Carrying-Capacity As a Basis for Sustainable Development

by P. Khanna, P. Babu

Paperback. The concept and premises of carrying-capacity are employed as tools for the operationalization of sustainable development. Carrying-capacity of a region, comprising its supportive and assimilative capacities, is defined as the ability to produce desired outputs from a constrained resource base to achieve a higher and more equitable quality of life, while maintaining desired environmental quality, and ecological health. The proposed planning process explicitly includes interaction between the community, experts and decision-makers to arrive at trade-offs between the desired production-consumption levels through the exploitation of supportive capacity within its regenerative potential, and environmental quality within the assimilative capacity of the regional ecosystem. These trade-offs result in structural shifts necessary for reconciling competing demands in the overall process of socio-economic development through appropriate technological, ma

62 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1999