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Environmental consultancy—an experiment
6
Biological Conservation
is the responsibility of the participating countries, while the international organizations concerned are only to provide the stimulation, technical assistance, and coordination, required. The future of this programme rests ultimately in the hands of the scientists concerned in the different countries. It is up to them to define what they want to do, and to influence the formulation of the MAB projects either indirectly through the international scientific unions or directly through their National MAB Committee. Obviously not everything cart be done at the same time, and the programme will advance through reaching a compromise between the aspirations of the scientists involved and the actual possibilities of governments and financing organizations. In this process, no doubt, the scientists and all others who are deeply interested in MAB will wish to give the programme their vigorous support and, more
specifically, to direct its activities towards those problems which they consider most urgent.
References POLUN1N, Nicholas (1969). The Biosphere Conference, BioL Conserv., 1(2), pp. 187-8. UNESCO (1970a). General Conference: Sixteenth session. UNESCO, Paris, 16 C/78, 31 pp. ÷ Annex I of 30 pp. and Annex II of 5 pp. (mimeographed). UNESCO (1970b). Use and Conservation of the Biosphere. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, Paris, Natural Resources Research X, 272 pp. UNESCO (1971). Proceedings of the General Conference: Sixteenth Session, UNESCO, Paris 1970. Resolutions: Resolution 2. 3131, pp.35-9.
Environmental Consultancy--an Experiment Widespread failures by our civilization to take account of ecological principles are not only due to faults in education. Engineers, economists, lawyers, accountants, and administrators, are usually responsible for preparing major projects and programmes of development, and they are often either the decisionmakers or at least the confidential and predominant advisers of decision-makers. Yet with very few exceptions the members of these groups have no education or training in environmental matters, even if they may have some informed interest in them. Ecological principles and knowledge have therefore commonly gone by default--at any rate until such an advanced stage that it is too late to contemplate substantial changes even where large improvements are involved or where imminent losses and damage could be arrested. Recently, informed opinion has begun to appreciate that the remedy for this trouble, and for the resulting controversies, delays, and abortive expenditures, is to develop a new kind of professional individual, capable of becoming a member of an interdisciplinary team charged with getting the project into a sound and balanced state from the outset. Among important evidences of this change of opinion have been the conclusions in the United Kingdom of the Countryside in 1970 Conference (which has advised closer teamwork between the land-linked professions), the decision of the World Bank* to provide for 'ecological * Officiallythe International Bank for Reconstruction and Development.--Ed.
validation' of applications for development loans, the Government of India's endorsement of a similar procedure in its new national development plan for 1969-74, and the agreement reached at Rome in September 1970, by a meeting of international agencies and conservationists, to prepare for publication material concerning the record of selected development projects. An outcome of one of the earlier '1970' conferences was the informal request to the present writer to assemble a competent interdisciplinary team that would be capable of taking care of all the non-structural environmental aspects of new projects, in terms of choice in land-use, feasibility studies, landscape appraisal and design, resource conservation or land reclamation, and site, park, and countryside, planning. This team, known as Land Use Consultants, has now been at work for nearly five years. It has treated more than forty sites requiring reclamation either for agriculture, for industry, or as country parks and open spaces It has also handled long-term schemes for redevelopment, the introduction of a major new industrial plant into an area where protection of amenity and of scientific values was essential, and major projects in replanning city centres and largescale educational and training sites. The outcome of this experience has been to confirm that the approach is sound and that at least in the United Kingdom an adequate effective demand exists for such professional services. In fact, the shortage of qualified and experienced men and women
Batisse : Man and the Biosphere
of the right calibre and personality to participate successfully in this exacting kind of team-work has proved the gravest obstacle to expansion. Nevertheless, it has proved possible to man two full teams of allround capability, one led by an Architect/Landscape Architect and the second by a Landscape Architect/ Planner. Qualifications of team members include also parks planning and administration, environmental resources, recreation planning, forestry, horticulture, economics, geography, and ecology. Ecological principles need to be promptly and successfully embodied in major projects affecting the environment. It seems clear that far more capable and well-minded professionals will need to be educated, trained, and given working experience, alongside engineers, surveyors, land managers, agronomists, and others who increasingly need specialist help and
advice on environmental, ecological, and land-use, problems. A number of universities and teaching institutions in both Europe and North America are turning in this direction, but the more good postgraduates they are able to produce, the greater becomes the problem of ensuring that they receive the kind of practice and encouragement in interdisciplinary team-work without which they cannot attain the satisfaction of seeing their talents and energies creatively employed in the great task of caring for the environment while enabling prosperity to grow. E. MAX NICHOLSON, Formerly Director-General of the Nature Conservancy; Chairman, Land Use Consultants, 139 Sloane Street, London S. W. 1, England
The Sea-level Canal Accord? Few if any biologists will disagree with the basis of the plea in Rubinoff's 'The sea-level canal controversy' (Biological Conservation, 3(1), pp. 33-6, 1970) that 'If our ecological knowledge does not become sufficiently sophisticated to predict the biological effects, then the new canal certainly should include a biotic barrier to be maintained until we are confident there will be no untoward effects'.
Other countries are plagued by these questions: a logical answer seems to be that these pollutants be used, not wasted. Any one of them, if added in sufficient quantity at the centre of a sea-level canal, would be repugnant, if not lethal, to interoceanic migrants, including tourists. However, the sea-level canal was not proposed to accommodate tourists but, instead, large ocean-going tankers.
In this time of great concern for environmental problems, let us consider the following questions whose answers may be very relevant to the establishment of an effective biotic barrier. Where does Panama intend to deposit its solid wastes, treated or untreated? Where does Panama intend to put the wastes which will emanate from the proposed copper development? Where does Panama intend to put its thermal* effluents ?
One proposed new routes passes through virtually uninhabited country at the backbone of the isthmus, and I suggest that all these effluents be funnelled into this uninhabited portion of a sea-level canal. The 'synergistic' pollutants could then become a useful localized River Styx, permitting the passage of oceangoing tankers, but preventing the passage of interoceanic migrants.
* Although no thermonuclear plants exist at present in Panama, and the Bayano hydroelectric plan is only under way, the author knows the location of hot springs between the proposed Routes 17 and 25.
JAMESA. DUKE, Research Ecologist, Beltsville, Md. 20705, USA.
Biological Conservation
is the responsibility of the participating countries, while the international organizations concerned are only to provide the stimulation, technical assistance, and coordination, required. The future of this programme rests ultimately in the hands of the scientists concerned in the different countries. It is up to them to define what they want to do, and to influence the formulation of the MAB projects either indirectly through the international scientific unions or directly through their National MAB Committee. Obviously not everything cart be done at the same time, and the programme will advance through reaching a compromise between the aspirations of the scientists involved and the actual possibilities of governments and financing organizations. In this process, no doubt, the scientists and all others who are deeply interested in MAB will wish to give the programme their vigorous support and, more
specifically, to direct its activities towards those problems which they consider most urgent.
References POLUN1N, Nicholas (1969). The Biosphere Conference, BioL Conserv., 1(2), pp. 187-8. UNESCO (1970a). General Conference: Sixteenth session. UNESCO, Paris, 16 C/78, 31 pp. ÷ Annex I of 30 pp. and Annex II of 5 pp. (mimeographed). UNESCO (1970b). Use and Conservation of the Biosphere. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, Paris, Natural Resources Research X, 272 pp. UNESCO (1971). Proceedings of the General Conference: Sixteenth Session, UNESCO, Paris 1970. Resolutions: Resolution 2. 3131, pp.35-9.
Environmental Consultancy--an Experiment Widespread failures by our civilization to take account of ecological principles are not only due to faults in education. Engineers, economists, lawyers, accountants, and administrators, are usually responsible for preparing major projects and programmes of development, and they are often either the decisionmakers or at least the confidential and predominant advisers of decision-makers. Yet with very few exceptions the members of these groups have no education or training in environmental matters, even if they may have some informed interest in them. Ecological principles and knowledge have therefore commonly gone by default--at any rate until such an advanced stage that it is too late to contemplate substantial changes even where large improvements are involved or where imminent losses and damage could be arrested. Recently, informed opinion has begun to appreciate that the remedy for this trouble, and for the resulting controversies, delays, and abortive expenditures, is to develop a new kind of professional individual, capable of becoming a member of an interdisciplinary team charged with getting the project into a sound and balanced state from the outset. Among important evidences of this change of opinion have been the conclusions in the United Kingdom of the Countryside in 1970 Conference (which has advised closer teamwork between the land-linked professions), the decision of the World Bank* to provide for 'ecological * Officiallythe International Bank for Reconstruction and Development.--Ed.
validation' of applications for development loans, the Government of India's endorsement of a similar procedure in its new national development plan for 1969-74, and the agreement reached at Rome in September 1970, by a meeting of international agencies and conservationists, to prepare for publication material concerning the record of selected development projects. An outcome of one of the earlier '1970' conferences was the informal request to the present writer to assemble a competent interdisciplinary team that would be capable of taking care of all the non-structural environmental aspects of new projects, in terms of choice in land-use, feasibility studies, landscape appraisal and design, resource conservation or land reclamation, and site, park, and countryside, planning. This team, known as Land Use Consultants, has now been at work for nearly five years. It has treated more than forty sites requiring reclamation either for agriculture, for industry, or as country parks and open spaces It has also handled long-term schemes for redevelopment, the introduction of a major new industrial plant into an area where protection of amenity and of scientific values was essential, and major projects in replanning city centres and largescale educational and training sites. The outcome of this experience has been to confirm that the approach is sound and that at least in the United Kingdom an adequate effective demand exists for such professional services. In fact, the shortage of qualified and experienced men and women
Batisse : Man and the Biosphere
of the right calibre and personality to participate successfully in this exacting kind of team-work has proved the gravest obstacle to expansion. Nevertheless, it has proved possible to man two full teams of allround capability, one led by an Architect/Landscape Architect and the second by a Landscape Architect/ Planner. Qualifications of team members include also parks planning and administration, environmental resources, recreation planning, forestry, horticulture, economics, geography, and ecology. Ecological principles need to be promptly and successfully embodied in major projects affecting the environment. It seems clear that far more capable and well-minded professionals will need to be educated, trained, and given working experience, alongside engineers, surveyors, land managers, agronomists, and others who increasingly need specialist help and
advice on environmental, ecological, and land-use, problems. A number of universities and teaching institutions in both Europe and North America are turning in this direction, but the more good postgraduates they are able to produce, the greater becomes the problem of ensuring that they receive the kind of practice and encouragement in interdisciplinary team-work without which they cannot attain the satisfaction of seeing their talents and energies creatively employed in the great task of caring for the environment while enabling prosperity to grow. E. MAX NICHOLSON, Formerly Director-General of the Nature Conservancy; Chairman, Land Use Consultants, 139 Sloane Street, London S. W. 1, England
The Sea-level Canal Accord? Few if any biologists will disagree with the basis of the plea in Rubinoff's 'The sea-level canal controversy' (Biological Conservation, 3(1), pp. 33-6, 1970) that 'If our ecological knowledge does not become sufficiently sophisticated to predict the biological effects, then the new canal certainly should include a biotic barrier to be maintained until we are confident there will be no untoward effects'.
Other countries are plagued by these questions: a logical answer seems to be that these pollutants be used, not wasted. Any one of them, if added in sufficient quantity at the centre of a sea-level canal, would be repugnant, if not lethal, to interoceanic migrants, including tourists. However, the sea-level canal was not proposed to accommodate tourists but, instead, large ocean-going tankers.
In this time of great concern for environmental problems, let us consider the following questions whose answers may be very relevant to the establishment of an effective biotic barrier. Where does Panama intend to deposit its solid wastes, treated or untreated? Where does Panama intend to put the wastes which will emanate from the proposed copper development? Where does Panama intend to put its thermal* effluents ?
One proposed new routes passes through virtually uninhabited country at the backbone of the isthmus, and I suggest that all these effluents be funnelled into this uninhabited portion of a sea-level canal. The 'synergistic' pollutants could then become a useful localized River Styx, permitting the passage of oceangoing tankers, but preventing the passage of interoceanic migrants.
* Although no thermonuclear plants exist at present in Panama, and the Bayano hydroelectric plan is only under way, the author knows the location of hot springs between the proposed Routes 17 and 25.
JAMESA. DUKE, Research Ecologist, Beltsville, Md. 20705, USA.