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5.2 ISSUES RELATED TO SOCIETY

On the basis of social theme, policy climate around resources and environment may be considered as a part of the society created by society for society. In developing societies, policy climate is not coherent but inherent and contesting (Wilson and Bryant, 1997). Within the society, there are environment users as well as environment managers with contradictions among and between themselves for right and tenure of resource use. A policy within those contradictions finds credibility to offer a regulatory action or strategy; but sustainability matters whether policies are acceptable to society and generate trust to the institutions that are put in the charge of regulation or not. This is a form of “discursive closure” for solutions of sustainability problems where variables for policy actions are actors like policy makers, managers, and their critics from people and institutions. Within a society, the role of these actors helps to avoid social inherence and contradiction producing coherence and a holistic approach of sustainability. There are certain ingredients of the society that determine how the coherence will develop in a policy system. The following sections will highlight some of those ingredients.

5.2.1 Social Modernization

Social modernization offers an understanding of changed social perception of particular problems around which actors get an opportunity to act more coherently. A dynamic society deals with a social problem by dissociating it into specific causal components. However, there are associated converse comprehensions of social modernization as well. The concept of “risk society” and “reflexive modernization” can be taken as the basis for the discussion of the role of modern society in environmental sustainability. According to Beck (1992), “risk society is an idea of forceful achievement of modernization which basically follows the historical era of industrial society.” While industrial expansion and growth become the motto of developing societies, the equation of risk taken by such societies needs to be resolved.

The difference between the role of risk society toward environmental sustainability and that of traditional society begins from the nature of the comprehension of environmental problems. Indeed, some of the environmental problems were not merely incidental but incremental (e.g., global warming). Wilson and Bryant (1997) claim that the

difference in the comprehension of nature and the environment of societies gives the reflection of different time and space. The end result of the environmental observation of nations will differ markedly between the periods as well as among the nations depending on the progress they have achieved on the wheel of modernity. That is why environmental discourse reveals and claims a routine check of social roles on the issues of policy evaluation of that society over that time.

5.2.2 Societal Relationship

The societal relationship induces societies to be coherent. Issues related to trades and transfers of resources mostly depend on societal relationship. The components of a policy dealing with the environmental crises thereby should have their roots in the relationship of society or social organization. Attitude of social organization and social policy toward environmental resources delineates sustainability standards. The attention paid by a society to achieving sustainability is termed here as “social bias.” Attitude to social organization is thus responsible for mobilization of biases, which is important to incorporate societal relationship in the evaluation of environmental sustainability of any resource policy. The organizational attitude and the social bias depend on their relationship with history, past traditions, and customs that justify the demonstration of social bias. Such a relationship is also important for global societies. Because resource policy evaluation has a spatial scale, differences in societies in consumption or attitude to resources could have a significant effect on resource sustainability. Therefore, the bridges of state society relationships are important for policy evaluation.

5.2.3 Radicalization and Convergence

The terms radicalization and convergence are considered here to mean the aloofness and association of state policy with the characteristics of society. While radicalization indicates some kind of peculiarities of policy or society that do not correspond with each other, convergence means adjustment of peculiarities persuaded towards achieving sustainability. Social and economic inequity is a common characteristic of developing society. Thus, if state policy does not work for a poor mass, a large proportion of the community suffers from the impacts of a dreadful policy. As a result, the environmental negligence in the policy, though it seems small, actually multiplies in the social space. Therefore, the key concept of environmental sustainability also emphasizes

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controlling the marginality of the people to reduce vulnerability. That is where the aim of the state should converge with the aim of society.

For sustainability reasons, the convergence of cultural lifestyle and the environmental component of resource, culture, and relationships of social groups (e.g., minority) cannot be avoided in the resource policy (Colchester, 1993). In many parts of the developing world, forestry has now become a part of wider social practice under the impetus of social forestry or homestead forestry (Carney, 1996; Jokes et al., 1995). These authors recommend that unsustainability issues of forest resource used in those societies need to address the equity in gender differences in terms of economy and power relationship. Thus, along with state society convergence, intrasocietal convergence is also necessary for policy sustainability.

The impact of differences in power relationship on unsustainability may also extend beyond the society and may prevail in the international arena. Bryant (1998) noted:

at one level power is reflected as the ability of one actor to control the environment of another. Such control may be inscribed in the environment through land, air and/or water alterations: felled forests, timber plantations, cotton fields, toxic waste dump, mine tailing, barrages over the river, smog from the forest fire and so many.

Thus, in developing countries though the degradation of environmental resources is commonly blamed on the fuel wood gatherer, shifting cultivators, and encroachers, evaluation of existing power relationships and business attitudes among and within the states may shift the blame of deforestation elsewhere. The policies for controlling power, politics, cronyism, trade, and economics may appear as the salient reasons for changing attitudes of poor fuel wood gatherers and shifting cultivators.

5.2.4 Boserupian/Neo-Malthusian Issues

Boserupian and Malthusian concepts characterize the relationship of people and resources, two most important components of society. Instead of taking population or technology as separate factors, Boserupian influence has considered a social characteristic to mean the combined effect of technology and population. According to Boserup (1983), if other methods of obtaining food or change of diet are not possible only technological advancement is enough to meeting the increased sustainably needs. Under the circumstances, intensive

pressure is exerted on the land to meet the staple requirement of people. However, neo-Malthusian concept assumes that, using technological advantages, sustainability can be maintained. Although the concepts sound like contradicting, actually they are additive— Boserupian concept is an additive to neo-Malthusian.

However, whatever concept is adopted, there is no doubt that they will produce intensive pressure on land production system that may cause a reduction of soil productivity in the long run and therefore, a permanent solution to sustainability issues will remain remote. People will start to use fragile lands, marginal lands, and slums (FAO, 1997). Thus, what seems to be a technological/social debate in neo-Malthusian and Boserupian concepts, could be turned to economic inequality. Therefore, the social coherence would be hampered, and thus the sufferings of the large poor mass could multiply in terms of environmental degradation.

5.2.5 Social Ignorance

Although social ignorance means many proletariat issues, in relation to policy social ignorance means a construction of policy inducement for hiding facts by removing details of reality away from the discussion and/ or overriding facts by other less relevant information. This happens mainly for the prestige of bureaucrats, to hide the dishonesty of officials and politicians or to direct the societies in a particular way. Negligence to knowledge of traditional people or aboriginals may also lead to a situation similar to social ignorance. Although such construction may be possible for positive action, in most cases in developing societies it happens for negative actions thus influencing policy sustainability in a negative direction. For example, transmigration and deforestation may have a strong correlation, but due to political motives the information may not be supplied in discussion. Therefore, social ignorance is also an influence of actors who are social elements. Policy evaluation should not avoid such a construction of social ignorance.

5.2.6 Social Attitudes

Social attitude may be considered as the expression of a society or social majority toward a particular policy or condition. Social attitude may be treated as a translation of the combined effects of all the social factors, similar to the translation of the Boserupian factor to socioeconomic factors. To a particular condition, such as environmental sustainability