1. Augmenting nature’s productivity as technological substitution
2. Substitution possibilities for ecosystem services
3. Implementing technologies to replace or extend nature’s services
This chapter briefly identifies some technologies that would augment or replace ecosystem services in order to reduce the direct human demand on nature. This identification is meant to be illustrative rather than comprehensive. This chapter does not, however, evaluate the net efficacy or desirability of listed technologies based on their costs, benefits, and impacts on nature. Those issues are outside this chapter’s scope.
ecosystem services. The benefits that ecosystems provide human beings. They include critical provisioning services such as food, timber, fiber, fuel and energy, and fresh water; regulating services that affect or modify, for instance, air and water quality, climate, erosion, diseases, pests, and natural hazards; cultural services such as fulfilling spiritual, religious, and aesthetic needs; and supporting services such as soil formation, photosynthesis, and nutrient cycling. This chapter does not explicitly address supporting services; they are implicit in the ability of ecosystems to deliver the other services.
substitute (or replacement) technologies. Technologies that wholly substitute for some facet or portion of goods and services that ecosystems provide for humanity.
technological augmentation of ecosystem services. The increase, through technological intervention, in the production of goods and services that nature provides. By helping fulfill humanity’s needs while limiting its direct demand on nature, such augmentation substitutes for natural inputs from ecosystems.
technology. Both tangible human-crafted objects or “hardware” (such as tools and machines) and human-devised intangibles or “software” (such as ideas, knowledge, programs, spreadsheets, operating rules, management systems, institutional arrangements, trade, and culture).
Nature once produced virtually every service, good, or material that humanity used. It supplied all food, fiber, skins, water, and much of the fuel, medicines, and building materials. Over time, human beings developed technologies to coax more of these services from nature, often at the expense of other species. Agriculture and forestry increased the production of food, fiber, and timber. Human beings also developed animal husbandry, commandeering other species to serve their needs for a steadier protein diet and for fiber and skins for bodily warmth and protection; to do work on and off the farm; and to transport goods and people. Gradually at first but faster in the past century, technological substitutes were developed that reduced human demand met directly by nature’s services. Thus, synthetic fiber today limits human demand on nature to provide for clothes, skins, and leather; vinyl, plastics, and metals reduce reliance on timber for materials; fossil fuels—themselves products of nature—and nuclear power reduce pressures on forests and other vegetation to provide humanity’s energy needs; synthetic drugs reduce harvesting of flora and fauna for life-saving medicines; and fossil fuel–powered machines and telecommuting increasingly substitute for animal and human power. Nevertheless, population and economic growth continue to increase aggregate demand for most ecosystem services, and the adverse impacts of substitutions may compromise many ecosystems’ abilities to provide other services.
The term technology as used here includes tangible human-crafted objects or “hardware” (e.g., tools and machines) and human-devised intangibles or “software” (e.g., knowledge, programs, spreadsheets, operating rules, management systems, institutional arrangements, trade, and culture) (Ausubel, 1991; Goklany, 2007). There is substantial skepticism, reinforced by the Biosphere 2 project’s costly failure, about technology’s ability to adequately substitute for ecosystem services (Daily et al., 1997). Nevertheless, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment acknowledges technology’s role in helping to meet human demand, particularly for provisioning services such as food, while recognizing that adverse impacts accompany these technologies (MEA, 2005a, 2005b). Recognizing this, Palmer et al. (2004) suggest the use of “designer ecosystems” to reduce humanity’s load on nature. Noting that designed ecosystems are imperfect ecological solutions and may not pass muster with many conservationists and ecologists, they recommend their use as part of a future sustainable world to mitigate unfavorable conditions through a “blend of technological innovations, coupled with novel mixtures of native species, that favor specific ecosystem functions” rather than as full substitutes for natural systems (Palmer et al., 2004).
Indeed, although technology may occasionally wholly substitute for nature’s goods and services, it will more frequently enhance their production. Because augmentation of nature’s productivity reduces humanity’s direct demand on nature, it is appropriately viewed as substituting for natural inputs from ecosystems. That is the view adopted in this chapter.
Consider food production. Had global agricultural productivity been frozen at its 1961 level, then the world would have needed over 3435 million hectares (Mha) of cropland rather than 1541 Mha actually used to produce as much food as it did in 2002 (Goklany, 2007: 161–163). Thus, technological innovation effectively substituted for over 1894 Mha of habitat, rivaling the total land reserved worldwide for conservation. Thus, arguably, in situ conservation has been enabled largely through augmentation of nature’s services by agricultural technology.
Enhanced productivity was based substantially on increased pesticides, fertilizers, water, and fossil fuel inputs. However, such practices can have significant environmental costs. Preference should be given to practices that balance higher yields with lower inputs of land, water, and chemicals so that they “save” more of the environment than they destroy. And so it should be with other technologies for substituting or augmenting nature’s services. However, although technology can reduce humanity’s demands on nature, it cannot replace and/or substitute for nature down to the last detail. Arguably, given nature’s complexity, it could not replicate itself in every detail if the clock were to be rolled back and restarted.
Table 1 contains a summary of various technologies that could enhance or substitute for nature’s ecosystem services. The ecosystem services identified in this table are adapted from the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA, 2005a: table 1). The following provides details of some of the technological possibilities.
Crops
Most food that humanity consumes today comes from technological augmentation of nature’s services through agriculture. The earth’s carrying capacity before agriculture has been estimated at 10 million people (Livi-Bacci, 1992: 29). However, the ecological footprint of its 6.3 billion people in 2003 was estimated to exceed carrying capacity by 23% (GFN, 2006). Therefore, assuming these estimates are accurate, present-day agriculture has boosted carrying capacity by over two orders of magnitude.
The world’s population is likely to expand and become wealthier by midcentury, increasing food demand. Ideally, future agricultural practices will deliver higher yields but with lower natural and synthetic inputs (i.e., land, water, pesticides, fertilizers, and fossil fuels). Options include more intensive agriculture using conventional breeding techniques, genetically modified (GM) crops, and precision agriculture. These three approaches can coexist.
GM crops, in particular, have high potential for low-input high-yield agriculture that could produce more food per unit of land and water diverted to agriculture. Several GM crops are in various stages of development ranging from research to commercialization. (This discussion on biotechnology and GM technologies draws liberally on Goklany [2007: chapter 9].) For example, soil and climatic conditions are frequently less than optimal for specific agricultural crops. Accordingly, bioengineered grains are being developed to tolerate such suboptimal conditions (i.e., drought, water logging, salinity, iron-deficient soil, or soils that are too acidic, too alkaline, or have excess aluminum). Similarly, staples—rice, maize, wheat, cassava, sorghum—are being bioengineered to resist biotic stresses such as insects, nematodes, bacteria, viruses, fungi, weeds, and other pests. Such crops ought to reduce pesticide usage. Spoilage-prone fruits (e.g., melons, papaya, and tomatoes) are being bioengineered to delay ripening, increase shelf life, and reduce postharvest losses. And the list goes on.
Table 1. Substitution possibilities for provisioning, regulating, and cultural ecosystem services
By increasing food produced per unit of land, water, and chemical inputs, GM crops would maintain or increase yields while reducing environmental impacts associated with agricultural activities. Higher yields would also reduce habitat loss, landscape fragmentation, pressures on freshwater biodiversity, pesticide and fertilizer usage, and soil erosion, which then improves water quality and conserves carbon sinks and stores. Thus, cultivation of GM crops may also displace use of more toxic pesticides with less toxic and/or less persistent ones.
Notably, GM crops have been cultivated commercially since 1996 without any detectable effects on human health. Experience worldwide indicates that they have reduced pesticide usage and increased yields and farmers’ profits (see Pest Regulation, below).
Food production per unit of land, water, and chemical inputs can also be extended through precision agriculture, which uses combinations of high- and low- tech monitors, global positioning systems, computers, and process controllers to optimize the amount and timing of delivering the various inputs, based on the cultivar, soil, and climatic conditions specific to the farm (Goklany, 2007: 393).
Livestock
Both conventional and bioengineering techniques can also be applied to increase livestock productivity by improving feed crops or the livestock so they can utilize feed more efficiently and reduce nutrients excreted in their wastes. For example, lysine is an amino acid that improves protein utilization in animals. Therefore, lysine supplements or high-lysine corn and soybeans improve livestock feed and reduce overall demand for land needed to produce animal protein, perhaps by as much as three-quarters. Similarly, improving utilization of phosphorus in feed reduces phosphorus in livestock excrement and, consequently, nutrient loadings in the environment. This could be facilitated by using bioengineered corn and soybeans that are low in phytic acid and/or contain phytase, an enzyme that improves phosphorus utilization. Scientists have developed a transgenic pig that contains phytase in its saliva and excretes 75% less phosphorus. Finally, corn with high oil and energy content and forage crops with lower lignin content would also increase feed utilization by livestock, thereby also reducing demand for land and water to sustain livestock.
Capture Fisheries
The annual worldwide catch of marine and freshwater capture fisheries was approximately constant between 1995 and 2004 (FAO, 2006). But production from aquaculture—appropriately viewed as a substitute for capture fisheries—increased rapidly from 4% of total fisheries production in 1970 to 32% in 2004.
In 2005, half the marine capture fisheries stock groups monitored by FAO were fully exploited; one-quarter were underexploited or moderately exploited; the rest were overexploited, depleted, or recovering from previous overfishing. Inland capture fisheries were also generally overexploited. Thus, the potential for maintaining production from capture fisheries is currently low (Worm et al., 2006; but see Beddington et al., 2007). Accordingly, although aquaculture is not a panacea (Naylor et al., 2000), it will probably expand to meet demand for fish and other seafood (Goklany, 2007: 363–367). This can be aided by increasing production at fish hatcheries, developing GM strains that would use feed more efficiently or utilize plant-based feed, and developing methods to improve health of cultured species to reduce preconsumption losses.
Wild Food
Although the provisioning aspect of this service could be met through cultivation, that may not entirely fulfill deep-seated cultural, aesthetic, and psychic needs associated with the rituals of hunting, gathering, and consuming wild food (see below).
There are several technologies that would substitute for or augment the production of timber. These include tried-and-true approaches such as increased utilization of harvested product to reduce wastage (e.g., through the manufacture of plywood and other engineered woods or computer-controlled manufacture of veneers), using high-yield tree crops developed through conventional techniques, and meeting demand via vinyl, plastics, and other petroleum-derived materials (e.g., fiberglass for insulation, or synthetics for flooring) or inorganic materials (e.g., aluminum and steel for construction). It could also include resorting to bioengineered trees. For example, lignin in wood must be chemically separated from cellulose to make pulp used in paper production. Researchers at Michigan Technological University have bioengineered aspen trees with half the normal lignin:cellulose ratio, which, moreover, could increase pulp production by 15% from the same amount of wood.
Also, future generations, conceivably more comfortable with computer screens, may abandon hard paper copy as reading and information storage media in favor of inorganic electronic media.
Sixty percent of the global demand for fiber is now met through synthetic fibers (e.g., polyester, nylon, vinyl, acrylic) (Kuffner, 2004). Moreover, cotton, wool, silk, flax, jute, hemp, and coir, although nominally classified as natural fibers, are produced largely through agricultural technology. In addition, cotton, the most abundant natural fiber, is increasingly produced from GM varieties, which currently occupy 40% of the world’s cotton acreage (ISAAA, 2006).
Synthetic fibers also substitute for natural furs and skins, reducing pressures to either harvest wild animals or maintain livestock for those purposes, thereby diminishing demand for land, water, and chemical inputs that would otherwise be required to maintain that livestock.
Traditionally, humanity’s fuel and energy services were mostly obtained from wood, dung, solar, wind, and hydropower, occasionally supplemented by geothermal power. Since the Industrial Revolution, the fuel mix has shifted toward fossil fuels (themselves products of nature) and, to a lesser extent, nuclear. Given the present state of energy technologies, current energy demand cannot be met with nature’s traditional energy services. Fossil fuels can thus be viewed as imperfect and overused substitutes for nature’s services that initially conserved habitat.
Because of climate change, efforts are now under way to reduce fossil fuel usage. These include greater emphasis on new renewable technologies (e.g., photo-voltaics, advanced wind and solar power devices, crop-based biofuels); nuclear; broad improvements in energy efficiency; and more exotic solutions (e.g., hydrogen fuel cells, fusion). Land-intensive energy solutions (e.g., biofuels and solar energy) could, however, have unintended adverse consequences for ecosystems and species (Ausubel, 2007). A case in point is forest conversion in Malaysia and Indonesia to produce palm oil to meet Europe’s subsidized biodiesel demand, which threatens endangered orangutans and other species.
Cultivation of energy crops (e.g., corn, soybean, and oil palm) threaten to reverse last century’s reductions in cropland per capita that have helped almost stabilize total habitat lost to cropland (Goklany, 2007). Also, because these crops feed both humans and livestock and, moreover, are used in numerous products, prices for milk, meat, and other food products have escalated, jeopardizing post–World War II advances against global hunger. Food costs have increased by 50% in the past 5 years in some places (Blas and Wiggins, 2007).
Just as for food, timber, and fiber, biotechnology can make crop-based fuel production more efficient. Hybrid approaches combining biology and chemistry could further increase these efficiencies.
For millennia, human beings have relied on beasts of burden to transport themselves and their goods, till the soil, and do other heavy work. These ecosystem services, although overlooked by the MEA, are still used in developing countries. However, on farms and in cities, machines, mainly fueled by fossil fuel–driven internal combustion engines, are displacing oxen, mules, and horses; today trucks and trains carry far more goods on the Silk Road than camel caravans. Although this has increased fossil fuel consumption, it has reduced habitat lost to cropland that would otherwise be required to maintain animals providing these services. In the early decades of the twentieth century, when the U.S. population was a third of what it is today, 35 Mha (or 25% of U.S. cropland) was devoted to producing feed for the millions of workhorses and mules used on and off the farm. Therefore, technology, by rendering this ecosystem service largely obsolete in rich countries, has enormously reduced their land (and water) diverted to agriculture (Goklany and Sprague, 1992).
One of nature’s critical services is providing access to its vast library of genetic resources, much of which, unfortunately, is not catalogued and may be in danger of being lost. Ex situ technologies that can be used to preserve this information include gene banks, zoos, and botanical gardens. Copies of this information can be created, and access facilitated, through the use of polymerase chain reactions. Biotechnology can also aid conservation by helping to propagate threatened, endangered, and, perhaps—à la Jurassic Park—even extinct species.
Any process, substance, or quality that exists or is produced in or by a living organism can, in theory, be bioengineered into synthetic crops. Armed with such traits, bioengineered crops can be used to produce medicines and vaccines in so-called GM pharms, manufacture bioplastics, biodiesel and other biofuels, colored or other forms of processed cotton, and eliminate toxic and hazardous pollutants from soils and waters. Once a better understanding is gained about how precisely genes help to manufacture various proteins and control various processes in nature, bioengineering may help to develop products and confer traits with no natural analogs. Today’s chemical, pharmaceutical, and manufacturing factories may also be supplanted by bioengineered crops, bioreactors, and biofactories, essentially substituting older risks with newer but, we hope, lesser risks (Goklany, 2007: 392).
Synthetic manufacturing techniques and processes can substitute for medicines that would otherwise have to be produced directly from natural products. For example, aspirin, perhaps the most used drug in the world, is a synthetic form of a chemical found in the leaves and bark of willow trees. Similarly, the cancer drug paclitaxel, a semisynthetic substitute for Taxol, eliminated the need to harvest the Pacific yew tree to produce the cancer drug. According to one estimate, it would take six 100-year-old Pacific yew trees to treat one patient (Edwards, 1996). The semisynthetic process, which initially used material from the more abundant European yew, has now been refined to use plant cell cultures rather than plant parts.
Despite some skepticism regarding cost-effectiveness of freshwater substitutes, numerous technologies are available and are used routinely worldwide to clean and purify water to enable its safe use and reuse. Unfortunately, such technologies are underused largely because institutional and cultural factors frequently preclude pricing water and charging consumers the water’s replacement price. Consequently, surface waters are oversubscribed, and groundwater is overdrawn (MEA, 2005a: 39).
In addition to desalination, which can be economically and environmentally expensive, several other technologies treat, purify, recycle, and reuse water. They include chlorination, ultraviolet radiation, filtration, and chemical and biological treatment (including sewage treatment) to reduce or remove pathogens, nutrients, metals, and other chemicals to make water safe for human, agricultural, industrial, and other uses. Treatment facilities come in sizes ranging from those designed for individual households to those suitable for towns. Thus, the number of people with access to safe water and sanitation has never been higher. Nevertheless 1.1 billion people still lack access to safe water, and 2.6 billion lack adequate sanitation, adding greatly to the global burden of disease (WHO/UNICEF, 2004).
Other technologies can, in effect, also reduce human demand on fresh water. Agriculture accounts for 85% of human freshwater consumption globally. Increasing the efficiency of agricultural water use by 1% would, on average, increase water for other human and environmental uses by 5.7%.
Moreover, there is significant scope for reducing water withdrawals for municipal and industrial purposes. Municipal (and household) consumption can be reduced through restricted-flow appliances (e.g., toilets, showerheads, washing machines), and industrial water use can be limited through the use of process changes or closed-loop water systems.
Finally, it may be possible to design ecological systems to freshen water for human consumption while also providing the rest of nature access to that water. Palmer et al. (2004) note that “‘designing’ ecosystems goes beyond restoring a system to a past state, which may or may not be possible. It suggests creating a well-functioning community of organisms that optimizes the ecological services available from coupled natural-human ecosystems.”
One of nature’s services is to cleanse various air pollutants from the atmosphere. This can be aided by technologies such as chemical scrubbers for sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, electrical and mechanical devices such as electrostatic precipitators and fabric filters to reduce particulate matter, combustion devices to oxidize chemicals such as carbon monoxide and organic compounds, or process changes such as switching to low-sulfur or no-lead gasolines. These technologies, which rich nations used successfully to reduce emissions for traditional air pollutants (that exclude greenhouse gases), are now being transferred to developing countries through knowledge transfers or trade in equipment. Consequently, developing countries are addressing environmental concerns earlier in their development cycle (Goklany, 2007). For example, the United States started replacing leaded gasoline in 1975, when its GDP per capita was $20,000 (in 2000 International dollars, adjusted for purchasing power), whereas India and China began addressing this before their GDP per capita reached $3,500 (World Bank, 2007, based on Goklany, 2007).
One of nature’s services is absorption and desorption of carbon dioxide, which helps regulate climate. However, increased fossil fuel usage and changes in land use and land cover have increased atmospheric CO2 concentrations by over 25% since industrialization started.
Technologies to reduce atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations include biological sequestration on land through plant growth, carbon capture from CO2 sources with subsequent sequestration in oceans or in geologic formations, and biological sequestration in oceans by stimulating the growth of plankton and other organisms through iron fertilization. Only the first of these is currently economically feasible. Specific technologies include faster-growing trees and vegetation, reduced nitrogen usage, and conservation tillage (see subsection on crops in Food and Timber, above, and Erosion Control, below). Carbon capture is technically, but not economically, feasible, and oceanic and geologic sequestration are still in the research and development phases. Their long-term environmental consequences need further evaluation.
Proposals have been floated for other exotic geoengineering options (e.g., orbiting solar power stations or climate modification through injection of sulfates into the stratosphere or covering large areas with reflective films). Their economic and technical feasibility and environmental impacts also need further analysis.
At local and, possibly, regional scales, some climate regulation can be achieved by modifying land cover and albedo (through planting trees and other vegetation, reducing paved surfaces, or painting rooftops). At much smaller scales, air conditioning and heating serve as energy-intensive substitutes.
Physical disturbance of the land’s surface caused by tilling, construction, or removal of vegetation can contribute to erosion. This reduces soil productivity and increases losses of carbon into the atmosphere. Because it increases sediment and any soil-associated pollutants, it also reduces water quality. Erosion can be reduced through agricultural practices that would enable low- or no-till cultivation (i.e., “conservation tillage”), maintaining ground cover through cover crops or crop residue and avoiding or postponing cultivation or disturbance of erodible soils.
Conservation tillage can be facilitated through the use of herbicide tolerant (HT) crops. These crops— developed through either conventional breeding or bioengineering—are designed to tolerate various herbicides, so that herbicide application rather than mechanical or hand weeding reduces the competition between weeds and economically valuable crops.
U.S. experience with genetically modified HT crops has generally been positive. In the United States, soybean competes with over 30 kinds of weeds that, if left unchecked, could reduce yields by 50–90%. However, a HT soybean engineered to be tolerant to a broad-spectrum herbicide, glyphosate, helps farmers get rid of weeds more effectively using smaller amounts of less-toxic and less-persistent pesticides (see Pest Regulation, below). Other popular HT varieties include those developed for corn, canola, cotton, and alfalfa.
Nature regulates disease through various mechanisms. It provides habitat both for vectors that convey pathogens that might affect human beings, their livestock, and wildlife and for the pathogens themselves. It also harbors organisms that prey on the vectors, such as “mosquitofish” that eat the larvae of mosquitoes that spread West Nile virus (see Pest Regulation, below). Substitute technologies include treatment or removal of habitat harboring the vectors (e.g., by draining swamps, ponds, or containers that could hold standing water) and segregating vectors from human hosts or targets (e.g., by using insecticide-treated bed nets, screens on doors and windows, or insecticides to repel or kill vectors) (Grieco et al., 2007). Appropriate water treatment (e.g., chlorination) would also reduce water-related diseases such as dysentery and diarrhea. Finally, any incidences of disease could be treated with medicines.
Substitutes for nature’s pest regulation include the use of pesticides and control of habitat that pests need. Also, nature itself can be harnessed in integrated pest management.
A relatively new technology for controlling pests is to bioengineer crops to contain their own pesticides. GM crops that are resistant to viruses, weeds, insects, and other pests have been developed. This should reduce pesticide usage, and their residues in the environment. Real-world experience so far bears out this theory.
The most widely used crops containing their own pesticides use genes from Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), a soil bacterium, which has been used as a spray insecticide in conventional agriculture for decades. Bt varieties exist for corn, cotton, potato, and rice. In the United States, such crops are sometimes used as part of integrated pest management systems in which the Bt crop farmers plant refugia with non-Bt crops to retard the development of resistance in pests targeted by the Bt crops. They also should monitor the situation, which enables adaptive management. Other strategies include crop rotation, developing crops with multiple toxin genes with each toxin targeting different sites within the target species, and inserting the bioengineered gene into the chloroplast to express Bt toxin at higher levels.
Field studies from Arizona, Mississippi, Australia, and China indicate that these strategies have effectively retarded evolution of resistant pests. In 2004, Bt cotton—planted on 7.1 million acres (or 51% of U.S. cotton area)—reduced pesticide use by 1.76 million pounds, increased yields by 82 pounds per acre, and netted farmers $42 per acre (Sankula et al., 2005: 4–5). Insecticide runoff in a watershed before and after introduction of Bt cotton showed that pesticides that are most toxic to humans, birds, and fish decreased between one-third and two-thirds (EPA, 2001: IIE36). After Bt cotton adoption, bird counts increased by10% for Texas to 37% for Mississippi (relative to the pre-adoption situation; EPA 2001: IIE38–40). Elsewhere, Bt cotton helped China reduce pesticide use in 2001 by 25% below mid-1990s levels (Pray et al., 2002), and, during the 1999/2000 season, South African farmers who adopted Bt cotton had 60% higher yields and 38% lower pesticide consumption than nonadopters (Ismael et al., 2001).
Similarly, the use of GM HT soybean, canola, corn, and cotton in 2004 reduced U.S. pesticide usage in that year by an estimated 55 million pounds (in terms of active ingredients) while it increased farmers’ net income by $1.8 billion (Sankula et al., 2005).
Pollination is an important service that improves the quantity and quality of many agricultural crops such as apples, almonds, melons, blueberries, strawberries, and alfalfa. In nature, some pollination occurs through the action of abiotic processes such as wind and water, but most is accomplished via insects (e.g., bees, butterflies, and wasps), birds, and bats. For some crops, e.g., apples, almonds, and blueberries, pollination has long been a managed activity with bee colonies being transported from location to location to coincide with the flowering season. In other words, managed pollination is itself the product of technology. In the United States, managed pollination is generally accomplished using European honeybees, a nonnative species. Cultured insects, e.g., bumblebees for greenhouse tomatoes or alfalfa leafcutter bees for alfalfa, may also be employed. Other technological substitutes include mechanical or hand pollination for small-scale applications such as greenhouses and small garden plots. The need for pollination management has increased, possibly because some monoculture crops are insufficiently attractive to native pollinators, because of declining abundance of native pollinators, the increasing size of monoculture plots, and the fact that some crops, being nonnative, lack native pollinators.
Although nature is responsible for many hazards such as floods, hurricanes, tornados, drought, other extreme weather and climatic events, tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and other geologic hazards, it also helps to buffer some of their effects. Soils store large quantities of water, mediate transfer of surface water to groundwater, and prevent or reduce flooding while barrier beaches, coastal wetlands, mangroves, and coral reefs help absorb storm surges from hurricanes and other wave action (MEA, 2005a: 118). Although some of these services have been compromised because natural buffers have frequently been modified, if not eliminated, and human beings continue to place themselves and their property increasingly in harm’s way, global mortality and mortality rates from extreme weather events have declined by 95% or more since the 1920s. The largest declines were for droughts and floods, which were responsible for 95% of all twentieth-century deaths caused by extreme events. For the United States, current mortality and mortality rates from extreme temperatures, tornados, lightning, floods, and hurricanes also peaked a few decades ago (Goklany, 2006).
These empirical trends suggest that, notwithstanding any increase that may have occurred in frequencies and intensities of extreme events, technological substitutes have more than offset any losses in nature’s protective services, at least with respect to protecting human lives. Declines in mortality are probably the result of increases in societies’ collective adaptive capacities from a variety of interrelated factors— increases in wealth, technological options, and human and social capital.
Technological options range from early warning systems and more accurate meteorological forecasts to artificial or restored wetlands and mangroves to defensive structures (e.g., dams, sea walls, levees, dikes) to better and smarter construction (e.g., stronger building codes, concrete and steel houses, houses built on stilts, floating structures), to improved communications and transportation systems that enable transport of people and materiel (including food, medical, and other essential supplies) in and out of disaster zones, and to the 24/7 media coverage when extreme events seem imminent.
Experience with the 2003 European heat wave and Hurricane Katrina indicates that human and social capital are as important as technological options and greater wealth. Moreover, society’s greater adaptive capacity to cope with extreme events and their aftermath must be deployed more rapidly and fully. The consequences of failure of natural barriers may be less than that of poorly deployed technology-based adaptations.
Nature also helps many individuals, communities, and cultures fulfill spiritual and religious needs. However, such services are cultural constructs, inseparable from human beings. Much of this probably reflects a time when nature directly provided virtually all of humanity’s provisioning services and was, therefore, endowed by humans with—for lack of a better word—“super-natural” powers. Historically, objects such as paintings, sculptures, and relics helped satisfy, to some extent, religious needs that may otherwise have had to be met by undertaking arduous and dangerous journeys to distant places. But it is almost unimaginable that such objects or their modern-day counterparts— photographs, videos, movies, DVDs, holography—can be other than weak substitutes. Nevertheless, nature may conceivably be viewed with less reverence in the future, if technology further increases its role in displacing or augmenting nature’s provisioning services, thereby diminishing demand for its spiritual and religious services.
Artificial or human-modified landscapes and ecosystems may also partially fulfill aesthetic, recreation, and ecotourism needs provided by nature. A query for manmade sites in the Ramsar Sites database returned 514 hits (out of a total of 1675 sites) (RSIS, 2007). A particularly successful example of a constructed ecosystem is India’s Keoladeo National Park, also known as the Bharatpur Bird Sanctuary. This wetland—both a Ramsar Site and a World Heritage Site—protects the village of Bharatpur from frequent floods and provides grazing for cattle while also serving as habitat for 366 bird species, 379 floral species, 50 species of fish, 13 species of snakes, 5 species of lizards, 7 amphibian species, 7 turtle species, and a variety of other invertebrates (WWF-India, undated). Other artificial systems include lakes and reservoirs created behind dams and other water projects such as the Anaivilundawa Sanctuary in Sri Lanka, Lake Mead in the United States; and Lake Kariba in Africa. Clearly, although such water projects fulfill one set of demands for ecosystem services (e.g., water for drinking, agriculture, recreation, and tourism), by diverting water, they also undermine the ecosystem’s ability to meet other demands.
Human-augmented ecosystems include the Ranthambore National Park (and Tiger Preserve) in India and artificial watering holes in Chobe National Park in Botswana. Other human-made or human-modified landscapes that partially substitute for nature range from the suburban gardener’s backyard to Frederick Law Olmstead’s Central Park in New York to England’s rural landscape from farms to hedgerows. They may also include zoos and botanical gardens, as well as artificial reefs.
Just as an Ansel Adams photograph, an Albert Bierstadt painting, or a National Geographic DVD may, for some people, compensate for the real experience of visiting Yosemite, the Rocky Mountains, or Everest, so might the aesthetic services that nature provides be substituted through other paintings, photographs, high-definition or, possibly, holographic television, videos, and movies. It should be possible, for instance, to take high-definition virtual IMAX tours of coral reefs or nature preserves in the Caribbean, the Galápagos, or in Gombe. Similarly, one may, in the future, indulge in a virtual white-water rafting trip down the Colorado, a hot air balloon ride over Victoria Falls, or a bicycling tour through the Swiss Alps.
There are numerous technological options for replacing or extending the goods and services that ecosystems provide humanity. Generic options particularly applicable to provisioning services—food, timber, natural fiber, energy—include technologies that would increase harvested yield per unit of land and water, increase utilization of harvested products through reductions in postharvest and end-use losses, and enhance recycling.
Such technologies would reduce humanity’s burden on nature, a burden that will otherwise increase as the global population increases and becomes wealthier. But these technologies often have severe environmental consequences. Accordingly, the trade-offs and synergies involved in meeting human needs and conserving the biosphere should be evaluated before these options are implemented. Such evaluations, which necessarily should be done on a case-by-case basis, should also consider the effects of forgoing these technological options because in a complex and imperfect world there may be no perfect solutions (Goklany, 2007: chapter 9).
Ausubel, Jesse H. 1991. Does climate still matter? Nature 350: 649–652. This provocative question is posed in light of the fact that technologies have made human civilization more adaptable and less vulnerable to climate change.
Ausubel, Jesse H. 2007. Renewable and nuclear heresies. International Journal of Nuclear Governance, Economy and Ecology 1: 229–243. Based on estimates of energy produced per unit area used, the author laments reliance on land-intensive energy solutions.
Beddington, J. R., D. J. Agnew, and C. W. Clark. 2007. Current problems in the management of marine fisheries. Science 316: 1713–1716. These authors argue that claims of inevitable decline in fisheries are overblown and that many existing management tools have yet to be implemented widely.
Blas, Javier, and Jenny Wiggins. 2007. UN warns it cannot afford to feed the world. Financial Times, 15 July. A news report warns on how diverting crops for biofuel production hinders the fight against global hunger.
Daily, Gretchen C., Susan Alexander, Paul R. Ehrlich, Larry Goulder, Jane Lubchenco, Pamela A. Matson, Harold A. Mooney, Sandra Postel, Stephen H. Schneider, David Tilman, and George M. Woodwell. 1997. Ecosystem services: Benefits supplied to human societies by natural ecosystems. Issues in Ecology 2 (Spring). Available at http://www.esa.org/science_resources/issues/FileEnglish/issue2.pdf. This is a good summary of many of the benefits natural systems provide for human beings.
Edwards, Neil. 1996. Taxol. Downloadable from http://www.bris.ac.uk/Depts/Chemistry/MOTM/taxol/taxol.htm. This provides a brief history of taxol and some efforts to synthesize this cancerfighting drug.
FAO. 2006. State of the World’s Fisheries and Aquaculture 2006. Downloadable from http://www.fao.org/docrep/009/A0699e/A0699E04.htm.
Global Footprint Network (GFN). 2006. Humanity’s Footprint 1961–2003. Available at http://www.ecofoot.net/.
Goklany, Indur M. 2006. Death and death rates due to extreme weather events: Global and U.S. trends, 1900–2004. In P. Höppe and R. A. Pielke Jr., eds. Workshop on Climate Change and Disaster Losses: Understanding and Attributing Trends and Projections, Final Workshop Report. Hohenkammer, Germany.
Goklany. Indur M. 2007. The Improving State of the World: Why We’re Living Longer, Healthier, More Comfortable Lives on a Cleaner Planet. Washington, DC: Cato Institute. This presents long-term U.S. and global trends in indicators of human and environmental well-being, including trends in land and water use. Chapter 9, devoted to bioengineered crops, discusses the environmental and public health trade-offs associated with their use and nonuse. The last two chapters address sustainable development and limits to growth.
Goklany, Indur M., and Merritt W. Sprague. 1992. Sustaining Development and Biodiversity: Productivity, Efficiency and Conservation. Policy Analysis No. 175. Washington, DC: Cato Institute. Probably the first study to note that higher land productivity conserves habitat and biodiversity, and to provide estimates of land saved for nature by higher agricultural productivity.
Grieco, John P., Nicole L. Achee, Theeraphap Chareonviriyaphap, Wannapa Suwonkerd, Kamal Chauhan, Michael R. Sardelis, and Donald R. Roberts. 2007. A New Classification System for the Actions of IRS: Chemicals Traditionally Used for Malaria Control. Public Library of Science One, 2(8): e716. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0000716.
International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications (ISAAA). 2006. ISAAA Brief 35-2006: Executive Summary. Downloadable from http://www.isaaa.org/resources/publications/briefs/35/executivesummary/default.html. The work provides an authoritative annual survey of the global penetration of bioengineered crops into agriculture.
Kuffner, Henrik. 2004. Synthetic fibres: Quantity and price from Asia, specialities from USA and Europe. Downloadable from http://www.awta.com.au/Publications/IWTO/Conf_Papers/Report_Synthetics_NL6.pdf. A market report from the Australian Wool Testing Authority.
Livi-Bacci, Massimo. 1992. A Concise History of World Population. English edition translated by C. Ipsen. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. An erudite population history of the world is presented.
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. 2005a. Ecosystems and Human Well-being: Synthesis. Washington, DC: Island Press.
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. 2005b. Ecosystems and Human Well-being: Biodiversity Synthesis. Washington, DC: World Resources Institute. These reports describe the status and trends in the world’s ecosystems, the services they provide for human beings, and the options to restore, conserve, or sustainably enhance these ecosystem services.
Naylor, Rosamond L., Rebecca J. Goldburg, Jurgenne H. Primavera, Nils Kautsky, Malcolm C. M. Beveridge, Jason Clay, Carl Folke, Jane Lubchenco, Harold Mooney, and Max Troell. 2000. Effect of aquaculture on world fish supplies. Nature 405: 1017–1024. This article notes that some forms of aquaculture may not relieve pressure on wild fisheries because they require large inputs of wild fish for feed and have various other ecological impacts.
Palmer, Margaret, Emily Bernhardt, Elizabeth Chornesky, Scott Collins, Andrew Dobson, Clifford Duke, Barry Gold, Robert Jacobson, Sharon Kingsland, Rhonda Kranz, Michael Mappin, M. Luisa Martinez, Fiorenza Micheli, Jennifer Morse, Michael Pace, Mercedes Pascual, Stephen Palumbi, O. J. Reichman, Ashley Simons, Alan Townsend, and Monica Turner. 2004. Ecology for a crowded planet. Science 304: 1251–1252. The authors describe some changes that would help balance the needs and aspirations of humans with the health of ecosystems.
Ramsar Sites Information Service (RSIS). 2007. Ramsar Sites Information Service. Database. Downloadable at http://www.wetlands.org/rsis/.
Sankula, Sujatha, Gregory Marmon, and Edward Blumenthal. 2005. Biotechnology Derived Crops Planted in 2004—Impacts on US agriculture: Executive Summary. Washington, DC: National Center for Food and Agricultural Policy. This article provides information on acreage, costs, and benefits of GM crops planted in the United States in 2004, including farmers’ net profits, and changes in pesticide use.
WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply and Sanitation. 2004. Meeting the MDG Drinking Water and Sanitation Standard: A Mid-Term Assessment of Progress. Geneva: WHO. This is an interim report on progress toward the Millennium Development Goals for safe water and sanitation.
World Wildlife Fund-India (WWF-India). Undated. Interpretation Programme for Keoladeo National Park. Downloadable from http://www.wwfindia.org/about_wwf/what_we_do/freshwater_wetlands/our_work/keoladeo_np/index.cfm.
Worm, Boris, Edward B. Barbier, Nicola Beaumont, J. Emmett Duffy, Carl Folke, Benjamin S. Halpern, Jeremy B. C. Jackson, Heike K. Lotze, Fiorenza Micheli, Stephen R. Palumbi, Enric Sala, Kimberley A. Selkoe, John J. Stachowicz, and Reg Watson. 2006. Impacts of biodiversity loss on ocean ecosystem services. Science 314: 787–790. This report suggests that present trends in losses of biodiversity, unless reversed, may cause collapse of all commercial fish and seafood species by 2048.