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Stretching the Limits: Environmental Compensation, Habitat Creation and Sustainable Development
Author(s) -
Cowell Richard
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
transactions of the institute of british geographers
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.196
H-Index - 107
eISSN - 1475-5661
pISSN - 0020-2754
DOI - 10.1111/j.0020-2754.1997.00292.x
Subject(s) - sustainable development , compensation (psychology) , negotiation , business , environmental policy , habitat , environmental resource management , stock (firearms) , environmental studies , environmental planning , economics , ecology , political science , geography , psychoanalysis , law , psychology , archaeology , biology
The rationales for ecological and landscape engineering are becoming absorbed within economistic interpretations of sustainable development grounded in maintaining ‘environmental capital’. These interpretations incorporate the possibility of compensating for the adverse impacts of development with environmental benefits of equivalent worth, thus maintaining the ‘stock’. Habitat creation is an important form of this ‘environmental compensation’. This paper explores the conflicts surrounding environmental compensation as sustainable development is translated into policy and practice in the British planning system. The extent to which environment damage can be meaningfully compensated raises difficult questions of environmental values and technical expertise. Analysis at two levels – national planning policy and the negotiation of compensatory habitat creation for a specific development scheme – indicates that the pursuit of environmental compensation through present planning processes can serve to accommodate development interests. Furthermore, claims about the manageability of environmental impacts help legitimize particular patterns of economic growth.