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2 Trends and Transitions
Pages 59-132

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From page 59...
... In the first part of this chapter, we look at directions in human development, especially the increasing connectedness of economies, peoples, and technologies; the persisting and even growing human diversity in modern cities; the changing patterns of consumption; the emergence of human development as a significant biogeochemical force; and the basic trends in population, economy, resource use, and pollution. In the second part, the chapter traces trends in the transformation of life support systems at local and regional scales, through trends in human-induced changes of atmosphere and climate, oceans, freshwater, land, species and ecosystems, and disease organisms and their vectors.
From page 60...
... Thus, we begin with trends in human development, then turn to the environmental transformations that have been influenced by human actions, emphasizing the interconnectedness of human development and the environment and the needed shifts in trends for attaining a sustainable future. Specialized studies, named in the text that follows, have addressed trends and transitions for particular aspects of environmental change and particular regions of the world.
From page 61...
... HUMAN DEVELOPMENT Population Growth, Urbanization, and Well-Being Slowing Growth The global human population at the end of the 20th century will reach about 6 billion people. With an annual growth rate of 1.33 percent between 1995 and 2000, about 80 million people were added to the planet each year.
From page 62...
... _ m 3: - - ~ 79~gn 90 Beat ~ ,t 7960 'a Less developed regions More developed regions Historical and projected human population growth in billions for less developed and more developed regions, 1950-2050. Source: UN (1999~.
From page 63...
... It could well grow to upwards of the 80 percent that now characterizes Europe and Japan in two generations.~3 Combined with the rates of overall population growth cited earlier, this means accommodating on the order of 80 million new urban dwellers a year, every year, throughout the transition to sustainability, a feat equivalent to building almost 20 great cities or 10 megacities each year.* Cities grow because people desire the infrastructure and opportunities that urban areas offer.
From page 64...
... The evolving distribution of the human population on the HDI scale reflects the dramatic improvement in the material conditions of human life since the Second World War, particularly in developing countries. Since 1960 life expectancy in the developing world has increased by 17 years, and infant mortality has been cut in half.
From page 65...
... Transitions are also taking place in many other aspects of human development. They include the health transition underlying increasing longevity, with movement away from the infectious diseases characteristic of developing countries to the chronic diseases of industrialized coun
From page 66...
... For a Sustainable Future The persistent trends of growing population numbers but slowing rates of population increase have two major implications. There will be an enormous challenge in meeting the needs of almost twice as many people as there are today in the space of a few decades.
From page 67...
... Pollution, which diminishes the value of ecosystem services and other valued activities and assets, is excluded from conventional GDP accounts as a liability, but appears as a valued economic good as effort, money, and materials are used to respond to it (such as for the repair of a pollutiondamaged building facade or the restoration of habitat)
From page 68...
... GDP is converted to a common standard, 1990 Geary-Khamis dollars, a method that uses estimates of purchasing power parity to compare national economies. Source: Maddison (1995~.*
From page 69...
... In general, extraction, production, and use of energy and materials have increased at rates exceeding the rate of population growth but more slowly than growth in GDP. At the same time, as consumption has increased, use of energy and materials has become more efficient on average.
From page 70...
... Adding in wastewater and materials associated with extraction may double the total mass of material consumption per person per day.37 In the absence of globally aggregated data, trends and projections in agriculture, energy, and economy can serve as surrogates for more detailed data on energy and material transformation, as suggested in Table 2.1. These data show that over the second half of the 20th century, while world population more than doubled, food production (as measured by grain production)
From page 71...
... It is difficult to foresee a sustainable future if the latter trend prevails. Regardless of distribution, increased wealth and income imply increased consumption.
From page 72...
... In the current transition, several major technological trends since World War II have combined to change the nature of industry, consumption, and the world. Fossil fuels, including the liquid fuels used in transportation, have been cheap, and in real terms have become cheaper.39 The availability of inexpensive fuel, the rise of the long-range electric distribution grid, the development and widespread commercialization of jet aircraft, and the proliferation of automobiles and long-range diesel trucks, along with the building of major road networks, have all revolutionized the availability of electricity and widespread transportation.
From page 74...
... We are not sure how to organize such a radically changed economic and social system. In most industrialized countries (other than the United States)
From page 75...
... Prevailing economic opinion sees these rapid increases in trade as the engine of development; in the long run, most participants in such trade will be better off. Yet many in industrialized countries see increased trade as a continuing threat to their own standards of living, imperiling their welfare systems and leading to
From page 76...
... The spread of cultural ideas about the desirability of consumption into distant places enlarges markets and fuels energy and materials transformations at rates far exceeding population growth. While modern technology enables communication that may be freighted with these values, it also distributes a culture of environmental concern that builds on universal concerns for the fate of the earth.
From page 77...
... The increasing connectedness of the world population also presents environmental threats.56 The rapid movement of peoples and products makes possible the rapid transmission of infectious diseases that affect people, crops, and livestock and of biological invasions that destroy native biota as well as crops.57 Environmental changes related to extractive processes for mines, fields, forests, and the sea are accelerated, as tropical forests are exploited for industrialized country consumption and as coastal forests and farmlands are destroyed in shrimp aquaculture. Environmental problems associated with manufacturing are exported to countries with weak environmental regulations or where rapid industrialization uses older technologies that do not incorporate recent advances in energy efficiency or industrial ecology.
From page 78...
... The much-reported resurgence of Islamic religious vitality and conflict tends to obscure equally tense religious differences between and within the majority of the world's religions.59 Are these differences among people and nations in wealth, ethnicity, religion, and opportunities, differences that divide people, create inequities, and encourage conflicts likely to persist and perhaps grow? Current trends in some measures of human development, such as the earlierdiscussed trends in health and human rights, show decreasing inequity; wealth measures are indicating stable or growing disparities; and either despite or because of the Cold War's end, conflicts remain and emerge, and may be increasing.
From page 79...
... For a Sustainable Future Increasing connectedness will fuel growth in some parts of the world, diminish it in others, and amplify the forces that drive increased consumption. In addition, it will export to some developing and recently industrializing countries many of the environmental problems of the industrialized world and, with some delay, the institutions and technologies to control them.
From page 80...
... Using the same framework, researchers70 estimated the fraction of fresh water "coopted" by humans; while this estimate depends on assumptions that de
From page 81...
... These estimates, while inexact, portend that expansions in the human claim on the planet's life support systems cannot be indefinitely extended, especially as human numbers rise through the remainder of the demographic transition. Taken together, do these massive and recent human-induced environmental changes threaten the life support systems of the earth for human life?
From page 82...
... Characteristic problems of developing countries such as inadequate water supply and sanitation decline with rising income. Air and water pollution increase and then decrease (an inverted U-curve)
From page 83...
... Policy emphases should correspondingly shift, whether in the areas of public health, pollution abatement, source reduction, or efficiencies in reducing consumption and reusing and recycling materials. For a Sustainable Future Human domination of natural systems is already so extensive in many places, however, and our dependence on natural resources so deep, that permanent management of ecosystems appears to be the only practicable alternative for a sizable fraction of the natural world.
From page 84...
... This layer is an important component in the life support systems of the planet in that it screens all life forms from harmful solar ultraviolet radiation. The discovery of the atmospheric chemistry of the chlorofluorocarbons, followed just over a decade later by the discovery of the seasonal ozone hole over the Antarctic and its chemical explanation, spurred governments all over the world to enter into a treaty to reduce CFC emissions.79 In response, the Montreal Protocol of 1987 and its subsequent amendments have led to sharply decreased emissions of CFCs and other ozone-destroying compounds, including brominated chemicals such as haloes.
From page 85...
... Of course, most places on earth would not experience the global average. Rather, they would likely experience more extreme weather patterns of variation due to the regionality of climate and sea level change and the impacts of natural variability at the annual to decadal scale.
From page 86...
... For a Sustainable Future It has been possible in some instances to manage pollution of the atmosphere so that damage is stabilized or even reversed. This is taking place at the global scale with stratospheric ozone, at the regional level for acid rain in Europe, and in numerous urban areas via regulation and
From page 87...
... Most of the expertise is concentrated in the developed countries, however, and an important element of a transition toward sustainability will be continued effective transfer of scientific and technical resources to developing countries. Managing climate change in a sustainability transition will have to account for the trend of rising energy consumption, together with the predominant role played by fossil fuels up to now.
From page 88...
... These values are an order of magnitude greater than the average experienced over the last few millennia.94 This worldwide rise, if combined with local land subsidence, results in a large local rise in relative sea level, flooding of coastal areas, and increases in beach erosion. Also, coastal environments are among the areas most susceptible to the consequences of global climate change that could affect sea level, freshwater runoff, frequency and intensity of storms, and temperature patterns.95 Other longer term physical and biological responses of the oceans to climate change are possible, including the disruption of North Atlantic deepwater formation, a condition that has been associated with significant climate variability in the past, and the effect of warming polar oceans on sea-ice melting, which can alter ecosystem processes including primary production.
From page 89...
... flowing to the sea. These actions have affected the abundance and diversity of marine life through changes in the quantity of coastal wetlands and the quality of estuarine waters, a primary source of marine productivity.~02 Fishing itself can affect marine ecosystems, especially the habitats of fish and other marine species, by changing bottom topography and associated benthic communities.
From page 90...
... increased by more than a factor of four, reflecting a long-term trend of increasing withdrawals per capita.~° The rate of withdrawal, an average of 2.5 percent per year, has been more rapid than population growth. Per capita availability of fresh water on a global basis fell from 17,000 m3 in 1950 to 7,300 m3 in 1995,~ while per capita freshwater demand rose until the mid-1980s.~2 One result was a large global investment in and construction of dams and transport systems.
From page 91...
... Although fresh water is a renewable resource (through groundwater recharge, surface runoff from local rainfall, in-flow from nearby regions) and global water supplies are abundant, regional water resources are unevenly distributed among countries, and local supplies or stocks are finite.
From page 92...
... Where groundwater reserves are a major source of water supply (e.g., 50 percent of domestic supplies in Asia) , expanding mining or industrial development can lead to problems of contamination.~30 Water is a basic human need and the failure to provide clean drinking water and sanitation services to all is one of the most fundamental failures of development in the 20th century.
From page 93...
... , which is a parasitic disease that can be eliminated through providing clean drinking water, is on the verge of elimination in Africa and Asia where it used to be prevalent.~3~ Cholera is not as easily eradicated with improved water supply, but it can be prevented by removing the bacterium with sewage and water treatment and treated by oral hydration therapy. However, fatality rates are often high in parts of Africa and Asia because of the lack of treatment facilities and preparedness.~32 In 1991, an extraordinary spread of cholera in Latin America has been linked to dumping of contaminated bilge water from a ship in the harbor in Lima, Peru, the lack of adequate facilities for providing clean water and sanitation, and the increase in algal blooms resulting from the warmer water, heavier rain and higher nutrient runoff associated with E1 Nino.~33 For a Sustainable Future In a transition to sustainability, water use seems likely to rely increasingly on efficiency in use and supply, closed cycles, more effective means of preventing and controlling water pollution, and more appropriate water pricing.~34 These trends also imply more efficient use of energy, the continuing decline in the construction of large projects, and increasing innovation and use of water-saving technologies.
From page 94...
... The discussion of hunger earlier in this chapter records an extraordinary achievement of the 20th century rising agricultural outputs that have outpaced human population growth and dramatically reduced the incidence of famine. This advance has been accomplished over the last 50 years by the large-scale application of scientific and practical knowledge to farming, with dramatic results in many poor nations such as India and economically impressive rises in agricultural production in rich countries such as Australia and the United States.
From page 95...
... Data on rates of deforestation are sometimes controversial because of the difficulties in obtaining data in many regions of the world, but the estimated gross global deforestation rate is roughly 100,000 km2 per year, yielding 5 billion m3 of wood and fuel.~49 Forest soils and standing timber are major storehouses of carbon, and the steady removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by longlived forest plants is a substantial counterweight to the burning of fossil fuels.~50 Forests also provide countless other goods and services; some of these goods, like cacao, play important roles in world markets, while others, including watershed services and medicinals, are valued only by localized human populations. If the rainforests were, for example, an extremely rich and valuable source of pharmaceutical precursor opportunities as many believe, their preservation should be assured by market forces which would not allow their destruction.
From page 96...
... Decreases in tropical forest area and the intensification of agriculture both result in stresses on biodiversity and on ecological systems. Some of these stresses for example the loss of soil organic matter and of pollinator species, and the changes in biogeochemical and hydrological cycles are not visible to the casual observer, but their long-term consequences for life support systems warn that a sustainability transition is likely to require wide-ranging shifts in the values ascribed to land and the way people manage its living resources.
From page 97...
... For example, an estimated 20 percent of the world's endangered land vertebrates are threatened by invading exotic species.~57 Biological invasions of this kind are usually inadvertent, but their frequency can be high. Introduction of exotic aquatic species by human action, often accidentally, such as transporting a species to a distant location in the ballast water of ships, has affected the species composition of heavily traveled coastal areas and bays.~58 For example, in San Francisco Bay, California, an average of one new species has been introduced every 36 weeks since 1850, a rate rising to every 12 weeks over the past decade.~59 As a result, the life-forms visible to humans in that bay are predominantly nonnative.
From page 98...
... Despite reforestation efforts, the rates of deforestation remain high in many areas of the world. The decrease and decline of freshwater ecosystems, coral reefs, and forests represents incalculable losses of ecological services, including the recycling of nutrients, water, and wastes; the mitigation of climate and temperature extremes; the management of watersheds; and the support of local communities and cultures.~65 For a Sustainable Future Without active efforts to conserve biodiversity, pinpoint the vectors of and control bioinvasions, and protect natural ecosystems, the trends of increasing loss of species, ecosystems, and ecosystem services will continue and threaten both the long-term stability of ecosystems and the quality of life for humans that depend on those systems for their livelihood.
From page 99...
... , including irrigation; and urbanization. The intensification of agricultural production has not only increased crop yields, but the related practices of irrigation, land conversion, and habitat disturbance have also increased the risk of infectious diseases such as malaria and schistosomiasis.
From page 100...
... For a Sustainable Future The emergence and reemergence of infectious diseases have important implications for sustainability, especially with expanding populations in areas where diseases are expanding. There will be an enormous challenge to containing the spread of disease while transportation and trading systems grow and while human populations grow and expand into new ecological settings, thereby establishing contact with previously isolated microbes and other infectious agents.
From page 101...
... Breaks or inflections in the long-term trends mark periods of transition. Transitions relevant to the prospects for sustainability are already underway to varying degrees in specific places and regions around the globe: the demographic transition from high to low birth and death rates; the health transition from early death by infectious diseases to late death by cancer, heart disease, and stroke; the economic transition from state to market control; the civil society transition from single-party, military, or state-run institutions to multiparty politics and a rich mix of governmental and nongovernmental institutions.
From page 102...
... 1997. What can be done to address population growth?
From page 103...
... 1992. Joint statement on population growth, resource consumption and a sustainable world.
From page 104...
... 1997. Fatal Synergisms: Interactions between infectious diseases, human population growth and loss of biodiversity.
From page 105...
... Chap. 1 in The earth as transformed by human action: Global and regional changes in the biosphere over the past 300 years, eds.
From page 106...
... 1996. Comprehensive assessment of the freshwater resources of the world: Groundwater component.
From page 107...
... 1998a. Issues in potable reuse: The viability of augmenting drinking water supplies with reclaimed water.
From page 108...
... Background paper for UN/SKI Comprehensive Assessment of the Freshwater Resources of the World. Stockholm: Stockholm Environment Institute.
From page 109...
... In Water in crisis: A guide to the world's fresh water resources, ed.
From page 110...
... 1997b. Report of the Secretary-General on a comprehensive assessment of the freshwater resources of the world.
From page 111...
... A joint publication by the World Resources Institute, the United Nations Environment Programme, the United Nations Development Programme, and the World Bank. New York: Oxford University Press.
From page 112...
... 23 Ausubel and Herman (1988~. 24 National Research Council reports (for most recent list and full texts, see http:// www.nap.edu)
From page 113...
... 37 Wernick (1996~. 38 National Research Council reports (for most recent list and full texts, see http:// www.nap.edu)
From page 114...
... Committee on Engineering Implications of Changes in Relative Mean Sea Level.
From page 115...
... Rapid transmission of infectious diseases, WRI (1998~; biological invasions, Vitousek et al.
From page 116...
... (1998~. Global Environmental Change: Understanding the Human Dimensions.
From page 117...
... (1995~. 78 National Research Council reports (for most recent list and full texts, see http:// www.nap.edu)
From page 118...
... (1991~. Toward a Sustainable Future: Addressing the Long-Term Effects of Motor Vehicle Transportation on Climate and Ecology.
From page 119...
... Outer Continental Shelf Environmental Studies Program III: Social and Economic Studies. Committee to Review the Outer Continental Shelf Environmental Studies Program.
From page 120...
... Committee on Engineering Implications of Changes in Relative Sea Level.
From page 121...
... Committee to Review the USGS National Water Quality Assessment Pilot Program.
From page 122...
... (1989~. Issues in Potable Reuse: The Viability of Augmenting Drinking Water Supplies with Reclaimed Water.
From page 123...
... Committee on USGS Water Resources Research.
From page 124...
... . 136 National Research Council reports (for most recent list and full texts, see http:// www.nap.edu)
From page 125...
... Committee on Irrigation-Induced Water Quality Problems.
From page 126...
... Subpanel on Integrated Pest Management, Panel for Collaborative Research Support for AID's Sustainable Agriculture and Natural Resources Management Program.
From page 127...
... Outer Continental Shelf Environmental Studies Program I: Ecology. Committee to Review the Outer Continental Shelf Environmental Studies Program.
From page 128...
... (1997~. Toward a Sustainable Future: Addressing the Long-Term Effects of Motor Vehicle Transportation on Climate and Ecology.
From page 129...
... . 168 National Research Council reports (for most recent list and full texts, see http:// www.nap.edu)
From page 130...
... (1991~. Issues in Potable Reuse: The Viability of Augmenting Drinking Water Supplies with Reclaimed Water.
From page 131...
... Steering Committee on Valuing Health Risks, Costs, and Benefits for Environmental Decisions.


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