Introduction
The issue of sustainability has been receiving a lot of attention lately; people in many sectors are recognizing that the utilization of the resources of the earth cannot be without consequence. The depletion of the resources is driven both by the growth in the population and the quest for greater economic growth.
Despite the large volumes of information that is generated everyday regarding the utilization of resources on the planet, the trend of unsustainable activities still continues unabated (Adams & Jeanrenaud, 2008); the big question today therefore is what the fate of the planet is.
The Story of Easter Island: Rapa Nui
Located in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, Easter Island or Rapa Nui offers a chilling example of the consequences of unabated exploitation of natural resources. This island, located 3,510 km west off the coast of Chile, is among the most isolated islands on the planet; basically, it was a closed ecological system.
Paleobotanical studies (of fossil pollen and tree moulds left by lava flows) show that the original vegetation of the island was a subtropical moist broadleaf forest. This ecosystem was quickly depleted by the growing population on the island. A lot of the resources were spent on waging war and building giant stone gods known as moai; for example, large trees were felled to make rollers to transport the statues from the quarry to the sacred site. The drive to create these gods was so great that at some point, there was one moai for every ten inhabitants of the island (Wright, 2004).
Eventually, so much of the forest was cut down that their large trees used to make large canoes able to venture into deep waters became extinct effectively denying the islanders of their major source of food, deep sea fish. The inhabitants turned to the islands fauna and ate all the mammals and birds making them extinct. Additionally, deforestation resulted in soils erosion making cultivation unproductive. There have been speculations that the severe lack of food on the island forced people to cannibalism (Diamond, 2005). By this point, the Easter Island civilization was gone and the population severely reduced.
Earth Island
The earth is also an island; it is a closed system without resource input from any other source; at least for now. As such if we deplete all the resources from this planet, we might suffer the same fate as that of the Easter Islanders; while the end result may not be necessarily cannibalism, it might be worse; wars, famine and collapse of society are all possible.
The big question is whether, unlike the islanders we might see the folly in our ways and put in place measures to reduce and/or reverse the negative effects of unsustainable utilization of the earth’s resources. There are several issues that are of major concern.
A growing population
An unsustainable growth in population is not defined by absolute numbers or density only; rather by also the availability of the resources needed to support such a growth. The human population has been able to overcome some of the factors that limit the population growth of other species; technology and agriculture have enabled the exploitation of the environment to produce more food, water and energy (Hopfenberg, 2003). However, as mentioned before, earth is a closed system; and at some point even with technology, it may be impossible to produce any more life-sustaining resources.
Fossil fuels
The growing human population has increased the demand for energy; this is required to fuel various domestic and commercial activities; and has been compounded by rising of the standard of living of large parts of the population (and the utilization of energy for non-essential activities). Additionally, the energy required to exploit other resources has increased due to the depletion of these; for example, a lot more energy is needed to raise water from water table whose levels have dropped significantly in some areas due to overexploitation such as Arizona, United States.
Fossil fuels have emerged as an easy and cheap way of producing this energy. This is achieved through combustion either to generate electricity or to power internal combustion engines for kinetic energy. This source of energy, however result in the production of carbon dioxide most of which is released into the atmosphere. This gas, together with others such as methane and ozone are known as greenhouse gasses due to their ability to trap the solar radiation into the planet resulting in the increasing global temperatures. Global warming has been blamed for the increasingly extreme weather with increased incidence of occurrence such as hurricanes, floods and droughts (Houghton, 2009).
Food availability
The ability of agriculture to supply the world population with sufficient food has been put into question. This has been attributed in part by the global climate change and extreme weather which rendered parts of the world incapable of producing food either due to excess or reduced precipitation (Hopfenberg, 2003).
Advances in technology will enable man to produce more food in the future if need arises. Indeed, some experts are of the view that there are enough resources to satisfy the food needs of a growing population if only proper methods of farming were used. However, the agricultural sector may grow at the expense of the world forest cover. Widespread deforestation will lead to loss of plant and animal species; soil erosion and pollution. Additionally, agriculture comes with a raft of other problems such as contamination of the environment with pesticides and fertilizers.
Water is Life
No single species can exist in the absence of water. Fresh water is one of the commodities that are among the most exploited in the planet. On the other hand, the traditional sources of fresh water are being destroyed by other factors outside direct utilization (Shiklomanov, 2000). For example, deforestation results in a reduction of surface water flow due to the loss of catchments areas. Additionally, human activities have resulted in contamination of surface water both as point-source (industrial and sewer contamination); and non-point source pollution (wash-off from farms and city storm-drainage); making it unsuitable for human consumption.
The reduction in surface water flow had turned people to ground water most of which is essentially non-renewable. When this is depleted, no doubt the prevailing fresh water shortage will be exacerbated (Shiklomanov, 2000).
Will the 21st century earth population learn from the mistakes of the Easter Islanders before them? Some may urge that the humans today know more about their environment than the people of Rapa Nui in the 18th century. However, the trends seen then are being seen now; the exploitation of scarce resources for non-essential uses is as alive as the building of hundreds of giant stone gods.
With the current trend, we will be trapped in a barren piece of rock called Earth-Island with no boats to escape, no food and surrounded by the useless monoliths we are building today.
Works cited
Adams, W. M. and Jeanrenaud, S. J. Transition to Sustainability: Towards a Humane and Diverse World. Gland, Switzerland: IUCN. 108 pp 2008.
Diamond, Jared. Collapse. How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. New York: Viking 2005.
Hopfenberg, Russell. “Human Carrying Capacity Is Determined by Food Availability,” Population & Environment, vol. 25, no. 2, (2003), pp. 109-117.
Houghton J. Global Warming: The Complete Briefing, Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Shiklomanov A. I. “Appraisal and Assessment of World Water Resources”. Water International 25(1): 11-32 (2000).
Wright, Ronald. A Short History of Progress. Indiana University, Indiana 2004.