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A New Look at the Plight of Tropical Rain-forests

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 August 2009

Willem Meijer
Willem Meijer
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of Botany, School of Biological Sciences, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky 40506, U.S.A.
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Extract

While developed countries of the world are expressing growing concern about the plight of tropical rain-forests, it is necessary to understand the issues involved. They are not merely populaton growth, the world food problems, and the ever-growing demand for natural resources, but also environmental ethics and the attitudes of resource managers and other decision-makers. These last issues might be even more important in the long run than purely demographic and socio-economic problems.

The Author of this essay attempts to build up a case for the need of a global environmental ethic which would incorporate existing values of respect for living creatures, sacred groves, and sacred animals—such as still survives among the cultures of the less-developed parts of the tropical world. It might well be that the life-styles of strongly vegetarian societies, and the intensive tropical lowland agriculture as practiced in and around irrigated rice-fields in Southeast Asia, could be used as a model for wiser use of renewable natural resources in the lessdeveloped tropical areas.

Type
Main Papers
Information
Environmental Conservation , Volume 7 , Issue 3 , Autumn 1980 , pp. 203 - 206
Copyright
Copyright © Foundation for Environmental Conservation 1980

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References

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