Description: The vast size of the United States and extensive variation of its climate, topography, and biota across different regions contribute to both the richness of the nation's natural heritage and the complexities involved in managing its resources. A follow-up to RFF's popular America's Renewable Resources (1990), Perspectives on Sustainable Resources in America updates readers about the current challenges involved in managing America's natural resources, especially in light of the increasing emphasis on sustainability and ecosystem approaches to management.

Written to inform general audiences and students, as well as to engage the interest of experts, the book includes assessments by some of the nation's most renowned scholars in natural resource economics and policy. An introductory chapter critically examines the concept of sustainability as it has been developed in recent years and asks how the concept might apply to individual resource systems. It considers the interrelatedness of ecosystem, economic, and social sustainability; the paradigms of resource sufficiency and functional integrity; and the contrast between weak and strong sustainability. The chapters that follow examine America's experience with forests, water, agricultural soils, and wildlife. Highlighting the adaptability and resilience of resource systems, each chapter provides a description of the physical characteristics of the resource, a history of its use, a policy history, and a review of ongoing debates in management and policy.

Perspectives on Sustainable Resources in America concludes with an innovative treatment of biodiversity as a natural resource. The chapter reviews the definitions of biodiversity, the ecological and economic meanings of biodiversity, and current efforts to preserve biodiversity, especially through regulatory approaches.

RFF Press is now an imprint of Earthscan. Click here to buy this book.

Description: What lies ahead for America's first conservation-based agency? What objectives should it set? What reforms will be most effective in allowing the Forest Service to carry out its mission?

A Vision for the U.S. Forest Service is both a "look forward" and a celebration of the 100th anniversary of the agency. The engaging, non-technical contributions of scholars, policymakers, and forestry officials provide broad reflections on the agency's past and future, contemporary perspectives about the use and stewardship of public lands, and insightful analyses about the science involved in the practice of "scientific management." The authors offer challenging ideas for evaluating the performance of the Forest Service, reshaping its mission, enhancing its effectiveness, improving internal morale, and increasing public participation in the agency.

Roger Sedjo and his coauthors intend to stimulate renewed attention to an agency that has had a history of both distinction and controversy. They have developed a work that will have great appeal to long-time observers of the Forest Service; past and present employees of the agency; industry, activists, and advocacy groups; public officials; and anyone with an interest in public land use and the future of U.S. forests.

The topics included in this volume were first presented at a national conference sponsored by Resources for the Future and the U.S. Forest Service. A Vision for the U.S. Forest Service is dedicated to the memory of Marion Clawson, a devoted scholar and expert in resource and environmental economics.

Description: RFF's Roger Sedjo and his colleagues discuss initiatives designed to promote and enhance sustainable forestry in temperate countries. While concerns about tropical deforestation are considerable, temperate forests account for the vast majority of the world's roundwood production and most global trade in wood and paper. Improving forest sustainability in such regions is imperative, economically and environmentally. This book illustrates how far nations have progressed, and how far they still need to go, in that effort.

The authors describe how temperate nations address forest sustainability, discussing recent developments affecting forestry and trade. Their compilation of international data on forest practices and regulation provides a useful comparative perspective. They analyze the effect of institutional changes (e.g., new laws) on land management. The volume assesses how national forestry industries are adapting to new laws and policies in the face of new realities in production and markets, particularly in the context of international trade and global competition.

Country profiles provide details on sustainability policy and performance in eight timber-exporting or major wood-using temperate nations: the United States, Canada, Finland, Sweden, Germany, France, New Zealand, and Chile. The authors also assess how each nation would be affected by the application of various criteria for sustainability.

Description: By recording one country's experience with its vast natural resource base, America's Renewable Resources: Historical Trends and Current Challenges will help to inform the management of future demands on the resource base in the U.S. and throughout the world. The contributors focus specifically on renewable resources--water, forests, rangeland, cropland and soils, and wildlife--which possess the capacity to restore themselves after they have be consumed. Because this capacity can be destroyed and the time required for restoration can be very long, a balance in thier use is necessary to sustain continued productivity.

In arresting fashion, the authors trace the history of each resource's use from early colonial times through periods of dramatic, sometimes cataclysmic, changes in its utilization by an expanding, diversifying society. They show how unforeseen consequences have forced social institutions into existence and compelled policymakers, especially at the federal level, to deal with problems for which they were largely unprepared. Complicating the effort is the fact that many of these resources are common property, and have been available on a first-come-first-served basis. Competing claims to their use have many times erupted into legal and even physical conflict. A concluding chapter examines the implications of the growing demand for outdoor recreation on these renewable resources.

America's Renewable Resources, by examining changes in demand, technologies, policies, and institutions, will assist both policymakers and the public at large to look past short-term events to the conditions fundamental to maintaining our future economic and environmental well-being.