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Ecological Footprint New Science, Old Concerns

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Ecological Footprint New Science, Old Concerns The Science of Sustainability NEW SCIENCE, OLD CONCERNS outline The Mystery of Sum up Easter Island Indicators Definitions, jargon & calculations & Concepts Branches: Food system Economy Industry Easter Island • Brundtland commission (UNED, 1983): [sustainable development… as meeting] “the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.“ • Officially introduced as a new science at the World Congress "Challenges of a Changing Earth 2001" in Amsterdam by the International Council for Science. • Its an interdisciplinary science of natural sciences, economy, engineering, humanities, ethics and more. • It aims at providing ways to reduce human impact and align it with the Earth’s biocapacity. definition “Sustainability is the capacity of any system or process to maintain itself indefinitely. Sustainable development thus is the development of a human, social and economic system able to maintain itself indefinitely in harmony with the biophysical systems of the planet.….its core objective…..to provide to everybody everywhere and at any time the opportunity to lead a dignified life in his or her respective society….This demand for a high quality of life…include[s] a descend standard of living, social cohesion, full participation, and a healthy environment. “ sustainability indicators, A scientific assessment, Scope 67, edited by Tomas Hak, Bedrich Moldan and Arthur Lyon Dahl, 2007 diagram Institutional Sustainability Cultural Sustainability So why do we need to think about sustainability at all? a detectable effect on ecological systems on a global scale (e.g. climate change, biodiversity) Population growth Energy Consumption (peak oil) Poverty, hunger and malnutrition Above all, these problems are inter related and require a new holistic approach beyond conventional disciplines Sustainable jargon • Non fiscal capital, ecosystem services, ecosystem valuation, externalities, carrying capacity (biocapacity), overshoot, weak and hard sustainability Environmental Kuznets curves: History of concerns Malthus (1798) "The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man. Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio...“ ,Malthus T.R. 1798. An essay on the principle of population. Tragedy of the Commons – Hardin (1962) Limits to Growth (1972) – World3 dynamic system model Vitousek et al. (1986) humanity’s appropriation of the biosphere Rees and Wackernagel (1994) Ecosystem Millennium report (2005) International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (2008) Planetary boundaries (2009) Ecological Economics • Dynamics and co-evolution between the human economy and natural systems. • Develop sustainable economic systems • Open vs. Closed systems, subsets and wholes. Learning from natural ecosystems. • substitutability • Well-being and growth. • dematerialization, degrowth Industry and design Industrial ecology – designing sustainable industrial systems Life Cycle Analysis, Material flow Analysis and Net Energy Analysis • Linear design and thought – cradle to grave vs. c2c Green revolution 1940’s-1960s project that involved the development and Pros Cons distribution of high • Increased Caloric • Decreased food security. yield varieties of consumption. The Farming was shifted from cereal grains, developing world consumes subsistence-based to 25% more calories today production for export expansion of than before the Revolution • Farming became heavily irrigation • Between 1950-1984 world dependant on fossil fuels. It infrastructure, and grain output rose 250%. takes more energy to • Only with these techniques produce each calorie. distribution of was it possible to feed our • Disturbed ancient farming hybridized seeds, growing population techniques that were often fertilizers and more sustainable. • Old knowledge was lost pesticides to farmers • Reduced biological in developing diversity countries. “If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for fifty years, they'd be crying out for tractors and fertilizer and irrigation canals and be outraged that fashionable elitists back home were trying to deny them these things.” –Norman Bourlaug Food for thought Population has doubled in the last 50 years. ~ 9 billion by 2050. Increase in population and food consumption per capita doubling (or even tripling) of food demand by 2050. ~1 billion people are hungry, >1 billion over fed, overweight. Arable land increase 1.2->1.5 billion ha from 1950-1999; Grain production has doubled. Doubling of food production either doubling of land or double in yield ~1/3 of the world's cropland abandoned during the past 40 years due to erosion. More lost to urbanization, desertification, and salinization; irrigation doubled; global fertilization increased by 500% USA food system [global]: 50% of total land [40%], 80% of fresh water [70%], and 17% of fossil fuel [30%]. Global food allocation: 62% food, 35% animal feed,3% bioenergy seed and other industrial products. Can humanity achieve sustainable food production systems at the beginning of the 21st century? Considering the environmental, social and economical implications how do biofuels score? And how can we measure such a score? Sustainability indicators Qualitative tools to assess sustainability There exist many indicators, ecological, economical, social or a combination of them. For example: the ecological footprint - It transforms human impact into 5 land types - aggregates it into global hectares. The Gross national happiness (GNH) going beyond GDP - conceptualized by the king of Bhutan - quality of life and social progress Sum up A biomimcry concept (A cycle, cyclic, stable over time) implement in human systems Contains dimensions of environment, economy, and social aspects with an ethical component. Holistic - transects all human disciplines Aligning human impact with Earth’s carrying capacity while providing a descend well being to everyone. More info Please visit our website for more info and summaries: http://openwetware.org/wiki/Sustainability http://www.weizmann.ac.il/plants/Milo/index.php ?page_name=energyANDsustainability .
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