Accommodating future needs and numbers to the earth's natural capacities and resources will give rise to a transformation of human values, social institutions and economic structures on an order which could ultimately approach that of the agricultural and industrial revolutions. The coming transformation is lengthy in duration: a period from a half to a full century. It is enormous in scope: a three-fold increase in world population. And it is awesome in its implications for change: the need to lower birth rates drastically; the need to provide specially for the poor and disadvantaged, the upheavals of migration, the expansion of the labour force, and the growth of metropolitan areas; the need for massive substitutes in primary energy and accompanying adjustments in agriculture and industry; the need to promote intensive environmentally-sound resource use; and the need to meet the tremendous requirements of the developing countries for food, health, education and housing, or more generally, to be equipped to handle not just "another world" but a second and third world "on top of this, equal in numbers, demands and hopes. "

Report of the Secretary-General,
United Nations Economic and
Social Council,

Interrelationships Between Population, Resources, Environment and Development, 1981 .

© The United Nations University. 1983
NRTS-22/UNUP-469
ISBN 92 808 0469-3

This report was prepared within the framework of the United Nations University's Programme on the Use and Management of Natural Resources. The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the United Nations University.

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Contents

Preface

1. Introduction: emerging issues in natural resource and human development policy

1. Changing trends in social and economic development policy
2. Development policy, social transformation and resource systems
3. Impact of international and national development activities on renewable resources
4. Natural resource transformation and regional development planning
5. Renewable resource transformation in small group and household economies
6. Transforming natural resources for human development: implications for research,
planning and policy

II.Changes in development theories and policies: toward economic growth with social equity

1. Growth maximization and trickle-down policies
2. Overcoming internal obstacles to development: top-down planning for sectoral development
3. Stimulating development from the bottom up" :economic growth with social equity policies
4. Conclusions

III. Development policy, social transformation, and resource systems

1. Changing perceptions of the role of natural resources in socio-economic development

1.1.The problem of marginal areas

2. The concept of transformational development

2.1.The potential for transformational approaches to the development of renewable resources:the case of palm sago in south-east Asia
2.2. The potential for transformational development

3. The resource systems framework

3.1.Relationships and linkages within resource systems: the case of coastal zones
3.2.Concept of a resource system
3.3.Elements of the resource systems framework

IV. The effects of national and international policies on renewable resource use

1. International economic impacts on developing countries

1.1.Increasing petroleum costs
1.2.Pollution of marine waters by petroleum hydrocarbons

2. National development policies and their impacts on resource systems: the case of forestry

2.1.The environmental consequences of forestry and forest industries
2.2. Impact of forestry in uplands and on linked resource systems

3. Implications for national development planning

V. Natural resource transformation and regional development planning

1. Interactions within resource systems
2. Location and design of regional development projects

2.1.Water resource development projects
2.2.Dams and reservoirs
2.3. Large irrigation schemes

3. Planning the regional spatial system and settlement pattern
4. Conclusions and implications

VI. The role of small group and household economies in renewable resource transformation

1. Economic theory and resource systems

1.1. Risk, uncertainty, and decision-making in household resource use

2. Behavioural concepts in household decision-making
3. Conventional wisdom and popular participation in development planning

VII. Transforming natural resources for human development: implications for research, planning and policy

1. Increasing awareness of relationships between natural resource and socioeconomic development
2. Strengthening administrative and institutional capacity for transformational development
3. Education and training of resource transformation professionals
4. Expanding research and the data base for planning and policy-making

4.1.Marginal resource systems
4.2.Equity and basic needs
4.3.International linkages

Other UNU publications in the resource systems theory and methodology series

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