The
Genius of the Place
Joseph L. Fisher
Berkeley, California April 15, 1971
Conservationists over the years have been fond of debating the
definition of their subject - what it is and what it isn't. Ecologists
have said conservation is concerned with understanding how natural
systems operate and can be sustained. Economists have said conservation
means a redirection of the use of natural resources toward the future.
Engineers have concentrated on the efficiency with which raw materials
are employed in production. Architects and planners have dealt with
configurations of landscape and buildings in an effort to see them
as functional wholes. Activists have been concerned with campaigns
to save nature from destruction. Politicians, responding to the
imperatives of their profession, have tried to fashion the laws
and arrangements about resources they thought the people wanted.
Each expressed his own view, each held a portion of the truth, each
had a part of the answer.
Long ago President Taft, in perhaps the most famous of all characterizations
of conservation, remarked that whatever it is, everyone is for it.
The remark seems more apposite today than ever before, but the question
implied in the first part has not yet been answered satisfactorily.
The Research-Policy-Action Circle
My purpose is not primarily to reopen the question of definition
but rather to offer an interpretation of conservation more inclusive
than those of the past and, I think, more useful to the present.
I shall seek to cover the full range of natural resources, viewed
both as commodities and environment, the social aspects along with
the physical, the near-term and the farther-off effects. But mainly
I want to look at conservation along another dimension extending
from research through policy and on to action. Lest I be accused
of linear thinking, regarded by many nowadays as unsuitable for
getting at the true nature of things, let me say that I look upon
research-policy-action more as a circle: research and analysis open
the possibilities for policy; and policy provides the broad framework
for fruitful action including some which occasionally may overturn
current policy and perhaps even some of the institutions through
which all organized effort tends to flow. To complete the circle,
the successes and shortcomings of action programs redefine the problems
and challenges for another round of investigation and research.
But a circle is a kind of line also, and so research, policy, and
action may, and usually do, proceed at the same time with regard
to the same matter. It would be pleasant to know all the answers
before trying them out, but this is not possible and wouldn't be
half as much fun. "Think ahead" and "plan ahead"
are admirable and workable maxims but most of us learn mainly by
doing or trying to do. If research can hold a small lead over policy,
and policy over action, rationality will have won a big victory.
Up till now conservation in the United States, both the movement
and its leaders, has not achieved an integration of research, policy,
and action. Without this integration conservation will continue
to fall far short of its potential contribution to the protection
of nature and the well-being of mankind. The day has passed when
the American people, or people anywhere, can afford the luxury of
well-meaning but helter-skelter actions without the guidance of
consistent policies, or of well-intentioned but aimless policies
that stem from biased research and inadequate factual information.
Examples of the failure to close the research-policy-action circle
are numerous. Agricultural policies and actions for the past forty
years, for example, have attempted to cut back farm output by restricting
the number of acres planted and harvested, overlooking the fact
that with crop prices sustained by these and other policies, farmers
could increase production by using more fertilizer and farm machinery.
Support payments have gone mainly to farm operators with fairly
large holdings and outputs while smaller and poorer farmers have
not benefited much. Only a very few foresaw this development from
the start and the pressures of the emergency were great. One must
wonder why the policy was not corrected a long time ago as soon
as the results became clear. If this agricultural policy really
was designed to limit output and raise incomes where most needed
then it was poorly chosen, research on its probable consequence
was inadequate, and the feedback from the poor results to further
study and policy changes was not operating correctly.
Over the years conservation has been concerned with re search,
policy, and action but almost always in a disjointed manner. Rarely
have the three been brought together properly to deal with a problem.
Generally the activists have dominated the scene. The policies they
have pursued typically have been oversimplified, and the research
they have used frequently ha been selected to support conclusions
already reached. In this country, conservation in the modern sense
of the word is almost one hundred years old. During this long period,
the emphasis and even the content of conservation have changed,
but the inability to integrate research, policy, and action has
remained. Only now, as we enter the second century of American conservation,
does it seem likely that we shall achieve such an integration.
The "Classical" Period in American Conservation
The past hundred years have seen three culminating periods for
conservation. First came the Theodore Roosevelt-Gifford Pinchot
period, the "classical" period of which a few old-timers
still have fond personal memories. Notions regarding multiple use,
sustained yield, resource management, and nature protection which
had taken form more from intuition than scientific investigation
were translated into significant and innovative laws, regulations,
and practices. Forestry led the way, soon accompanied by flood control,
parks, licensing of hydroelectric development, and wildlife control.
Some of the developments preceded Roosevelt and Pinchot. The American
Forestry Association was established in 1875, to be followed shortly
by other citizen-interest and -action groups concerned with wildlife,
birds, grazing, parks, and - later on - soils, river basins, and
other resources. The legislation, executive action, and citizen
effort of those times was thinly supported by research, although
the Geological Survey had already accomplished a good deal of mapping,
and of water and mineral investigations; the Corps of Engineers
had accumulated much practical experience in both land and water
development; and the Department of Agriculture had begun to turn
its attention to several branches of agricultural science. Only
recently, when studying air, water, and land pollution, have we
realized how little was known about the behavior of ecosystems and
their capacity to absorb hard treatment. As might be expected, the
policies laid down during this "classical" period were
not finely tuned. But they did establish the framework and set the
directions within which the country has moved ever since - public
acquisition of selected natural areas, government leadership and
aid for research and experimentation, regulation of private exploitation
of resources, use of taxes and other financial incentives or deterrents,
beginnings of management of public lands. The open-endedness of
the Western frontier came to a close; awareness of the need to preserve,
sustain, economize, and manage had begun to emerge. Pinchot McGee,
Powell, Theodore Roosevelt, Mather, and a little later Albright
and others - scientists, government officials, businessmen - deserve
much credit for pointing the country in a new direction, one which
despite much faltering continues on to this day.
The Depression Period of the 1930's
The second culminating period was the depression of the 1930's.
The agony of a country richly endowed with natural resources and
yet seemingly helpless to put the millions of unemployed to work
brought economic and social factors to the center of attention,
for conservation as well as for other matters. Jobs and income had
to be restored on a massive scale; if gains could be made for conservation
at the same time, so much the better. The Civilian Conservation
Corps provided a limited but critical amount of employment in parks,
forests, and other natural areas; many of the roads, trails, and
other improvements resulting from this program are still in evidence.
The Tennessee Valley Authority was established in 1933, predicated
on the idea of resource development and providing cheap electric
power for the people of one of the poorest regions of the country.
Rural electrification became widespread and resulted in programs
which furnished electricity to virtually all farms in the country.
Soil conservation quickly followed, especially after the dust storms
of the mid 1930's, although it proved difficult to rationalize this
soil-building, crop-increasing effort with the larger effort to
restrain production to increase and stabilize prices of basic farm
products. Reforestation was expanded, and the Taylor Grazing Act
provided the first concerted effort to bring greater order into
the use of public and private grazing lands. Large-scale water development
projects, like the Grand Coulee project in Washington, were undertaken
as yet another way of strengthening the economy. Conservation regulations
in petroleum were greatly expanded, especially at the state level,
following the catastrophic drop in prices as production from the
newly discovered East Texas field came on to a depressed market.
Attempts were made also to alleviate distress in the coal- and metal-mining
industries. And trying to comprehend the entire picture was the
National Resources Planning Board, the high-water mark of comprehensive
planning in the United States thus far.
The 1930's brought economic concerns to the fore in conservation;
conservationists had to consider the "dismal science"
of economics and occasionally found that their own policies and
policy objectives had to yield to the shorter-range imperatives
of employment, production, and purchasing power which a few years
later were formally made primary goals of national policy in the
Employment Act of 1946. But as in the "classical" period,
the conservation policies and actions of the 1930's with their economic
orientation were still thinly supported by competent research; only
this time economic and social research was more lacking than scientific
research. It took the advent of the Second World War to lift the
national economy out of its slump. The 1930's however, made it clear
that conservation was more than just saving trees or even utilizing
them wisely; it was in the marrow of the economy.
The Environmental Quality Period Circa 1970
The third culminating period is the present time, a few years back
and a few years into the future. The fate of conservation for a
long time to come hinges on what we conservationists are doing and
will do in these few years. Perhaps the fate of the whole earth
swings creaking on the same hinge. Having put the matter thus melodramatically,
I will add my belief that the key to a good and long future for
us all is the integration of research, policy, and action for dealing
with our conservation problems of land, water, air, raw materials,
wildlife, and natural beauty.
This third period is characterized by a growing concern for the
environment of man-more accurately, for the environment including
man. The physical and economic aspects, which were central in the
first two culminating periods, are no longer enough. Engineering
aspects are no more important now than aesthetic; economic aspects
no more than ecologic. The most notable aspect, however, is the
ethical concern for conservation and environment.
Several things have been responsible for this period of environmental
enlightenment. First of all, the natural environment has deteriorated,
visibly and palpably, for millions of Americans, and in many instances
with alarming rapidity. The air much of the time over most of our
cities is foul. Rivers, lakes, and coastal waters carry heavy loads
of pollutants; anaerobic conditions are not rare, and water clean
enough for recreation is becoming harder to find. With a few notable
exceptions, both the urban and the rural landscapes leave much to
be desired. Cities are choked with traffic, especially during the
commuting hours living conditions in the ghettos are deplorable
and in the suburbs frequently monotonous; solid waste disposal is
a colossal headache for every city council in the land; noise everywhere
is a nuisance, but near airports and major highways it is almost
unbearable. More serious than the inconveniences, nuisances, and
aesthetic insults are invisible contaminants such as DDT and other
persistent pesticides which get into the air and the water, drifting
and flowing with them. Worse, they also get into the food chains,
concentrating viciously as they move up the chains toward man. Radioactive
elements, even more lethal, I also have entered the air, water,
and food, as have mercury and a number of other toxic heavy metals.
These poisons are not confined to the airshed of a metropolitan
area or the watershed of a river system; their beat is the world's
atmosphere and oceans from pole to pole.
Of course, the environmental picture is not entirely bleak; a number
of exceptions give us hope. Sulfur dioxide over some of our cities
is slowly being brought under control and several of our rivers
are less polluted than they used to be in certain respects. A few
striking examples of town and country planning are environmentally
sound and aesthetically pleasing. Legislation passed last year by
the Congress aims at reducing the pollution caused by today's automobile
by go per cent over a five-year period, and work on the SST has
been discontinued. A Council On Environmental Quality now operates
in an advisory way at the highest levels of government, and the
federal bureaucracy has been rearranged to improve performance in
environmental control. States and even cities and counties have
followed suit, to coordinate their activities with the federal programs
and to deal more precisely with local situations. Numerous private
groups have taken up the battle for a cleaner environment. An increasing
number of industrial firms have begun reforms, partly on their own
initiative and partly in response to governmental incentives and
regulations.
But despite all efforts, some of them heroic, the tide has not
yet turned; it is still ebbing toward deterioration. The monitoring
of most pollutants is not yet on a sufficiently comprehensive and
accurate scale to permit a definitive picture to be drawn of environmental
conditions, but general direction and outlines seem clear.
In addition to the continued worsening of the objective situation,
the crisis is reinforced by a subjective aspect. Large numbers of
Americans now expect a cleaner, healthier environment. They believe
the technology and the funds are available for doing the job, and
the leadership had better produce results. This rapidly rising level
of expectation, as much as anything else, has precipitated a sense
of environmental crisis and an insistent demand for results. One
hopes that this sense of crisis will lead promptly to constructive
action programs in which millions of individuals will find outlets
for their hopes and energies; otherwise frustration will set in
on a massive scale and we shall have missed a grand opportunity.
Much more needs yet to be done if this third culminating period
- the environmental-quality period in the history of conservation
- is to issue a satisfactory report to posterity. The outcome will
depend largely on whether research, policy, and action can be organized
properly and trained on the problems. For the moment the will for
action may have outrun our knowledge of precisely what to do, at
least in many instances. For example, we want to reduce drastically
the air pollution from automobiles apparently without giving up
automobiles or even cutting down on their size and horsepower; the
car manufacturers do Dot know how best to do this or what it will
cost. We want to reduce the thermal and other pollution from new
electricity-generating plants, and also their unsightliness, but
the technical, economic, and behavioral studies have not been made
to determine the feasibility and consequences of various ways of
proceeding toward these objectives. We want to reduce certain kinds
of global pollution of the atmosphere and the oceans, but our understanding
of the prerequisites for successful international action is incomplete,
requiring insight into the views in less developed countries, socialist
countries, developed countries that compete economically with the
United States, and so on.
In other instances knowledge, both theoretical and practical, is
already available as a basis on which policies can be formulated
and actions taken. In some cases the methods already exist but need
to be made widespread. For example: if we handled all our farms
as well as we do the best ones (allowing for differences in soil,
climate, and location), yields and output nationwide would increase
by several times and farms everywhere would be models of conservation.
The same could be said of the nation's forest land and even of its
water resources. And if all parks were handled as well as our best
parks, the satisfaction people receive from visiting them would
be greatly enhanced.
The weakest leg of my tripod - research, policy, action - may be
policy. It is widely conceded, for example, that national policies
for energy are full of inconsistencies. Policies have tended to
respond to one pressure after another - military security, cost
factors, international trade situations, preservation of monopoly
position, the political strength of particular states and regions,
and more recently ecological and health constraints - without planning
or organization. Much of forest and wild lands policy is stalled
in a rather fruitless but exhausting dispute over single purpose
use versus multiple-purpose use. Much of our mineral policy has
long been held captive by a relatively few dominating companies,
and our basic mineral laws greatly need overhauling as was recently
pointed out by the report of the Public Land Law Review Commission.
Policy for outdoor recreation and wilderness is still in its infancy
and is far from measuring up to the demands of the people and to
desirable standards. A comprehensive and farsighted land policy
does not exist in any thought-out way, although we may be nearing
a breakthrough in this matter as the more offensive results of the
lack of adequate policy in the past come more fully to view. Perhaps
under the intensifying public pressure for action and by the use
of all facts and analyses available, the policy leg can be strengthened
so as to bear its share of the weight. This challenge will test
the Council On Environmental Quality during the next few years.
New Thrusts in Conservation
To be viable for the 1970's and beyond, conservation will have
to cope with several new thrusts, adapting to them, and shaping
them to its own purposes. These thrusts arise mainly from conditions
and movements outside of conservation in its narrow sense. To deal
with them successfully, conservation will have to understand them.
The major thrust, already discussed, comes from environmental protection
and management based on ecology and sociology, and is already exerting
powerful influence on the decision makers in and out of government.
From now on environmental considerations are likely to shape and
constrain both policy and action in ways and to a degree hitherto
unknown. Furthermore, they will lead research into new fields. From
now on no electric utility will be able to select a site for a power
plant or locate a transmission line without attention to environmental
damages. No automobile manufacturer will continue to shove air pollution
problems to the side of his desk. No producer of pesticides or chemical
fertilizers will dare forget to reckon with their effects on fish
and wildlife or on lakes and estuaries. Conservation leaders have
been fairly quick to incorporate ecology into their thinking and
their programs, occasionally a bit uncritically, but always with
good intentions. Greater sophistication and discrimination, it may
be expected, will follow and be reflected in the policies they advocate.
After all, the knee-jerk conservationist makes too easy a target.
Several other major new thrusts are not altogether new, but the
widespread awareness of them is. They interrelate with one another,
and combine to reinforce the environmental thrust. One of these
is the rising concern about population. Demographic projections,
we have learned, should always be dated. Such projections will be
no better than the assumptions about birth, death, and immigration
rates on which they are based. Good arithmetic cannot make up for
poor assumptions. But for all that, the population of this country
is likely to have passed 300 million by the year 2000, despite the
rapid decline in fertility rates during the past decade to the lowest
level in our history. Recent sample surveys indicate that if women
now had the number of children they say they would like to have,
birth rates would be such that over the long run the population
would just about replace itself; that is, the net reproduction rate
would be close to 1. The absolute size of the population would continue
upward for the remainder of the century and somewhat longer because
of the relatively large number of women in or approaching the childbearing
age. Viewed on the world scale population seems certain of continued
rapid increase, more than twice as fast as in the United States,
for many years to come. The present world population of three and
a third billion could become nearly seven billion by the turn of
the century. The world pressure on food supplies and other materials
will remain strong. Beyond the year 2000 the picture is even bleaker.
Coupled with a population increase - in this country 1 per cent
or less a year - is a much larger per-capita rate of economic growth,
about 3 per cent a year based on the long-range historical average.
The chief sources of increasing productivity include technological
advance, better education and job training, and plentiful supplies
of energy and other natural resources. Thus, greater productivity
rather than larger population bears the main responsibility for
the growing demand for raw materials and also for the growing amount
of pollution related to production activities and consumption habits.
Some further differentiation is needed: for instance, population
growth is linked directly with consumption of food and the occupance
of space while industrial growth bears more importantly on the use
of fuels, metals, and water. In any case, both population and economic
growth place heavy burdens on the capacity of the environment to
assimilate, dilute, remove, and otherwise cope with the residuals
left over from production and consumption.
Another thrust that is causing conservationists to overhaul their
programs is summed up in the term urbanization, which denotes not
only the increasing proportion of the population living and working
in cities and metropolitan areas, but also the slums, poverty, concentration
of racial and ethnic minorities, traffic congestion, pollution,
and other problems that go with such concentration. Conservation
traditionally has been oriented to the countryside and the wilderness;
nature was more or less assumed to be where the people were not,
or at least not in large numbers. But all this is changing. City
people do most of the producing, consuming, and polluting. Much
of the conflict over changes in land use occurs in the metropolitan
regions. Outdoor recreation more and more is being planned to meet
the need of urban dwellers. Even hunters and fishermen are predominantly
from town. The new Secretary of the Interior is not a Westerner.
From now on hardly any significant resource decisions will be made
without taking careful account of their urban consequences, their
effects on city folks.
Finally, world conditions and problems have thrust themselves into
the field of conservation to a degree and with a persistence that
is distinctly new. This country has come to depend increasingly
on imports of oil (now around one-fifth of total consumption); iron
ore (one-third or more); copper, lead, and zinc (one-half or more
each); and numerous other metals (some imported in their entirety).
Many less developed countries, while striving to assert national
control over their raw materials industries, still depend heavily
on sales in the United States market for foreign exchange with which
to buy machinery and other import products necessary for their economic
development programs. These countries are skeptical of pollution
control measures that will raise costs of production; they maintain
that the affluent countries which cause most of the pollution and
can afford to correct it should look after their own. Those kinds
of pollution which girdle the earth will ultimately require international
agreements to establish worldwide monitoring networks as well as
control standards and enforcement procedures. The protection of
endangered species of plants and wildlife, and of superior scenic
attractions and historic landmarks, also are of international concern,
as are the fisheries and other common property resources in the
oceans out beyond territorial limits. To the extent possible without
forcing the issue, those countries in earlier stages of economic
development should have the opportunity of profiting from the environmental
mistakes of the more developed ones.
Each of these new thrusts - environment, population, eco-nomic
growth, urbanization, international considerations - as it moves
over the threshold beyond which the consequences for resources become
severe and even irreversible, poses a challenge for conservation.
These challenges can be met by initiatives in research, policy,
and action.
The Integration of Research, Policy, and Action: A Few Examples
I shall illustrate the integration of research, policy, and action
by describing briefly several situations that call for a planned
approach across this broad front. To some extent I shall draw on
my own experiences or studies.
The handling and disposal of solid waste constitutes a problem
for most cities, including the Washington metropolitan area where
I live and carry some public responsibilities. Several thousand
tons of discarded paper, boxes, metal, garbage, and trash has to
be collected, processed, and got rid of daily. Of course, it can't
really be got rid of; it can only be burned, compressed, or otherwise
altered in form, and ultimately discharged or transported somewhere
else. If the solid waste is burned, at least some air pollution
results. If it is ground up and released through sewer lines or
directly into water courses, some amount of water pollution is the
outcome. If it is hauled away, in compacted or loose form, it has
to be dumped somewhere as landfill, in abandoned mines, or at the
bottom of the sea.
In the national capital region deficiencies have existed in all
three sections of the circle: in research, the problem has not been
fully understood; in policy, we do not agree on what to do; and
in action, we have trouble putting a practical solution in operation.
Right now the public officials of the various states, cities, and
counties are establishing a regional solid waste management agency.
Success will depend on citizen support and will for action. It will
also depend on research to decide on the waste management technology
to use, the estimated costs and their allocation, and the administrative
machinery that will get the job done. An additional problem is the
delicate task of negotiating for suitable disposal sites. All these
questions have to be worked on simultaneously; failure at any point
can throw the whole arrangement off the track. If the feasibility
studies are done too far ahead of time, the technology will be out
of date and the cost estimates faulty. If public interest and understanding
lag anywhere up and down the line, the votes necessary for interjurisdictional
agreements and hood issues will not be available when needed. And
if consistent policies are not worked out as the process goes on,
the whole scheme will come unglued. A proper integration of research,
policy, and action is the prerequisite for establishing a new institution
and plan of operation for solid waste disposal in the Washington
region, and probably many other regions.
Another example: along with others I have been interested in establishing
a park and recreation system on the beautiful, three thousand mile
coast of Maine. We envisage a discontinuous system of numerous land
and water sites including rocky promontories, forest-covered hills
that slope directly to the sea, picturesque coves, offshore islands,
and even fresh water lakes for camping and swimming located within
a few miles of the ocean shore. Some areas would be quite large;
others no more than ten or twenty acres. Perhaps a few fishing villages
could be included. No pressure would be put on present private owners
to sell. Instead, offers to purchase would be extended without limit
of time so that areas would be acquired when owners wanted cash
or when wills were probated and deals could be made with the inheritors.
Gifts of property would be welcomed directly or through some suitable
organization like the Nature Conservancy. Not all areas would have
to be owned in fee; long-term lease arrangements, scenic and recreational
easements, and perhaps other devices would be acceptable. Still
other areas could remain entirely in private hands and be a part
of the system as long as specified standards of appearance and operation
were met. By scattering the areas out along the long, serrated coastline
numerous nearby towns and localities would receive economic benefits
from tourist spending. The system would be promoted as a whole;
visitors could plan to see and experience the full range of possibilities
and be assured of high standards throughout. The one national park
on the Maine coast and several state parks could be included by
appropriate arrangements with the National Park Service and the
state parks agency. Some of the better town parks might also be
listed.
To establish such a park system which seems suitable to Maine's
situation, it will be necessary simultaneously to generate public
understanding, to crystallize the guiding policies, and to decide
on quality standards and site selection criteria. The analogy of
the conducting of a symphony orchestra comes to mind: the woodwinds
could be thought of as research, the strings as policy, and the
percussion instruments as action.
A final example, although many more can be thought of, is furnished
by the Alaska oil pipeline, now the subject of nationwide controversy.
Oil discoveries on Alaska's North Slope have opened the possibility
of a major new industry and source of revenue for the state of Alaska
and source of oil for the nation. By 1980, it has been estimated,
three to five million barrels of crude oil could be produced daily
amounting to 10 to 15 per cent of the projected United States consumption.
In addition to nearly one billion dollars of bonus money already
paid to Alaska by the oil companies which secured leases and with
more to come as new fields are proved, the state by 1980 could also
be receiving annually a quarter of a million dollars in royalties
and severance taxes. Markets for this oil within the United States,
if not also in Japan and Northwest Europe, seem assured with rising
demand and increasing difficulty in expanding supplies of oil from
conventional sources within the country.
But one difficulty has to be overcome: the oil has to be transported
from the North Slope to the lower forty-eight states. To do this
a large diameter pipeline through which heated oil would be pumped
has been proposed running south from the Arctic Coast across Alaska,
mostly across wilderness, to the year-round port of Valdez from
which the oil would be transferred to tankers for shipment, primarily
to the West Coast. The possibility of environmental damages - thawing
and settling of the permafrost with the risk of breaks in the pipeline,
interference with caribou migrations, clawing up of this long strip
of landscape because of construction and maintenance - appears to
be sufficiently great that environmentalists and others all over
the country have risen up in protest. They have found response from
the Secretary of the Interior who has put off the decision until
more facts and analyses are available on the advantages and dangers
of the project. Testimony is being gathered from many sources on
the environmental impact of the pipeline as well as its economic
benefits and costs. Alternative means of transportation continue
to be advanced such as direct tanker shipment through the Arctic
Ocean, or under it by submarine tankers or tows, but these two also
pose ecological risks. The risks of other pipeline routes, principally
up the Mackenzie Valley in Canada connecting with the midcontinent
pipeline system in Alberta, are being analyzed.
In this instance one has the clear impression that action has got
too far ahead of reliable information and knowledge about environmental
consequences and alternative ways of moving the oil south. Furthermore,
certain broad policy decisions came close to being made prematurely.
It may be that even now the ecological and related studies critical
for choosing wise policies and actions have not yet begun. Here
is another instance in which research, policy, and action need to
be harmonized in the interests of the people of Alaska, the oil
consumers of the country, and all those concerned with protection
of the natural environment.
Education for More Effective Conservation
Education will have to play an important role in promoting conservation
as research, policy, and action. In putting across a new approach
to almost anything, education in its various forms will prove helpful,
probably necessary. This is certainly true for the kind of conservation
I have been discussing. Good research on ecologic systems, economic
options, and management feasibilities will obviously be the base
for wise policy and effective action. Without high-quality education
to the advanced levels, both research and research personnel will
be less than adequate to these tasks. The formulation and testing
of policy alternatives require skilled social scientists who know
how to apply their analytical tools to the relevant scientific,
technical, and social data. They also require persons skilled in
making policy decisions up and down the ranks of government, business,
conservation organizations, and elsewhere. Their education will
have to be of a high order and well tended to.
Finally, the general public nearly all of which is concerned about
natural resources and the environment, will have to have a sufficient
breadth and depth of understanding to insist on at least minimum
levels of factual knowledge, research insight, policy consistency,
and administrative competence. For this, general and adult education
of quality and reach is essential.
Motivations to improve the environment are running strongly, especially
among the youth of the country. Resource conservation is widely
seen as needing an infusion of renewed vigor. The national situation
at the beginning of the 1970's seems ready for a conservation which
combines with research, policy, and action a new emphasis on education
to support these other elements and give conservation the additional
analytical sophistication, policy relevance, and action thrust it
needs for the perilous years ahead.
Introducing: Joseph L. Fisher
An assignment as an Army private for directing the work of a Navy
captain was an early indicator of Joseph L. Fisher's ability to
combine disparate elements in his career. With the same calm effectiveness
with which he carried out this unusual assignment, he subsequently
combined a career as a dispassionate and highly analytical leader
of research with a personal commitment which has made him a creative
elected official in his home community.
He was born in Rhode Island and in 1935 received his B.S. from
Bowdoin University, which honored him thirty years later with the
award of the D.Sc. Following graduation he spent a year of postgraduate
study at the London School of Economics and took his M.A. in economics
at Harvard in 1938. After service in the Army during World War II,
he completed his Ph.D. at Harvard in 1947. To round out this educational
background, he took a second M.A., this time in education, at George
Washington University in 1951.
Dr. Fisher served as economist and executive officer of the Council
of Economic Advisers, Executive Office of the President, from 1947
to 1953. He then joined Resources for the Future, Inc., as associate
director and was advanced to the presidency in 1959. As president
of RFF, Dr. Fisher is the second successor to the man he recognizes
as his mentor in conservation, Horace Albright, who served as its
first president and chairman of the board.
Resources for the Future, Inc., is a nonprofit research and educational
foundation concerned with the development of natural resources.
Under Dr. Fisher's guidance RFF has been remarkably productive in
contributing to the understanding of the resource situation, not
only in North America but throughout the world. He is the author
of Resources in America's Future (1963) and World Prospects for
Natural Resources (1964).
As one who believes in participation as well as in scholarship,
Dr. Fisher served on the Arlington Planning Commission and has been
a member of the County Board of Arlington, Virginia, for a number
of years, serving as its chairman in 1965. He is chairman of the
board of directors of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments
and a member of the board of trustees of the United Planning Organization
for the Washington area. He is a director of the American Forestry
Association and also serves as moderator and chairman of the board
of trustees of the Unitarian Universalist Association.
Clearly, in speaking on Conservation as Research, Policy, and Action,
Dr. Fisher draws on knowledge born of both action and research.
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