Renewable natural resources planning for regional development with special reference to Kashmir

Thesis



Natural resources are part of the social capital. It is useful to classify them in relation to their use by man. Renewable resources can be used and yet perpetuated at a given Isvel of quantity and quality. They include the attributes of soil and landscape, the btotic and water resources. Minerals and fossil fuels, on the other hand are depleted through use. They are non-renewable resources.

Renewable resources, together with man, comprise a dynamic bio-system. Any usage of resources affects the system and, in turn, society and vice versa. The resource uses considered here are agriculture, horticulture, forestry, grazing, and watershed protection. These uses embrace an area's rural sector. This includes that part of the output of goods and services and of employment in the economy which depends on the use of land conceived as a natural resource. A conjoint consideration of all the above uses is required to adapt an area's resource-use pattern to society's needs. For this, case studies are needed. This Investigation pertains to Kashmir valley in north India.

The role of renewable resources in development is analysed in chapter II. This provides a conceptual background.

In a poor region like Kashmir, renewable resources have an important place in catalysing development. This involves the transformation of the available renewable resource capital, such as forests, into more productive forms. Additionally, the effects of the increasing man/land ratio can be offset through an intensification of land-use.

A conservationist policy, which impedes the above process, is unhelpful to economic development. The policy should be to economizeon scares man-made capital and skills. They may be combined with larger doses of underutilized renewable resources and unskilled labour. The question in development is not of locking up the social capital for posterity or of canalising society's limited resources into one or the other sector. It is of allocating resources to most productive opportunities.

The planning method evolved here consists of synthesising biotechnical, economic and institutional analyses. The analytical stages do not rigidly follow this order; for, in practice, one analysis has feed-back effects on another.[See text for remainder of abstract].

Authors: Muthoo, M; Muthoo, Maharaj K.

• Publication date: 1970
• DOI: 10.5287/ora-wrmgxngd4
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Subjects: India; Conservation of natural resources; Management; Regional planning; Natural resources