Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
conception remains
in the West, which has been illustrated, in par-
ticular, by recent polemics with respect to the Gaya conception (Ebel et al. 2004).
The biotic regulation conception is based on the following conclusions:
“
unnoticed
”
The Earth is a unique planet of the Solar system, since on this planet, life exists
in the form of biota
a totality of all living organisms, humans including.
Important properties of life include: biological stability of species and their
communities as well as a very rigid distribution of energy
—
uxes absorbed by
biota among organisms of different sizes. Biota is responsible for the formation
of environmental properties and their stability according to biotic needs. Only
for this reason the long existence of biota on the Earth based on the principle of
biotic regulation has become possible. Maintenance of environmental stability is
one of the major goals of all living organisms.
fl
Like many other species, homo sapiens is one of the biotic species and therefore its
important problem consists also in maintaining the global biospheric stability.
Otherwise, sustainable development would be impossible. Very long ago, humans
left their natural ecological niche and began to consume much more biospheric
resources than it is permitted by requirements of ecological balance. After the
beginning of industrial revolution, this process of breaking the natural balance has
been accelerating under conditions of rapid growth of population size.
Approximate estimates have shown that to provide the stable state of the bio-
sphere, one can use not more than 1 % of its resources. At present, this share is
close to 10 %. A similar situation exists with respect to the evolution of global
biogeochemical cycles of matter. So, for instance, the completeness of global
carbon cycle before the beginning of industrial revolution had been close to
0.01 % (biodiversity had played an important role in establishing the biospheric
stability). By now, the completeness has decreased to 0.1 % and a threat of
global ecological disaster becomes more and more pronounced. So the bio-
sphere should be considered not a resource but a fundamental condition for life
on Earth. At present, a major goal should be a restoration of the biosphere,
already subjected to substantial disturbing forcings, and its maintenance in a
state that would ensure the sustainable development. However a dif
cult
problem is the presence of many insuf
ciently studied aspects of biospheric
dynamics. In this context, creation of adequate observational systems and fur-
ther improvement of numerical modelling methods play a decisive role. The
rst
of these problems is especially urgent, since until now an adequate system of the
global change monitoring not only does not exist but even has not been sub-
stantiated conceptually.
A critically important feature of the present civilization development consists in
inequality between developed and developing countries, which is manifested,
first of all, through non-equivalent use of the existing resources. The per-capita
consumption of the
“
”
(this term is popular in the Russian-
speaking world, referring to the relatively wealthy people in industrially
developed nations, or the West) is incomparably higher than for the rest of the
world. Therefore it is necessary to achieve an agreement on a new social order
golden billion
Search WWH ::
Custom Search