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"Sustainable development theory is rather weak on the institutional dimensions of natural resource management. The 'theory' attempts to span a wide ideological and philosophical guff between preservationist or 'ecocentric' and managerialist or 'technocentric' positions with regard to the relations between society and environment (Pepper 1984; O'Riordan 1988; Redciift and Benton 1994). However, much environment-and-development literature continues to be more or less fixated with population increase and natural resource degradation and scarcity. Very little of it adequately conveys the extent to which the uses of renewable natural resources (RNRs), and their consequences for sustainability, are mediated in intended and unintended ways by institutional arrangements. This is not to deny that there are serious and growing problems of natural-resource degradation in many parts of the developing world. But in search of pragmatic solutions to such problems, attention should be shifted away from natural resources themselves and towards the humanly devised institutions that - for better or for worse - surround their management." |
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