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Summary articles Reinventing Environmental Planning
Summary articles Reinventing Environmental Planning
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Summary articles REPLecture 2:
Hughes, J.D. (2005) Global Environmental History: The Longs View.
1 | Abstract + Intro
Four themes that seem certain to characterize the course of world environmental history in the long
run. These are: (1) population growth; (2) local vs. global determination of policy; (3) threats to
biodiversity; and (4) the supply of and demand for energy and materials
2| Population Growth
Population problems take on a different appearance when viewed one by one. Nevertheless,
population growth is the most potent engine driving environmental destruction. Burgeoning
(ontluikende) population adds to the scale of environmental effects caused by humans, and makes
changes happen faster.
Looking toward the twenty-first century, the UN has predicted that population growth will
slow and stop at some maximum figure between 10 and 12 billion. These are believed to result from
improving health and education, availability of birth control, higher standards of living, and the
increasing participation of women in reproductive decisions. Even so, food supplies will stay adequate
beyond mid-century, so famine will not constrain population. Additionally, many benefits of biotech
will remain affordable only in the affluent nations.
When such an upward swing of population pushing the limits of resources has occurred in history, as
happened in the southern Maya lowlands between 650 and 850 CE, and in Europe during the two
centuries or so before 1300, it was followed by a crash and the abandonment of many settlements.
The major causes of such a crisis would be resource shortages, pollution, and depreciation of resource
capital due to failure of new investment. Without measures to curb population growth, along with
controls on pollution and resource use, a demographic crash later in the century or shortly beyond
seems inevitable.
3| Local versus Global Determination of Policy
The second theme is the local versus the global. The course of the relationship between culture and
nature is determined to a major extent by the scale on which decisions about environmental policy
are made. The direction of the trend through history seems clear.
1. Early farming villages allotted the land, decided what to plant, and often reserved a tract of
forest for communal use, including an inviolable sacred grove. People with both ways of life
made impacts on the environment, but they witnessed these impacts and limited them to
some extent.
2. City-states established hierarchies of priests, kings, and assemblies that made decisions on
land use. The authorities could see some of the results of their decisions. The overall effects
of the use of resources were less apparent to local people
3. Colonialism enabled metropolitan countries to profit from environmental damage in other
parts of the world, and in doing so to limit self-determination of communities in the colonies
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, a. The principle of exporting environmental damage by importing resources at low cost
from far away became a keynote of the policy of industrial nations in the twentieth
century, who found they could implement colonial policy without direct rule. Demand
in one region could be met by impacting the environment in a distant part of the
world.
As a result the WTO is committed to ceaseless (onophoudelijk) growth. It provides limited support to
measures for environmental improvement by permitting its member nations to enforce laws
necessary to protect the life and health of humans and to conserve natural resources, but has not
stressed the broader area of environmental protection.
→ Some economic theorists regard environmental regulations as an unnecessary restraint of
trade, including laws intended to protect endangered species in international trade.
Environmental organizations that operate on the global level often do not trust local communities to
care for their own environments. They encourage the establishment of national parks and other
central government programs, which sometimes are paper measures, when the best way of protecting
natural pieces in the mosaic landscape might be to gain the active support of the people who live in
and near them. The local–global dichotomy can be resolved if local projects play their parts in
preserving the global environment, and at the same time global institutions compose viable
environmental law and policy and are given the ability to conduct them. The motto: ‘Think globally,
act locally.’ This must be balanced by its converse, ‘Think locally, act globally.’
I predict, however, that as the century moves onward, the importance of environmental conservation
will loom larger due to exhaustion of resources and widespread environmental damage, and will
involve a larger segment of UN and other international agendas. In recent years, the World Bank has
admitted some of its failings and has created an environment department, but it is uncertain whether
its overall efforts have been diverted in an environmental direction. I am afraid that I foresee a
momentum of economic growth only marginally checked by environmental considerations in the
coming decades, at least initially.
4| Threats to Biodiversity
A third theme that will be played out in the environment and environmentalism in the coming decades
is the preservation or destruction of the great orchestra of species that makes up the biodiversity of
life on Earth. From the beginning of culture, humans have found their lives intertwined with those of
other species. Interaction with countless kinds of animals and plants helped to form our bodies and
minds, and in many important respects made us what we are. If we lose that interaction, it will affect
us more deeply than we may think. It seems that human intelligence is a response to the challenges
offered by living among many other species.
Over time, human actions have reduced the number of species, and the number of individual
organisms within most species, diminishing biodiversity and the complexity of ecosystems. European
enterprise caused a great homogenization of the Earth’s ecosystems, unparalleled in geological time.
The dominant attitude toward animals and plants by Europeans was economic materialism: other
species were viewed as commodities. As Francis Bacon expostulated, ‘The world is made for man, not
man for the world’. By the end of the twentieth century, extinctions had occurred on a scale only
matched by catastrophes of the geological record. In recent years, scientists, writers, and others have
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,recognized a crisis of biodiversity. But the tenor of international discussions of the question is not
encouraging for the survival of natural ecosystems.
One argument used for preservation of ancient forests was that they are storehouses of species
producing substances that might prove of use as foods or medicines. Biodiversity, the world realized,
had economic value, and the discussion changed its tenor. Most of the discussion, however, was not
on the need to preserve species and ecosystems, but the desirability of assuring sustainable econ-
omic development and to distribute equitably the gains realized from biological resources.
Dangers of pollution, overfishing, extinctions and the destruction of coral reefs have raised concern
around the world. It assumes that the other forms of life on earth are the property and under control
of nation-states. It forbids interference in the way any nation chooses to protect or exploit the species
within its borders. Yet national frontiers rarely coincide with ecosystems, and the welfare of life on
the whole planet concerns everyone. The challenge is serious because Homo sapiens is not immune
to the threat of extinction through degradation of supporting ecosystems. A danger derives from the
tendency to treat the natural world not as a series of ecosystems that include human beings, but as a
set of resources and commodities separate from humankind.
Pollution carried by air and water to distant regions affects even protected wilderness.
5| Energy and Materials
The use of energy by human societies has been increasing substantially since the onset of the Industrial
Revolution, but in the twentieth century an unprecedented exponential growth began and continues.
Historically, therefore, the modern world has seen a series of epochs each marked by the
predominance of a different energy resource, first wood, then coal, and then petroleum and natural
gas. The movement from one natural energy resource to another generally was dictated by
considerations of technology, energy density, ease of use, and price, rather than supply of the
resources or their possible exhaustion.
Resource exhaustion is not a matter of actual physical depletion but rather one of eventually
unacceptable costs, and the latter designation may now mean not just in an economic sense (too
expensive to recover or to deliver to a distant market) but also in environmental (causing excessive
pollution or unacceptable ecosystemic destruction or degradation) and social terms (where their
recovery would necessitate displacement of a large number of people, or bring serious health
problems) (Smil, 2003, p. 181).
Possible replacements:
1. Hydro-electric power is in one sense renewable, since it can be used as long as river flow
continues, but it is limited in that there exist a finite number of practical dam-sites.
2. Nuclear: Although the actual production of electricity by a nuclear plant is almost free of
chemical pollution, it does produce large amounts of thermal pollution
3. Other: These include wind energy, solar energy through photovoltaic cells, geothermal
energy, tidal turbines, and hydrogen fuel cells. All of them should be investigated for
technological improvement and economic viability
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, 6 | Conclusion
If the cultural attitudes of the modern industrial age remain the determiners of actions in regard to
ecosystems, while the population continues to increase, an unprecedented crisis of survival is certain
in this new century. ‘The question is whether the economy ... is part of the environment or whether
the environment is part of the economy … Those who conduct the economy must recognize limits set
by the ecosystem or face the consequences.
The worldwide trend is moving in that direction, but not rapidly enough to avert a crisis. Ecologically
sustainable agriculture and a forestry that assures the survival of the forest community are absolutely
necessary, or we will lose these essential renewable systems. A widespread encouragement of a
revival of local communities that take responsibility for protecting their own ecosystems would be one
of the most positive efforts the environmental movement could make.
One of the most effective trends would be wider education of children and adults in the facts of
ecological and reproductive responsibility. Without this element, it is difficult to predict any major
positive trends on the social level.
What I do expect is that environmental movements will gain strength as problems manifest
themselves ever more urgently. But I am also aware, as he is, that humanity when challenged is
capable of consciousness and creativity.
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