|
Organic Resource Management and Environmental Protection
What are organic resources and how may they be utilized? What are the benefits of organic resource use and how may they be increased? What are the tradeoffs and potential hazards from organic resource use? Answers to these key questions frame the presentation by Paul Woomer.
The production, movement and use of organic materials utilized for food production, as animal feed, fuel, fertilizer and for making handicrafts have impacts on both humans and the environment. Although use of these resources improves human livelihoods and generates wealth, they may also pose less obvious environmental risks. An example is composting, which not only produces organic fertilizer, but also emits greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere and may contaminate groundwater. To protect the environment, these risks must be controlled by maintaining a balance in natural resource utilization, waste recycling, soil and water protection, and policy reform.
Most importantly, innovative exploitation of organic resources may turn adversity into opportunity. In the case of water hyacinth, a biological invasion of East Africa’s freshwaters posed a hazard to human welfare and the environment, but also allowed the production of new handicrafts, thus making water hyacinth control and value-added processing mutual goals. Another example is a mixed-enterprise smallhold farm that generates multiple organic resources from agroforestry, maize-legume intercropping, poultry, livestock and market gardening. When organic resources from the different enterprises are innovatively combined, farm production improves, biodiversity is fostered, and land and atmosphere are better protected. Countless opportunities exist to make better use of available organic resources and that innovation requires insight, practical knowledge and persistence.
|
