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Hauhs, Michael ; Lange, Holger:
Sustainability in Forestry : Theory and a historical case study.
In: Gadow, Klaus von
(Hrsg.):
Sustainable Forest Management. -
Dordrecht
: Kluwer
,
2000
. - S. 69-98
. - (Managing Forest Ecosystems
; 1
)
ISBN 0792363566
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-9819-9_2
Abstract
The concept of sustainable development contains two independent goals: The connotation of unlimited economic growth in the term 'development' and the perpetual conservation of natural resources implied by the concept of sustainable management. These two goals have been difficult to reconcile. Traditionally, sustainability is connected to the search for truly renewable resources in the realm of natural sciences and to the search for truly human needs in the realm of social sciences. Here we argue that in order to operationalize the concept of sustainable development it is necessary to distinguish two fundamentally different types of technologies by which humans develop and utilise resources. The proposed dualism of technologies is based on the respective historical contexts of their origin. One type of technology, exemplified by European forestry, depends on systems derived from natural history, but empirically by trial and error changed into an ahistoric, i.e. sustainable management system that may be extended infinitely. The second type of technology depends on scientific understanding of ahistoric material building blocks that can be recombined and developed into a virtually infinite technical potential through (open-ended) cultural history. The current dilemma of ecological problems becomes one of learning which of the technical potentials and traditions belongs to which category and how to organise the interface between them. We present and discuss a historic example were the interdependent use of the two types of technologies is exceptionally well-documented: The Rammelsberg mine at Goslar, Germany. Delineating a technical culture into realms organised by one or the other type of technology remains a non-trivial problem, but the continuous updating and learning process can be organised in a straight-forward manner. The proposed concept generalises lessons from the example of European forest history and suggests an operational implementation of sustainable ecosystem utilisation.