Essay: Conservation and Moderate Scarcity

Conservation and Moderate Scarcity

Tiffany Tong
October 15^th, 2007

The concept of conservation promotes protection of natural resources to balance consumption and preservation so that future generations will have sufficient resources to utilize[1]. Conservation, however, can only deal with resources that are “moderately scarce” relative to human wants, and cannot be applied to resources that are extremely abundant or scarce relative to human wants[2]. In both extreme cases, conservation fails to be implemented because it is a relative concept that offers no concrete limit or guidelines, and only implies, but does not enforce, a constraint on human activities.

Conservation as a relative concept tells us how our actions should be relative to what we could have done otherwise². It, thus, implies that there should be a constraint on human desires and actions². Conservation tells us that although we have the ability to use up all our natural resources today, we should constrain our immediate wants, and spread out our consumption in order to leave some for tomorrow. Yet, the problem is that, since our usage is relative, there are no concrete limits to restrict our consumption, even when over harvesting of resources can bring negative consequences.

In cases where the resource is very scarce relative to human wants, non-binding constraints will break down and will not be able to be enforced. When there is an extremely high level of desire for a particular resource, its market price will rise. If there are very strict laws governing the protection of that resource, the market price will only increase even more because of scarcity. Thus, even if breaking the constraint will result in, for example, a death penalty, the risk of one’s life would still outweigh the benefits of earning an equivalent of many years worth of money to support one’s family². Therefore, when immediate human wants far outweighs the long term goal of conservation, no kind of constraint can be enforced to protect the natural resource.

One example of a resource of extreme scarcity is illegal logging of mahogany in Brazil. The huge demand for mahogany furniture, piano, and guitars, which are known for their beauty and hardiness, in the international market has led to huge discrepancies in the numbers exporters and importers of mahogany report: much more is imported than exported legally (Greenpeace 2001). The Brazilian government estimated in 2001 that 80% of all logging done in Brazil was illegal (Greenpeace 2001). Even with strict laws and hefty fines in place, the illegal trade is still rampant because mahogany is scarcer than human wants.

In cases where there are plentiful resources relative to human wants, humans will have no desire to consume all of the resource. Therefore even if no constraint is required to protect that resource, there will still be enough for future use. In other words, there will not be a large market for the resource and thus no high prices to drive people to break down any constraints.

An example of an abundant resource is silicon. On earth, silicon is the second most abundant element, making up 25.7% of the earth’s crust by mass (Chemistry). Silicon is also very useful because it is the principal component of most semiconductor devices such as microchips that are essential to the functioning of computers (Chemistry). Although there is a huge and increasing demand for silicon, the supply is equally abundant. Therefore conservation does not apply to its protection; no regulation or constraint is required for the protection of silicon as a resource.

References

Chemistry: WebElements Periodic Table: Professional Edition: Silicon: key information. http://www.webelements.com/webelements/elements/text/Si/key.html Accessed 15 October 2007.

Greenpeace Calls on UK Government to Seize Mahogany as Brazilian Government Bans Trade. http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/media/press-releases/greenpeace-calls-on-uk-government-to-seize-mahogany-as-brazilian-government-bans-trade Accessed 15 October 2007.