The Issue
The Earth is facing global threats to a point never experienced before. Will we, as human beings, be able to react in time to these challenges and revert these processes? How habitable will the Earth be in the coming decades? A stimulating discussion on the nature of earth as a habitable system will close the GCTE/LUCC conference held in Barcelona, March 14-18, 1998.
The Science
- Dr. R. Leemans, from the National Institute of Public Health and Environmental Protection, Bilthoven, The Netherlands, will present his view based on the results of a multidisciplinary integrated model, IMAGE, which simulates the response of the environment to climate change, taking into account economic and other human factors. He will argue that different regions of the world will respond quite differently to global changes due to differences in their adaptive capacities (technical, financial and knowledge resources). Some regions of the world are likely to experience radical changes because they are "fragile" in the sense that they have little capacity to respond and adapt.
- Dr. M. Brklacich, Carleton University, Canada, and his collegue are also getting ready to cope with a "fragile" earth. Like R. leemans, they think that global changes could potentially worsen resource scarcity and environmental degradation and exacerbate impoverishment in some regions of the Earth, which might lead to human security problems. Dr. M. Brklacich and his collegues are working on the concept of security which needs to be addressed in a non-conventional and more global manner that goes beyond the concept of national security and carefully links human security to ecological stress.
- Dr. J. Ausubel, from the Rockefeller University, New York will bring an optimistic and provocative note to the discussion arguing that human beings will solve the environmental crisis they created through scientific and technological innovations. He will base his argument on the huge gains in our efficiency of resource use over the past 200 years, and on the enormous potential that remains to be exploited. The new emerging field he is helping to develop, industrial ecology, is looking into innovative techniques for the industry, such as zero emission systems that will make human economy less dependant on the environment. "Science and technology have liberated humans from the harshness of the environment. They will now liberate the environment from humans."
Practica Inforrmation
These ideas will be presented on Day 6 (March 18) of the conference at 14:00 in
the session 3 "The Nature of Earth as a Habitable System: Robust or Fragile?".
It will be chaired by B. Walker, CSIRO Wildlife and Ecology, Canberra,
Australia.
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