In this thought-provoking article Brian Walker takes a hard look at the current scenario in humid as well as semi-arid and arid tropics. In many of these regions the productivity of agriculture is low, human populations are growing and natural resources eroding under pressures of over-use. Conventional development policies of governments have largely failed to solve these problems, and Walker provides an objective analysis of why this is so. He points out that a combination of bureaucratic inertia, different political priorities, a lack of appreciation for what is possible and a reluctance to break with existing policies often leads to governments hindering progress rather than facilitating it. From the point of view of governments alternative, environmentally more desirable resource use strategies are more difficult to control in terms of taxes and facilitating better access to profits to industry. Governments therefore tend to keep on pushing large-scale production schemes, even though they may well generate a lower level of per capita income. The experiences I am personally familiar with from India often conform to this picture (Gadgil and Guha, 1995). Walker's hypothesis is that a combination of non-consumptive uses of a broader base of biodiversity resources than those employed by intensive agriculture and animal husbandry may often be environmentally, socially and economically more sustainable. This is certainly plausible.
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