Arguably, the most significant threat to environmental health in the Bay Area is development. Development’s impacts are multiform and disruptive to ecosystems on many levels;from air and water quality to wildlife habitat, through each trophic level of the food web. The impacts of development areso far reaching that it is almost impossible to find another singular environmental issue in the Bay Area with suchimmense ecological and social import.
It is however, important to define development in the context of this discussion, as development is not simply theincrease of infrastructure, population, and industry; although these are certainly elements of development. Development, for the purposes of this essay is also a cultural and economic paradigm in which growth and consumption are necessary andoften incentivized. Development in its simplest form is unmitigated use of natural resources. It is also unilaterallyconstructed land use policy.
In the Bay Area many iterative versions of thisdevelopment model exist. It would be unreasonable to suggestthat all development interests pursue the same goals or deliver the same environmental impact. Nonetheless, regional land use policy and development require a certain degree of scrutiny, as the fundamental factors which drive development are notecological but economic. And so long as the economic informsthe activities of development, these activities will requireecological perspectives which balance development activities in ecological terms.
Ultimately, this is a discussion regarding the extension of ecology and ethics into the regional public policy dialogue. As sustainable city researcher and author Tim Beatley remarks, ethics are “axiomatic” in public policy discussions (9). Indeed, ethical discourse is unavoidable in public debate, but often absent in the discussion of development. At the same time reference to ecological principles is limited in the public discourse. The absence of the ecological dialogue in policy discussions must also be addressed.
The extended history of environmental conflict in the region reinforces the need for these frameworks and highlights the failure of ethics and ecology to address development in the past. Hopefully, this paper will move forward the idea of a regional” land ethic” and encourage regional discourse regarding the same.
