Supply-side sustainability

Historically, societies have been abandoned when management invoked complicated infrastructure that diminished returns on effort. Some societies survived by redefining their relationship to the resource base through emergence of a new, more elaborate level of organization. Organization may elaborate when resources are expanded or used more efficiently. The new situation favorably resets the cost/benefit ratio of problem solving. With six billion people, our critical problem is the capture of natural resources while maintaining ecosystem function to keep them renewable. Presently resource management is too complicated at too low a level, and suffers diminishing returns. Supply-side sustainability recommends management from the context for the function of the whole ecosystem, not the resource. Then ecosystems integrate materials and energy sustainability, while generating resources that humans can take. To achieve a global level of organization of resource management we see a new relationship between the feedback of commerce, greened by the social and environmental resource sciences in the academy, with governmental catalysis. Published in 1999 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.