Geoscience Reference
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hunter-gatherer cultures, such as the American Indians, “sold” their land to
the invaders (in this case, Europeans), they were really selling the right to
use their land, not to own it outright as fixed property to the exclusion of oth-
ers, something the Europeans did not understand. The European's difficulty
in comprehending the difference probably arose because once a sedentary
lifestyle is embraced, it is almost impossible to return to a nomadic way of
life, including the thinking that accompanies it.
Until fairly recently, historically speaking, property in Britannia, as early
England was known, used to be a matter of possessing the right to use land
and its resources, and most areas had some kind of shared rights. Today, the
land is considered to be property, and the words for the British shared rights
of old have all but disappeared: “estovers” (the right to collect firewood), “pan-
nage” (the right to put one's pigs in the woods), “turbary” (the right to cut turf),
and “peccary” (the commoner's right to catch fish) are no longer in the British
vocabulary. Now, while the landowner's rights are almost absolute, the com-
mon people no longer have the right of access to most lands in England. 12
Even the future of agriculture in the Fertile Crescent is becoming increas-
ingly grim due to a combination of a changing global climate and continual
diversions of the water far upstream in both the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
In 2009, after 2 years of drought, which experts warn could become perma-
nent, farmers began abandoning their fields, even as the Turks began tight-
ening the grip of their dams, which have already reduced the rivers to mere
trickles. In addition, however, new Iranian dams are further reducing the
flows in these two historic rivers. 13
We, as individuals, may despair when we contemplate the failure of so
many earlier human societies to recognize their pending environmental
problems, as well as their failure to resolve them—especially when we see
our local, national, and global society committing the same kinds of mis-
takes on an even larger scale and faster time track. But the current envi-
ronmental crisis is much more complex than earlier ones, because modern
society is qualitatively different than previous kinds of human communities.
Old problems are occurring in new contexts, and new problems are being
created, both as short-term solutions to old problems and as fundamentally
new concepts. Pollution of the world's oceans, depletion of the ozone layer,
production of enormous numbers and amounts of untested chemical com-
pounds that find their way into the environment, and the potential human
exacerbation of global climate change were simply not issues in olden times. 14
But they are the issues of today.
Although a few cultures (such as Bedouin clans in the Middle-Eastern des-
erts and the Lapland reindeer herders) still live lightly on the land, most of
humanity leaves a heavy footprint, consuming nearly a quarter of the Earth's
biophysical productivity. In fact, land use continually transforms Earth's ter-
restrial surface, thereby resulting in changes within biogeochemical cycles
and thus changes in the ability of ecosystems to deliver services critical to
human well-being. 15
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