SERIE RE5EHRCH IHEmORnnDR ECOLOGICALLY SUSTAINABLE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN A REGIONAL SYSTEM: A CASE STUDY IN AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT PLANNING

This paper focuses attention on the relevance of the notion of sustainable development in a regional context and the use of models in analyzing sustainable development. The paper discusses first the notion of sustainable development, linking socio-economic, ecological and political-ethical elements. Time and space prove to be important dimensions of sustainable development, in both distributional and tradeoff questions and dynamic growth processes. The concept of sustainable use of resources and its relevance to sustainable development will also be discussed. In that context multiple use and uncertainty are important concepts. In a spatial context, an often neglected but interesting concept is that of regional sustainable development. lts relationship with both the global concept of sustainable development and sustainable use of resources will be discussed. In the paper, we will focus on the use of models for sustainable development in general and in a regional context. All such models integrate economy and ecology: a description of economie processes, ecological processes and their interactions; and an inclusion of socioeconomic and ecological indicators in the evaluation. Only dynamic models will be considered here, as they are seen to be the most relevant class for tracing sustainable development. It is argued that systems models are most appropriate on a regional level, as here the level of detail of describing economics and ecology (and their interactions), including their policy relevance, is fairly balanced. Finally, a case study is presented for the Peel region, an agricultural area in the Netherlands, where presently agriculture causes considerable damage to groundwater, forests, and protected fen areas due to intensive cattle farming, irrigation and drainage.