Illinois Institute for Rural Affairs
Making a Difference in Rural Illinois
A Foundation for Sustainable Rural Community Development
Aldo Leopold
Recognition of the relevance of forester Aldo Leopold’s (1887-1948) thinking for community development practice has gradually grown in the decades since the publication of A Sand County Almanac in 1949. His land ethic moves beyond a community that focuses on people to include the land: soil, water, plants, and animals.
Leopold’s Land Ethic suggests possibilities for new human relationships with nature, while emphasizing biological limitations on individualistic human behavior that is, in the long run, irrational. Leopold offers a rational ethical alternative to Adam Smith’s amoral notion of insatiable wants and needs and continuous growth that permeates capitalist economic thought and activity.
The Land Ethic is a natural capstone of the Conservation Movement encouraged by Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot. The land ethic, however, moves beyond wise use, giving the community’s ecology an equal footing with social development. It is a vital element of today’s efforts to build sustainable communities based on central goals of a healthy ecosystem, a vibrant local and regional economy, and overall social well-being.
Recommended Resources
- Collins, Timothy. 2006. “Community Capitals, Human Agency, and Values for Sustainability: A Land Use Example.” North Central Regional Center for Rural Development. Community Capitals Framework Workshop, December, 2006. (Accessed: August 18, 2008).
- Leopold, Aldo. 1968. A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There. London: Oxford University Press.
- Newton, Julia Lutz. 2006. Aldo Leopold’s Odyssey. Washington, DC: Island Press.
