Introductory Note: Human Nature Is What We Were Put Here to Rise Above

This issue of Population and Environment originated with a workshop on Women and Sustainable Development, held in 1994 at the University of Michigan's School of Natural Resources and Environment. Offering sel- dom-heard perspectives on population, environment, and conservation, the articles address contemporary problems in terms of the constraints laid on us by our own nature.

The focus specifically is on behavioral probabilities which grow out of different male and female reproductive strategies. These have been forged over the millennia by the Darwinian processes of natural selection and sexual selection. They are not unique to humans but reflect, rather, ubiqui- tous efforts to mate and reproduce. The sex making the greater investment in offspring is the limiting (scarce) factor in terms of total parental repro- ductive effort, and can, therefore, exercise choice in mating. The sex mak- ing less parental effort is forced into intrasexual competition in order to win a mate.

This editor is refreshed by analysis which does not begin with what humans ought to be or ought to want. In these articles, the distinction between human aspirations and the raw material of our genetic endow- ment is not in doubt. Biology, anthropology, and ecology show us to our- selves as self-interested, striving animals, working and competing to suc- cessfully reproduce. That human endowment seems unlikely to change.

Solutions to humanity's critical problems with overpopulation and overconsumption probably cannot be found without a clear-sighted view of our genetic starting place. Deciphering human predispositions is a nec- essary, if humbling, beginning.

Goals come later, as in Katherine Hepburn's memorable admonition to Humphrey Bogart (in The African Queen), "Human nature is what we were put here to rise above." The challenge is to arrange economic incen-

Population and Environment: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies Volume 18, Number 2, November 1996 �9 1996 Human Sciences Press, Inc. 103

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tives and political systems that will contain the--glorious or not, as one will--irreducible male and female efforts to survive and multiply.

Virginia Abernethy

The Workshop on Women and Sustainable Development was orga- nized under the auspices of the Population and Environment Fellows Pro- gram (PEFP) of the University of Michigan with support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). It included presen- tations by authors who did not provide papers for publication. Abstracts summarizing their contributions appear at the end of the collection.