Johan Rochstrom, leader scientist form Sweden
who work on the Stockholm Resilience Centre, gave a speach on July 2010 „Let
the invironment guide our development” and video about it is possible to see on
official Ted Talk website ‘www.ted.com’.
The leading subject and goal of a speech was to
indicate that nowadays humanity live on the Planet Earth which is dominated and
controlled by human beings who are putting enormous pressure on the planet. At
the same time the speaker emphasizes that we as the first generation that owing
to science and recent scientific discoveries are lucky to be well-informed and
conscious how we straining the stability and capacity of the Planet Earth. Afterwards
it is said how crucial is to undertake actions in order to implement
transformative changes based on new ideas and innovative solutions, and it
called that process “human scientific journey in global phase of
sustainability”.
Nowadays it’s very noticeable how instead of
supporting human development we are putting “quadruple squeeze” placing our
Planet under the big pressure connected with civilization evolution.
Firstly, as it was mentioned in the video,
these “quadruple squeeze” is related to rapidly growth of population. At the
present the Planet Earth is inhabited by almost 7 billion of people while
prognosis indicate that in few years it will be number exceeding 9 billion.
Another interested fact which he took into considerations is that the biggest
and the most negative environmental impact on our planet have the rich minority
of people, what can appears as ridiculous. Because we can assumed that as the
rich and influential people dispose with enormous amount of money, they have
all rights, abilities and means to support in proper way development of our
Planet. However, instead of that they
have already “jumped on the industrial bandwagon” and disseminate the unsustainable lifestyle.
Secondly, climate and connected with it climate
changes issues are the next biggest factors which put the pressure on the Earth
Planet. It leads to greenhouse gasses affect, the increased of the temperature,
destabilization of the west Antarctic Ice Sheet and the Greenland Ice Sheet and
connected with that well-known see level rising.
Third mentioned factor is the ecosystem
decline. Our ecosystem in rapidly and uncontrolled way is declining what was unthinkable
50 years ago.
The forth pressure in the surprisingly fact, of
which most of people are not awareness, that our ecosystem did not behave "linearly, predictably, controllably" but is changing rapidly, violently and
often irreversible.
Johan’s point of view is that we are entering
in a new geological era – the
Antropocene, where human beings are leaders and conduct all the changes on the
planet on a universal level.
He brought considerable evidences of above-mentioned
thesis, as carbon dioxide, deforestation, overfishing, land degradation, loss
of species – all of them show how from the mid of 50th human
enterprises rapidly expedited in results having an impact on the global level.
Remarkably important is the fact what he said that we need to “bend the curves”
what means stop accelerating human pressure on the Planet Earth! In order to bring
closer significant of problem he gave an example of Coral Reef System as a one of
the most diverse ecosystems on Earth, which under the pressure of overfishing,
unsustainable tourism, climate changes it losses resilience (ability of
self-recovering).
Many others examples there were called, such
as: the Arctic – as the biom which regulates our planet suddenly had lost 30 –
40 % of its summer ice cover in recent years.
However there is still hope for our humanity.
Johan with his colleagues have carried out researches which enable them to
indicate “9 Planetary Boundaries” within
which we can find a solution just by giving them active back up and
stewardship. Below I will specify all of them:
1. Climate changes
2. Depletion of stratospheric ozone
3. The Ocean acidification
4. Biogeochemical loading: the
influence of the big nitrogen and phosphorus cycles on the planet
5. Land use changes
6. Rate of biodiversity loss
7. Global use of freshwater
8. Air pollution
9. Chemical pollution
All 9 points together create the “guide book”
for human development without damaging the Planet Earth, which is considered to
be self-regulation system complex.
Scientists estimate as well that fast human
development have caused to transgressed 3 main boundaries already, which are:
the rate of biodiversity loss, nitrogen, and climate changes.
In the end was mentioned that the key to deal
with “turbulent era of global changes” is persistence and simultaneously
cooperation of all countries in the world and their move in the same
direction is necessary to implement proper and
positive changes. What’s more flexible and adaptive approach is essential as
well. I agree with author of this speech, and what’s more I think that all of the
targets can be achieved if human and society start to cooperate on global
level, without focusing only on local scale but putting the attention on global
scale.
Link:http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/johan_rockstrom_let_the_environment_guide_our_development.html
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