PARENT SESSION
Symposium #1: Ecology and agriculture.
Sponsored by ESA Agroecology section
Organized by: D. Andow, S. Gliessman, N. Jordan, M. Liebman, B. Maxwell, D. Neher, I. Perfecto, A. Power.
Monday, August 6, 2001. 8:00 AM to 12:00 PM. Lecture Hall

Science for sustainable, humane and productive development.

LEVINS, RICHARD¹, ¹

ABSTRACT- The world faces a dilemma: on the one hand the peoples of the developing world demand a rising standard of living. On the other hand, if that standard of living and the productive processes to support take the form of the Euro-North American-Japanese pathway of the development, we will destroy our life support system. We can neither suppress the demand for a fair share of the world's riches nor accede to a pathway that sinks us all. Therefore the only solution is an alternative pathway of development, one which meets the criteria of productivity, justice and sustainability. The world is rich enough and our scientific potential broad enough to make the enhancement of life a criterion for development. Within such a pathway of development, agriculture plays a central role. The design of a pathway of agricultural development that is productive and enhancing of productivity, reliable, equitable in its rewards, enriching for its participants, that preserves rural life, and that participates along with natural preserves in the preservation of biodiversity, is the challenge for our science. The development of such a science is daunting in its complexity. But the study of complexity is perhaps the central intellectual problem of our age. Far from requiring ecologists to sacrifice intellectual concerns for practical needs, such an agenda for our science enriches its intellectual content along with its urgent practical value and allows us to establish new kinds of relationships that combine the detailed, intimate knowledge that farmers have of their own circumstances with the scientific knowledge that requires some distance from the particular.

KEY WORDS: development, justice, sustainability, productivity