Applying sustainable development to resource assessment and environmental planning: Meaning, method and application

The concept of sustainable development has become widely accepted as an instrumental objective of resource planning and environmental policy analysis. Nevertheless, despite considerable academic and institutional activity, there have been few efforts to apply empirically the concept to real-world resource allocation and environmental problems. Lacking are frameworks that integrate the conceptual, methodological, and measurement components necessary for this task. Current and unsatisfactory interrelationships between environment, economy, and society will remain fundamentally unchanged, subject to partial and opportunistic intervention for want of more substantive underpinnings. This dissertation attempts to give the concept of sustainable development a logically consistent and operational content.;Presented is a conceptual framework in which sustainable development is characterised by two components: a set of dynamic ecological constraints and; a series of human development goals. It is suggested that the conceptual framework can be applied to resource assessment and environmental planning problems via a multi-dimensional planning approach. Multi-criteria plan evaluation approaches and programming models are two classes of multi-dimensional approach that have the ability to incorporate the ecological, social and economic dimensions of sustainability-related resource analysis. Moreover, these methodologies have robust data handling capabilities allowing, to a varying degree depending on the actual method used, the integration of quantitative and qualitative information. Their flexibility also makes them particularly relevant tools in today's climate of participatory and consensus based planning.;Success in applying the concept of sustainable development to resource assessment and environmental planning also depends on the selection of appropriate environmental and social indicators. A way must also be found to integrate diverse ecological, social, and ecological variables. An approach for resolving these problems is presented based on indicator measurement at the landscape level. Such measures can be used as indicators of resource stocks. The landscape level of analysis also facilitates the integration of indicators, and provides a means with which to inculcate human values with the study of ecological systems.;Based on the articulated approach to sustainable development a case study centered on Clayoquot Sound, British Columbia is presented. The case study contains two related components. The first is a partial analysis (using a simple multi-period programming model) of the potential of Clayoquot Sound's resources to support sustained development activities. The second part of the case study integrates the results of the programming model with a multi-criteria plan evaluation model. This allows for the evaluation of prior specified development alternatives involving quantitative and qualitative criteria scores and ordinal criteria weights. The study concludes that Clayoquot Sound's current contribution to human wellbeing call not be sustained without a restructuring of the present ecosystem-socioeconomic interrelationship.