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Of all the animals living on Earth only humans deliberately and for their own immediate ends change the environment in which they live on a really large scale. We have been doing so for centuries and now we begin to face the consequences of our actions: global climate change, increasing pollution, and a serious loss of biological diversity. Exactly what the end result will be for our descendants is difficult to predict and no consensus has been reached by those who have tried. What can be said with some certainty is that sometime in the next century the human race, if it survives, will find itself living in a rather different world.
The clock cannot be put back but at least there is now a growing awareness that we can, and should, try to take measures to reduce as much as possible the impact of these changes. The problem with this is that action is needed on a global scale but internationally agreed objectives are difficult to achieve given the very different political agendas both within and between nations.
A thoughtful and wide-ranging contribution to the discussion of these issues has been made by Robert Watson of the World Bank in the Sixth British Ecological Society Lecture published in the Journal of Applied Ecology (vol 36, pp 1-10, 1999). He describes the underlying causes of the changes now happening to our environment. These include ever increasing demands for biological resources due to an increasing population and rising economic wealth, institutional failures to regulate the use of biological resources, the failure of people to care about the future, and the too often inappropriate uses of technology.
Sometimes the problem is lack of knowledge. An example was the use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) as solvents and refrigerants. They are non-toxic and so safe for home use but unfortunately it was later found that they were destroying the ozone layer leading to an increase in ultra-violet radiation reaching the Earth’s surface which can adversely affect human health. Once this was known governments were forced to ban the production and use of CFCs. At other times the knowledge is there but simply ignored. An example is the collapse of fisheries all over the world even though much is known about fish populations, their ecology, and their conservation. We just do not use the information available in this case.
An old proverb tells us that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Advances in medicine and agriculture enable us to live well and longer if, that is, we live in the developed world. Watson estimates that 800 million people are malnourished today and many more, perhaps half the world’s population, lack adequate health care. The primary role of the World Bank is, he says, to eliminate poverty. This, since poverty is relative, may be difficult if not impossible to achieve. However, few would disagree with the intention to alleviate the appalling conditions in which up to half of our fellow humans live today. But, if raising the fortunate half of the world’s population to their present levels of affluence has resulted in the problems outlined above, what state will we be in if the other half is brought up to the same level?
If this happened the people of the developed world would, of course, expect their lives to continue to improve, politicians get elected by promising a better future. Poverty remains relative. The intention is good but the Earth’s resources are finite. Is there some way of giving at least most people a reasonable life without destroying the planet in the process? Watson suggests that there are ways in which we could try to protect the environment, reduce the loss of biological diversity, and alleviate poverty. He believes the massive subsidies currently given to agriculture, forestry, fossil fuel production, and transportation, lead to an inefficient use of resources and so make global warming and other problems worse without much benefit to the poor.
Unfortunately Watson does not suggest that a reversal of human population growth is needed if any measures are to be effective in the long run. Perhaps it was not in his remit for this lecture, perhaps the World Bank does not see it as a necessary response to these problems. Yet almost all the global problems facing humanity today are due to our ability to reproduce faster than we can provide for our increasing numbers. If we sincerely want to alleviate poverty we need to reduce our numbers to the level the Earth can carry. Sustainable forests are fine for trees, one is planted for each one felled. We too need to match births to deaths or risk witnessing the end of civilisation. The population bomb has not gone away, it is still ticking. Dealing with it should be our major priority.
John Timson