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The Impact of Development Projects on Estuarine and Other Wetland Ecosystems

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 August 2009

John B. Elkington
John B. Elkington
Affiliation:
Associate and Senior Planner, Transport and Environment Studies (TEST), 24 Floral Street, London WC2, England.
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Extract

Wetlands represent significant reservoirs of wildlife and natural diversity, in addition to any role which they may play in underpinning the productivity of river, estuarine, and offshore, fisheries. Various campaigns have been mounted to publicize their value and plight, but it is argued that the pressures for development and economic growth are often such that the ecological issues are obscured.

The biology of the estuarine environment is discussed as a first step to evaluating the impact of pollution and land-use policies. The impacts of urban, agricultural, and recreational, uses of wetland areas are reviewed, with particular reference to wetland ecosystems in Third World countries.

The paper concludes by arguing that the estuarine environment needs to be considered as a single ecosystem, and that an understanding of the carrying capacity of a given environment is a necessary precondition for sound management policies. The destruction of natural resources in the process of development planning effectively inflates the costs of that development, emphasizing the need for an ecological basis for planning decisions. The importance of experiment in evaluating alternative land-use options (such as intensive fish-farming) is stressed, and a simple model for ecologically sound development is proposed which could apply to Lake Manzala, in the Arab Republic of Egypt's Northern Wetlands.

Type
Main Papers
Information
Environmental Conservation , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , Summer 1977 , pp. 135 - 144
Copyright
Copyright © Foundation for Environmental Conservation 1977

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