"Sustainable" forest management is a good example of this. It usually means sustainable production of timber products and may or may not include other environmental values (water, soil, wildlife, biodiversity) associated with forests. This is expecially true of "sustainable" management of tropical forests where most of the nutrients are held in the vegetation, not the soils, and where much of the biodiversity lives in the forest canopy.
"Sustainable agriculture" in the tropics is another example. Most so called sustainable agricultural practices promoted for oxisols and ultisols in the tropics are probably more sustainable than traditional slash and burn practices (not the indigenous shifting agricultural practices) of spontaneous and government sponsored colonizers but are not "sustainable". They of course do not sustain biodiversity, watershed protection, and other environmental values - probably not even soil fertility and soil physical properties upon which the "sustainability" of agriculture depends. Robert Mowbray -------------- Original message from Paul Stacey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: -------------- > As a resource manager, I worry about it a lot! It has become a tag, with the > connotation that the environment is being protected - if it's sustainable, it > has to be OK, right? Unfortunately, it depends on which goals are being > sustained, and it almost always involves compromise to the environment to > sustain the level of human development that is the usual goal.
