[A-List] Devastated by our hunger to consume and discard

[Mark Jones <markjones011@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Devastated by our hunger to consume and discard
By Steve Connor Science Editor Independent
24 August 2002
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Forty years ago a series of articles appeared in The New Yorker magazine 
warning the world of an impending ecological disaster. The author, a 
minor-league scientist called Rachel Carson, published her thesis later 
that year as a book called Silent Spring. In it she spelled out the dangers 
posed to the environment of the new generation of agro-chemicals being used 
to boost food production around the world.
Silent Spring ? a reference to the death of songbirds ? became an instant 
classic. It made people aware of the fragility of the natural world to 
man-made chemicals and it led directly to the creation of the modern 
environmental movement. The 65,000 delegates to the World Summit on 
Sustainable Development congregating in Johannesburg this weekend owe much 
to Carson's pioneering thoughts.
Just 10 years after Silent Spring was published, the first global 
discussion on the problems facing our natural habitat was held. The 1972 UN 
Conference on Human Environment in Stockholm led directly to the formation 
of the UN Environment Programme and the first international declaration to 
preserve and enhance the natural environment.
The Brundtland commission a decade later formulated a mechanism of how this 
could be done in its seminal report, Our Common Future. More than a report, 
this was a manifesto for what humanity needed to do to save the planet. At 
the heart of this new approach was a concept called "sustainable 
development" which the report defined as development that "meets the needs 
of present generations without compromising the ability of future 
generations to meet their own needs".
Like many of the best sentiments, it is easier said than done. A glimpse at 
some of the facts is enough to make a pessimist of anyone. In the 400 or so 
generations that separate the dawn of agriculture, about 10,000 years ago, 
to the pre-industrial era of the 17th century, the global human population 
grew from a few million to about 500 million. Since then it has accelerated 
with alarming speed, reaching 6 billion last year and heading for 9.3 
billion by 2050.
Since Carson first wrote so provocatively about the environment, we have 
lost a fifth of the world's topsoil, a fifth of the best agricultural land 
and a third of the forests. The "green revolution", which helped to feed 
the growing population over the same 40-year period with the help of 
chemical fertilisers and pesticides, is faltering. Global grain production 
has fallen short of consumption for two consecutive years. The world's 
surplus is now at its lowest level for two decades, according to Peter 
Raven, director of the Missouri Botanical Gardens in St Louis.
Meanwhile, some 1.1 billion people ? 18 per cent of the world's population 
? lack access to clean, safe drinking water and more than 2.4 billion 
others do not have adequate sanitation.
The grinding poverty that so many people are forced to endure is hard to 
imagine. About 1.2 billion people live on just 65p a day, 850 million are 
illiterate and 325 million children have never been to school. Some 11 
million children under the age of five die each year, many from avoidable 
illnesses such as diarrhoea caused by tainted water.
In the past decade the world has lost an area of forest the size of 
Venezuela. More than 11,000 species are listed as threatened with 
extinction ? a fraction of the true number ? and more than 800 species are 
known to have been lost for ever, mostly due to the destruction of their 
habitats.
To succeed in Johannesburg we must find a way of curbing this almost innate 
tendency to use, consume and discard whatever there is around us, says 
Professor Raven.
"We continue to depend on a series of ancient, genetically and socially 
determined habits and attitudes, many of which seem to have been more 
suitable for our hunter-gatherer ancestors," he says. "We must adopt new 
ways of thinking that will serve our descendants well in a world that is 
crowded beyond imagining, a world in which we shall always be the major 
ecological force; unless, of course, we destroy ourselves."
Johannesburg is a stab in this new direction. Building on the partial 
success of the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992, the conference has identified 
five main areas of concern: water, energy, health, agriculture and 
biological diversity (Wehab). The assumption is that no one area can be 
treated in isolation and no single country can act alone.
But unlike Rio, there will be no legally binding treaties. Instead, and to 
the intense annoyance of environmentalists, it is intended that the meeting 
will result in "consensus agreements" or more ambitious, but entirely 
voluntary, "type two" agreements. We can also expect a rather 
self-congratulatory Johannesburg declaration.
The organisers of the summit hope it will lead to the removal of 
trade-distorting subsidies and a strengthening of the World Trade 
Organisation to favour the poorest rather than the richest countries.
And above all, there is the question of what to do about Africa, which 
seems to have been left behind by the economic development seen elsewhere. 
In the 1990s China reduced the number of people living in extreme poverty 
from 360 million to 210 million and in Vietnam it fell by half but in 
Africa, development efforts have lagged behind just about everywhere else 
on just about every measure there is.
It is fitting that the summit, therefore, should meet in Africa. But what 
will it achieve? Andrew Jordan, of the University of East Anglia, says: 
"Although they do not produce that many hard and fast regulations 
protecting the environment, 'mega' environmental conferences do promote a 
long and slow change in attitudes, encouraging governments to adopt 
statements of principles or 'soft laws' which are then translated into more 
binding regulations and laws over time."
But time is not a commodity that is in rich supply. When Aldous Huxley 
first read Silent Spring he remarked that humanity was losing half the 
subject matter of poetry. And that was 40 years ago.

IoS