Ecologie et politique des ressources naturelles

The economic crisis affecting most countries, the prospect of an association of mineral raw materials exporting countries, the threat of a return to protectionism may lead to policies of industrial withdrawal or redistribution the ecological consequences of which can still not be clearly seen. Thus it is necessary to wondzr how necessary it is for states to define a policy for managing their natural resources, which term should be understood in its broadest sense, that is to say including so-called environment resources but also waste that can be recuperated and reprocessed. The interdependence of policies worked out and implemented all too often separately leads one to look for complementarities and incompatibilities between objectives in order to arrive at a coherent natural resources policy. The perfecting of national and regional ecological — economic models, and the attempts to keep count of what is removed from nature should soon enable strategies related to the management of our natural resources to be estimated. Yet a coherent resources policy supposes institutional modifications, the setting up of which will take a long time, and that a choice be made amongst the means of encouraging and facilitating adaptations in the production system. Finally a national framework is too narrow to work out a natural resources policy especially with the prospect of industrial redistribution dictated by the new international economic order as yet in embryo.