The SWCS view

Excerpt

SWCS's 44th annual meeting in Edmonton, “Making Conservation Happen, Together,” is meant to focus our attention on improved teamwork in natural resource management. Never has the need for greater teamwork been more apparent. Declining financial resources, increasing complexity in environmental management problems, and rising public expectations for better cooperation among units of government all call for more and better teamwork.

Several recent critiques of the state of our global environment, among them the report “Our Common Future” by the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development (the Bruntland Commission) and numerous reports from the Worldwatch Institute, contain warnings about the lack of sustainability in resource management practices, both in North America and globally.

As resource conservation practitioners, we are called upon to reconsider traditional ways of managing resources in an attempt to discover more sustainable methods. To accomplish this, we must realize far more teamwork among disciplines, among units of government, and between governments and a host of privatesector and public-interest groups. A significant obstacle is the difficulty we experience in sharing resources, control, and recognition without being threatened by those with whom we do the sharing.

In this complex world few …