complicated enough matter on its own account. Of greater complexity is ‘where
and how’ in the multi-stage life cycle (of say, a toxic chemical product) is it best
to focus controls and interventions? This is explained by MaCauley and Palmer
(1992) as recognizing that:
[P]otential for risks to health and the environment may occur at many stages in the
[toxic product] life cycle – at the mine mouth [on the farm?] or during production of
the feed stock, during production of intermediate products...during use by indus-
try or households, and upon disposal. Thus regular intervention to safeguard against
risk may be necessary at more than one stage of a [product’s] life cycle and may have
to take different forms.Broadly expressed, the preferred approach comes down to the use of substitute
benign products in place of those which are toxic; the engagement of recycling
strategies such as deposit-refund schemes; thenCommand and Control regula-
tions which target intervention and impose penalties for at-risk usage or the
dumping of a product or a resource. This topic is addressed more fully in the Risk
Assesment section of chapter 4.
Responsible neomodern sustainable decision-making comes down to approvals
being given, and controls being engaged, for applying socially acceptable resource
management use and discard practices. These practices also exhibit ‘impact
balance’ and ‘environmental quality’ in line with the soft pathways reasoning
depicted earlier in box 3.4.
The soft pathways listing could have gone further, although there
is also the box 3.7 sustainability Matrixto tap into. Alongside
principles of the diverse kinds shown there, real life comes down
to practical realities, including survival for the very poor, and
taking the cheapest option by the not so wealthy. As surely as past
attitudes have been conditioned by political motivations, plunder
practices and freedom-of-use laws, nations of the North Ameri-
can-Australasian kind will be obliged over the medium term, or
forced eventually, to fall in with watered-down ‘soft’ pathways.
Fortunate indeed are those wealthier nations for whom ‘soft’
pathways remain an option. Their situation contrasts markedly
with the Third World survivalist circumstance where the imper-
ative, for most people, is personal and family survival through
the rest of a mostly joyless lifetime.^26 Not for them the option of
resource conservancy although, unselfconsciously, they live
lifestyles which are more sustainable than those pursued by people in the wealthy
nations.^27
The wealthy settler societies have the capacity (if not yet the will) to command
levels of fossil-fuel resource use which can underscore a cyclical and thus sus-
tainable, ever-continuing, pattern of conservation withdevelopment. To this end
they will need, over the first two decades of the twenty-first century, to secure
the particular advantages offered by their low-density populations and discrete
Charter for Conservation with Development 113The Kyoto Convention,
ratified in 2002, was not
signed by the United
States, where it was
viewed by George Bush
Jr. as potentially
damaging to the short-
term economy, despite
clear and irrefutable
evidence from the US
Academy of Sciences
that global warming,
with the US arraigned as
the prime culprit, was
the major contributor
to climatic change.