Suchergebnisse

Aquatic ecosystems play a major role to ensure that water, which is both essential and scarce, is always available for both present and future generations. This has become even more urgent in light of the ongoing increase in total world population and predicted changes in the world climate. Since aquatic ecosystems have been and are being damaged at a rate far in excess of both natural restoration and anthropogenic restoration it is essential that both restorative processes be accelerated. However, ecological disequilibrium, evolutionary processes, and invasive species are likely to disrupt both processes. Most current debate focuses on water distribution but, since the heath of the aquatic ecosystem plays a major role in water quality and availability, it is argued that sustainable use of the planet requires that this attribute be given greater attention. The prospects for fully restoring damaged aquatic ecosystems to predisturbance conditions increasingly appear unlikely. Partial restoration now appears to be a more accurate description of the process, although full ecological restoration should always remain an aspiration. Adapted from the source document.

Arguably, no curve in the world increases indefinitely—certainly no growth curve of human society. The quest for sustainable use of the planet involves estimating levels of activity, particularly resource use, that can continue indefinitely. Since the biosphere is dynamic, this continuation is not a stagnant, steady-state situation but rather a mutualistic interactive relationship between human society and the planet's ecological life support system. Human technology, creativity, and ingenuity may modify natural laws, but cannot be used to repeal them. Attempts to maintain the recent exponential growth of the human population, affluence, and artifacts cannot continue forever, or probably even for another century. At best, quality of life will be diminished, and, at worst, a substantial loss of human life will occur if both ethical and ecological issues are not freely and openly discussed. Sustainability may be visionary and unattainable, but it does offer an opportunity to improve the quality of life for future generations of humans and the other life forms, an opportunity that is far greater than possible with present unsustainable practices.

Toward what kind of future is humankind now tending? Is human society engaged in a global gamble based on the assumption that technology, aided by human ingenuity and creativity, can remake the world and manage its resources for immediate material benefit to humanity without regard to natural law and the fate of other species? Infinite substitutability of species has been tested over evolutionary time, but infinite substitutability of resources is a relatively recent hypothesis based on a faith in human creativity and technological prowess. The choice made will affect both the future of human society and of many other species.