THE RESOURCE CYCLE IN FORESTRY AND FISHING

While renewable resources appear to be the ideal basis for sustainable development, such development assumes that extraction can be restrict ed to the rate of natural increase in an intact ecosystem. The long re cord of failure to sustain the yield of biological resources suggests that such restriction is possible only in theory. While fish and timbe r are renewable, in practice they have not been sustainable. Although both may remain abundant, or at least stable, on a national basis, agg regate data disguise a sequence of regional cycles of boom and collaps e, in which the market shares of regions in decline are taken by other regions which have not yet reached the point of crisis. Sustainabilit y in regional resource extraction is achieved only in the chastening a ftermath of resource collapse, and usually at levels significantly bel ow those theoretically attainable from the productivity of the origina l ecosystem. This paper reviews the multiple, and mutually reinforcing causes of the cycle of overexploitation and collapse, termed the reso urce cycle. It closes by considering the limitations that the resource cycle imposes on public policy, and their implications for the recove ry of depleted resources.