Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
planetary crisis and a science-based framework for a transition to sustainability
forms the core of this text. They argue that the financial crisis is not just an economic
one as it involves repaying all our debts, especially those we owe to nature, the
climate, ecosystems, the oceans, and so on. Many of the points Wijkman and
Rockström make are now becoming generally accepted, but what remains are the
politics, the policy formulation and implementation. Population, for instance, is
often a key driver of environmental problems but the boundary model which states
so many and no more does not offer any ready-made policy solutions. Paul Ehrlich
and Anne Ehrlich (2009), in reviewing their famous demographic treatise
The
Population Bomb
published forty years earlier (Ehrlich, 1968), argue that population
growth retards the development of poor nations and has a disproportionately negative
impact on our life-support systems. In other words, we seem to need, and consequently
take, too much from the planet. Wijkman and Rockström are wary of science being
drawn into political debates but, given what they argue, this is surely unavoidable.
Democratic political processes invariably involve debates, dialogue and, in practice,
'trade-offs', even though many conservationists and sustainability practitioners may
feel that certain values such as individual rights, species protection and cultural
heritage should not actually be tradable at all. Eileen Crist (Crist, 2012: 148)
takes the view that humanity is 'spellbound by the idea that Earth is our planetary
real estate' and that we continually do our utmost to exploit it with increasing
(eco)efficiency which could ultimately result in a completely denatured planet. The
issue for Crist is not so much the potential for human self-annihilation but the
'totalitarian' conversion of the natural world to a repository of goods and ecosystem
services. What we are in danger of losing is not so much resources but our own
family - i.e. the richness of life on earth. Not
Resource Earth
but
Abundant Earth
and this
Abundant Earth
can and should support far fewer billions of people than
it presently does and is anticipated will do as this century progresses. The political
problem then becomes, as David Harvey (1996) puts it, how in a society ruled by
a dominant class are those who are not dominant going to avoid material, political,
economic and social repression; and how are the debates about ecoscarcity, natural
limits and overpopulation going to avoid being debates about preserving the existing
social order rather than nature per se.
Politics, business and scientific developments have certainly increased human food
supply through the introduction of scientifically improved crops that produce high
yields protected by the liberal dispensation of pesticides in areas of high population
growth and evident hunger - south-east Asia, Africa, China and India. This 'Green
Revolution', which had its major impact in the 1960s and 1970s, was also seen by
many political elites as a way of building up economic capital through the development
of an export-orientated agriculture, which would in turn facilitate the path towards
industrialization and urbanization. Many developing countries introduced new strains
of high-yield wheat and rice so that by the early 1990s nearly 75 per cent of land
in the developing world was used to cultivate these crops. In China the cultivation
figure for rice and maize was nearer 95 per cent (McNeill, 2000). Food production
did certainly increase, preventing the prospect of starvation being the principal
experience of the developing world's growing population, but hunger and indeed
periodic famines have not disappeared entirely.
There were also other, unforeseen, consequences to the Green Revolution.
