaught. Industry must play a leading role in defining and implementing sustainable development, and in championing the concept. The concept will be attacked and manipulated by no-growth environmentalists, but they must not be allowed to prevail.

Sustainable development offers the present generations the chance to reconcile conservation and development. That reconciliation is an imperative for the future.