Module 1: Environmental Perceptions, Governance, Management, and Policy of Natural Resource Use Flashcards
What are Natural Resources? Are they renewable or non-renewable?
Resources that occur in a natural state and are valuable for economic activities.
- Examples: minerals, water, timber, soils, fish, etc.
- Renewable or non renewable?
What are Renewable Resources
A resource that is supplied on a continuing basis by ecosystems.
- Can be harvested sustainably or depleted
What are nonrenewable resources?
Resources that are available in a fixed supply including minerals and fossil fuels. Any ongoing level of extraction will deplete the resource.
- Resources that do not renew at an economically relevant rate
How are Natural Resources Valuable?
- Commodities (lumber and fish)
- Inputs into production (nickel in the production of stainless steel, soil for agriculture)
- Services provided by functioning ecosystems - water quality/quantity, biodiversity, waste treatment, etc.
What are the three intersecting levels in which natural resource challenges are addressed?
- Natural resource governance
- Natural resource policy
- Natural resources management
What is the point of Natural Resource Governance?
To determine how competition for natural resources are resolved and who benefits from them.
To determine who has power, who makes decisions, and how other players make their voice heard - governance often requires developing alternative ways to manage natural resources.
Provide and Explain the three governance examples
- Watershed Based Management
- Indigenous Engagement in Natural Resource Decision Making
- Natural Resources Act and Natural Resources Transfer Agreements (1930)
Define Policy. Who can pursue a policy? Who enables a policy?
A plan or guideline for action directed at moving toward and achieving some objective.
- Pursued by any individual, group, firm, or government
- Enabled by formal governance
Define Public Policy. How is public policy pursued? Provide examples of public policy.
Action undertaken in the public arena by groups of people to manage activities affecting their welfare.
- Pursued through formal governmental institutions
- law passed by legislature
- a zoning bylaw passed by a municipality
- an environmental tax implemented by a provincial government.
What is the iterative approach and what are the steps for it?
- problem recognition
- proposal of solution
- choice of solution
- policy implementation
- policy evaluation and monitoring
Natural resource policy definition. Provide examples
Collective action undertaken to influence natural resource harvest, extraction and management to maintain natural resource quality and quantity.
- forest harvest limits
- endangered species legislation
- water use rights
Define environmental policy. Provide examples
collection action to manage human impacts on the quality of the environment - usually focused on pollution control
- emission control
- pollution tax
- water quality standards
What is natural resource management? What must we recognize as people?
Deals with the way people and natural systems interact (landscapes and ecosystems).
- must recognize that people rely on the health and productivity of the environment and their actions play an important role in maintaining it.
Describe the viewpoint of deep ecology
calls for the priority of environmental concern over market forces
- biocentric view of humans as one species among many
-concerned more with ecological viability than with economic viability
Which viewpoint is the foundation for critiquing the anthropocentric perspective that permeates much resource policy, institutions, and society?
Deep Ecology - the biocentric view
Does deep ecology focus on local or large-scale approaches?
local forms of organization and control of technology and more responsive than large-scale bureaucratic approaches
- preference for appropriate technology: low ecological impact and orientated to specific local needs - (e.g., large scale hydro vs small scale solar, wind, and hydro)
Define sustainable development
Development that meets the needs of the current generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs
- integrates economic, social and environmental considerations
How does sustainable development influence natural resource governance/policy/management?
Mainstream sustainability emphasizes individual choices and regulation of goods and services through an environmentally enlightened economic market
Conservation of resource stocks is primarily for ____ reasons?
non-ecological reasons
why is resource management so difficult
Because it requires an understanding of socioeconomic and institutional context for policy decisions
What is the spectrum of environmental ideas
deep ecology –> sustainable development –> resource management –> frontier economics
