Q. What is sustainable resource use?
A. Resources can be classified in
a variety of ways. Natural resources (e.g., land and
water), produced resources (e.g. roads and factories),
and human resources (e.g., skilled and unskilled labor)
are generally recognized, if not always easy to measure.
Social resources are comprised of the institutions and
cultural patterns on which functioning societies are
based. Indicators of natural resources and social
resources have been developed. Sustainability is a
function of how these resources are used over time, which
depends in turn on the level of technology, the performance
of markets, and other factors.
Serageldin (1996) distinguishes degrees of sustainability based
on the extent to which different kinds of resources are seen as
substitutes or complements. “Strong sustainability” requires
the maintenance of each kind of resource intact, based on the assumption
that resource categories are complements rather than substitutes.
By contrast, “weak sustainability” maintains the total
value of resources, regardless of its composition, implying that
resource categories are substitutes for one another rather than
complements, and that individual resources (and even resource categories)
can be depleted without threatening wealth as a whole. A middle
approach would require both the maintenance of total wealth and
concern with the composition of wealth, recognizing that different
resource categories are both substitutes and complements, and that
critical levels of each category should be defined and maintained.
As
such, sustainable resource use is central to the concept
of food
security,
which involves the ability to meet both food and non-food
requirements in order to sustain human and other resources
over time. Sustainable resource use and food security
together depend on the ways in which resources are used
in production and exchange, in the generation of income,
and in subsequent patterns of consumption and investment.
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