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.