Environment on the edge

In one sense environment has always been on the edge, and always will be. It is just that the shortness of our lives and the narrowness of our perspective on Earth history mean that we are mostly unaware of change, and until now scarcely notice pressures on the environment.

Over millions of years the environment has been on many edges. There have been big hits from space, the changing relationship between the Earth and the Sun, the slow movement of tectonic plates on the Earth's surface, major volcanic eruptions, and not least the influence of life itself. The tightly linked living organisms on the Earth's surface work as a single self-regulating system, tending to create and maintain the environment most favourable to them. Over time the environment has tipped many ways, sometimes violently, to the detriment of this or that ecosystem. Yet today one small animal species - our own - is tipping the system in ways that cannot be foreseen.

The idea may be hard to accept but the Earth has never been in this situation before. In the words of the title of a recent book on environmental history, we confront Something New Under the Sun. These points were well brought out in a remarkable Declaration published by some 1,500 scientists from the four great global research programmes at Amsterdam in July 2001. They stated squarely that:

"The accelerating human transformation of the Earth's environment is not sustainable. Therefore the business-as-usual way of dealing with the Earth's System is not an option. It has to be replaced - as soon as possible - by deliberate strategies of management that sustain the Earth's environment while meeting social and economic development objectives."

How did we get into this situation? Let us look at recent human history. At each stage in the development of current society, the impact has increased. Hunter gatherers fitted easily enough into the ecosystems of cold and warm periods in the Pleistocene epoch. But farming with land clearance changed everything. With a vast increase in human population came towns and eventually cities. Tribal communities evolved into complex hierarchical societies. Before the industrial revolution some 250 years ago, the effects of human activity were local, or at worst regional, rather than global. All the civilizations of the past cleared land for cultivation, introduced plants and animals from elsewhere, and caused a variety of changes. Only now and, even in prosperous Switzerland, are we being obliged to count the costs.

There are six main problems which have pushed the environment to the edge. They arise from human population increase; degradation of land and accumulation of wastes; water pollution and supply; climate change; energy production and use, and destruction of biodiversity. Of these factors population issues are often ignored as somehow too embarrassing or mixed up with religion and the ideology of development; most people are broadly aware of land and waste problems, although far from accepting the remedies necessary; water issues, both fresh and salt, have had a lot of publicity, and already affect most people on this planet; climate change with all its implications for atmospheric chemistry is also broadly understood, apart from by those who do not want to understand it; how we generate energy while fossil fuel resources diminish and demand increases is another conundrum; but damage to the diversity of life of which our species is a small but immodest part has somehow escaped most public attention.

Copying with all or any of these issues requires two fundamental changes: first recognition that they exist, and secondly - and eventually - readiness to do something about them. This process may take some time. The story of how ozone depletion was recognized, and international action followed, is a classic example of success. The story of climate change is only halfway there. Many in the Bush Administration are still in a state of denial; but elsewhere in the United States attitudes are changing fast, and I believe that in the end concerted international action to limit the emission of greenhouse gases will be taken.

Nothing is more difficult than learning to think differently. The problem goes to the roots of how we run our society. Any change in a system that gives primacy to market forces, exploitation of resources and ever rising consumption will be uncommonly difficult. At present we seem to want to attach monetary value to almost everything. But how do we give a monetary value to pollution of the atmosphere, acidification of the oceans, loss of a species or supply of such natural services as microbial disposal of wastes? Somehow we have to bring in the factor of environmental costs. As has been well said, markets are superb at setting prices but incapable of recognizing costs.

Definition of costs requires a new approach towards economics and above all towards how we measure things. Neither state-directed economics or market economics can alone supply the right framework. Governments have a particular responsibility to determine what is in the public interest, and to use fiscal instruments to promote it. But they can scarcely do so without public understanding and support.

It is also extremely difficult for governments to take action outside a broad international consensus. Such action can look needlessly damaging to the national interest unless others do the same. But the sad truth is that international institutions are still feeble. We seem to have an exaggerated expectation of what they, and international conferences, can achieve. Look at what happened - or did not happen - at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002. Perhaps the most damning comment came from Hugo Chavez, the President of Venezuela. He said:

"Sometimes our heads of state go from summit to summit, while our people go from abyss to abyss."

Most of the solutions to the problems we have caused are well known. Take human population increase. The overall rate is still rising, but in several parts of the world it is levelling off. The main factors are improvement in the status of women, better provision for old age, wider availability of contraceptive devices, lower child mortality, and better education, especially for girls and young women. Even so, according to the 1st UN Millennium Ecosystem Assessment report if current trends are anything to judge by in 2050, we may well have a population of 3 billion more people, bringing the total to around 9 billion. Yet when I was born, the population was around 2 billion. If this rate of increase were in swallows, spiders or elephants, we should be scared silly. But because it is ourselves, we accept it as almost normal.

Take degradation of land and water. We know how to look after them both if we try. We do not have to exhaust top soils, watch them erode into the sea, rely upon artificial aids to nature, eliminate the forests with their wealth of species, or poison the waters, fresh and salt. Take the atmosphere. We do not have to rely on systems of energy generation which will affect climate and weather in a fashion that puts an overcrowded world at risk.

But in order to concert action we need institutions for the purpose. At the moment there is a particular imbalance. On the one hand we have the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank which are all institutions with real mechanisms for influencing government policy. They are much stronger on trade and finance than on the environment, and tend to be driven by vested interests looking for short-term profitability. By contrast the 200 or more environmental agreements are dispersed and poorly coordinated, with different hierarchies of reference and accountability, and look principally to the long term. I have long argued for the creation of a World Environment Organization to balance - and be a partner of - the World Trade Organisation. If the environment is not to go over the edge, we shall need something of this kind.

So at the moment neither public understanding of how and why environment is on the edge, nor the mechanisms for coping with the results yet exist. Nor have we yet reckoned with the indirect effects. High among them is the understandable desire of most poor countries to follow the industrial countries in exploiting natural resources to the full, raising living standards, and participating in the consumer culture which is characteristic of the mindset of most modern society. Yet in many ways this is an impossibility. Over the last few years stock market indices may have risen, but the world's natural wealth, measured by the health of its terrestrial, freshwater and marine species fell by no less than 40 percent between 1970 and 2000. The WWF index shows that the development on which so many countries are bent ignore ever increasing human pressure on the biosphere. In 2001 humanity's ecological footprint exceeded the Earth's biological capacity by about 20 percent.

The division between the world's rich and the world's poor is a prime and a growing source of insecurity for all. At present about 20 percent of the world's people consume between 70 percent and 80 percent of its resources. That 20 percent enjoy about 45 percent of its meat and fish, and use 68 percent of electricity (most generated from fossil fuels), 84 percent of paper, and 87 percent of cars. The division between rich and poor is not only between countries but also within them. The contrast is between small numbers of globalized rich and large numbers of localized poor.

Some economists suggest that market forces will eventually bring their version of development to all. The trends in UNDP Development Reports suggest the opposite. Living conditions have certainly improved for many people over the last 250 years, and most people are living longer. But with ever rising population and increased pressure on resources, it is hard to see how this can continue. More people than ever are fleeing poverty, water and food shortages, health problems, storms, floods and droughts, and by most reckonings the number of environmental refugees will greatly increase. In a world where the internet lets knowledge travel ever wider, ever faster, inequalities in living conditions are becoming more generally known and felt.

Accepting all the difficulties, we still need to work out what should be done. Looking over all the problems on the environment, I have my own list of priorities for what it is worth:

• We need urgent action on climate change. Like Sir David King, the British Government's Chief Scientific Advisor, I think that it represents "the most severe problem we are facing today, more serious even than terrorism". Global dimming from pollution has become an unexpected even if temporary counterpart of global warming. Urgent action on energy policy in all its aspects is now essential.
• We need to do far more to educate public opinion, not least in the financial and investment communities.
• We need to look again at economics and the way we measure wealth, welfare and the human condition in terms of the Earth's good health.
• We need to apply the principles of common but differentiated responsibility, accepting that industrial countries have much bigger responsibilities for what has gone wrong as well as what has gone right, and should give the example in their domestic policies.
• For other countries, we need to help them make best use of their resources and particular circumstances, avoiding any universally applicable blueprint for improvement in their condition.
• We need to do far more to understand natural ecosystems and promote conservation. The recent report of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment should help.
• We need to make better use of technology and its myriad applications. We also need to understand the hazards, particularly over pollution. Risks are hard to assess. The short term must not be allowed to defeat the long term.

All involve the ability to accept accelerating change, to learn to think differently, and ultimately to behave correspondingly. We all suffer from the disease of what has been called conceptual sclerosis. Change is rarely linear. There are sudden breaks, unforeseen thresholds, uncomfortable shocks.

In bringing about change we need three things: leadership from above; public pressure from below; and - usually - some instructive disasters to jerk us out of our inertia. There are many examples of all these: leadership on ozone depletion or climate change, public pressure on pollution and for disposal of industrial wastes, including oil rigs; and catastrophes over destruction of top soils and their fertility.

Today we are witnessing another kind of leadership. It is that given by the Earth Champions who have shown a marvellous example to us all. I congratulate them, and hope that what they have done in the Canton de Vaud may be an inspiration to others all over the world.