The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA 2005) assessed 24 ecosystems services, from direct services such as food provision to more indirect services such as ecological control of pests and diseases, and found that 15 of them are being degraded or used unsustainably. 2011).Īt least as disturbing as climate change, and far less well known and understood, is the erosion over the past two centuries of ecosystem services, those benefits derived from ecosystems that support and enhance human well-being. These risks, such as those associated with sea-level rise, extreme events, and shifts in rainfall patterns, rise sharply as the temperature climbs toward 2☌ above pre-industrial and quite possibly beyond (Richardson et al. Although many uncertainties still surround the risks associated with climate change, impacts are already observable at today’s mean global surface temperature rise of about 0.8☌ since the mid-nineteenth century. The manmade greenhouse gases have already trapped enough infrared energy to warm the planet by more than 2☌ (Ramanathan and Feng 2008). The evidence that the Earth is warming is unequivocal, and human emissions of greenhouse gases, most importantly carbon dioxide (CO 2), have been responsible for most of the warming since the middle of the twentieth century (IPCC 2007). These challenges come at a time when the global environment shows clear signs of deterioration and, as a consequence, questions the continuing ability of the planet to provide the same accommodating environment that has facilitated human development over the past 10 000 years.Ĭlimate change is a prominent sign of human-driven changes to the global environment. The pathways of development followed by today’s wealthy countries after the Second World War-built on plentiful, cheap fossil fuel energy resources, an abundance of other material resources, and large expanses of productive land to be developed-cannot be followed by the 75–80% of the human population who are now at various stages of their trajectories out of poverty, and are beginning to compete with today’s wealthy countries for increasingly scarce resources.Ī large fraction of our population of nearly 7000 million people needs more access to food, water and energy to improve their material standard of living, and the prospect of an additional 2000 million by 2050 intensifies the need for basic resources. Less well known is the potential shortage of the mineral phosphorus and the increasing competition for land-sometimes referred to as the “land grab” in relation to Africa-as the new economic giants of Asia move to secure food resources in non-Asian territories. The twin challenges of “peak oil”-decreasing petroleum resources and increasing demand-and climate change are redefining the pathways of human development in the twenty-first century (Sorrell et al. People and the Planet: Humanity at a Crossroads in the Twenty-First Century As we go further into the Anthropocene, we risk driving the Earth System onto a trajectory toward more hostile states from which we cannot easily return. The need to achieve effective planetary stewardship is urgent. The Anthropocene is a reminder that the Holocene, during which complex human societies have developed, has been a stable, accommodating environment and is the only state of the Earth System that we know for sure can support contemporary society. Many approaches could be adopted, ranging from geo-engineering solutions that purposefully manipulate parts of the Earth System to becoming active stewards of our own life support system. The advent of the Anthropence, the time interval in which human activities now rival global geophysical processes, suggests that we need to fundamentally alter our relationship with the planet we inhabit. This situation is novel in its speed, its global scale and its threat to the resilience of the Earth System. Equity issues remain stubbornly difficult to solve. However, in the twenty-first century, we face scarcity in critical resources, the degradation of ecosystem services, and the erosion of the planet’s capability to absorb our wastes. Over the past century, the total material wealth of humanity has been enhanced.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |