Environmental degradation
Garbage covered beach in Haiti, 2005
Credit: UN Photo / Sophia Paris / CC BY NC ND
Summary
Humanity’s ecological footprint is such that scientists have declared the dawning of a new geological epoch—the Anthropocene. Desertification, deforestation, acidification of the oceans, the massive erosion of biodiversity, the depletion of fish stocks and the multiple forms of pollution all count among the many forms of environmental deterioration caused by human activity—and which has considerably accelerated since 1950.
On August 2, 2017, humanity’s annual consumption of ecological resources exceeded the earth’s capacity to regenerate those resources in that year. This day, Earth Overshoot Day, calculated by the Global Footprint Network, varies from country to country and has been arriving earlier and earlier in the year since the 1970s. In 2018, France hit Earth Overshoot Day on May 5: if the whole of humanity were consuming at the same rate as the French we would need 2.9 Earths to make up the ecological shortfall (as compared with 1.7 Earths for the global average). Humanity’s ecological footprint is such that scientists have declared the arrival of a new geological era, the Anthropocene : “Whether it is solid, liquid or gas, concentrated or dispersed, human waste leaves traces in the water, the soil, in the air bubbles we find in ice cores; it has become the unarguable evidence, the tangible proof of the influence of human activities on the composition of the planet’s uppermost layer” (Baptiste Monsaingeon).
Ecological footprint, 2014
Comment: The Global Footprint Network, founded in 2003 by researchers in the United States, is a think tank network of 70 partners that uses multiple sources (mainly UN) to estimate the annual ecological footprint. The network also carries out awareness-raising activities (such as the Earth Overshoot Day campaigns – the date by which humanity will have consumed more resources than the planet can regenerate). The ecological footprint for consumption has become a benchmark for all environmental actors. This indicator is high in many countries, particularly the United States, Mongolia, Australia, the Gulf, Russia, etc. The vertical bars indicate the number of planets Earth that would be needed to support the consumption of each country.
In 1968, Garrett Hardin used a parable to explain the mechanisms of environmental degradation: a pasture available for everyone to use – the “commons” – becomes inexorably eroded by herdsmen who benefit individually from overgrazing without bearing their share of the collective costs. This is the tragedy of the commons, which poses the problem of “reconciling short-term self-interest and long-term collective interest” (Philippe Le Prestre). Although he proposed only two options for halting the degradation of the commons – either privatization or nationalization (later studies would point to alternative forms of regulation, such as polycentric governance) – Hardin shaped our current understanding of environmental problems. Environmental degradation depends on the institutional mechanisms governing modes of accessing and consuming natural resources. At international level, our global common goods – the oceans and the seabed, the atmosphere, the Antarctic, outer space – are governed collectively with a view to limiting degradation while simultaneously keeping sovereignty claims in check.
Desertification, deforestation, biodiversity loss
Environmental degradation caused by human activity has accelerated significantly overall since 1950. The battle against depletion of the ozone layer, via the Vienna Convention of 1985 and the Montreal Protocol of 1987, may have notched up one victory on the prevention side of the equation – but other forms of degradation are worsening, despite the mechanisms provided by international regulations.
Desertification – a phenomenon that can be natural or human in origin – is being exacerbated by overuse of soils and irrigation, by deforestation, industrialization, tourism and climate change. According to the UN, 12 million hectares of land and USD 42 billion in income are lost each year, despite the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), adopted in 1992. According to FAO estimates, there was a net annual decrease in forest area of 3.3 million hectares worldwide, between 2010 and 2015. Deforestation is not a new phenomenon: in 5,000 years, 1.8 billion hectares of forest have been destroyed to meet human needs for food, feed, fuel, fiber and forest products (the Five Fs). Two recent changes should be noted: since 1950, deforestation has primarily affected tropical forests while reforestation rates in temperate zones have been steadily increasing; and since the 1990s the private sector has supplanted the state as the primary actor of deforestation. In 2015, the FAO estimated that a slowdown of 50% in overall deforestation rates had been achieved during the previous 25 years – yet specific rates varied widely between different geographic regions, and tropical forests (which are carbon sinks, biodiversity reserves and the traditional habitats of indigenous peoples) fared poorly. Acidification of the oceans, a massive erosion of biodiversity, dwindling fish stocks and multiple forms of pollution will also feature among the many environmental degradations reported in UN Environment’s upcoming Global Environmental Outlook, to be published in 2019.
Cambodia and Paraguay: two cases of change in forest cover, 2000-2016
Comment: These two examples of deforestation, in Paraguay and Cambodia, emerged from analyses carried out by the University of Maryland using Landsat satellite images from 2000 and 2016. The dry forest of the Paraguayan Chaco in the country’s very sparsely populated west (0.5 inhabitants per km2) has the highest rate of deforestation in the world. Local actors, both Brazilian and international (the Moon sect and multinational American firms Cargill and Bunge), are developing soy farming (GMO + glyphosate) for the world market, as well as cattle breeding on farms of between 10,000 and 400,000 hectares (mauve rectangles on the map). Cambodia, a country with 75% of forest cover in 1990, had lost 25% of its forest by 2015; illegal logging, which is tolerated with police complicity, feeds a very lucrative traffic in tropical timber to Vietnam and China, which is doubled by public policies giving forestry concessions to large national and international groups to develop rubber production (50 to 100-km mauve patches in the Eastern part).
While debate persists on the relative importance of the various socioeconomic causes of environmental degradation, which are essentially interdependent and complex (weakness of institutions, poverty, overpopulation, capitalism, economic growth, trafficking and illegal exploitation, etc.), there is no doubting that their impacts are mutually reinforcing: deforestation contributes to climate warming, which contributes to desertification, which impacts agricultural production and biodiversity, and so on.
Living Planet Index, 1970-2012
Comment: Founded in 1961, the WWF or World Wide Fund for Nature is one of the largest global environmental protection NGOs. Its Living Planet Index (LPI) is a benchmark. The LPI measures biodiversity by collecting data on the abundance of various species and the way they have evolved over time (14,152 populations of 3,706 species of vertebrae: mammals, fish, amphibians, and reptiles across the whole globe). The graph shows that from 1970 to 2012, global LPI experienced an average decrease of 58%, with, respectively, 36% in the marine environment, 38% in the terrestrial environment, and 81% in fresh water.
Managing global waste
Every year humanity produces more than 4 billion, nearly half of it generated in urban areas. By 2100, this figure could have. The Club of Rome report The Limits to Growth issued a warning about the unlimited exploitation of limited resources and the question of waste back in 1972. Today, management of the waste problem extends into the domestic space and supports an industry worth USD 433 billion annually, while 20 million people work in the informal recycling sector. Revaluing waste – a key factor in achieving political, economic, health and environmental goals – sits at the heart of circular economy or “zero waste” projects like the Sydney initiatives described by Michele Acuto. Transnational campaigns by environmental NGOs like Greenpeace and WWF promote the 3Rs mantra (“reduce, reuse, recycle”) and highlight specific issues like the plastic waste ending up in our oceans, estimated at 12.7 million tons per year, or the illegal trade in toxic waste. As Baptiste Monsaingeon argues, waste often remains invisible to those who produce it: by isolating the problem of waste and focusing on its management and disposal, we are obscuring the political, economic and social choices that lead to its production in the first place.
- ecological footprint > Ecological footprint
- Pressure exerted on ecosystems by human societies. This indicator measures the impact of human activities by assessing the total biologically productive area necessary for different types of lifestyle, in order to produce the resources they consume and absorb the waste they generate. The values obtained (measured in global hectares per capita) vary substantially from the more predatory to the less predatory societies (between 5 and 10 gha for North America and some European countries, to less than 1 gha for India, Indonesia and part of Africa). This indicator is also used more broadly to measure the impacts of actions by an individual or institution (private companies, international organizations, specific projects, etc.) in terms of environmental degradation.
- Anthropocene
- Etymologically, it means “the human era.” Many scientists have confirmed the advent of a new geological era replacing the Holocene (the era covering around the last 11,500 years), which is characterized by the far-reaching effects of human activity on natural ecosystems and terrestrial geology, considered by some to be irreversible. The date when this era began is still a matter of debate, varying between the Industrial Revolution (in the early 1800s) and the atomic era (starting from the 1950s).
- tragedy of the commons > Tragedy of the Commons
- Metaphor used by Garrett Hardin in 1968 to describe the inevitable exhaustion of common goods (a variant on the prisoner’s dilemma). Hardin imagines a fictional pasture that is freely accessible. It is in every shepherd’s interests to graze as many sheep there as possible (as a source of additional profit) as quickly as possible before the grass is exhausted, without taking on the cost of maintaining the pasture held in common by the shepherds. The “tragedy of the commons” explains the inevitable over-exploitation of common goods and the mechanisms underpinning environmental deterioration. This parable is a key reference for international environmental policy.
- governance > Governance
- Inspired by management and entrepreneurship, the expression global governance refers to the formal and informal institutions, mechanisms and processes through which international relations between states, citizens, markets and international and non-governmental organizations are established and structured. The global governance system aims to articulate collective interests, to establish rights and duties, to arbitrate disputes and to determine the appropriate regulatory mechanisms for the issues and actors in question. Governance takes various forms: global multilateral governance, club-based governance (restricted to members, e.g. G7/8/20), polycentric governance (juxtaposition of regulatory and management mechanisms operating at various levels), and so on.
- common goods > Common goods
- Goods considered as the common property of humanity, for which each of us is responsible for the survival of all. This notion comes from two philosophical traditions: the ancient concept of community, taken over by the Catholic Church, and the liberal and utilitarian idea of individual responsibility. It enables the general interest of societies, such as the protection of common goods, to be defined. On the global scale (global commons), the concept invites indivisible control of humanity’s common heritage, both material (health, environment) and immaterial (peace, human rights, transcultural values). Some goods are therefore beyond the limits state jurisdiction (the high seas, space) or beyond sovereign claims (Antarctica).
- international regulations > Regulation
- The term regulation refers to all the processes and mechanisms that enable a system to function in a normal, regular fashion. At the international level, it refers to the set of processes, mechanisms and institutions that act to correct imbalances that might threaten the global order and to ensure that actors behave predictably, thereby ensuring stability. It is closely linked to the notions of governance and global public goods.
- deforestation > Deforestation
- Deforestation results from the exploitation of wood resources (boards and planks, paper, fibers, charcoal production, etc.) and tree-felling to use the soil for other activities. It is often done with the aim of replacing forests with different types of farming (monoculture, fodder production, and so on) or for developing infrastructures. Until the mid-twentieth century, it mostly concerned temperate forests, but it then extended to tropical forests. Since the 1990s, private-sector actors have replaced states as the persons mainly responsible for deforestation. In 5,000 years, 1.8 billion hectares of forests have disappeared.
- industrialization > Industrialization
- The process of industrialization developed from the Industrial Revolution onward – in Western Europe then in the United States, and in their colonies. It is constantly changing (structure, production and location). Companies are restructuring their operations on a global scale (new international division of labor). FDI and delocalization are at the crux of this deindustrialization/industrialization pairing a withdrawal from traditional industrial areas on the one hand (plant closures, job losses, dissolution of subcontracting networks) and the creation of facilities in emerging countries and the global South on the other. Value added is growing in manufacturing industries thanks to productivity gains (innovation and R&D) and the outsourcing of corporate services (maintenance, transport, logistics, research, IT, advertising).
- climate change > Climate changes
- The UN defines climate change as “a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods” (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change [UNFCCC], 1992). The expression is used to describe global warming of the Earth’s surface, whose extent and rapidity are without precedent in the planet’s history, and results from the increase in anthropic greenhouse gas emissions (principally carbon dioxide and CO2, but also methane, nitrous oxide, perfluorocarbons, hydrofluorocarbons, and sulfur hexafluoride).
- Deforestation
- Deforestation results from the exploitation of wood resources (boards and planks, paper, fibers, charcoal production, etc.) and tree-felling to use the soil for other activities. It is often done with the aim of replacing forests with different types of farming (monoculture, fodder production, and so on) or for developing infrastructures. Until the mid-twentieth century, it mostly concerned temperate forests, but it then extended to tropical forests. Since the 1990s, private-sector actors have replaced states as the persons mainly responsible for deforestation. In 5,000 years, 1.8 billion hectares of forests have disappeared.
- biodiversity > Biodiversity
- This notion originated during the preparatory work for the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. It describes the diversity of the living world in the strictest sense, emphasizing the unity of all life, and the interdependency connecting the three elements of biological diversity: genes, species, and ecosystems. The concept takes the living world out of the restricted field of natural sciences and places it at the center of international debate. Today, biodiversity is a global heritage to be protected and a source of potential revenue that is hotly disputed between states, multinational companies, and local communities.
- indigenous > Indigenous
- Although there is no universally accepted definition to describe indigenous or first peoples, the UN has declared that “indigenous peoples are inheritors and practitioners of unique cultures and ways of relating to people and the environment. They have retained social, cultural, economic and political characteristics that are distinct from those of the dominant societies in which they live.” The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was adopted in 2007. According to the UN, indigenous peoples represent 370 million individuals, forming over 5,000 different groups, present in around 90 countries on five continents and speaking more than 4,000 languages, most of which are becoming extinct.
- capitalism > Capitalism
- An economic system based on private ownership of the means of production and the free market (free enterprise, free trade, free competition, etc.; the foundations of liberalism). In this system, the capital holders (as distinct from employees who form the workforce and who, according to Marx, are exploited) seek to maximize their profits (accumulating capital). After the end of feudalism, the system took hold during the Industrial Revolution. Now adopted by all countries (with the exception of communist ones), it takes multiple forms, and still includes state intervention (to a greater or lesser extent), for the purpose of regulation (notably in the Rhineland model or the social market economy in Scandinavian countries) or as actor and planner (Japan, Singapore, France, etc.).
- growth > Growth
- A long-term, sustained increase in a country’s production of economic wealth, in other words, its GDP. Economic growth is not synonymous with development. Measuring it with purely economic and monetary tools is becoming increasingly unsatisfactory because of the deterritorialization and internationalization of economic activities, as well as the failure to take account of any wealth creation that cannot be monetized (elimination of illiteracy, gains in scientific or cultural knowledge, etc.). This implies special emphasis on high productivity despite the potential destruction (especially ecological) caused by growth that is seen exclusively from the angle of economics and financial profitability.
- Club of Rome
- An international group of economists, scientists, and industrialists, founded during the 1960s for the purpose of encouraging reflection on the economic, political, social, and natural aspects of the global system. In 1972, their report titled The Limits to Growth (or the Meadows report) gave rise to numerous debates on global limits with regard to population growth, food production, and use of resources.
- NGOs > Nongovernmental Organization
- Use of this expression became more widespread following its inclusion in Article 71 of the United Nations Charter. NGOs do not have an international legal status and the acronym is used in different contexts to refer to very different kinds of actors. It generally designates associations formed by individuals over the long term in relation to not-for-profit goals, often linked to values and beliefs (ideological, humanist, ecological, religious, etc.) rather than financial interests. Active on a wide range of issues at both the local and global levels, NGOs now number tens of thousands, but vary greatly in the scale of their budgets, staff and development.