Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
3 RestoringBabylon
Leaving a Better Iraq for This
Century of Revitalization
Storm Cunningham
CONTENTS
Background .............................................................................................................. 29
What Iraq Can Learn from Warsaw ......................................................................... 30
Reblindness .............................................................................................................. 31
From Pioneers to Long-Term Residents .................................................................. 32
Restoration: The Great Integrator ............................................................................ 33
References................................................................................................................ 36
BACKGROUND
We're at a historic global turning point. The three crises (contamination, corrosion,
and constraint) resulting from sprawl (from population growth) and from basing
societies on natural resource extraction have always been local in nature: we've long
had polluted, dilapidated, and overcrowded cities, regions, or even nations. Never
before, however, have these three crises reached global levels, and now all three
are coming to a head simultaneously in what can be referred to as “the restoration
economy” (Cunningham 2002).
In the past, humanity dealt with these crises in one of three ways: the city or
region was allowed to decline or even die, the people packed up and moved to an
area that wasn't affected by the three crises, or the committed residents shifted to
a restorative mode. Those three options exist when the crises hit at a local level,
but two of them disappear when the crises become global: humanity can't yet move
to another planet, and letting the entire global economy go into a death spiral isn't
a viable option. Therefore, put simply, we either restore and revitalize, or decline
and die.
In the 1960s, we started addressing the environmental problems of the world—
contaminated land, air, and water; crashing fisheries; dwindling biodiversity;
exhausted farmlands; destroyed farmlands (from sprawl); and so on—by trying to
slow down the rate of destruction and pollution, and by trying to save a few examples
of pristine ecosystems for future generations. All well and good. But that rearguard
29
 
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