The Sustainable Natural Resources Management (SNRM) program carries out

policy research, provides advice and builds capacity for integrated, participatory
and sustainable natural resources management. IISD's work in Sustainable Natural
Resources Management recognizes that the litmus test of good policy—regardless
of its origins (global, federal, provincial, municipal)—is if it promotes local
resilience. IISD believes that adaptive management builds resilient ecosystems.
"Adaptive management" views each management action as an opportunity to further
learn how to adapt to changing circumstances—learning by judicious doing. IISD is
committed to the research, dissemination and application of those policies, tools
and techniques at all scales that build community-level resilience.

The SNRM program's current projects focus on Western Canadian water and
agriculture. The Prairie Water Policy Symposium, held in 2005 in Winnipeg,
convened 100 water experts to discuss IISD's research on cumulative stresses on
prairie water and the capacity to manage adaptively. IISD is now pursuing policy
research on the conjunction of Integrated Water Resources Management and
Payments for Ecosystem Services in the Canadian Prairie context.

Application of the tools and methodologies being developed by the SNRM program
extend well beyond the Canadian Prairies. SNRM's international work also
emphasizes building community-scale resilience to environmental stressors such as
climate change and natural hazards. The uniquely tragic events of the 2004 Asian
tsunami spurred members of IISD's SNRM team to undertake Natural Disasters
and Resource Rights: Building Resilience, Rebuilding Lives, a project funded by
IISD's Innovation Fund. The project examined the role of resource rights (such as
ownership of land, and access to sea and forest products) in community resilience
to natural disasters and the effectiveness of post-disaster reconstruction.

IISD's work in the field of natural resources follows a tradition of non-partisan,

multi-disciplinary research leading to practical policy advice, and cuts across the
following areas.

Water
Watersheds enable a place-based perspective for the effective management of
water resources. integrated water resources management (IWRM) and the concept
of ecological goods and services (EGS) are emerging as powerful policy concepts
that frame modern water resources management. These two concepts form the
basis of water-related research at IISD.

Agriculture
The Canadian Prairies face multiple, ongoing crises including collapsed commodity
prices, disastrous farm incomes and climate change. IISD's research is aimed at
re-envisioning a sustainable system of prairie agriculture resilient to environmental
and economic shocks and stresses. Current research uses the concepts of perennial
and bio-dynamic cropping systems, ecological goods and services evaluation, and
sustainable bio-energy production.

Environment and Security

Since 1999, IISD has been examining how better environmental management can
contribute to human security, including sustainable livelihoods; resilience to
disasters; disease prevention; conflict avoidance/peace-building; and post-conflict
reconstruction. Facilitated through partnerships with governments, NGOs and
multilateral institutions, this work seeks to offer practical tools for addressing
the links between environment and security.
In economic terms, resources (or capital) are regarded as actual or potential
wealth that can be applied toward the creation of additional wealth. There are
three broad types of capital. First, manufactured capital is industrial
infrastructure that can be applied to the production of goods and services.
Examples include factories, mines, harvesting equipment, buildings, tools and
machinery, computers, and information networks. Second is human capital, or the
cultural means of production, encompassing a workforce with particular types of
knowledge and skills. And third, natural capital refers to quantities of raw, natural
resources that can be harvested, processed, used in manufacturing, and otherwise
utilized to produce goods and services for an economy.

There are two types of natural resources: non-renewable and renewable. Non-
renewable resources are present in a finite quantity on Earth. Therefore, their
stock diminishes as they are mined from the environment. Nonrenewable resources
can only be used in an non-sustainable manner. The lifetime of a non-renewable
resource is determined by the size of its recoverable stocks in the environment,
and the rate of mining. However, some nonrenewable resources can be reused and
recycled to some degree, which extends the effective lifetime of the resource.
Common examples of non-renewable resources include metal ores, coal, and
petroleum.

Potentially, renewable resources can be sustained and harvested indefinitely.

However, sustainable use requires that the rate of harvesting does not exceed the
rate of renewal of the resource. Most renewable resources are biological and
include trees, hunted animals such as fish, waterfowl, and deer, and the products
of agriculture. Flowing surface water is an example of a non-biological resource
that can potentially be sustainably used for irrigation, to generate
hydroelectricity, and as a means of transportation.

It is important to recognize that potentially renewable resources can easily be

"over-harvested," or exploited at a rate exceeding that of renewal, resulting in
degradation of the resource. During over-harvesting, the resource is essentially
being "mined"—that is, it is managed in the same way as a non-renewable resource.
Regrettably, this is all too often the case, resulting in collapses of stocks of
hunted fish, mammals, and birds; deforestation; declines of agricultural soil
capability; and diminished river flows due to excessive withdrawals for use by
humans.

Another important characteristic of renewable resources is that they

can provide meaningful ecological services even when they are in their
natural, unharvested state. For example, intact, natural forests provide
biological productivity; cycling of nutrients and water; a sink for
atmospheric carbon; control of erosion; cleansing of pollutants emitted
into the environment by humans; habitat for diverse elements of
biodiversity; aesthetics; and other important ecological services. Some
of these services are of potential value in providing resources that
humans require, an example being the biomass and productivity of
trees and hunted animals. However, most of these are not recognized
by the conventional marketplace, although they are certainly important
to ecological integrity and environmental health.

The undeniable ecological reality is that humans have an absolute

dependence on a continuous flow of natural resources to sustain their
societies and economies. Over the longer term, this is particularly true
of renewable resources because sustainable economies cannot be
supported only by non-renewable resources. Therefore, the only way to
achieve a condition of sustainable development is to build an economy
that is supported by the wise harvesting and management of renewable
resources.