The Last Post

Well, here we are, after almost 13 weeks. It really has been an incredibly journey and I've loved every minute of it. It has been a completely unique experience, finding my own voice and my own unique angle on the Anthropocene, as an Economic Geographer. Together, we've analysed many, many graphs (yes, I'm well aware of how much I love graphs), and now, it's time to go our own separate ways. I sincerely hope you have enjoyed this blog as much as I have enjoyed sharing my thoughts with you, and I've made a short summary of my blog to have one final recap. Of course, it includes one last graph, which can also be found here. 

Farewell, my fellow bloggers and readers.

New Year, New Diet?

Throughout this blog, I have maintained a consistent theme of depletion of resources. As the population continues to increase exponentially, food, water and materialistic goods are becoming inadequate to satisfy the whole population. So what now? We’re exhausting all of our resources to satisfy our appetites so how about changing them? 

The FAO (2014) estimates that fish now accounts for 17% of the global population’s intake of protein.  As we have seen in previous posts though, there is evidence to suggest that we have reached a peak in marine capture and supplies may now in fact be declining. Bunge (2015) asserts that chicken will be the meat of the future; it uses the least water, requires the least feeding and is the most abundant meat available. However, some think that the sustainability of the planet relies on vegetarian diets (Leitzmann 2014; Macdiarmid et al 2012) or even plant-based diets (Sabaté and Soret, 2014)! 

Macdiarmid et al argue that in the UK alone, food systems account for approximately 18-20% of GHG emissions. Through various models and testing, they showed that a sustainable, but realistic diet, with small quantities of meat, could reduce GHG emissions by up to 36%. Sabaté and Soret however, state that sustainable human life began with plant-based diets and thus we should return to it, to make human living habits sustainable once again. Perhaps we don’t need to go to such extremes of plant-based diets, but if we carry on depleting resources at this rate, we just might end up eating plants for Christmas lunch! Perhaps in the long term, we may see growing markets to support vegetarian diets, but we do need to stop hunting rare species for materialistic desires. Biodiversity is declining and we need to invest more in conservation. 

Unfortunately, with regard to diet, I don’t personally believe the human diet will change that much. I believe we will continue to do and deplete as we please, no matter what the consequences, which is why the main focus of this blog has been on how to accommodate our infinite desires. Charles Darwin’s ‘survival of the fittest’ theory can be applied here. We strive to be at the top of the food chain and perhaps it is simply in our nature to kill other animals for our pleasure. I remain on the optimistic side of the fence, with Ester Boserup (1965), who stated: “Necessity is the mother of invention”; we will invent whatever we need, in order to survive.

The Earth Fights Back

Thomas Malthus (1798) asserted that once population reached its tipping point, such that it exceeded Earth's capacity, certain 'checks' would come into play. These 'checks' included 'positive checks'; natures way of returning to a point at which it can cope, through disasters such as war, disease and famine. Everyone has by now heard about climate change causing rising sea levels and increasing severity and frequency of floods. However, climate change is also thought to have led to an increase of magnitude and frequency of weather related disasters, as shown by The Economist (2012) graph below:

In 2011, Smith asserted that 2010 was the wettest and hottest year recorded since records began in 1880. In the US and Europe, seasonal records were broken by snowstorms. The following US summer of 2011 saw a hot and dry summer, leading to a record-breaking number of wildfires.

Figure 1

What does this mean for the economy? It means increased investment in adaptation to such weather events. In the wake of many weather related disasters, there is often damage to various buildings and infrastructure. To increase our capacity to cope with an increasing frequency and magnitude of natural disasters, governments need to invest in innovation into building robust and stable frameworks for infrastructures and buildings. If they don’t, they construction sector may transform into the re-construction sector. In Figure 1, Ward and Ranger (2010) show the trend in global economic losses for weather related losses between 1980 and 2009, peaking in 2005.

Figure 2

Ernst & Young (2015) state that in 2014, 980 natural catastrophes worldwide resulted in insurance claims of over US$31 billion. They also suggest hurricane winds have the potential to increase by 5% over the next 20 years, which could lead to an increase of up to 40% in property insurance losses. Furthermore, in Figure 2, Swiss Re (2015) show that globally, a significant proportion of countries have experienced growth in real premiums

It come as no surprise that extreme weather events compounded with exponential population growth, has put a real strain on both water and food security. This has led to food and water scarcity in some regions. For example, NASA shows that the Aral Sea has experienced a surface area decline of about 75% and a volume decline of about 90% since 1977:

Naturally, this puts stress on regions that use the Aral Sea. However, the UN distribution map (Figure 3) shows that globally, freshwater availability is unevenly distributed.

Figure 3

Therefore, countries can share water resources, but of course, for a price. The Global Water Intelligence’s 2010 report asserted that approximately US$571 billion dollars needs to be spent annually to meet rising demand (Jowit, 2010). This may lead to development and innovations in the water industry to distribute water more equally. Here, Dalin et al (2011) show that virtual water flows have continued to increase over the past 20 years:


Every aspect of climate change, combatting it and mitigation against its effects, seem to have various affects on different markets. So what next? I’ve spoken about economic markets emerging to accommodate our appetites sustainably, however, I’ve not spoken about changing our appetites to accommodate our surroundings. What about changing ourselves? That's not a question that crosses many of our minds, but if we did this to our Earth, surely we have some responsibility to correct ourselves. Perhaps the ultimate solution lies in stopping in our tracks and taking a good look in the mirror. As a species, we are so used to changing everything around us for our needs and our desires; what would happen to the economy if we completely transformed our materialistic and exploitative hunger? This is what next post will focus on. Stay tuned!

Biodiversity... Or Not?

Steffen et al. (2015) assert that biosphere integrity has exceeded its planetary boundary. Unfortunately, as per usual, humans are the most likely culprits here. We are involved in a number processes that lead to a reduction in biodiversity, to name a few:

Plastic dumping

• Ingestion of plastics has led to a decline in particular Mediterranean species:
  o   54 less Loggerhead Mediterranean turtles (Bugoni et al. 2001)
  o   171 less Mediterranean birds across 9 species (Codina-García et al. 2013)

• Entanglement
  o   Possible 10,000 Fur Seals on Bird Island, Georgia had suffered from entanglement, which would’ve caused restricted movement and thus possible death from starvation. (Croxall et al. 1990)
  o   62 Gannet Birds in Grassholm, Wales entangled each year (Votier et al 2011)

• Absorption of pollutants
  o   Plastics can also be carriers of pollutants such as Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs). Evidence of PCBs have been found in Great Shearwater birds and may have a damaging effect on them
  
  

Pollution from industrial chemical dumping

• Oil and Petroleum is very harmful to marine life and can greatly reduce biodiversity. The Gulf of Mexico British Petroleum oil spill had several impacts on various species (Biological diversity report, 2011):
  o   82,000 birds of 102 species injured or dead
  o   6,165 sea turtles injured or dead
  o   25,900 marine mammals injured or dead
• A rare species of Iguana on a Galapagos Island fell from 25,000 to 10,000 after a coastal oil spill (Revkin 2002)

What does this mean for us? Well, firstly it means less interesting wild marine life to see. It also means less marine animals available for us to consume and should we consume unhealthy marine animals, it may also have health impacts on us. As more marine species populations go into decline, there are less marine creature for other marine life to feed on, which may lead to starvation and trophic crash. As we can see from this Steffen et al. graph below, marine fish capture is already beginning to decline, which begs the question: have we already reached the peak?

The Living Planet Index shows a 39% decline in marine species between 1970 and 2010. Eutrophication, an increase in nutrients in an environment, can lead to the death of zooplankton, fish and shellfish due to their sensitivity to oxygen; this can then lead to trophic crash and a regime shift to an alternative stable state (WHO, 2002).

Due to these issues, there has been a rise in the demand for marine management and aquaculture (aquatic farming). Here, Schröder shows how the aquaculture market has grown over the past 30 years:

Steffen et al. also demonstrates how shrimp aquaculture along has seen a shocking level of growth over the same time period:

As more marine life becomes endangered, there has been increased investment in protecting marine habitats and species. An ever-increasing human population and an arguably declining marine population has led to a rise in demand and a fall in supply for aquatic organisms. This has led to exponential growth of the aquaculture market, as seen above, which is expected to reach over $195 billion by 2019 (Marine Water, Freshwater and Brackish Water, 2013).