
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, January 2, 1995                   TAG: 9501070067
SECTION: EDITORIALS                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

ECO-JARGON

SUSTAINABLE development may figure in the jargon of macro-policy wonks like Al Gore, worried about the global issues - loss of tropical rain forests, soil erosion, overpopulation, mass migrations and the like. But real people - worried about their kids, their mortgage and the price of hamburger at the grocery store - don't talk much about it.

They should be thinking about it. Particularly if they worry about their kids, and the kind of world they will live in. And particularly if they live in an area, like Western Virginia, that needs to develop to prosper, but would be striking a poor bargain if it did so at the cost of its natural heritage.

Far from an abstract, distant concept, sustainable development is about local ecologies, local economies, local priorities, local leadership. It is about bringing economic and environmental benefits into accord, and this will not - cannot - happen by federal order, through central command and control, though it can be part of a federal strategy that sets overall standards.

Sustainable development will succeed locally, however, only where it becomes a community value, underlying individual, corporate and local government decisions that affect the environment. It is not anti-development: As the term implies, the point is to be able to sustain development.

Nor is it anti-business. In the current edition of Nature Conservancy magazine, David Buzzelli, a vice president of The Dow Chemical Co., notes that a strategy is needed "that fosters environmental and economic vitality." Sustainable development, he writes, "challenges industry to initiate environmental strategies, not simply comply with mandates."

The challenge extends beyond manufacturers. The Nature Conservancy's Virginia Coast Reserve, on the Eastern Shore, adjoins a 1,050-acre farm operated by the Custis family, which has been farming in the area for centuries. Sustainable development, for them, has meant abandoning their conventional practice of putting hundreds of acres into grain production and diversifying.

By turning to firewood production, a wholesale greenhouse operation and historic farm tours, the family has found a way to keep its farm economically viable, while using the land in a way that sustains it.

A healthy economy does not compete with a healthy environment, but depends on it.

by CNB