The Dictionary of Human Geography

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resource evaluation A component of the

resource managementcycle involving physi-

cal, economic and/or cultural appraisal of

natural resources. Evaluation generates

knowledge about aresourcethat is used to

shape future strategies towards its use,conser-

vationor management: it may, for example,

provide a ‘baseline’ against which to judge the

effects of human intervention; it may calculate

potential commercial values of a resource for

a range of possible uses; or it may be used to

review the consequences and effectiveness of

management strategies. Although often emp-

loyed as a top-down administrative tool, parti-

cipatory use of the techniques of resource

evaluation can challenge ‘expert’ assumptions

about the value, function and condition of a

resource. gb

resource management The knowledges

and practices associated with monitoring,

evaluating,decision-makingand intervention

in environments, with the objective of ensur-

ing that these environments produce goods

and services of value tosociety. Resource

management activities are undertaken by a

wide range of actors and institutions, includ-

ing private-sector organizations, national and

local governments,communitygroups and

households.peasantstudies andpolitical

ecologyhighlight agriculture as the ‘original’

resource management activity: the farmer is a

land manager who makes (highly constrained)

decisions about inputs to and outputs from a

plot of land.

Etymologically, ‘management’ conjoins two

distinctive roles: the trainer or director (mana-

ggiare), and the careful housekeeper (me ́nager)

(Williams, 1983 [1976]). Resource manage-

ment is the ‘applied science of possibilities’

(Hays, 1959): the task of the resource manager

is to ensure the orderly production of environ-

mental goods and services over time and space.

The codification of this role – and the elevation

of resource management as a specialized

branch of knowledge – first appeared on

large European landholdings: von Thu ̈nen’s

work on land rent inThe isolated state(1966

[1826]), for example, developed from a con-

cern to determine optimal patterns of agricul-

tural land use on his Prussian estate (seevon

thU

..

nen model). Resource management sci-

ence also developed as part of thecolonial

project, as Europeans wrestled with unfamiliar

tropical ecologies and sought ways to attain

their control and maximize the yields of com-

mercially valuable crops (Scott, 1998b). The

emergence of resource management as a

distinctive social task marks a historical dis-

juncture: it is the point at which scarcity and

abundance are recognized to be the product of

social organization, and society begins the

active production (‘husbandry’ or ‘steward-

ship’) of environmental goods and services that

formerly had been taken as ‘free’ inputs.

Recent efforts to develop planetary manage-

ment regimes for global resources –biodiver-

sity, globalclimateand theoceans– are an

explicit recognition of this ‘underproduction of

the environment’ and replicate a process that

occurred earlier at the national scale for many

productiveresourcessuchastimber,soils,water

and game (e.g. the Conservation Movement

of the early twentieth century in the USA).

Within geography, resource management

has been viewed as a promising vehicle for

achieving the integration ofhumanandphys-

ical geography(Johnston, 1983). Although

geography programmes often contribute to the

teaching of conservation and resource/

environmental management, much recent

human geography is critical of the knowledge-

claims and ‘utilitarian, reductionist, techno-

centric and market driven’ practices of conven-

tional resource management (Howitt, 2001b).

Encounters between resource managers and

indigenous peoples highlight the particularity

and ethnocentrism of the instrumentalist

‘resource imaginary’, and the way in which

conventional resource management works

to empower those who share itsepistemology,

while disenfranchising (and often dispossess-

ing) those who do not. Yet there are a stunning

array of other rationalities – aesthetic, spiritual,

communitarian – and indigenous environmen-

tal knowledges that may provide alternative cri-

teria and values for management. Recent work

seeks to bridge the gap between expert and

indigenous knowledgesvia processes such

as stakeholder consultation, the development

of multi-actor management systems (that com-

bine the interests of private, public and other

interested parties) and community-based nat-

ural resource management. (See alsonatural

resources.) gb

Suggested reading

Bakker and Bridge (2006); Howitt (2001b).

resource wars Conflicts over the control of

natural resources are frequently simply

called resource wars. Through much of the

twentieth century, supplies of resources to

feed and fuel industrial states were a matter

of concern to war planners in many imperial

states. During the cold war, American

Gregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_R-new Final Proof page 650 2.4.2009 9:12pm

RESOURCE EVALUATION