Introduction

Abstract

Technological advances, the geographical and social expansion of markets as well as institutional developments increasing access to capital have resulted in a vast extension of human natural resource harvesting capacities in the twentieth century, and there are few signs that this trend will slow down in the foreseeable future. The questions of biological limits and ecological sustainability have in various ways and to different degrees been placed on the political agendas during the past forty years. It has generally been recognised that this problem must be seen as being the responsibility of political authorities, at least in principle. However, apart from those instances where the state itself owns and manages the means of production it is debarred from managing natural resources directly. It has to manage resources by managing the people who harvest them. In other words, successful resource management requires successful governance of people and thereby a minimum level of knowledge of relevant social processes. Much emphasis has been placed on generating knowledge about the causal connections between the actions of resource harvesters and the state of nature. This is not difficult to understand. The ability to predict important long-term ecological consequences of human activities has so far proven to be limited, and the cases addressed in this study are no exception in this respect.