Factor aarde aantekeningen en samenvatting
Hoorcollege 1:
3-11-2020 – Introduction to the course: relevance of human-environment interactions
‘guano’: grondstof voor bemesting van landbouwgrond, gemaakt van een specifiek type vogelpoep.
‘Ecological economics’ and ‘economics in a full world’
We currently live in an ‘extraction economy’. People aim to accumulate wealth by extracting as
much financial benefits from the system of economic trade as possible, regardless others or
consequences for others.
Seek financial tax havens, use financial tax-free routes such as through the Netherlands, stall income
on tax paradises such as the Cayman Islands or Cyprus.
And then call it ‘smart’ to cover up its greedy basis.
Economie zou moeten gaan over ‘life’, not ‘wealth’: wat hebben huishoudens nodig om een goed
leven te hebben? Eerste levensbehoeften
Tragedy of the commons:
A situation in a shared-resource system where individual users, acting independently according to
their own self-interest, behave contrary to the common good of all users by depleting or spoiling the
shared resource through their collective action.
- Gemeenschappelijke weidegrond, verschillende boeren laten hier hun koeien grazen, elke
boer wilt zoveel mogelijk verdienen
Economische effecten van extra koe: positief > boer kan meer melk
verkopen, negatief > overbegrazing, minder melk, minder opbrengst
Positieve effect: helemaal voor de boer
Negatieve effect: verdeeld over alle eigenaren
Resultaat is dat alle boeren extra koeien blijven kopen om meer winst te
maken; als boer A het namelijk niet doet, dan doet boer B het wel
- Wat kun je eraan doen? (eigendomsrechten, samenwerking)
Overheid:
Beheerinstrumenten
Vergunningenstelsel
Fiscale maatregelen
Markt:
Geef elke boer een aantal ‘ontwikkelrechten’
Met het totaal aantal uitgegeven ontwikkelrechten wordt de
kwaliteit van de weiden niet aangetast
Als een boer meer melk wil produceren, dan moet hij
‘ontwikkelrechten’ bijkopen
Zelforganisatie:
Laat de boeren het onderling regelen
Model: Communize costs, privatize profits
- Kosten verdeel je over de samenleving, winst hou je zelf.
Op de geologische tijdschaal bestaat de mens pas heel kort.
De aarde bestaat 4,6 miljard jaar, de mens bestaat sinds 150.000-200.000 jaar. Ongeveer 10.000 jaar
geleden was er sprake van de eerste agrarische samenleving.
Lithosfeer: de lithosfeer of steenschaal is het buitenste gedeelte van de vaste aarde en is ongeveer
80 km dik. De lithosfeer beweegt: plaattektoniek.
,Atmosfeer: de dampkring had niet altijd een vast evenwicht qua chemische samenstelling van
gassen. De zuurstofconcentratie is gegroeid van 0 naar meer dan 20%.
Biosfeer: interactie tussen atmosfeer en lithosfeer bomen, planten, dieren, habitats, het zorgt
voor interactie op de volgende manieren: transpiratie, albedo veranderingen, geochemische opslag,
voedingsstoffen toevoegen aan de grond, soil nutritients, etc.
Ecosystemen:
- Centraal idee binnen de ecologie
- Gaat uit van gemeenschappen, bijvoorbeeld vegetatiegemeenschappen
- Zowel omgevingsfactoren als invloed andere soorten (materie en energie)
- En de invloed van de samenstelling van het ecosysteem op de omgeving
Hydrosfeer: water, rivieren, oceanen, grondwater, etc.
Donut economics:
A visual framework for sustainable development – shaped like a doughnut or lifebelt – combining
the concept of planetary boundaries with the complementary concept of social boundaries.
The name derives from the shape of the diagram, i.e. a disc with a hole in the middle. The centre
hole of the model depicts the proportion of people that lack access to life's
essentials (healthcare, education, equity and so on) while the crust represents the ecological ceilings
(planetary boundaries) that life depends
on and must not be overshot
The framework was proposed to regard
the performance of an economy by the
extent to which the needs of people are
met without overshooting Earth's
ecological ceiling.[3] The main goal of the
new model is to re-frame economic
problems and set new goals. In this
model, an economy is
considered prosperous when all twelve
social foundations are met without
overshooting any of the nine ecological
ceilings. This situation is represented by
the area between the two rings,
considered by its creator as the safe and
just space for humanity.
Planetary boundaries:
,Literature:
Chapter 1: A geographic perspective on Human-Environment interactions
Humans have learned to manipulate the environment for their own purposes, for example by using
new techniques in farming systems that are more effective. As societies grew, people traveled
greater lengths, and they started to trade. The significance of this trade, in combination with
urbanization, was that is gradually separated people from the sources of their foods. We were losing
the ability to productively and sustainably engage with our ecosystems.
Not all ecological challenges are a direct result of humans modifying the environment in a
problematic manner, in some cases it has more to do with how humans position themselves vis-à-vis
the biophysical world. Hurricanes, for example, become a bigger problem when people build homes
close to coastlines.
Geography is a broad discipline that essentially seeks to understand and study the spatial
organization of human activity and people’s relationships with their environment. It is also about
recognizing the interdependence among places and regions, without losing sight of the individuality
and uniqueness of specific places.
Physical geography = the study of biophysical phenomena
Human geography = the examination of human or social phenomena
Physical geographers seek to understand long-term climate patterns and change, patterns of plant
and animal distribution, and the origin and evolution of landforms.
Human geographers study the patterns and dynamics of human activity on the landscape, including
settlement, urbanization, economic activity, culture, population, development, and disease.
Between physical and human geography lies the area of human-environment geography.
Geography has been long known for presenting data, cartography or mapping.
Human-environment geographers may use dot maps to understand population distribution,
geographic information systems (GIS) to analyze the potential relationship between population
density and soil fertility, or remote sensing to monitor change in surface biomass.
Human geography Human-environment (cultural Physical geography
(urban, economic, ecology, political ecology, (biogeography, climatology,
, population, cultural, agricultural geography, water geomorphology)
development, political resources, human-dimensions of
geography) global change, hazards
geography)
Techniques:
Geographic information systems (GIS), remote sensing, cartography, statistics
Exploitation is the use of a source without regard to its long-term productivity, for example
overharvesting.
Conservation refers to the use of sources within their biological limits, this is usually referred to as
the sustainable yield (max limits) attempts to make humans’ relationships with the environment
sustainably while still extracting natural resources.
Preservation is the non-use or non-consumptive use of natural areas refers to setting aside areas
of land that are either human-free, free of obvious marks of human influence (like roads or fire pits),
or whose sole human inhabitants are native people.
Non-consumptive use is hiking or camping, for example.
Modifiable areal unit problems are the level at which data is aggregated and the boundaries of
spatial units.
Politics of scale is about the political implications of the choice of scale at which an environmental
issue is articulated and conceptualized. The scale at which an approach is presented or analyzed is a
choice with political and ideological implications.
For preservation and conservation, the net primary productivity (NPP) needs to be considered,
cause if a large part of the npp is from land use, and you start to preserve the land, the people will
need to look somewhere else for their income.
There are two approaches to resource management:
Gifford Pinchot (scientific conservationist) was in favor of the conservationist approach. He did not
see conservation and development as incompatible. He thought the wise use of natural resources
was the key to sustainable development and production over time. He wanted to maximize the
human benefit from the sources over time, instead of on the short term.
John Muir wrote a lot about the aesthetic beauty of national parks. He described nature as a place
without people. So not only preserved from consumptive use but a prohibition on people living in
these spaces. Wilderness should be a place where man is a visitor and does not remain.
In the early 20-th century a conflict started about whether or not to put a dam in the Hetch Hetchy
Valley. It was a discussion between conservation and preservation. The main point was that Muir
wanted to preserve the area for the aesthetic beauty and Pinchot wanted to dam it to provide water
and hydroelectric power for the city of San Francisco. Eventually the dam was built, and Muir and
the preservationists lost the battle.
There is also a discussion about if this was conservation, because due to the dam, the entire valley
was flooded, and the entire wildlife and valley was destructed, so that’s not conservation.
Critical questions:
1. Is human manipulation of the landscape necessarily a bad thing? Explain
2. Are humans unique in their ability to manipulate the physical environment? If not, what
may distinguish humans’ ability to manage the environment from that of other animals?
3. How might you describe geography to a friend? If this is your first geography class, how has
your understanding of geography changed since you started this course and this chapter?
4. What are some fairly general, yet distinctive, elements of the way human-environment
geographers’ approach natural resource questions?
Chapter 2:Why,
5. according
The politics of to geographers, is the Hetch Hetchy controversy in US environmental
nature
history not a very good example of the difference between conservation and preservation?
