ABSTRACT
Management of natural resources has become a contentious and divisive issue throughout the world. The natural environment is the basis of all economic activity and provides humans with food and water, raw materials needed for the production of consumer goods and services, and ecosystem goods and services. Ecosystem goods include products, such as timber, biomass fuels (coal, crude oil, and natural gas), and natural fiber (cotton and wool) that are used to produce intermediate goods, such as lumber, aluminum, and inorganic fertilizers, and/or consumer goods and services, such as homes, automobiles, clothing, and health care. Ecosystem services include air and water purification, mitigation of floods and drought, detoxification and decomposition of wastes, generation and renewal of soil, biodiversity, partial stabilization of climate, nutrient cycling and pollination, and others (Daily 1997).
