Technorati Tags: demography , ecological footprint, Malthus
Our planet is densely populated. We are more than 6 billion people, and we need a space for our activities, but also to sustain our life and future generations. This situation was noticed by Robert Malthus in his Essay on the First population, first published in 1798. It states that "the growth capacity of the population is infinitely greater than the capacity of the land to produce food for man." (Malthus 1997:53) points to a growing unequal relationship, where the population increases geometrically, in available food while you do arithmetically. Formulas, formulas unless I want to focus on the idea of \u200b\u200bthe effect it has on the planet our daily activities.
Malthus focused on food production to predict a catastrophe in the time when food and do not reach for much of the population. But this effect should not wait for having no land available, but due to the distribution guided by economic criteria. The interesting thing is to follow the reasoning behind that conclusion. Given a quantity of food, any redistribution intended to increase the ration of one decreases the other, so there are always sectors that will be without means for subsistence. But it does not end there: when social policy assistance type, delivery of money to purchase food promotes such a scenario in which the value of the products increased as demand grows and supply is maintained, a situation in which a still larger population is prevented from accessing such products, now measuring access to food money, we see that there are many other associated problems such as lack of access to healthy housing, the imperative to be employed in hazardous occupations, lack of education that leaves people more vulnerable to, among others. misery and vice and displayed a natural law, as are where the population is abundant and remains in poor condition. Epidemics, wars and even hunger are to be methods of control for a population growing beyond its means of subsistence.
This limit to the expansion of population and land use in our daily activities is present in the notion of ecological footprint, a concept that attempts to quantify our impact on the planet, calculating acres each continent, country, city and people require for survival. Here we speak not only of the land on which our house is located, but sees the technology associated with our activities. For example, we need the land where they poured the waste we produce, reservoirs for drinking water treatment plants sewage, urban areas where we work and study. We need food for our growing areas, and heavily carnivorous diet consuming more land than a plant-based. They take thousands of acres to extract and process the metal of our means of transport, in addition to roads, highways and airports.
And do not forget that there are large areas over which they can grow, or are not safe for the building, or for one reason or another do not qualify for being considered unfit to sustain our lives.
Thus, the formula may not be so literal Malthus: the problem is not food but total space we occupy. It is assumed that there are 1.8 ha per person in the world. Chile's ecological footprint is 3.1 hectares, which is not enough to be covered by our planet, if all the world's people live as in Chile, we would need 1.7 planets to survive.
Unfortunately, not everyone lives the same way. For U.S. calculating a footprint of 9.6 hectares, 11.6 planets to be necessary. This situation leads to several authors pose an ecological debt from North to South. Jose Borrero, an environmental lawyer, is defined as follows:
Overshoot call to all social and environmental externalities environmental not assumed. Thus, the ecological debt of a particular country may be expressed or measured as this additional burden on the environment caused by exceeding the limits of resilience of natural systems. This additional burden is Ecological Debt, which is not only generated within the geographical boundaries of a country, but built by imported products. Source
This is intended to make clear that those acres occupied by more industrialized countries have direct effects on other countries. Whether the shipment of trash, junk and toxic waste, and resource extraction irrecoverable or obedience to international agencies have pushed for farmers to use fertilizers and genetically modified seeds dangerous, it is proposed to quantify this debt in monetary terms and put it at the same level of external debt, so as to slow down, canceled or even developing countries upgraded to become creditors. (Pengue, 2003:51-52)
Personally, I hope that international organizations make great efforts to take seriously the concept of ecological debt, but this should raise questions of extreme importance to the future of human life such as know. How many more can be as a species? What so great is our footprint on the planet? But also, what if we begin to quantify the environmental damage? Will the countries spenders buy something and share environmental burden to developing countries? (Durand, 2003:33-36)
Finally, leave the link for you to calculate your own ecological footprint and tell us how it went.
Related
- Ecological Footprint Analysis. Information on measuring the ecological footprint. In English.
- Ecological Debt: Archaeology and meaning of a concept . Article Jose Borrero.
- Ecological Footprint Quiz. Questionnaire to calculate the ecological footprint.
References
- Durand, Frédéric, "Blind to a deadly threat" in Save the planet, Editorial Still Believe in Dreams, Santiago, Chile, 2003.
- Malthus, Robert, First essay on population , Altazar Ediciones, Barcelona, \u200b\u200b1997.
- Pengue, Walter Albert, "What the North owes the South" Save the planet , Editorial Still Believe in Dreams, Santiago, Chile, 2003.
