No matter what they come up with, ice ages, volcanoes, and shifting tectonic plates will dwarf human activities in the long run. But communities and countries face concrete choices in the next decade that are likely to determine the quality of human life and the environment well into the 22nd century.
Human activity is such a pervasive influence on the planet's ecological framework that it is no longer possible to separate people and nature.
Emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide, whether from an Ohio power plant or a Bangkok taxicab, contribute to global warming. Seafood lovers dining in Manhattan bistros prompt fishing vessels to sweep Antarctic waters for slow-growing Chilean sea bass. Shoppers in Tokyo seeking inexpensive picture frames send loggers deep into Indonesian forests.
In a new book, Great Transition: The Promise and Lure of the Times Ahead, published by the Stockholm Environment Institute, a group of geographers, economists, engineers, and other experts concludes that the same inventiveness that accelerated the human ascent can be harnessed to soften human impact.
Over the past 30 years, "sustainability" has become the mantra of many private groups, government officials, scientists, and, even, a growing number of businesses. Most define the notion as advancing human endeavors without diminishing prospects for future generations.
Slow Progress
The Johannesburg summit meeting is the third global conclave in three decades chasing this elusive goal of "sustainability." But movement toward concrete action has been slow.
The first meeting, in Stockholm in 1972, rang an alarm about despoiling Earth. Wealthy nations began cleaning air and water, but continued to assault forests and other resources elsewhere to fuel growth.
In 1992 came the second meeting, in Rio de Janeiro, called the Earth Summit. Diplomats forged ambitious agreements aimed at holding back deserts and protecting the atmosphere, forests and pockets of biological richness.
But the agreements were vague, relying more on good will than on concrete obligations. Developing countries refused to take on obligations, saying the industrialized north should step first.
After Rio, population continued to grow, poverty persisted, forests retreated, soils eroded, fish stocks shrank, and concentrations of heat-trapping greenhouse gases rose, despite a treaty in which industrialized countries pledged to "strive" to reduce them.
After disasters such as the chemical release in Bhopal, India, in 1984 and the grounding of the Exxon Valdez in Alaska in 1989, many companies shifted practices to avoid environmental damage, shareholder wrath, and consumer boycotts.
No one expects that people will be able to manage the planet like some giant corporation.
"If you mean making the thousands of little decisions that need to be made, we can no more effectively manage the world than the Soviet Union could manage its centrally planned economy," said Robert Kates, a geographer who heads a National Academy of Sciences committee on sustainable development and a co-author of Great Transition.
But Kates says the potential exists to make informed choices that spread the benefits of development to an impoverished majority while not depleting vital assets.
Irreparable Change
One impediment to such a transition is the change itself—the environmental and societal turbulence created by explosive human growth, technological advance, and the planet-wide linkup of disparate cultures, Kates and other experts say.
Another barrier, they note, is the enormous growth of population and consumption. Although global population appears headed for a 50 percent increase in the next 50 years, for example, demand for food will likely double, as prosperity raises the per-capita consumption of calories.
There is another roadblock. Not every problem of consequence comes with a Bhopal-style wake-up call. Global warming and species extinction are examples of potential catastrophes that are hiding in plain sight, experts say.
By flooding the atmosphere with synthetic chemicals and heat-trapping carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, for example, people damaged the protective ozone layer and contributed to a warming climate, scientists have said. The ozone depletion became vividly and unexpectedly evident in the 1980s, when a gaping hole was detected over Antarctica.
The hole will shrink in the next 50 years because of a ban on ozone-eating chlorofluorocarbons. Other damage will not be so easy to repair.
Long before they are cataloged, thousands of plant and animal species are likely to be driven to extinction as forests, wetlands, mountain slopes, and other habitats are exploited or harmed by climate change.
Satellites that map vegetation and the nighttime signature of human activity fire and light show that people have altered more than one-third of the terrestrial landscape. Once it is changed, it is usually changed forever, G. David Tilman, an ecologist at the University of Minnesota, said.
Where progress is seen, too often it is only in a slowing rate of destruction, ecologists say.
For example, new satellite surveys show that forest loss in the tropics through the 1990s occurred at a rate 23 percent less than previous estimates. But losses still add up to some 14 million acres (5.6 million hectares) a year, with another 5 million acres visibly damaged.
Major Role of Cities
Projections for the next two generations do not bode well for easing environmental problems. Even with the population bomb predicted in the 1960s substantially defused, the human population is likely headed for at least 9 billion or 10 billion before leveling off.
Another focal point for experts who envision a managed Earth is cities. In many ways, they are where the battle will be won or lost.
Cities are where almost all remaining population growth will occur, demographers say. The roster of megacities—those with populations exceeding 10 million—is widely expected to climb, from 20 today to 36 by 2015.
But increasingly, demographers and other experts say that cities may actually be a critical means of limiting environmental damage. Most significantly, family size drops sharply in urban areas.
"The city is perhaps the most effective device for reducing the birthrate," said George Bugliarello, chancellor of the Polytechnic University in Brooklyn and an expert on urban trends.
For the poor, access to health care, schools, and other basic services is generally greater in the city than in the countryside.
Energy is used more efficiently, and drinking and wastewater systems, although lacking now, can be built relatively easily.
Copyright 2002, International Herald Tribune
