Think of the planet as a trust fund. There is a principal—namely the oceans, forests and atmosphere. That principal produces an interest in the form of services: fish production, soil regeneration, air quality. A few years ago, the most prominent environmental scientists in the world met to do an audit of Planet Earth's holdings. The results, released yesterday, were not encouraging. Janet Ranganathan of the World Resources Institute says two-thirds of the planet's resources—the principal—have been consumed. Business as usual is not only irresponsible, it is now impossible.
Janet Ranganathan is director of biological resources at the World Resources Institute in Washington D.C. More information about the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA), is available at www.maweb.org.
Think, for the moment, of the earth as a business.
Earth, Inc. is a global conglomerate that provides products and services to customers all over the world. It’s been in business a long time, with such huge capital accounts that only recently, in the wake of other business scandals, has anyone bothered to look carefully at the books and examine how it’s doing.
Beginning four years ago, more than 1,300 of the world’s pre-eminent scientists—from 96 countries—assembled to undertake an audit of the departments at Earth, Inc.: wetlands, drylands, marine, coastal, forests and inland water, just to name a few.
The audit revealed an enterprise in deep trouble: capital accounts depleted for short term gain, poor asset control, uncoordinated management teams; accounts receivable long overdue, limited strategic planning and under-investment in R&D.
This “audit,” to end the analogy, is the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA), the first-ever comprehensive look at the condition of natural systems and the services they provide to people—such as food, water, fiber, carbon storage, and flood, disease and climate control. The results merit attention. Nearly two-thirds of nature’s services that underpin human well-being are degraded or being used unsustainably. This coincides with a period of growing demand for these services to both support an expanding population and to help lift millions of people out of poverty. It’s clearly time to rethink the business.
But the MA isn’t just another gloomy scientific study. Released March 30 in cities around the world, it offers an innovative approach to reconcile the hitherto competing goals of human development and environmental stewardship, using the the concept of ecosystem services. It also provides a wealth of information and insights that can make for more informed development decisions that weigh both the benefits and consequences of ecosystem change to human well-being.
The MA findings are nothing short of stunning. For instance, over the last 50 years, humans have changed ecosystems more rapidly than at any time in human history, largely to meet growing demands for food, fresh water, timber and fiber. Some examples include:
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Since 1945, more land was converted for agricultural use than in the 18th and 19th centuries combined.
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Water impounded behind dams quadrupled since 1960, and the amount of water held in reservoirs is, by far, greater than the volume flowing in natural rivers.
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More than half of all the synthetic nitrogen fertilizer ever used occurred since 1985.
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Humans have increased the species extinction rate by over 100 times the natural rate.
These changes are not without benefit: the resulting increase in food, fiber and other services has contributed to improved human well-being. However, the gains are unevenly distributed, and the poor have more often born the associated costs. These include the loss of access to ecosystem services that they previously depended upon for their livelihoods—such as small-scale fisheries that have collapsed following moves to more intensive harvesting by industrial-scale fishing operations—or the loss to indigenous people of natural forest services when large-scale deforestation for timber occurs in the Amazon or Indonesia.
As they look forward for the next 50 years, the MA experts’ project demand for food will grow by 70 to 80 percent and the demand for water by about two-thirds. Though we farm roughly one-third of the planet’s surface already, we will convert another 10 to 20 percent of remaining grassland and forestland for food production.
Habitat change, over-exploitation, invasive species, pollution and climate change will each either grow in intensity or remain constant. Drylands, which cover 41 percent of land surface and are home to a third of the world’s population—many already suffering from problems such as malnutrition and disease—were identified as especially vulnerable.
Options exist to curtail this degradation, but they require a sea change in attitudes, policies, institutions and behavior. Like any company in serious trouble, responsible management requires change. Everything should be on the table: subsidies that promote overproduction, greater use of market-based approaches, application of new technology, and new ways to integrate ecosystem stewardship into all types of decision-making that impact ecosystems—not just those taken in environment departments.
No single silver-bullet fix exists for this complex interlinked problem of ecosystem degradation. But one thing is abundantly clear: “Business as usual” is no longer an option. The time has come to stop operating Planet Earth like a business and start thinking of it as a family trust fund—set up for the benefit of today’s as well as tomorrow’s children.
