Name

: Muhammad Sulthoanuddin Akbar

Student ID

: 1306448634

Major

: Civil Engineering
Summary of Chapter 5 Natural Systems Under stress

Introduction
Note the feedback loop between ecology and economy and the basis of civilized life on soil and
the gifts of the earth. Brown does not mention the crushing foreign debt that forces Haiti to sell
its resources at bargain prices or the corrupt elites that plundered Haiti's natural and human
heritage.
Add to the mix population growth. As deserts expand and coastal area recede, population
densities rise and thousands become environmental refugees. Lester Brown wrote of this in
November, 2006:
Our early twenty-first century civilization is being squeezed between advancing deserts and
rising seas. Measured by the land area that can support human habitation, the earth is shrinking.
Mounting population densities, once generated solely by the addition of over 70 million people
per year, are now also fueled by the relentless advance of deserts and the rise in sea level.
The introduction to this dramatic chapter reminds us that all civilization is based on the soil.
Indeed, about half of humanity even today are land based people living in subsistence-based
cultures. But the land, even the sea, is under the threat of the ecologist's nightmare scenario:
overshoot and collapse. Brown, again in reserved tone, tells a harrowing story.
He focuses on key natural life support systems under human assault:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

Shrinking forests
Eroding soil
Deteriorating rangelands
Advancing deserts
Collapsing fisheries
Disappearing plants and animals, extinction

As members of the Ramapo College community, are generally not land based people. Note how
many of the ecological holocausts Brown depicts intersect within the poorer regions of the
world, particularly Africa and Asia, where 4.8 billion people struggle to survive within
subsistence cultures. This recalls the Malthusian dilemma of humanity swamping and degrading
the carrying capacity of ecosystems. Note, however, that most of the damage can be averted with
forethought and intervention of the destructive patterns of human behavior, often rooted in the
economy. Solutions are not presented here, but issues are. Examine them, for they are serious,

although distant from our daily lives. Our children's future will depend on finding policy
remedies for the agenda elaborated in this chapter.

Shrinking Forests
Heed Brown's observation: "World forest loss is concentrated in developing countries." Brown
provides an overview here. Brown depicts how deforestation occurs in different places, not citing
a single cause for all regions. Hard pressed native populations forage for fuelwood and destroy
remaining patches of forest in Africa's Sahel and on the Indian subcontinent. Commercial lumber
logging, often for tropical hardwood, clear cuts whole forests in Africa and Southeast Asia.
Often, foreign-owned countries purchase the rights to the forests at a discount provided by
national governments desperate for hard currency needed to pay debt service. Ranchers and
farmers destroy forests for easily exhausted plantations, then move on, repeating the destruction-subsidized again by public policies that never solve their problems. Even alternative fuels, such
as biodiesel come at the expense of deforestation. And as forests denude hillsides, erosion of
topsoil and vast flooding inevitably follow. The feedbacks between ecological destruction and
human culture intensify the perverse downward spirals.
Brown frequently points to model programs that reverse these trends, but that appears absent in
this section. He also does not comment on the relationship of deforestation, the diminishment of
the lungs of the planet, on CO2 increases and on global warming. The interconnections
throughout this chapter, and the whole book, must be kept in mind: One Earth.

Losing Soil
We are all familiar with the story of the Dust Bowl of the U.S. Great Plains in the 1930s depicted
in John Steinbeck's classic, The Grapes of Wrath. With that in mind, ponder the contemporary
Dust Bowls of China, Africa, and recently Russia. Ethiopia, perpetually at the brink of
starvation, loses an estimated one billion tons of topsoil per year due mainly to erosion.
How important is soil? Brown begins this section noting "The thin layer of topsoil that covers the
planet's land surface is the foundation of civilization." In the following paragraph he concludes:
"Today the foundation of civilization is crumbling." Brown does note some major regional
policies in China, which has recognized that economic growth and population pressure often
destroys essential environmental services. The U.S. has made great progress in reversing soil
conservation. Experience shows that remedial policies are feasible and affordable. Yet, the
problem of soil erosion intensifies--and agricultural capacity with it. Note again the perverse
feedback loops.

Deteriorating Rangelands
Rangelands, 20% of the earth's surface, shift over time, often due to the degradation of human
habitation, human population growth, and the increasing population of ruminants such as cattle,
sheep, and goats, now numbering 3.2 billion. The overlap of rangeland with farmland shifts, and
human cultures collide. Consider the excerpt below from the Max Planck Institute for Social

Anthropology study Environmental Degradation and Interethnic Disputes in Darfur. As you

read this, note the complex relations between land use and human culture. I have highlighted text
that illustrates the underlying social ecology:
Drought is one common feature of environmental change that has been associated with conflicts
in many African countries. The severe drought of the early 1970s that hit African Sahel countries
instigated a series of changes that affected seriously the lives of millions of people in that belt for
ever. The western part of the Republic of Sudan was among those areas deeply affected by that
drought which culminated in the 1984 infamous famine. Almost exactly two decades after Darfur
hits the news again as experiencing the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today. This time
the crisis resulted from the on-going civil war that has polarized Darfurian people into two nondistinctive ethnic groups: Africans and Arabs. Since most African Darfurians are settled
cultivators and most Arab Darfurians are nomadic pastoralists, a legitimate question arises in this
case regarding the extent to which the current conflict is somehow related to competition over
natural resources; notably land. A further question to be asked is how much of the competition
over natural resources is directly linked to environmental degradation? As time goes by, there is
growing demand for more productivity in order to feed an ever increasing population. Keeping
the delicate balance in issues of land use becomes more difficult because customary land tenure
systems have less elasticity to enable them to cope with changing conditions. On the other hand,
new changes can play an important role in turning an otherwise peaceful coexistence between
groups into a hostile confrontation or even a full-scale war. For that matter, some researchers
tend to consider ecology as an important factor that explains many conflicts in Africa today
(chiefly Suliman, 1999). When there is a change in the environment the capacity of land to
sustain peoples livelihoods shrinks; but when this is combined with a population increase a
conflict is already under way. In the case of Darfur, the combined effects of a multitude of
factors culminated in a chronic land degradation. Overgrazing and deterioration of range land
resulted from the fact that much of the land in the semi-desert and goz zones lost their capacity to
grow grazing grasses, forage, and trees. Combined with drought the human factor (in the form of
tree-felling, excessive cultivation and overgrazing) contributed greatly in speeding up the
desertification process to the extent that vast areas lost their capacity to sustain traditional
livelihoods for its inhabitants. Some experts assert that millet cultivation in the semi-arid zone
has dangerous implications for the environment and have even advocated the prohibition of
millet cultivation beyond certain boundaries (Ibrahim, 1980).
Those not faint of heart might view this gruesome BBC photo that depicts a similar situation.
This phenomenon is familiar throughout Africa and Asia. Brown speaks to several case studies.
China seems to have mounted effective remedial policies. Few others have.

Advancing Deserts
China is the main front in the battle over the spread of deserts, typically into rangeland:
China is now at war. It is not invading armies that are claiming its territory, but expanding
deserts. ... WangTao reports that over the last half-century, some 24,000 villages in northern and

western China have been entirely or partly abandoned as a result of being overrun by drifting
sand.
Desertification has been concentrated in Asia and Africa, where 4.8 billion of the earth's 6.5
billion people live. As the case study of Darfur, above, demonstrates, for many subsistence
cultures, the rapid spread of deserts is a holocaust like no other. Brown this time offers no simple
solution other than to recommend that the population growth of humans and their domesticated
ruminants decelerates.

Collapsing Fisheries
I generally consume fish twice each week, always have. Maybe you do, too. Our children
probably will not, unless fish farming expands enormously, despite the ecological havoc it
brings. The oceans have been dramatically overfished, with the accompanying economic
dislocation and ecological decline.
Consider some chilling anecdotes:

The 500-year old Canadian cod fishery, has collapsed in the 1990s, throwing 40,000
workers out of their jobs.
Estimates claim that 90% of the large ocean fish has disappeared in the last fifty years.
A Japanese sushi restaurant will pay $50,000 for a large bluefish tuna, a species that has
declined by 94%.
The harvest of Caspian sea sturgeon, a prized delicacy, has declined from 27,700 tons in
1977 to 461 tons in 2000, a huge regional economic loss.

Brown presents issues for a global agenda and saves policy prescription for later. The only
remedy he sites is fish farming, which requires land-based fish-food production and creates
environmental problems. I suspect that our children will eat less fish and pay more for their
catch.

Disappearing Plants and Animals

We are well into the sixth great wave of extinction, although this is the first induced by
humanity, an evolutionary setback. If you are, like me, fond of habitat, plants, and animals, you
should be disturbed. If you take any of the thousands of pharmaceuticals derived from nature,
you should also be concerned about the loss of knowledge and potential. You get the point.
Here is a recent example of extinction to consider: After surviving 20 million years, China's
goddess of the river, Yangtze River dolphin, or baiji, is driven to extinction. Yahoo! says: A
powerful moral argument can also be made: Species deserve an opportunity to survive., but goes
on, into the terrain of ethics:
When charismatic birds or mammals are threatened, that gets people's attention. One mammal
humans warm to, the polar bear, has now been joined with another huge environmental

challenge: climate change. The US Fish and Wildlife Service is to rule any day on whether to
propose listing the polar bear as endangered. Environmental groups such as the Center for
Biological Diversity say global warming is melting the ice on which the bears live. Climate
change is likely to raise awareness about species extinction.
For a more scientific treatment of extinction, check out the entry in Wikipedia. For a less
anthropocentric (human based) discussion of extinction, use Wikipedia's entry on deep ecology
See also a treatment from an environmental ethics position
Protecting the diversity of life on earth requires protection of habitat. The discussion above
reveals the pressures that will make that problematic. Add to that the impact of climate change
on existing habitat and species, and diversity is further threatened. Then consider the invasion of
exotic species, that for example constantly threaten my lake in New Hampshire. Worse still is the
effect on rich ecosystems within the tropics, such as the vast Amazon. Brown notes that we are
entering a new world. His only optimistic gesture is that our knowledge base has increased, or
rather that our ignorance has diminished a bit.