Valuing ecosystem integrity and health
There is widespread concern for valuing ecosystem integrity and health, in Congressional legislation, in policy for ecosystem management, sustainable development, and environmental quality. Both integrity and health are combined fact-value words that significantly mix science and advocacy. Science orients policy, though policy also orients science. Recent ecological science raises questions about the mix of stability and historical change in ecosystems, about how structure and process combine to form biotic communities, about order and disorder in natural systems, and the scales on which these occur. Concern for sustainable development mixes the concern for a sustainable biosphere. Ecosystem integrity and health require much restoration of degraded environments, but restoration goals also mix science and values. A traditional attitude toward nature as resources to be for several centuries, is being challenged by an attitude toward nature as resources to be managed by sound scientific management, increasingly successful for several centuries, is being challenged by an attitude of responsibility for harmonizing culture with nature. This will require an unprecendented mix of science, ethics, and policy in the century ahead. It would be a tragic failure of human culture, especially of modern scientifically advanced culture, if it were further to degrade the integrity, health, and biodiversity achieved over many millennia, leaving a still more depauperate Earth. Homo sapiens, improverishing people and the planet, would not be the {open_quotes}wise{close_quotes} species at all.
- OSTI ID:
- 549151
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-950264-; TRN: 95:006094-0020
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting and science innovation exposition, Atlanta, GA (United States), 16-21 Feb 1995; Other Information: PBD: 1995; Related Information: Is Part Of 1995 AAAS annual meeting and science innovation exposition: Unity in diversity; Strauss, M.S. [ed.]; Heasley, C.; PB: 337 p.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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