Corresponding author: Mohsen Kayal ( mohsen.kayal@gmail.com ) Academic editor: Robert Costanza
© 2019 Mohsen Kayal, Hannah Lewis, Jane Ballard, Ehsan Kayal.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Citation:
Kayal M, Lewis H, Ballard J, Kayal E (2019) Humanity and the 21 st century’s resource gauntlet: a commentary on Ripple et al.’s article “World scientists’ warning to humanity: a second notice”. Rethinking Ecology 4: 21-30. https://doi.org/10.3897/rethinkingecology.4.32116
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A year ago, Ripple et al.’s “Warning to Humanity” was published (
Sustainability, Inequality, Demography, Food production, Western bias
The 21st century will undeniably represent a major turn in the development of human societies, as Earth’s limiting resources can no longer support the current pace of material consumption (see Suppl. material
A major limitation in Ripple et al. relates to an apparent idolization of western societies, in which the western lifestyle is assumed to be the norm and end goal of societal evolution rather than a path among other alternative trajectories. Since the industrial revolution, western societies have contributed greatly to improving human health and material comfort, particularly through increasingly dominating what was often considered an austere and threatening natural world (Suppl. material
While the warnings recognize an equitable distribution of wealth as an inherent component of a sustainable future (prescription l in Ripple et al.), the current state of inequality, a major obstacle to sustainability, is left unaddressed. Accounting for inequalities is key to defining sustainable policy, including for establishing well-managed reserves, remedying defaunation, and promoting dietary shifts (prescriptions a, e and g; Suppl. materials 4, 5). Poor communities often depend more directly on natural resources and ecosystem services for food and livelihood, making them more vulnerable to environmental decline (Suppl. material
Another incomplete and, in our opinion, misconceived statement in the two calls relates to the debate on population control (prescriptions h and m in Ripple et al.). While the role of increasing human population as an amplifier of anthropogenic stress on the planet is obvious, it is highly reductionist to assume a common and constant environmental cost for every human life and limit the debate to birth rates. Over the last two centuries (year 1800 to 2000), the global human population multiplied by six (from 1 to 6 billion humans) whereas carbon-dioxide emissions grew 1000 times (from 30 million to 30 billion tonnes-CO2-per-year), representing a tremendous increase in per capita human impacts (https://ourworldindata.org). Yet, resource consumption has remained significantly lower in low-income populations compared to wealthy communities, indicating wealth-related differences in ecological footprint (
While the need for feeding the world is repeatedly used as an argument for limiting population and growing ever-larger agro-industries, enough food is already produced to feed billions of additional people (
Climate change, wealth inequality and biodiversity collapse are not inevitable conditions of human life, but logical outcomes of the socio-economic systems that produce them. Rethinking the processes underlying our global socio-ecosystem, such as the continuous transfer of resources from the poor to the rich, and of carbon from soil to atmosphere, is crucial to produce sustainable outcomes. The points raised in Ripple et al. are imperative, but by ignoring underlying drivers and inherent biases in the proposed solutions, the transformative change we all strive for will remain elusive (see also
We strongly support Ripple et al.’s point that a major reconsideration of political drivers is needed to shift decision power from economic growth to sustainability. However, while institutional work towards socio-ecological sustainability has been underway for decades, positive contributions are repeatedly dwarfed by powerful organizations undermining this goal, notably governments and lobbyists that benefit from petro-chemical, weapon, and agro-industries and hamper socio-environmental legislation despite global calls for action. We therefore hold that, more than a need for scientific knowledge, political decisions require guidance from independent institutions that guarantee socio-environmental justice beyond the reach of private interests, and with long-term perspectives that expand the short-term agenda of elected officials. Such institutional powers appear necessary to effectively step away from inequalities and unsustainable practices that are pre-eminent in today’s socio-economic systems (e.g.
Sustainability can only be achieved through prioritizing global ethics, including universal equality and respect for all forms of life. In this process, humanity needs to emancipate itself from past mistakes by overcoming western ethos of individualism and consumerism, where developing countries feed the western world in resources, host their wars, and welcome their waste (Suppl. materials
MK, HL, JB, EK developed the concept, and designed and revised the manuscript. MK: 25%, HL: 25%, JB: 25%, EK: 25%. All authors contributed equally to this work.
Authors | Contribution | ACI |
---|---|---|
MK | 0.25 | 1.000 |
HL | 0.25 | 1.000 |
JB | 0.25 | 1.000 |
EK | 0.25 | 1.000 |