Nature has published a lead article by a team headed by the Stockholm scientist Johan Rockstrom. Titled “A Safe Operating Space for Humanity,” it sets boundaries for nine interlinked planetary thresholds, arguing that if we crossed them we risked destroying the “unusual stability” that has marked the Holocene, the last 10,000 years.
Besides carbon dioxide and ozone, there is good evidence for some other as important thresholds: ocean acidity, freshwater use, the movement of nitrogen and phosphorus, the amount of land used for crops, aerosols (haze and other particles), biodiversity, and chemical pollution.
For example, as we spread fertilizer on farmland and burn coal, we are pumping far too much nitrogen into the environment. Human activity releases 121 million tons of nitrogen, much of which ends up polluting rivers, lakes and oceans and potentially pushing their ecosystems into irreversible changes.
Ecological models still can’t capture the entirety of Earth’s biological, geological and chemical processes, and it’s impossible to run whole-Earth experiments. What are the alternatives? So is it truly useful to create a list of environmental limits without serious plans for how they may be achieved?
These are questions to which answers are tough but many are beginning to believe that to stay within planetary boundaries is important, and for that we need social transformation at a massive scale. Is that possible when the problem is not really 'visible' to the large majority? Are these merely scare scenarios? What do YOU think?
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Incidentally, in the book titled Hind Swaraj, Gandhiji actually warns of the dangers of over production and over consumption. This was 100 years ago and the book is still so relevant!
We need to impose limits to our wants, as he advocated – that is the social transformation needed today. Call it industrialization or mechanization, it has only resulted in producing more and more ‘things’ by using scarce resources and ignoring abundantly available manpower.
This is also the time we need to wake up to realities and focus on the small instead of big. Instead of massive scales, we need to look at small, locally sustainable systems, whether it be in energy or food production or water availability. Decentralised energy and water management are the need of the hour.
Our economy needs to look at things critically – simply because we can produce or make some things, do we need to? How critical a need is it? What are we doing for our villages today? As Gandhiji believed, India lives in villages. Still, a large percentage does. What are we doing for their ‘progress’? Replacing the sustaining practices with large machines that over-produce – is that the answer? More industrialization of agriculture??
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