The Environmental Assessment of Recreation Development

Abstract

Ecology is like universal suffrage or the 40-hour week: at firts, the ruling elite and the guardians of social order regard it as subversive, and proclaim that it will lead to the triumph of anarchy and irrationality. Then, when factual evidence and popular pressure can no longer be denied, the establishment suddenly gives way — what was unthinkable yesterday becomes taken for granted today, and fundamentally nothing changes. ... Ecological thinking still has many opponents in the board rooms, but it already has enough converts in the ruling elite to ensure its eventual acceptance by the major institutions of capitalism. (Gorz 1987, 3).

Whilst it is now some 30 years since the Western world was first alerted to the potential environmental impacts of economic development, by Rachel Carson in her book Silent Spring (Carson 1962), most people would be forgiven for thinking that environmental concern was a product of the late 1980s. In Britain this has largely been the case, with the Government heralding its White Paper on the environment (Secretaries of State for Environment et al. 1990) as the first comprehensive strategy of all aspects of environmental concern. Similarly, both the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties recently published policies on the environment in the expectation that it will be an important issue in the forthcoming general election (Labour party 1990 and Liberal Democrats 1990).