Building a political commitment to conservation

Excerpt

HEARING the political speeches often made to conservation groups, one would think there is virtually no limit to the political commitment to conservation in Washington, D.C. Every government official and member of Congress knows that soil conservation is good. All have a standard speech deploring resource waste, and all want to be seen as a champion of the issue.

But the results of all that support, when played out in the context of actual public policy decisions that affect public funding for soil and water conservation, tell a far different story. Such measures as real purchasing power, conservation spending as a percentage of total national outlays, or conservation budgets as a percentage of the total U.S. Department of Agriculture budget show that federal soil and water conservation efforts have been declining rapidly for the past decade.

As a result, what the nation needs today is a much broader political commitment based on a solid public commitment to conservation, which must, in turn, be based on a solid intellectual understanding of the facts. Building that intellectual base, then, becomes the challenge facing both soil …