Urban Sprawl: Environmental Bane for Our Times

For a long time, Earth with all her pristine resources remained by and large free for humans and other species. But since the advent of the Industrial Revolution coupled with an unprecedent growth in human population and the accompanying urbanization, now Earth with her resources face a probable ecocide of a larger scale.

Urban Sprawl is the bane for our times. What is an Urban Sprawl? Urban Sprawl is defined as the exploitation of agricultural land and forests to build residential areas for human consumption. The space revolution with its satellites orbiting our Earth brought home the perilous truth of population explosion and its concomitant urban sprawl that threatens global well-being. What first began to happen in developed countries slowly began to be copied by the less developed/developing countries.


After World War II, urban residents sought more free space cum greenery and moved out into sub-urban regions. One described it then as sub-urban expansion of cities. But, before long, real estate developers began their land-hunt in the rural areas  in their bid to citify them. No sooner, along came industrial development, automobiles, shopping malls and other building structures gobbling up farm lands and forests. Development has been intense in some countries leaving more than 70% of the agricultural land into complex urban structures, points out Environmental Issues Network (EIN).


Urban sprawl has many characteristics that have cast an ominous spell of permanence. Once agricultural lands or forest territories are taken over for urban development, all the other concomitant 'killer grab' of land ensures that the expansion is cancerous: habitats are fragmented, water percolation is impacted, aquifers disappear, forests vanish, species endangerment. Its long time impact on the environment is never accounted for in the neo-liberal model of growth economics. When complex urban structures are developed by cutting down trees, we naturally have more polluted air. "The intensity of pollution further increases from smoke emitted by automobiles, industries and room heaters. Hazardous gases emitted by these complex machines worsen the air pollution," points out EIN.

One of the major crisis is energy depletion. With the urban model of economic growth, the consumption of energy is faster than any replenishable probability as long as the base is fossil fuels. Nuclear energy with its scary waste disposal issue is not necessarily an ample solution for now. Besides, the urban lifestyle per se is energy-consumptive. With agrilcultural lands getting urbanized, food crisis is real problem in a number of developing countries. Urban sprawl has led to a 'car-dependent' community. Air pollution, health illnesses, traffic gridlock and parking  space crisis are 'downlights' of the car-dependent community.

Job-sprawl is a twin issue born with the increasing urban sprawl. Now workers tend to travel longer distances for their job locations leading to extensive commuting. Often people tend to use automobiles more often opt for public transport. Further, expanding citification also has led to an ever increasing cost of living for even necessary food materials have to be delivered over longer distances. Prices in the sub-urban cities always exhibit a tendency to spike in a never-ending spiral on account of transportation costs.

EIN depicts a gloomy scenario given the rate of urban sprawl around the globe: "Urban Sprawl definitely is taking its toll on nature, destroying wildlife and agricultural land. It is believed that several thousands of plant and animal species will come to an end by the end of 21st century if urban sprawl is continued at this rate. . In many developing countries, energy crises are a major problem in the developed suburbs. Needless to say, this trend will severely damage our ecosystem, our natural resources for food and water around with many other things."

We have been hearing the initiatives of governments around the world to curb the urban sprawl, but given the flawed neo-liberal economic model which posits a technological substitution for probable crises without a realistic assessment of its devastating impact on the eco-systems, it is far important to realize that we need to uproot our 'static material growth' models which are not in tune with eco-sytemic recyclable services of the Nature.

Great Pacific Garbage Patch

"The garbage patch barfs, and you get a beach covered with this confetti of
  plastic."
                                                                                           - Curtis Ebbesmeyer -

The world's largest rubbish dump - covering an area twice the size of the continental United States - is afloat across the Pacific Ocean. This plastic soup of debris stretches from about 500 nautical miles off the Californian coast, across the northern Pacific, past Hawaii and almost as far as Japan. In the American oceanographer Charles Moore's - who discovered the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" - guesstimation about 100 million tons of flotsam are circulating in the region!

The Alguita Marine Research team had set out to investigate for a month in 2008 just how much plastic waste was floating in the ocean, how this plastic affected marine life, and how this might affect humans that eat fish found in the area known as the North Pacific Gyre. They discovered that a soup of plastic debris was afloat in the Pacific Ocean and was increasing at an alarming rate. Marcus Eriksen, a research director of the US-based Algalita Marine Research Foundation, which Mr Moore founded, said: "The original idea that people had was that it was an island of plastic garbage that you could almost walk on. It is not quite like that. It is almost like a plastic soup. It is endless for an area that is maybe twice the size as continental United States"- to quote from the article 'The world's rubbish dump: a tip that stretches from Hawaii to Japan' by Kathy Marks with Daniel Howden for The Independent-Green Living.

It was a chance encounter for sailor Marcus Eriksen in 1997 when he had steered his craft into the "North Pacific gyre" – a vortex where the ocean circulates slowly because of little wind and extreme high pressure systems. Usually sailors avoid it. He was taken aback that so much rubbish surrounded his craft day in and day out thousands of miles off land. This vast expanse of plastic flotsam is held in place by the swirling underwater currents that it is also referred to as 'trash vortex.' The "soup" is actually two linked areas, either side of the islands of Hawaii, known as the Western and Eastern Pacific Garbage Patches. About one-fifth of the junk – which includes everything from footballs and kayaks to Lego blocks and carrier bags – is thrown off ships or oil platforms.The rest comes from land, wrote Kathy Marks and Daniel Howden.

"It moves around like a big animal without a leash," claimed oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer - an authority on oceanic flotsam.When that animal comes close to land, as it does at the Hawaiian archipelago, the results are dramatic. "The garbage patch barfs, and you get a beach covered with this confetti of plastic," he added with eloquence. To boot, Research Triangle Institute (US) chemist Tony Andrady pointed out: "Every little piece of plastic manufactured in the past 50 years that made it into the ocean is still out there somewhere."

The UN Environment Programme reveals that plastic debris causes the deaths of more than a million seabirds every year, as well as more than 100,000 marine mammals! Syringes, cigarette lighters and toothbrushes have been found inside the stomachs of dead seabirds, which mistake them for food.  Plastic is believed to constitute 90 per cent of all rubbish floating in the oceans. The UN Environment Programme estimated in 2006 that every square mile of ocean contains 46,000 pieces of floating plastic! Hundreds of millions of tiny plastic pellets, or nurdles – the raw materials for the plastic industry – are lost or spilled every year, working their way into the sea. These pollutants act as chemical sponges attracting man-made chemicals such as hydrocarbons and the pesticide DDT. They then enter the food chain. "What goes into the ocean goes into these animals and onto your dinner plate. It's that simple," said Dr Eriksen. 

In the ocean, "Degraded plastic pieces outweigh surface zooplankton in the central North Pacific by a factor of 6-1. That means six pounds of plastic for every single pound of zooplankton" informs past studies. The need to obtain "a full accounting of the distribution of plastic in the marine ecosystem and especially its fate and impact on marine ecosystems," as called for by oceanographer David Karl at the University of Hawaii the sea of rubbish is all the more urgent considering that the 'rubbish' is translucent and lies just below the water's surface consequently not detectable in satellite photographs./

 tXtrEf: The world's rubbish dump: a tip that stretches from Hawaii to Japan by
             Kathy Marks and Daniel Howden in The Independent-Green Living, 2008./
             Environment News Network story on the topic.2008.

IoS Green List: Britain's top 100 environmentalists

The little-known John Stewart, who leads the onslaught against a third runway at Heathrow, soundly beats far more high-profile figures to take the top-environmentalist honour. He does so in the wake of an important breakthrough for his campaign – the announcement by the Conservative Party that it plans to scrap the runway in favour of high-speed rail links that would supplant short-haul flights.
So began The Independent on Sunday (IoS) Green List of Britain's top 100 environmentalists three years ago.

John Stewart was not a high-profile environmentalist if one were to compare him with Jonathon Porritt or Sir David Attenborough but he was the top of the first comprehensive list of Britain's most effective greens. The runners-up were also unconventional choices, not normally found heading such lists: Professor Robert Watson, the chief scientist at Defra; Jane Davidson, the Welsh environment minister; the broadcaster Monty Don; and the polar scientist Peter Wadhams.They, and other greens, were selected on the criterion of impact of their campaign/activity rather on the basis of fame.

Judges were bent on identifying environmentalists who really made a difference 'either directly or by altering public perceptions' rather than those who 'made most noise.'  So, naturally, it should not be a real surprise when the honor was bestowed on John Stewart.

"Mr Stewart, who is also chair of the Campaign for Better Transport, took up aviation and Heathrow more than a decade ago after winning a successful campaign – as head of the pressure group Alarm UK – against the then Conservative government's plans for a road-building drive hailed as the biggest since Roman times. Of an original 600 schemes, only 150 remained when John Major lost office in 1997, and the incoming Labour government cut those down to 50. By then Mr Stewart had presciently begun to switch targets, forming a group called ClearSkies, then merging with, and radicalising, the gentlemanly Heathrow Association for the Control of Aircraft Noise (Hacan). His campaign has been so effective in getting the third runway to the top of the agenda that the judges unanimously selected him to lead the list even before the Conservatives' announcement," to quote The Independent - Green Living.

Professor Robert Watson - the outspoken veteran campaigner against ozone-gobbling chemicals - clinched the number two slot. His gathering of scientists in his campaign-bid to save the ozone did prove efficacious that  he was a pivotal force behind the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change – too much so for the Bush administration, which had him removed as chairman – and to lead definitive, groundbreaking assessments of the state of the world's wildlife and agriculture. He was an inspired, if unexpected, choice last year to become chief scientist at Defra.

The judges were: Nicholas Schoon, editor, the 'ENDS Report', Britain's leading specialist environmental journal; Alex Kirby, former environment correspondent of the BBC; David Randall, assistant editor, 'IoS'; and Geoffrey Lean, environment editor at The IoS.

In the subsequent postings, I intend to reproduce The IoS' brief profiles of each of the top 100 environmentalists in Britain. Though the List was published in 2008, my idea of recollecting is to propagate the 'list' as knowledge resource in the domain of environmental care. In a way, the issues and personalities, not necessarily all would be known outside Britain except some, could make us understand the unifying connectivities that matter in our efforts to save the environment.

Soil with Life: Winogradsky's Clostridium

"Soil is a young substance."

- Peter Farb -

We walk on the surface of the Earth every day but hardly wonder how come the soil was born. To boot, our feet are insulated from the contact with the bare soil given our urban lifestyle. So, naturally we do not give a second thought to the soil under our feet except while washing it off our feet after an outing; leave alone the invisibile colony of organisms that inhabit the soil and their feedback loop in the eco-systemic services.

Nature's weathering and earthquakes. Rocks splinter. Roll down, crash and break down into pieces. After millenia of action, tiny worn out fragments settle down. Microscopic in dimension. A mantel of smooth iotaic layer on Earth's surface still is not soil! For 3/4rth's of geologic time there was no soil on Earth. 'There is no soil without life', wrote Peter Farb.

How did first life get into the soil? In ancient times, spores ought to have held tight after a tidal wash onto the skeletons of the soil nudging deeper nibbling or gobbling the micronutrients lodged between minuscule crevices leading to the first conversion of particle minerals into true soil - transmorphing soil into a nursery bed for life. Weathering gave pottasium and phosphorus - two vital ingredients for plant growth. But, nitrogen - though relatively abundant in the atmosphere - did not exist on the parent rock material! So, how did the soil obtain its first repository of nitrogen?

Was it lightning or microbes? Scientists debated for years till around 1890 when Ukranian-Russian Sergei Winogradsky, a brilliant cum perservering soil biologist, established the fact that microbes fixed nitrogen in the soil. His method demonstrated that some microbes can take nitrogen from the atmosphere and convert it into nitrogen compounds. He was hunting for organisms that manufactured nitrogen compounds on their own in the absence of those nitrogen compounds. So, as chief of the division of general microbiology of the Institute of Experimental Medicine, he identified the obligate anaerobe Clostridium pasteurianum. He prepared arrays of cultural dishes containing every nutrient for growth except nitrogen. He added pinches of soil to the dishes and soon nitrogen got fixed. Only three kinds of bacteria survived this starvation diet but they were interlocked together that Winogradsky was not able to find out which of the three bacteria or whether all three fixed nitrogen. After a disheartening series of experiments, Winogradsky managed to separate the three bacteria "but now none of them - if grown alone - could fix nitrogen," wrote Peter Farb. But when Winogradsky combined the bacteria, nitrogen got fixed!

Now, Winogradsky employed a novel technique: he deprived the bacteria of all air except nitrogen. Two of the bacteria died and the third bacterium - Clostridium - thrived. Clostridium thrived only because it was an anaerobe - a bacterium that only functions in the absence of oxygen. Yet it begged an answer as to how it managed to separate nitrogen when the air itself is over 1/5th part oxygen? "Here was explained the two interlocking bacteria: they insulate Clostridium against the atmosphere, themselves absorbing the oxygen and leaving only nitrogen!" explains ecologist Peter Farb.

Winogradsky went on to prove much about the nitrogen bacteria in the soil, and so thorough was his work that "after nearly 70 years little new information has been added," observed Farb in 1963. Now we know that actually very few free-living bacteria are able to convert atmospheric nitrogen, but that it is a very common trait among the blue-green algae. Yeasts and fungi too have joined the nitrogen-fixers' club.

Today the free-living bacteria fix but small amounts of nitrogen found in the soil; most of the repository of nitrogen compounds comes from other bacteria which live on the roots of certain plants and are called legume bacteria. But the free-living nitrogen bacteria, or forms with a similar ability, were perhaps among the first inhabitors of the earth when the seas receded, writes Farb, 'for they would have had to build up vast amounts of nitrogen in the soil before other forms of life could gain a foothold.'

"It will no doubt always remain an unsolved problem, for no record of this event has been left to us," wrote Peter Farb in his 1953 classic Living Earth; and undoubtedly, questions continue to linger at subtler levels even as soil chemistry has advanced a great deal in the intervening year. Winogradsky is best known for discovering chemoautotrophy, which soon became popularly known as chemosynthesis, the process by which organisms derive energy from a number of different inorganic compounds and obtain carbon in the form of carbon dioxide.

Sergei Winogradsky also was the microbiologist who pioneered the cycle of life concept. He discovered the first known form of lithotrophy during his research with Beggiatoa (bacteria that relish life in sulfur-rich environment) in 1887. He reported that Beggiatoa oxidized hydrogen sulfide (H₂S) as an energy source and formed intracellular sulfur droplets. This research provided the first example of lithotrophy, but not autorophy. His research on nitrifying bacteria would report the first known form of chemoautotrophy, showing how a lithotroph fixes carbon dioxide (CO₂) to make organic compounds. The Winogradsky column - a simple device for culturing a large diversity of microorganisms - remains an important display of chemoautotrophy and microbial ecology demonstrated in microbilogy lectures around the world./

'evolution of a mode of awareness' ... Michael E.Zimmerman

Deep Ecology as a concept seeks to overhaul our perspectives on how to conduct ourselves as a species on Earth rejecting the anthropocentric paradigm that had governed the management of Earth resources and environmental care-keeping. Deep ecology is far closer to the original meaning of the philosophy - love of wisdom!

Michael E.Zimmerman - Professor of Philosophy at Tulane University, New Orleans - talks of Deep Ecology with Alan Atkisson.
//TxtSource: Environment. Copyright by Context Institute.//

Alan: What is  "deep ecology?""
Michael: Deep ecology is an environmental movement initiated by a Norwegian philosopher, Arnie Naess, in 1972. He wasn't the first to dream up the idea of a radical change in humanity's relationship to nature, but he coined the term "deep ecology" and helped to give it a theoretical foundation. Deep ecology portrays itself as "deep" because it asks deeper questions about the place of human life, who we are.
Deep ecology is founded on two basic principles: one is a scientific insight into the interrelatedness of all systems of life on Earth, together with the idea that anthropocentrism - human-centeredness - is a misguided way of seeing things. Deep ecologists say that an ecocentric attitude is more consistent with the truth about the nature of life on Earth. Instead of regarding humans as something completely unique or chosen by God, they see us as integral threads in the fabric of life. They believe we need to develop a less dominating and aggressive posture towards the Earth if we and the planet are to survive.
The second component of deep ecology is what Arnie Naess calls the need for human self-realization. Instead of identifying with our egos or our immediate families, we would learn to identify with trees and animals and plants, indeed the whole ecosphere. This would involve a pretty radical change of consciousness, but it would make our behavior more consistent with what science tells us is necessary for the well-being of life on Earth. We just wouldn't do certain things that damage the planet, just as you wouldn't cut off your own finger.

Alan: How does deep ecology relate to ecofeminism? Or do they relate?
Michael: There are many ecofeminists - people like Joanna Macy for example - who would call themselves deep ecologists, but there are some ecofeminists who've made an important claim against it. They say the real problem isn't anthropocentrism but androcentrism - man-centeredness. They say that 10,000 years of patriarchy is ultimately responsible for the destruction of the biosphere and the development of authoritarian practices, both socially and environmentally.
Deep ecologists concede that patriarchy has been responsible for a lot of violence against women and nature. But while they oppose the oppression of women and promote egalitarian social relations, deep ecologists also warn that getting rid of patriarchy would not necessarily cure the problem, because you can imagine a society with fairly egalitarian social relationships where nature is still used instrumentally.

Alan: And then there's a third big player on the scene, "social ecology," with its own critique of deep ecology.
Michael: Right. According to social ecologist Murray Bookchin, deep ecology fails to see that the problem of the environmental crisis is directly linked to authoritarianism and hierarchy. Bookchin says those are the real problems, and they're expressed both socially and environmentally.

Alan: So social ecologists see things like homelessness as being caused by the same mechanisms that cause rainforest devastation?
Michael: Also racism, sexism, third world exploitation, mistreatment of other marginalized groups - they're all phenomena on the same spectrum. By supposedly not recognizing the social roots of the environmental crisis, deep ecologists invite themselves to be accused of nature mysticism. Social ecologists say we need to change our social structure, and that the elimination of authoritarianism and hierarchy in human society will end the environmental crisis.
Deep ecologists say there's no certainty that would happen. Again, you can imagine a case where social hierarchy is eliminated and yet the new egalitarian society dominates nature just as badly. The problem is that anthropocentrism can take on different forms.

Alan: So what's their political agenda? What, in practicality, do deep ecologists want?
Michael: That's an interesting question, because I don't think anyone knows what the best political vehicle is for this new way of thinking. Certainly the old ideologies of left and right are pretty bankrupt, in terms of their ability to address these issues.
Critics have latched onto the fact that on one or two occasions, certain deep ecologists have called for very Draconian measures to save the planet from destruction at the hands of human beings. The danger that social ecologists and others see is that what these deep ecologists envision will become a new kind of a totalitarianism or "eco-fascism" - in other words, some kind of world government which would compel people to change their social practices and totally control their behavior to make it consistent with the demands of the ecosphere.
But most deep ecologists talk about the need for decentralization, bioregions, the breakdown of the totalizing impulse of industrialism, an end to authoritarianism, and the development of a much more fragmented society with new kinds of relationships. This seems far closer to the truth about deep ecology, and none of it seems consistent with the possibility of totalitarianism.

Alan: How do these kinds of developments in philosophy and other academic disciplines filter their way out into actual social change?
Michael: That's a very good question, and it's an unfortunate response I have to give. I think that philosophy has made itself socially useless. No one cares what philosophers say. Now, that wasn't true before World War II. Dewey and other American pragmatists had an enormous impact on American education and social reflection. But after the war philosophers, with their interest in analytic philosophy and epistemology, made their questions and their research not relevant to the larger public. They engaged in much less reflection upon the categories and presuppositions of culture, and their reflection became so rarefied that they just took themselves out of the ball game.

Alan: But now we see deep ecologist philosophers and others actually energizing social movements, like the Greens or the Earth First!ers.
Michael: Right. These changes come about peripherally. When Peter Singer wrote his famous book Animal Liberation in the middle 1970s, he legitimized - because of his status as a philosopher - an area of discourse called "animal rights." This has now burgeoned into an enormous amount of writing in the ethics journals about the moral considerability of non-human beings, which wasn't there before. That was the wedge which cracked the door of anthropocentrism open. Feminism and the civil rights movement also cracked open the door, because they revealed that our ethical systems and our assumptions about selfhood were rather narrow and in need of expanding. Now deep ecology is able to attack anthropocentrism more directly.

Alan: A critique I hear often is that deep ecologists want to return to a way of life that's totally tied to the rhythms of the Earth, but at this point we have so disturbed those rhythms that we can't even consider going back. To retreat to a pre-technological state would in fact be dooming the Earth to destruction, whereas what we need now is to be more engaged in trying to repair the damage. How would a deep ecologist respond?
Michael: I think deep ecologists have mixed emotions about that, but I would agree with that critique. For example, if we stopped our development at the current level, it would be a catastrophe, because our production methods are so dirty and inefficient and destructive that if we keep this up, we're really in trouble.
Some deep ecologists say that it would be all for the best if the industrial world were just to collapse, despite all the human suffering that would entail. If such a thing ever occurs, some people have suggested, we could never revive industrialization again because the raw materials are no longer easily accessible. I hope that doesn't happen, and yet it may happen.
Now, social ecologists say that deep ecologists flirt with fascism when they talk about returning to an "organic" social system that is "attuned to nature." They note that reactionary thinkers often contrast the supposedly "natural" way of life - which to them means social Darwinism and authoritarian social systems - with "modernity," which in politial terms means progressive social movements like liberalism and Marxism. But deep ecologists recognize this danger. They call not for a regression to collective authoritarianism, but for the evolution of a mode of awareness that doesn't lend itself to authoritarianism of any kind.
So I think the only thing we can do is to move forward. We need to develop our efficiency and production methods so that we'll be able to take some of the pressure off the environment. We also need to develop increasing wealth for the highly populated countries so their populations will go down. [Ed. Note: See Lappé and Schurman, "The Population Puzzle," in IC #21.]
There's a necessity for new technology. The question is, can it be made consistent with our growing awareness that the planet is really hurting?

Coral Reefs: A Reservoir of Unknown Medicines

A coral reef may save your life one day. Why have we done so little to return the favor? 

- scientist M Sanjayan -

Out of sight, out of mind. We - the majority of the global population - hardly get to see the coral reefs in our normal life. Often our children do not get an ideal exposure to the coral eco-systems in their education. So, coral reefs often remain outside our routine life; quiet remote and exotic, only accessible through Discovery or National Geographic Channels.

In Nature, many animals from chimpanzees to parrots have been seen to search for favorite plants or mineral deposits during times of stress. Even our pet dog gets in the act, nibbling on grass perhaps to ward off tummy grumbles. Sparrows tend to chomp the tiny leaves of certain plants. Instinctively the animals, birds, and insects know that Nature is a vast chest of drawers with medicines to cure many ailments. Obviously, our early ancestors had watched and emulated their co- species in identifying the Nature's antidotes.

The Nature Conservancy's scientist M Sanjayan, writing on why we need to save the coral reefs around the world, cites three good reasons:

1. Coral reefs are amongst the most biologically rich and densely packed habitats on the planet.
2. Underwater warfare reigns with extreme competition for space and nutrients intense amongst reefs organisms pack into a narrow band of suitability. Critters use chemicals to defend and attack invaders- exactly what you might need to ward off something nasty.
3. Coral reefs have until recently been effectively inaccessible to humans -- and bio-prospectors. This means lots of species waiting to be discovered.

"Indeed, in the last few years, some important new drugs have been discovered and isolated from coral reefs. Those that show the most promise have been synthesized (essentially replicated) in the lab, tested and used in life-saving therapy. For example, Ara-C, isolated from Caribbean sea-sponge, is essential in chemotherapy. According to researchers at Stanford University, the sea squirt, an otherwise unremarkable blob of an animal, is providing huge breakthroughs in organ regeneration and bone marrow transplant. The cone shell, one of the most venomous animals on the reef (1,000 times more potent than morphine!), is being used as a painkiller, while marine derived SGN-35 is on the verge of FDA approval for non-Hodgkins lymphoma," informs Sanjayan.

Yet, with World Resources Institute bluntly warning that over 75% of coral reefs are under threat, Dr Sanjayan cautions of the likelihood of saving the coral reefs becoming too late. "In an era of spiraling health care costs, nature's most promising pharmacy is the only thing that is still free. We ought to take better care of it. There is no doubt that with careful collecting and testing, new cures will emerge from coral reefs," he points out in his article 'This Reef May Save Your Life' in the HUFFPOST GREEN.

The new Reefs at Risk Revisited report warns that 75% of the planet’s reefs are threatened, not just by unsustainable fishing practices and development but also by the effects of climate change. Though much efforts had been put in to save the coral reefs in the last decade, still - as conservation marine scientist Mark Spalding put it - 'but while I’d love to tell you we’ve turned things around over the last decade, we haven’t.' Yet, this is not to say that everything has been futile and hopes dashed to a nothingness even as Mark Spalding revealed that in fact, there’s been a 30% increase in the area of threatened reefs.

Arguing that "it would be wrong to talk about failure, though. Reefs would be in much worse condition in many places if we hadn’t done what we’ve done," Mark Spalding optimistically points out,  " There are now literally thousands of examples of good reef management worldwide, and of how to turn coral reefs around. We need to pick up these examples and see them as a tool-kit, something we can turn into standard management practice across the globe. For peoples’ sake.  "

Equally important are the potent chemicals of the reefs and their medicinal uses and potential. "Like rainforests, coral reefs host a bewildering diversity of plants and animals. In systems this diverse, the struggle for survival leads many species to develop complex adaptations, from skeletal structures to poisons and venoms. There might be 1 million different animal species on the world’s reefs, and we have only just begun to look at them. But they’ve already yielded active compounds with considerable promise for the treatment of certain cancers, HIV and malaria," reveals Spalding in his interview to by  Robert Lalasz for the The Nature Conservancy.

How to link drug development to conservation efforts? One major successful 'terrestrial precedent' is the model under which the government of Costa Rica collaborated with the pharmaceutical giant Merck to develop a bio-prospecting scheme for its rainforests. Through INBio, a research institute, Merck paid for prospecting and promised to share in future revenues should any drugs from the forest prove to be a commercial success. However tricky it might be to do so for coral reefs, Sanjayan feels that given that we extract fisheries and tourism revenues from reefs globally, it's not unreasonable to create a payment scheme for bio-prospecting particular reefs. "The key, of course, is to ensure that the payment goes to reef conservation," he stresses.

Pointing out how individuals are critical in the movement to safeguard the environment, and coral reefs in this particular case, Spalding doles out significant tips that could make a vital difference to the environment however small the act might be but with a profound scalar effect in the long run: 'And even if you live far from reefs, you can help, too. Do you holiday in reef areas, or know people who do? Think about where you stay and don’t be afraid to ask questions — choose hotels and restaurants that do not pollute and that make a positive contribution to the environment. Support NGOs such as The Nature Conservancy, which are making a real difference to coral reef conservation on the ground. Reduce your own personal carbon footprint, too — this step is urgent and, while it won’t be enough, it sends a powerful message. Finally, tell others what you are doing and encourage them to do the same.'

Yes. We ought to take better care of the coral reefs if its unknown reservoir of medicines ought to be known in the future for the generations to come, besides for the vital integral eco-systemic services of the coral reefs on Earth./

'World is a Sanctuary' - Henryk Skolimowski

" The world is not a machine but an exquisite sanctuary. "

- Henryk Skolimowski -

In ancient times, Earth was revered as a sacred place to dwell. But, in the name of material civilization, the spirit of reverence was mortgaged for physical well-being at the cost of the ecological heritage. Now we are on the verge of having to make and execute major decisions on behalf of the generations to come as the world we are inhabiting is increasingly getting impoverished in spirit.

Henryk Skolimowski  is an eco-philosophical visionary. "To treat yourself well, to treat others well, you must know that the world is not a heap of meaningless rubbish but a place reverberating with divine energies," he writes in A Sacred Place to Dwell. He is one of the founding thinkers of eco-philosophy.

His message to the people at large is for them to see the world as a sanctuary. When he first landed in USA in 1964, he did find Los Angeles 'intoxicating but somewhat bewildering.' "Somehow my life in Los Angeles did not quite feel the paradise I was told I was in," he recollected later while reflecting on the history of eco-philosophy. He noticed that the freeways were always crowded. If a new one was built, it was clogged in a few months. "I was told by a knowledgeable civil engineer that freeways do not relieve traffic; rather, they attract traffic," he contemplated on the paradox that drove him to an odd conclusion:   "It began to dawn on me that this may be the case with our wonderful technologies — they do not satisfy our needs but increase them. "


The Hippie Revolution passed by him with all its countervailing demos when the youth asked Skolimowski: ""You are a philosopher. Tell us where we have gone wrong." The youthful unrest - the sense of alienation of the younger generation - triggered Skolimowski to wonder what was wrong with what seemed to be a 'perfect civilization'.

Henryk Skolimowski, dipping into the 400 years of Western philosophy, discovered that the conceptual acceptance that 'the universe is a machine, that knowledge is power, and that nature is ours for exploitation and plunder' were exactly the reasons that were the root causes for the ecological upheaval. " We simply conceived of a wrong idiom for the interaction with nature, " he summed up.

Reminiscing, 'I saw the beauty and the potency of technology,' Henryk Skolimowski with a telling 'but', observes, 'I also saw that technology was condemning itself by the fruit it has been bearing: desolate environments, atomized society, and individual alienation — all being the consequences of a certain way of reading the world and interacting with it.' His ideas were crystallized into an insightful  paper:  "Technology—the Myth Behind the Reality" and led a to a series of papers which paradigmatically forayed into what was ailing the mechanistic society. One of his sledgehammering insights was: " We consider ourselves to be a clever, quick and intelligent people. Yet we learn awfully slow from our past mistakes, and we are so reluctant to see and admit that the whole blueprint of our civilization is riddled with shortcomings, is in tatters, and has always been lamentably lacking in vision. "

In 1981 he published the book 'Eco-philosophy, Designing New Tactics for Living'. In recollecting the intellectual milieu under which his eco-philosophical ideas germinated, Skolimowski wrote in Eco-Philosophy in an Historical Perspective (2008): 'On 20 June 1974, I was invited by the Architectural Association, School of Architecture in London (one of the best schools of architecture in Europe) to participate in the symposium entitled, "Beyond Alternative Technology." We were convinced, already at this time, that the Ecology Movement had somehow burned itself out. Building windmills and insisting on soft technology was not enough. So four of us took the floor to ask ourselves, "Where do we go from here?"'


In the allotted ten minutes, Skolimowski nutshelled his perspective by calling for an Ecological Humanism wherein the imperative need for orienting toward 'social relationships based on the idea of sharing, and stewardship rather than owning things and fighting continuous ruthless battles in open and camouflaged social wars' was articulated. He called for soulful values instead of pecuniary equivalents which contributes to a deeper understanding of people by people, and a deeper cohesion between people and the rest of creation.

Denouncing the 'process of naked greed and robbery', he made it clear that it was not natural and that it was pathological. Being an optimist that he was - 'sane and honest people will not allow it to continue' -Henryk Skolimowski, though accepting the fact that alternative visions of reality have had a rough passage to actualize themselves, proclaimed with an immense self-confidence giving hope to others: " ... mark my words, the New Renaissance is not far off. "

So, Henryk Skolimowski -  Professor of Ecological Philosophy at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and at the University of Lodz, Poland, - has set the ball rolling with inspiring lectures and uplifting ideas through his books on ecological philosophy. Now, it is time, the present generation wakes up to the real imperatives for an ecological humanism with the realization that the world is a sanctuary that should not be forsaken and any negligence on that score would only be eco-genocidal for all the species in the long run.

Eco-Guardrails: " pLanetary bOundaries "

" We are entering the Anthropocene, a new geological era in which our activities are threatening the earth's capacity to regulate itself. "
- Professor Will Steffen -
-Australian National University (ANU)&ANU Climate Change Institute-

Is it important to designate our epoch as Anthropocene is an ongoing debate and though scientists are divided on the imperative need to baptize our era so, they are not split when it comes to the dire need for recognizing the eco-destruction perpetrated and perpetuated by our species since its ascendancy to dominance in the animal kingdom. Also on the need to search for alternative paradigms to tackle the impending catastrophes if we choose to continue to ride the rollercoaster of indiscriminate consumption of natural resources.

An assembly of 28 leading researchers in a transdisciplinary analysis have proposed that global biophysical boundaries, identified on the basis of the scientific understanding of the earth system, can define a "safe planetary operating space" that will allow humanity to continue to develop and thrive for generations to come. They have identified Earth system processes and potential biophysical thresholds, which, if crossed, could generate unacceptable environmental change for humanity. Their paper 'Rockström et al. A safe operating space for humanity. Nature, 2009" focuses on the alternative paradigm of 'boundaries and thresholds' for a safe operating space for humanity on Earth.

Nine boundaries identified were climate change, stratospheric ozone, land use change, freshwater use, biological diversity, ocean acidification, nitrogen and phosphorus inputs to the biosphere and oceans, aerosol loading and chemical pollution.

"The human pressure on the Earth System has reached a scale where abrupt global environmental change can no longer be excluded. To continue to live and operate safely, humanity has to stay away from critical ‘hard-wired´ thresholds in the Earth´s environment, and respect the nature of the planet's climatic, geophysical, atmospheric and ecological processes," says lead author Johan Rockstrom, Director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre. He opines that as long we do not cross the thresholds, our future is bright; but 'transgressing the planetary boundaries' could be devastating to humanity.


"We are beginning to push the planet out of its current stable Holocene state, the warm period that began about 10,000 years ago and during which agriculture and complex societies, including our own, have developed and flourished. The expanding human enterprise could undermine the resilience of the Holocene state, which would otherwise continue for thousands of years into the future," points out Will Steffen. Our post-Industrial Revolution had expanded human activities on Earth to an unprecedented scale that it has  now 'generated geophysical force equivalent to the great forces of nature' is what scientists reckon as the crux of the matter.

Pointing out that traditional models of casting history of humanity in terms of the rise and fall of great civilizations, wars, and specific human achievements leaves out the important ecological and climate contexts that shaped and mediated these events, co-author Robert Costanza, director of the Gund Institute at the University of Vermont, explains the context of the transdisciplinary framework of planetary boundaries brought forth by the assembly of 28 researchers in Science Daily," Human history and earth system history have traditionally been developed independently, with little interaction among the academic communities. The Nature article provides evidence of the necessities to establish a thorough, long-term historical understanding of the exchange between human societies and the earth system, in order to set standards for safe navigation within planetary boundaries and avoid crossing dangerous thresholds. "

Planetary boundaries is a way of thinking that will not replace politics, economics, or ethics, explained environmental historian Sverker Sörlin of the Stockholm Resilience Centre and the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm. "But it will help tell all of us where the dangerous limits are and therefore when it is ethically unfair to allow more emissions of dangerous substances, further reduction of biodiversity, or to continue the erosion of the resource base." 

As 'guardrails', contours of the planetary boundaries as defined by the environmental data are our proactive concepts that help us take meaningful  actions to act safely within boundaries 'at the same securing well-being for all' to quote Professor Sverker Sorlin.
" Transgressing planetary boundaries may be devastating for humanity, but if we respect them we have a bright future for centuries ahead, " cautions Johan Rockstrom.

The group of scientists including Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Will Steffen, Katherine Richardson, Jonathan Foley and Nobel Laureate Paul Crutzen, have attempted to quantify the safe biophysical boundaries outside which, they believe, the Earth System cannot function in a stable state, the state in which human civilizations have thrived.

The study suggests that three of these boundaries (climate change, biological diversity and nitrogen input to the biosphere) may already have been transgressed. In addition, it emphasizes that the boundaries are strongly connected — crossing one boundary may seriously threaten the ability to stay within safe levels of the others.

Observations of an incipient climate transition include the rapid retreat of summer sea ice in the Arctic Ocean, melting of almost all mountain glaciers around the world, and an increased rate of sea-level rise in the last 10-15 years, says Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber - co-author and Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. "What we now present is a novel framework through which our scientific understanding of the Earth System can potentially be used more directly in the societal decision making process," avers co-author Professor Katherine Richardson of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Copenhagen.

'Planetary Boundaries' concept might not be giving a complete roadmap for now, but reveals the 'thresholds' beyond which our actions would be 'tipping towards the unknown' (to quote the title of the Stockholm Resilinece Centre on the topic). 

" Within these boundaries, humanity has the flexibility to choose pathways for our future development and well-being.  In essence, we are drawing the first — albeit very preliminary — map of our planet´s safe operating zones.  And beyond the edges of the map, we don´t want to go.  Our future research will consider ways in which society can develop within these boundaries — safely, sanely and sustainably,  " says co-author Professor Jonathan Foley, Director of the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota.

Once again top-flight scientists have come together in a bid to not just comprehend the non-linear dynamics of our Earth's ecosytem vis a vis humanity's actions, but attempt to weave a pattern of solutions that would in the long run enable resiliency of environmental and ecological sustainability on Earth.

TxtRef: Rockström et al. A safe operating space for humanity. Nature, 2009; DOI: 10.1038/461472a 
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090923143339.htm
Scientists Outline 'Safe Operating Space' for Humanity, ScienceDaily, Sept.24/2009.
http://www.stockholmresilience.org/planetary-boundaries

Soil: Placenta of Life

" The soil is the placenta of life. "
      - Anonymous Scientist -

In 1959, Peter Farb wrote a lovely book on the 'living' soil - Living Earth - which I reckon is all the more relevant for our times despite the time-gap. Tiny microscopic lives beyond our ordinary capacity to see them thrive within the teeming Earth in innumerable variety. We hardly know of their intricate relationships and of their unusual adaptive skills. But, in the years since Farb's concern, scientific understanding of the microscopic life and the placental soil has reached a new sophistication with a dawning awareness of the networks of ecosystems.

"The apparent lifelessness of a piece of earth is an illusion," wrote Farb. A teaspoon of soil from the temperate regions has the likelihood of containing 5 billion bacteria, 20 million actinomycetes, 1,000,000 protozoa, and 200,000 algae and fungi. "These crowds of microorganisms," points out Farb, "carry on such fierce activity on each acre that they expend an amount of energy equal to 10,000 human beings living and working there."

The curator of the world tropics Dr William Beebe of the New York Zoological Society over 90 years ago, who before climbing aboard his streamer after a bird expedition to Belem in Brazil, dumped a handfuls of jungle earth, mold, and decaying leaves in his old bag. En route to New York, he examined the jungle litter only to discover a hidden world of intricate beauty and complexity about which he eloquently wrote in Zoologica in 1916:

" Contracting the field of vision to this  world where leaves were fields and fungi loomed as forests, competition, the tragedies, the mystery lessen not at all. Minute seeds mimicked small beetles in shape and in exquisite tracery of patterns; small beetles curled up and to the eye became minute seeds of beautiful  design. Bits of bark simulated insects, a patch of fungus seemed a worm, and in their turn insects and worms became transmitted optically into immobile vegetation ... When we had worked with the lens for many minutes, all relative comparisons with the surrounding world were lost. Instead of looking down from on high, a being apart, with titanic brush of bristles ready to capture the fiercest of these jungle creatures, I, like Alice in Wonderland, felt myself growing smaller, becoming an onlooker, perhaps hiding behind a tiny leaf or twig. "

We walk on the solid Earth's surface which in fact is not solid at all. 'Many soils are more than half empty, filled only with air, water, and a multitude of living things between particles,' writes Farb. The 'soil beings' thrive between particles of soil rather than in the soil.

Bacteria live in clumps or colonies. Fungi concentrate around decaying plants and animal debris. Microbes swarm the roots of plants. Insects occupy favorable niches. 'Nor are the numbers of soil-dwellers a constant thing,' claims Farb. Activity and growth have definite periodic oscillations depending on the natural seasons. Soil of every variety has been hospitable to life. 'A bit of fungus,' Farb puts down in a memorable prose, 'before it is fully dead, may be attacked by ravenous bacteria. A highway gash leaves the bare ribs of the earth stripped of life; yet, shortly fungi send out strands, binding together the particles, holding them in place while seeds of colonizing plants gain a foothold. It is the same story, with infinite variations, of all the triumphs and tragedies that have occurred since the seas first receded and left a forlorn patch of dry ground.'

Wherever life can exist in the soil, nature has evolved a form to fill that niche across the three great soil types  - forests, grasslands, and deserts. It should be a fascinating journey to visit all those communities of life in different soil ecosystems ranging from 'billions to the ounce to only a handful of some species per acre.' Ought to be done if one needs to comprehend the role of soil as a placental incubator of life!

World Environment Day - a bEginning

tHe World Environment Day !

I am beginning this blog - eCo-cOnscience: Vignettes on Earth - on this day on the themesong ecological conscience which as a conceptual logic on interdependent being originates in the ancient wisdom. Lost for many years till looming environmental crises rekindled our memories for that legacy of philosophical reality known to our wise ancestors as conscient co-evolution.

The Aborigines of Australia, for thousands of years aligned their lifestyles to the eco-philosophic leitmotive: It is the nature, which possesses us - we do not possess it. When the Aboriginal Tribal Elders tell us  "we have lived and kept the earth as it was on the First Day", their words clearly reminds me of the Native Amerindian eco-philosophic wisdom when they put it: "Treat the earth well: it was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit the Earth from out Ancestors, we borrow it from our  Children."

Long before the urbanized global community woke up to the song of environmental-ecological wisdom in Stockholm, the ancient Indic heritage had enough insights and outlooks on the need for symbiotic connections on the physical, mental and conscious planes of existence in Nature. In the Prithvi Sukta in Atharva Veda, we hear the evocative 'Mata Bhumih Putroham Prithivyah' - Earth is my mother, I am her son!

In US, ecologist Aldo Leopold - in the words of the eco-conscient monk Thomas Merton - " brought into clear focus one of the most important moral discoveries of our time. This can be called the ecological conscience." The ecological conscience stressed on the realistic importance of having an awareness that our place as Homo species centered on being only an inter-dependent member in the biotic community. "The respect for life, the affirmation of all life, is basic to the ecological conscience," points out Thomas Merton.

So, on this World Environment Day - June 5-2011 - a day that reiterates the core message of the imperative need to have an ecological conscience. Ecotaoism tells us that 'any organism perpetuates its kind in association with the other life forms (or cultures), causing a holistic feedback response from all associated species within the ecosystem,' writes blogger Lawrence Evans in a tidy blogpiece on the concept of eco-symbiosis. As argued for by ecologist Paul Ehrlich and knowledge analyst Robert Ornstein, conscient co-evolution is a reality we as a species got to comprehend.

Considering the rate of destruction inflicted on our Earth, and also the valiant efforts of a number of eco-conscious people across the globe, I shall be writing/sharing information. knowledge, and wisdom on the topics of environment cum ecology in as many of its implications to our lives and other species that co-share livingry and space with us on this tiny blue-dot of a planet - the only Spaceship Earth as fondly reminded to us by the legendary comprehensivist Richard Buckminster Fuller and the personalities involved in the field. I call 'vignettes' for they will be short descriptive sketches on a wide gamut of topics and let me see how eco-literary could they be made too.

I shall also involve subjects of mathematical modelling, futuristic scenarios, computer projections and historical retrojections besides alternative paradigms and appropriate technologies and accommodative lifestyles.

Without history we would not have evolved for embedded memes that are part of our neural architecture are part of our biological evolution which implies that historical ideas would also be sharing their memetic space in this blogospheric niche. Besides, as and when I find certain things worth sharing from other online and offline sources as they are, with due credits at the bottom or within the text, I shall be sharing them too for the benefit of a larger reach. :-)