there is a better, slower, way forward, and that the patterns and traces which
produced triple-balanced harmony in the past have been neglected, and await
refurbishment.
The conservation withdevelopment issue comes down to one
of close-the-gap politics applied as solutions to the six crises
(political, identity, class, technological, management, territorial)
detailed in box 3.1. The desired outcomes are essentially practi-
cal. The sustainable path is there to be taken, and the neomodern
goals wait to be scored through sustainable stealth.Resource Exploitation and Discard Dynamics
The interface of Jane Jacobs’s commercialandguardianethical cri-
teria (Systems of Survival, 1992) illustrates human frailty; indicat-
ing the way people spawn entropic disorder, the mechanics of
which can be put this way:THE RESOURCE COMMONS TRAGEDY
Consider the ocean fish around the World’s territorial shorelines.
Competitive fishers for whom each haul adds to their store of
capital, secure as much as possible of accessible stock in order to
maximise their gain and thereby enhance their material lives.
When an individual fisher brings in less than their vessel’s
capacity, and there is a seller’s market, that person will lose out to
other competitors who arrive at the market place to make up the
shortfall. Thereby arises the compulsion to exploit stocks ahead of,
and in greater quantity than, any other competitor; and to continue
in this manner after it is realised that the natural replenishment of
the stock is being jeopardised. This may result in an artificial inter-
vention, the introduction of fishing quota, which is of course
worthy but imperfect; identifying the exploitative and commercial
instinct to maximise fish-catch gain by selectively retaining the
highly sought-after species, even to the point of extinction.
THE SYNERGISTIC TRAGEDY
Picture an agricultural entrepreneur. Following some com-
mercial success, there is the allure of more advanced technology,
disease controls, genetic modifications, chemically-assisted
storage, assisted sales and a raft of other investment and diversi-
fication options, including farm aggregation. These all escalate
simple success into an avalanche of profit-taking and induce a
cash-enhanced lifestyle; leading to accelerated personal con-
sumerism with, of course, an inevitable discharge of pollutants
and toxins.^13 When local success feeds further success, entre-
preneurs become role model attainers of ‘desired goods’. Publicity
enshrines such a synergy. Profit-taking, financial-gearing, market-
manipulation and false-paper commodity trading follows; all with86 Practice
Synergy can be identified
beneficially, as well as
negatively. The
‘Synergistic Tragedy’
portrayed here is
adverse ‘synergism’ – the
observable negative
outcome of an
interaction (e.g. in the
atmosphere, between
gaseous pollutants) in
which the damage from
the pollutants inter-
reactingexceeds the sum
of the adverse effects
considered separately.The Resource
Commons Tragedy is
based on Garrett
Hardin’s ‘The Tragedy of
the Commons’. First
published in Science, 162,
1968Laws I and II, the so-
called ‘Laws of Entropy’,
are a rendition and re-
expression of the First
and Second Laws of
Thermodynamics, which
can be characterized as
the book-keeping
principles of finite
resource flows,
particularly fossil fuels.
First– and of marginal
concern to this
discourse – that energy
(and for all practical
purposes, matter) can
neither be created or
destroyed.Secondly–
and of importance –
that the transformation
of energy (and for
practical purposes all
‘finite resources’) results
in resource disorder,
degradation, and
disutility.