The most significant confrontation is that of persuading,
educating and regulating those who manufacture and dis-
charge from urban places. The settlement populations have
scant collective appreciation of food-producing chains, potable
water supply ecosystems, waste disposal processes, fresh air
replenishment exchange mechanisms, or any of the other
dilution and absorption cycles which tie them to earth island
in space. In short, it is important to push home to urban
populations the message that if the biosphere sickens and
becomes diseased, the conduit from nature to themselves will
work its way through remorselessly as habitat denial, urban
decay and social disorder. An ultimate irony in this regard is
that nature as such has nothing akin to a ‘soul’ and does not,
indeed cannot, in and of itself, ‘care’. This dumps the respon-
sibility for biospheric wellbeing firmly into the ambit of
sustainability politics and development with conservancy
practice.Improvements in the take-up of the neomodern sustainability
ideal are within the policy reach of OECD communities pro-
videdthere is conviction on the part of the urban component
in those societies to abide by the ecological rules and conform
to the logic for upholding these values. If in its ‘efficiency’
urban society fashions a pea-soup atmosphere, a gormless
suburb, or an industrial moonscape, so be it. In short, after
human society reaps the harvest of its own landscape evis-
ceration, destruction and poisoning, nature simply adjusts
accordingly, degraded to be sure, and rolls on into a quality-
reduced future.
For much of the richer nation OECD a worst-case scenario
along the lines outlined need not be perpetrated. The Anglo
settler societies have the resource capacity to retain a larger
environmental conviviality (National Parks, Forest Reserves
and the like) anda capacity for ‘tipping the balance’ ensuring
that education for conservation is worked in with develop-
ment, particularly for urban places.Socio-Environmentalism: The New Reality
The day-to-day exigencies of the Commons Tragedy and
Synergy Tragedy, and the Exploitation Dynamics and Discard
Dynamics traversed earlier, fastens upon the four main
resource categories (finite, renewable, heritage, free-flow);
to which human communities are bound and by which they90 Practice
ENVIRONMENTAL
PERFORMANCE INTERNET
SITES:
Coalition for
Environmental
Responsibility
http://www.cere.org
International
Organisation for
Standardisation
http://www.iso.ch
Chemical
Manufacturers
Association
http://www.cmahq.com
International Institute
for Sustainable
Development
http://www.iisd.org
Friends of the Earth
http://www.foe.org
Global Climate
Coalition
http://www.globalclimate.org
Greenpeace
http://www.greenpeace.org
International Chamber
of Commerce
http://www.iccwbo.org
NGO Taskforce on
Business
http://www.coopamerica.org
/isf/tobi
Recycler’s World
http://www.recycle.net
UN Environment
Programme ‘Clean
Production’
http://www.unepie.org/cp/cp
UN Environment Prog.
‘Industry and
Environment’
http://www.unepie.org
World Business
Council of Sustainable
Development
http://www.wbcsd.ch