Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-42gr6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-19T02:15:49.426Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Third American Conservation Movement: New Implications for Public Policy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

Timothy O'Riordan
Affiliation:
Simon Fraser University

Extract

The American nation is presently caught in the throes of its third conservation movement. It is generally considered that the first American conservation movement in the United States took place during the period 1890–1920, with particular emphasis upon the first decade of the twentieth century, and the second was associated with the New Deal and subsequent policies of Franklin Roosevelt in the period 1933–43. The aim of this paper is to compare the development and the underlying philosophies of the present conservation movement in the United States with the growth and guiding principles of its two predecessors, and to follow this analysis through with a somewhat more normative examination of various implications for public policy which come to light.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1971

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 For an excellent account, see Hays, S. P., Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency (Cambridge, Mass., 1959).Google Scholar

2 See Reisch, A. L., Conservation under Franklin D. Roosevelt (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1952).Google Scholar

3 See Herfindahl, O. C., ‘What is Conservation’ (Washington, D.C.: Resources for the Future, reprint no. 30, 1961).Google Scholar

4 G. P. Marsh, Man and Nature: or Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action. The original edition was published by Charles Scribner, New York, in 1864, but a later edition, edited by David Lowenthal, published by Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., in 1965 is now available.

5 Powell, J. W., Report on the Lands of the Arid Region of the United States (Washington, 1878).Google Scholar

6 Muir, J. W., Our National Parks (Boston, Mass., 1901).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 See McConnell, G., ‘The Conservation Movement, Past and Present’, in Burton, I. and Kates, R. W. (eds.), Readings in Resource Conservation and Management (Chicago, 1965), pp. 189201.Google Scholar

8 Ibid., p. 192.

9 Pinchot, G. W., The Fight for Conservation (New York, 1910), p. 6.Google Scholar

10 Swain, D. C., Federal Conservation Policy, 1921–1933 (Berkeley, 1963).Google Scholar

11 For an analysis of the development of the river basin planning concept in the United States, see White, G. F., ‘A Perspective on River Basin Development’, in Law and Contemporary Problems, 22 (1957), 157187.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 Friedmann, J., ‘The Concept of a Planning Region: The Evolution of an Idea in the United States’, Land Economics, 32 (1956), 113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 President Hoover's Research Committee on Social Trends, Recent Social Trends in the United States (New York, 1933).Google Scholar

14 The battle centred around whether upstream land management and small retention structures (undertaken by the Soil Conservation Service) should take precedence over large downstream dams (built by the Corps of Engineers) for the control of floods. For a fuller discussion, see Leopold, L. B. and Maddox, T., The Flood Control Controversy: Big Dams, Little Dams and Land Management (New York, 1954).Google Scholar

15 This issue was most bitterly fought in the case of the Missouri River, for which, in 1944, a compromise joint agency plan was formulated. See Hart, H. C., The Dark Missouri (Madison, Wis., 1957).Google Scholar

16 The Taylor Grazing Act of 1934 established a land management policy for intermontane lands, but did not settle which agency should be most responsible. The result was considerable confusion and conflicting agency programmes. See Calef, W. C., Private Grazing and Public Lands: Studies of the Local Management of the Taylor Grazing Act (Chicago, 1960).Google Scholar

17 Udall, S., The Quiet Crisis (New York, 1963).Google Scholar

18 Carson, R. L., The Silent Spring (Boston, Mass., 1962).Google Scholar

19 For a review of the field of ecology and its relationship to environmental studies, see Lacey, M. J., ‘Man, Nature and the Ecological Perspective’, American Studies, 8 (1970), 13, 1327.Google Scholar

20 Marsh, G. P., op. cit. (see note 4 above).Google Scholar

21 Muir, J. W., op. cit. (see note 6 above).Google Scholar

22 Leopold, A., A Sand Country Almanac (London and New York, 1949).Google Scholar

23 See Ayres, R. U. and Kneese, A. V., ‘Production, Consumption and Externalities’, American Economic Review, 59 (1969), 282–97.Google Scholar

24 For a good discussion, see Boulding, K. E., ‘The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth’, in Jarrett, H. (ed.), Environmental Quality in a Growing Economy (Baltimore, Md., 1966), pp. 314.Google Scholar

25 For Further details, see an article by Commoner, Barry, ‘Technology and Environment’, in The Progressive, 34 (04 1970).Google Scholar

27 See Kneese, A. V., ‘Economics and the Quality of the Environment: Some Empirical Observations’ (Washington, D.C.: Resources for the Future, reprint no. 71, 1968).Google Scholar

28 For a good discussion, see the articles appearing in Jarrett, H. (ed.), Environmental Quality in a Growing Economy (Baltimore, Md., 1966).Google Scholar

29 This model is presented in ch. 15 of a book by Maass, A. A., Hufschmidt, M. M., Dorfman, R. and Fair, G. M., Design of Water Resource Systems (Cambridge, Mass., 1962).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30 Wengert, N., Natural Resources and the Political Struggle (New York, 1955).Google Scholar

31 Kasperson, R. E., ‘Political Behaviour and the Decision Making Process in the Allocation of Water Resources between Recreational and Municipal Use’, Natural Resources Journal, 9 (1969), 176211.Google Scholar

32 This model is obviously a very simplified account of a complex situation, and its purpose is largely illustrative and not analytical. All sorts of variations might be found in any particular situation. For example, the agency may initiate action by ‘tipping off’ a special interest group. Frequently too the special interest groups (including the advocate conservationist groups) disagree within themselves as to the proper course of action, thereby emitting very ‘noisy’ signals to the politician, who may be uncertain as to the best course of action.

33 Club, Sierra, Ecotactics, The Sierra Club Handbook for Environmental Activists (New York, 1970).Google Scholar

34 Citizens' Advisory Committee on Environmental Quality, Community Action for Environmental Quality (Washington, D.C., 1970).Google Scholar