Return to Real World Home Page
Ecosystems
There is nothing new about human abuse of the Earth. Prehistoric peoples drove many species into extinction while ancient civilisations in regions such as Central America, North Africa and the Middle East caused such levels of soil erosion that their economies were fatally undermined. Deforestation has long followed in the footsteps of humankind.
As a series of events, the eruption of Europeans into the wider world brought unprecedented levels of environmental damage. It went way beyond simple 'smash and grab' plundering. The French observer De Toqueville, for example, was moved to suggest that white settlers of North America were driven by a pathological fear of the comparatively 'empty' forests, rivers and prairies they found and of the tribal peoples who, in a reasonably sustainable way, lived there already.However, it is subsequent to the Industrial Revolution, which interacted with the dramatic increase in human numbers and an equally explosive rise in material expectations, that environmental degradation, pollution and resource depletion began to take on regional and continental dimensions. Since 1945, the 'ecological burden' of human society has intensified, with on-going population increase, greater levels of per capita consumption and a whole series of technological changes, particularly the shift from naturally occurring materials to the use of synthesised ones.
The novelty of today's situation, then, is:
the sheer number of different problems,
their spread across all continents, and
the rate at which most are getting worse.
Even when generous allowance is made for uncertainty and exaggeration, it seems that humanity faces a situation of unprecedented danger. Some issues, notably global overwarming, have tended to grab the headlines, compared to less 'sexy' subjects like soil erosion, yet the overall prospect is not significantly altered if the 'greenhouse effect' turns out to be the product of a few inflamed imaginations. The most destructive of peacetime human activities-the sterilisation of land by paving over it with brick, concrete and tarmac-is the most neglected.
Perhaps for the first time in history, for example, environmental refugees, people fleeing from degraded land or driven out by 'development' projects like dams, outnumber other kinds of refugees. Another 'first' is the way the insurance industry is being rocked by environmental liabilities e.g. oil tanker accidents and old waste disposal sites. For non-human species, the situation is catastrophic with a rate of extinction rivalling past geological upheavals, except that this time it is caused by a fellow species, humanity.
China, home of the world's largest population, illustrates many of the key problems. By the new millennium, there will be 1.3 billion Chinese. Her car and truck population increased by over 1 million in 1992, a figure projected to triple by 2000. In 1993 industrial growth rate was 21.3%. Desertification is spreading at a rate of 1,000 sq. km annually. Each year, 5 billion metric tons of topsoil is washed away. 33% of the country's farmland has been lost in the past 40 years. There are some 120 million landless people and apparently 150,000 criminal gangs. Such problems are endemic in many parts of the world.
The effects of environmental abuse have rightly been compared to a boomerang: what we do to the environment we do to ourselves. However, the costs often do not reveal themselves quickly or directly. Long-term water shortages, for example, might manifest themselves in the form of military conflicts over the control of river basins. Usually, the price is paid by groups distant in time or place from the particular activities that cause the problem. Those groups may share the costs but seldom any of the benefits.
These are not the only reasons why the ecological crisis is so widely ignored or denied. Society has become so insulated within its technological cocoons that it is easy to forget that humanity's total dependence upon the Earth's ecological systems-not just for specific resources we use but also, and more importantly, for those processes that make the planet habitable, as compared to, say, the surface of the moon. No amount of technological sophistication can change that fact of life. The very nature of the problem makes it worse. The slow but steady drip of environmental abuse does not stimulate alarm and appropriate remedial action. But if ignored, it will continue until a point will be reached where no amount of activity can reverse the decline.
To be fair, ecological issues are often very complex. Usually, there are several variables involved, with many mechanisms at work about whose nature there is often only limited understanding and information. Given that human factors such as economic self-interest, political power-seeking, lifestyle preferences, ideological loyalties and even egos are also at stake, it is no wonder that there is often fierce debate about the very existence of the problems identified below, let alone trends, causes, consequences and solutions. Some even believe that environmental changes will be beneficial and that, if they turn out to be worse than expected, then corrective technologies will facilitate quick and less expensive remedial measures. Phrases like global warming also bring not unattractive connotations, particularly for audiences in colder countries.
Many of the issues below also have gone through a boom-slump attention cycle, sometimes more than once. Some issues are more newsworthy than others. Soil erosion, for example, receives nothing like the interest that global warming has aroused yet it undoubtedly has been a killer of ancient civilisation and could visit the same fate on contemporary ones. In the field of biodiversity, the threat to some species arouses far more sympathy than others though their ecological role might be less significant (as far as we know!). Similarly, the alleged mistreatment of individual farm animals seems to provoke more anger than the elimination of entire species.
Often it is not difficult to identify the vested interests and value orientations at stake. The fossil fuel industries consistently have denied the danger posed by phenomena such as acid rain and climatic change. The thesis of ozone layer depletion similarly provoked hostile reactions from some sections of the chemical industry. Others simply echo the words of Lord Keynes-'in the long run, we are all dead'-and simply get on with the business of living in the here and now.
However, fateful choices face humanity, ones which mature, intelligent and responsible people cannot ignore. The fundamental fact of life today, regardless of whatever issues may be grabbing the news headlines, is that humanity, taken as a whole, seems to be putting too much pressure upon the environmental systems that sustain life.
In Excess
Humanity was born into a world equipped with all the necessary life-support systems. Today, the size of the human population and the production systems of industrial society have become so large and so fast that their thirst for more energy and raw materials has become unsustainable. The deepening resource crisis takes two forms. First, there is the squandering of what are properly called the Earth's 'savings': the finite stores of oil, gas, coal and minerals. Second, and more worrying, is the rapid erosion of our 'income': those resources drawn from sunlight, soil and water which ecological cycles are increasingly unable to replenish, such is the assault by humanity on them.
In a mere blink on the timescale of human evolution, Industrial society has been depleting and impairing Earth's 'supply system' at a phenomenal rate. It treats the Earth like some enormous warehouse, a lifeless horn of plenty there to satisfy our whims. Rising human numbers, greater levels of personal consumption and more powerful technologies create a demand, for which supplies are diminishing. The prospect is one of inevitable haemorrhage in the lifeblood of industrialism-the cheap and ready flow of abundant energy and minerals.
Americans, for example, have used more minerals and fossil fuels during the past half-century than all the other peoples of the world throughout human history. To spread such consumption levels to the rest of the world's exploding numbers would require over 130 times the world output of 1979. Attempting such a feat would soon bankrupt the Earth.
If it were just a problem of our factories running short of, say, nickel or tungsten, the barrier might not be insurmountable. In the past, humanity has been able to switch from one resource base to another, even though individual communities have sometimes paid a grievous price. What has changed is the sheer scale of our dependence on so many resources: fossil fuels, sand, gravel and stone, water, metals, animal and plant products, wood, fertiliser, plastics, rubber, synthetic fibresthe list seems endless.
Each item is obtained at the expense of other resources-it takes energy to get energy supplies-and at the cost of human and environmental damage, at every stage from exploration and extraction, through processing to use and the discarding of the 'waste'. Industrialism will increasingly have to feed itself from sources of poorer grade and in more remote locations. The ground subsidence, the waste tips, the oil spills and blow-outs, the water pollution, the health hazards, the boom-time inflation and the ghost towns associated with old minefields and oil wells will be visited upon green fields and pastures new. The short-term cost is likely to be partly economic-inflation due to rising resource costs-and partly political. More communities will be forced to have on their doorsteps open-cast sites, mines and wells they do not want.
Even more dangerous is that many resources only occur in a few locations. The leading industrial countries protect their stakes by military means-the French in Central Africa, the Americans in the Middle East, the British in the South Atlantic. The risk of 'resource wars' is plain to see. The battleground may turn out not to be a particular oil field or mine, but rivers such as the Nile, Euphrates and Mekong.
What about the 'lifeblood' of humans themselves-food and water? Again, all the signs suggest that we are taking too much too fast. High levels of agricultural output depend on increased inputs, with harmful side effects which put the total resource balance into the red. There is ample evidence of declining productivity across world croplands, ranges, forests and fisheries. In the next ten years it is estimated we will lose 275 billion tons of topsoil, around 8 per cent of the already depleted total of that most fundamental of all resources. Innovation in farming and medicine is being irreversibly undermined as we lose the genetic resources of plants and animals driven into extinction.
The concept of scarcity is fundamental, if we are to under stand how to find the resources for our future society. It is rooted in the biophysical realities of a geologically finite planet, ruled and limited by entropy and ecology. The spectacle of farmers being paid to plough their crops into the ground, of idle industrial plant or falling petrol prices can mislead, since they tempt us to see the problem as one of human restrictions on production which only have to be released to usher in a world of material abundance. In reality, we face the prospect of increasing shortages, with, perhaps, water supply problems being the most dangerous threat. Yet much more serious than tightening constraints on the supply of specific resources is the general deterioration in the planet's health'.
There are two sides to this greater danger. First there is the threat from pollution-from the volume and kind of substances human activity is putting into environmental systems. Their capacity to absorb that load is now being overwhelmed. Second, and most critical of all, there is the threat from environmental degradation as humanity simplifies and otherwise disrupts that complex set of jigsaw we call ecosystems, the interaction of whose 'pieces'-living and non-living-together constitute the Earth's life-support systems.
The greater dangers currently being posed by environmental degradation than from pollution per se can be seen in the former Soviet Union. The radiation released by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster did-is doing-great harm. Yet its disastrous consequences are being greatly exceeded on the steppes of central Asia where the inland Aral Sea has lost some 60% of its waters in just 30 years due to irrigation schemes. A new salt desert is forming on the dry sea beds. Economic development has ruined the very resources on which it depends. The longer term impact may include changes to weather patterns affecting lands way beyond the region's borders.
Life-Support
Unlike industrial society, nature has no resource problem. The process of photosynthesis harnesses only a tiny fraction of incoming solar energy. Yet from less than 5 per cent of what it receives, nature has produced wonderful diversity and richness. If we humans could learn to do so much from so little, we might have fewer social and ecological problems.
Through evolution, nature has produced a virtual infinity of working, flexible compromises to sustain, repair and regulate itself. The Amazonian jungles have sustained their luxuriance for countless centuries. The Earth seems to have created and maintained optimum conditions for the flourishing of life.
It is a system well able to cope with change. Where volcanoes explode, nature soon heals the wounds with new vegetation. But there is one change which nature cannot seem to accommodate-technological human society. All other plants and animals work together in self-maintaining ecosystems, fitting into the biosphere as a whole. First with agriculture, now with the industrialisation of one part of the Earth after the other, humanity is breaking apart the web of life.
The explosion in both people and human-created artefacts is now decreasing the free 'life-support' functions provided by ecosystems: breathable air, fertile soil, potable water, amelioration of weather extremes, water retention, the dilution, breaking down and recycling of wastes, pollination, photosynthesis etc. An economist once asked what is wrong with plastic trees, implying that everything is merely a matter of personal preference. He might have asked how many of these ecological services could be sustainably furnished and how many other species could be sustained by such human-made artefacts (whose aesthetic quality might also leave something to be desired).
The planet's tree cover highlights exactly what 'life-support' means. Forests act as buffers against excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and stabilise climate; they enhance rainfall; they protect soil and act as sponges against excess downhill flow of water; they purify and cool the air; they absorb noise; they provide habitats for an incredible variety of wildlife; they convert solar energy into a host of specific resources of which lumber is just one...and, to many eyes, they are beautiful. The further these natural, large-biomass, diverse and multiple-age forests are replaced by single-species, even-aged and short-rotation plantations or simply cleared, the more these priceless and irreplaceable life-support functions are lost. Wetlands also play a critical role. They are nature's kidneys, processing the nutrients in waterways. Furthermore, they protect shorelines, recharge ground water, moderate flooding and climate whilst, of course, providing habitat for many other species, including, in the USA, over 180 endangered species.
These life-support services are vital for human and non-human species alike. Like all species, humans depend on others for our existence. At the very least, we need them to produce oxygen we breathe, absorb the carbon dioxide we exhale, decompose our sewage, provide our food, maintain the fertility of the soil we cultivate. Interestingly, scientists like Professor E. O. Wilson are now suggesting, in what has been called the 'biophilia hypothesis', that evolution has given humans a psychological as well as a material need to conserve the Earth's diversity of life.
No Technological Salvation
Technological substitutes for the life-support systems described above, however, are either non-existent, enormously expensive or create side-effects which are worse than the opportunities foregone to maintain a species in existence. The use of downstream levees and flood control reservoirs, for example, to replace the protective life-support functions provided by forested watersheds will cost vast amounts of energy and raw materials. Their provision will further erode ecological systems, necessitating more substitutes in a downward spiral until the point of general collapse is reached.
As David Ehrenfeld has commented, 'our most glittering improvements over nature are too often a fool's solution to a problem that has been isolated from context, a transient, local maximisation that is bound to be followed by mostly undesirable counter-adjustments throughout the system'. Human has been behaving like some do-it-yourself fanatic trying to 'do up' what is perfectly decorated and in perfect repair, and the boomerang effects can be sudden and dramatic.
Human attempts to improve upon the 'ecoservices' provided by the river Nile by building the Aswan Dam have met with disastrous consequences. Western-style farming and the replacement of natural woodlands by tree farms create longer-term instabilities, dependent on the repair kits of fertilisers and pesticides with their own attendant problems.
Human intervention can have less direct repercussions. Warfare against the tsetse fly in Africa (financed by organisations such as the EU) might seem a sensible 'home improvement'. Yet this 'pest' protected vulnerable lands from the overgrazing that swiftly followed its eradication. There are countless examples of the dangers of working against rather than with nature's ways. William Ophuls has compared nature to a well-made watch: 'If one pokes at this arrangement carelessly, there is a strong likelihood that it will suffer damage.'
A Sickening Planet
Debates about when a particular resource might run out can miss the real point. It. is the damaging side-effects on the 'ecoservices' from increased use of energy and material resources that is the most fundamental 'limit to growth', not the availability of the resources themselves. Symptoms of a sickening planet will vary from quantifiable ones such as the rate of soil erosion to less tangible but no less real feelings about a general decline in the quality of life. In some cases, of course, human health and even survival will be directly threatened. The latter is obviously the case in areas of rapid degradation such as the Sahel region of Africa. But there are now many cities where air quality is so poor that well-being is being undermined.
The parlous state of non-human lifeforms is the most startling symptom of planetary disorder. A tidal wave of human-caused extinction of plants and animals is engulfing one ecosystem after another. This is most clearly the case in the tropical rainforests yet there are many other regions where once-rich biodiversity is being progressively impoverished. The fundamental problem, then, is one of long-term decline in the capacity of the Earth to sustain life.
General overviews
Brown, L. et al. State of the World. Earthscan, annual. Comprehensive and authoritative survey of many of the key trends.
Caldicott, H. If You Love This Planet. Norton, 1992. An up-to-date and easily read overview of the planetary crisis by Australian physician.
Chiras, D. Lessons from Nature: Learning to Live Sustainably on the Earth. Earthscan, 1993.
Gordon, A. & D. Suzuki. It's A Matter of Survival. Harper Collins, 1991. No punches pulled survey from Canada of how humanity is heading for ecological suicide. Professor Suzuki has appeared on British television recently on programmes about genetic engineering.
Ehrlich, P. & R. Harriman. How to be a Survivor. Pan, 1971. An older book but still an excellent introduction. It might be useful to use it as a text to judge the accuracy of gloomier environmental prognoses, which, for the Guide's writers at least, came closer to the truth than most recent writing on 'sustainable development'.
Ehrlich, P. & A. Earth. Methuen, 1987. Companion to the Thames TV series of the same name. Very readable and full of insights.
Goldsmith, E. & N. Hildyard. The Earth Report. Mitchell Beazley. 1988. An A-Z list and general review of key issues. New editions seem likely.
Goldsmith, E. et al. 5000 Days To Save The World. Hamlyn, 1990. More a coffee table book but very accessible and informative.
Goodland, R. & et al. Population, Technology, Lifestyle: The Transition to Sustainability. Island Pr., 1992. The most academic of the works cited here but complementary to the punchy style of the others.
Morgan, R. Planet Gauge. Earthscan, probably annual. Convenient little handbook of facts & figures on the state of the world.
The Human Assault on Planet Earth
The human assault on Earth has a sadly long lineage, from the exploitation of fire, the domestication of farm animals and settled farming to contemporary industrialism. It is an attack that has taken many forms though today they are of unprecedented breadth and intensity. Various geography textbooks provide much relevant material but tend to adopt an approach of "oh, well, that's life", failing to differentiate sustainable change from destructive variants, let alone ask why the destruction is taking place and what can be down to stop it. The following look more deeply.
Cronon, W. Changes in the Land: Indian, Colonists & the Ecology of New England. 1983. How new people and new values changed a particular region.
Crosby, A. Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe. CUP. 1986.
Dorst, J. Before Nature Dies. Houghton Mifflin, 1970.
Flannery, T.F. The Future Eaters: An Ecological History of the Australian Lands and Peoples. Braziller, 1995.
MacLeish, W.. The Day Before America: Changing the Nature of a Continent. Houghton Mifflin, 1994.
Meyer, W. Human Impact on the Earth. Cambridge UP, 1996. Focus on the last 300 years.
Morgan, B. Indigo Blues: The Destruction of Gulf Hammock. Wild Earth, Winter, 1992/93: 33-38. Story of the destruction of the coastal forests of NW Florida, once rich in panthers and bears..
Perlin, J. A Forest Journey. Harvard UP, 1991. The swathe cut by the axe and the chain saw down the ages.
Ponting, C. A Green History of the World. Penguin, 1991. A popular presentation of the ecological view of history, taking the people-environment interaction as the crucial feature of any society and the most decisive determinant of its future. Very readable.
Sale, K. The Conquest of Paradise. Penguin, 1991. Columbus and all who followed in his wake put into an ecological light.
Seymour, J. & H. Girardet. Far From Paradise. BBC, 1986.
Smith, R.L., ed.. The Ecology of Man. Harper & Row, 1976. An older but still very useful collection.
Thomas, W.L., ed.. Man's Role in Changing the Face of the Earth. Chicago UP, 1956. A true oldie but goldie.
Terrie, P. Contested Terrain: a New History of Nature and People in the Adirondacks. Syracuse UP, 1998. A story of one locality, the mountains of upper New York state in the USA.
Turner. B., et al, ed.. The Earth as Transformed by Human Action: Global and Regional Changes in the Biosphere over the Past 300 Years. CUP, 1990.
Worster, D. The Vulnerable Earth: Towards A Planetary History. Environmental Review, 11/2, 1987: 101
Ecological Perspectives on History
Academic history has been a bit like a polo mint, with a big hole in the middle. The missing heart is the ecological context of history. Environmental systems are both an 'object' of human actions and an actor in their right, decisively influencing the course of events. The human-environment relationship is the fundamental expression of a given society's past and most significant influence on its long-term prospects.
Yet historians and history courses have tended to ignore such matters. It is possible to read studies of, say, Roosevelt's New Deal in America which omit the fact that schemes launched by bodies like the Tennessee Valley Authority have caused great environmental damage and undermined the sustainability of those communities dependent on local ecosystems. Going back further in time, it is common in both the academic and popular press and broadcasting to find ringing statements about the glory that was Rome and other civilisations, without any reference whatsoever to the immense and sometimes suicidal ecological damage they created.
There are, of course, exceptions to this general rule. Perhaps the most notable is the history of landscape change about which there have been some notable works. But even here, the tendency is towards description rather than critical assessment of human-environment interactions and their import for both the human prospect and that of other lifeforms.
At the same time, there have been communities which have lived in comparative equilibrium with the environments, sustaining themselves over long periods and providing healthy and socially satisfactory lives for their members. Perhaps if history has any lessons to teach, we should shed popular pretensions about technological progress and develop the modesty to learn something from such societies. Although the 'clock' can never be put back, today's society could and should to take on board each and every lesson available about the nature of sustainability.
Fortunately, there is a new school of environmental historians who are putting ecology back into history. It might be added that the environmental movement itself might benefit from scrutiny by historians. They could shed much needed light on the development, achievements and failures of environmentalism, both as a body of ideas as well as a social and political force.
However, there is another aspect to honest historical 'accounting'. Many people claim that not enough was known about the human impact upon environmental systems to take action before now. In fact, back in ancient China and Greece, voices were raised about deforestation. More recently, several thinkers from Malthus onwards warned about environmental limits but were denounced by people from all parts of the political spectrum.
Since World War 11, for example, most people were fixated by the dream of universal affluence but a minority realised that the expansion of human society must incur rising costs and face increasingly insuperable barriers. The reaction to these warnings is particularly interesting. Rachel Carson, for example, was the victim of what can be only described as a witch hunt.
Berman, M. Coming to Our Sense: Body and Spirit in the Hidden History of the West. Random, 1989. A critique of conventional historiography
Chatterjee, P. The Gold Rush Legacy: Greed, pollution and Genocide. Earth Island, Spring, 1998: 26. Unmasks the romantic myths of the '49ers'.
Cronon, W. Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West. Norton, 1991.
Crosby, A. Germs, Seeds and Animals: Studies in Ecological History. M.E. Sharpe1994.
Culbert, T.P., ed. The Classic Maya Collapse. Univ. New Mexico Pr., 1973. Civilisations have collapsed as in this case and ecological factors often have played a decisive role.
Diamond, J. The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution & Future of the Human Animal. Harper Collins, 1992.
Diamond, J. Guns, Germs and Steel. Norton, 1997
Diamond, S. In Search of the Primitive. Transaction Books, 1974. Critique of the pretensions of 'civilisation from an ecological and anthropological perceptive.
Goldsmith, E. The Fall of the Roman Empire: A Social and Ecological Interpretation. The Ecologist, 5(6), 1975: 196-206.
Harris, M. Our Kind: Who We Are, Where We came From & where We Are Going. 1989. Vintage Anthropological critique of 'progress'.
Harris, M. Cannibals & Kings. Harper & Row, 1991. Readable analysis of human evolution.
Hughes, J. Donald. Ecology in Ancient Civilisations. Univ. New Mexico Pr., 1975.
Hughes, J. Donald. American Indian Ecology. Texas Western Pr., 1983.
Polanyi, K. The Great Transformation. Octagon, 1980. Classic study that puts the rise of Industrialism in an ecological context
McNeil, W. Plagues & People. Doubleday, 1976. The interaction between environment, human history and epidemics analysed.
Mowat, F. Sea of Slaughter. Bantam, 1989. History of wildlife destruction in a particular region NE seaboard of America
Mumford, L. The Myth of the Machine 2 vols. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1967 & 1970. History & critique of humanity's dangerous infatuation with machine-based 'progress'.
Paehlke, R., ed.. Conservation and Environmentalism. Fitzroy Dearborn, 1995. Encyclopaedic collection of essays on environmental concerns, with American focus.
Sahlins, M. Stone Age Economics. Aldine, 1972. Pioneering study that dispels the arrogant myths of modern society about 'primitive' societies.
Sahlins, M. Islands of History. University of Chicago Pr., 1985. Contrast between the thinking and social structures of Polynesian Islanders and those of the British invaders
Shepard, P. The Tender Carnivore and the Sacred Game. Scribner, 1973. Human roots in hunter-gatherer societies and its meaning for today.
Smith, M.R. & L. Marx, eds. Does Technology Drive History. MIT Pr., 1994. Provides evidence against technological determinism, a view which renders us helpless in the face of unwanted or undesirable technological change.
Slotkin, R. Regeneration through Violence; The Mythology of the American Frontier. 1973. A case study of how fear and the appeal of violence turned dreams into very real nightmares.
Thomas, W.L., ed. Man's role in Changing the Face of the Earth. Chicago Univ. Pr., 1956. Pioneering study.
Weiskel, T. The Ecological Lessons of the Past: An Anthropology of Environmental Decline. The Ecologist, 19(3), 1989: 98-103.
Wilkinson, R. Poverty & Progress. Methuen, 1973. Good example of reinterpreting history in an ecological light.
Worster, D. Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s. OUP, 1979.
Worster, D. Rivers of Aridity: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West. Pantheon books, 1985.
Worster, D., ed. The Ends of the Earth: Perspectives on Modern Environmental History. CUP, 1988. Excellent reader on environmental history.
Worster, D. Wealth of Nature: Environmental History & the Ecological Imagination. OUP., 1993. Essays from a leading ecological historian.
Many civilisations have dug their own graves through soil erosion. See, for example:
Dale, T., & V. G. Carter. Topsoil & Civilisation. Univ. Oklahoma Pr., 1955.
Hyams, E. Soil and Civilisation. Harper, 1976.
Land Abuses: Soil erosion, compaction and denutrification
Though spectacular pollution events such as oil spills and nuclear power plant leakages tend to grab the headlines, the most serious ecological crisis is the steady drip of environmental degradation. It takes different forms but all contribute to a decline in the Earth's life-support systems, especially its loss of its fertile soils and their vegetative cover. Public protest has focused mainly on specific industries and technologies like the motor car. Yet it is the tillage of soil, monocultural cultivation, intensive irrigation, the grazing of domesticated farm animals and the opening up of more land for human use by forest clearance which, in terms of both geographical spread and general impact, have undermined most seriously the Earth's capacity to sustain life.
Sometimes, these blows against ecological health can be as dramatic as pollution spills. A well-known example was the dramatic spectacle of the dust bowl storms in mid-west America in the 30s. The effects of salt encroachment on surface soils (salinisation) also can present a clearly discernible face as the surface of the land, seen from a plane, takes on a white aspect. More usually land abuse is a more lengthy but no less potentially lethal, process.
Often, it is the sheer quantity of fertile soil that is being slowly eroded away. In other cases it is being impoverished by nutrient loss. Soils are also being degraded by excessive compaction, largely due to the use of heavy farm and forestry vehicles but also made worse by vast numbers of of cows herded into small cattle lots. Frequently, all three processes are at work together undermining the very foundations of sustainable food, fibre and timber production. 'Sticking plaster' solutions such as treatment with replacement artificial fertilisers, importation of water and pesticide treatment bring problems of their own. At the same time, soil erosion increases sedimentation in waterways, worsening the threat from and damage caused by floods.
The mining of minerals and, more recently in history, fossil fuels, too has devastated more land than the industries they feed. The extractive industries generate, for example, far more wastes than all industries combined. They are also prodigious consumers of water and energy as well as physical space. Contemporary forestry and agriculture too should be seen as extractive industries since, in effect, they are mining environmental systems. Of all human activities, however, it is the relentless tide of brick, concrete and tarmac that creates the greatest environmental damage, sterilising an ever increasing area of land. Yet while the amount of fertile cropland, healthy pastures and productive forest go down, human numbers and individual expectations continue to rise. Insofar as environmental degradation is addressed, it is primarily seen as a Third World problem. The African Sahel is often cited as a prime example of the problem. Yet all continents are suffering, including 'rich' regions like Australia and the USA.
Population growth is the primary driving force extending and intensifying environmental degradation. Even in the case of hunter-gatherer groups, practising 'slash and burn' farming in tropical forests, an increase in their small numbers means the clearance of bigger areas of land as well as an earlier return to previously exploited areas before they have time to recover. However, it is the incredible explosion of human populations in agricultural and urbanised societies that generates the biggest demand for more food and other goods, followed in turn by increased pressure on the land.
At the same time, individual lifestyle choices can make a dramatic difference. For example, human exploitation of the land would be much smaller scale and less intensive if meat-centred diets weren't so prevalent. In some regions, the role of animals as symbols of status and wealth obviously contributes to overgrazing. Mining too would not be so damaging if, for instance, use of metals like gold were confined purely to essential purposes.
Environmental degradation also interacts with the current political and economic order. This is especially the case when ruling élites encourage the cultivation of cash crops for export on 'modernised' farms while previous occupants of the land are forced out into marginal dryland areas which cannot sustain the new pressures being put upon them. Because the immediate victims of desertification and other forms of land abuse are usually the poorest and least politically powerful sections of society, the crisis is simply allowed to get worse. Yet there are plenty of instances of environmental degradation, including severe overgrazing of the land, in pre-industrial and pre-colonial societies. It is naive to blame the problem solely upon the effects of 'imperialism' or the world trade system.
There is also a danger of viewing environmental degradation in isolation. This was evident recently when it was widely reported that soil conservation, increased crop yields and a growing population were all happening hand in hand in Kenya. Lost from view was any sense of other environmental problems which might be worsening whilst such 'gains' were being registered. For instance, the once rich diversity of wildlife in countries like Kenya continues to decline due to that very increase in pressure from human numbers. Water resources are also declining.
It should be clear, then, that much talk about 'clean' technology is misleading since many 'non-polluting' activities may be causing nonetheless great environmental destruction. That said, pollution and environmental degradation constitute a twin spiral of decay. Pollution-induced climatic change and consequent droughts, for example, are making dryland areas even more vulnerable to desertification. In other words, rainfall, groundwater, tree cover and soils all need to be conserved.
The only way to conserve ecological health and productivity is to set limits both to the intensity of land uses like farming and forestry as well to the area of land which extractive industries are allowed to touch. Ecologically more sustainable alternatives in sectors such as agriculture are explored under the heading Technology. Similarly, longer-life products and greater recycling as well as a general decrease in the level of economic activity will help to reduce the impacts of mining and quarrying. This section concentrates on the severity of the land abuse crisis.
Blackie, P. & H. Brookfield. Land Degradation and Society. Methuen, 1987.
Brown, L., & E. Wolf. Soil Erosion: Quiet Crisis. WorldWatch Institute, 1984.
Durning, A. & H. Brough, H. Taking Stock: Animal Farming & The Environment. WorldWatch Institute, 1991.
Gardner, G. Shrinking Fields: Cropland Loss in a World of 8 Billion. WorldWatch Institute, 1996.
Grainger, A. Desertification. Earthscan, 1983.
Hillel, D. Out of the Earth: Civilisation and the Life of the Soil. Aurum Pr., 1992.
Lai, R. Land Degradation & Its Impact on Food & Other Resources. In D. Pimentel & C. Hall, eds. Food & Natural Resources. Academic Pr., 1989.
Mann, R.D. Time Running Out: The Urgent Need for Tree Planting in Africa. The Ecologist, 20(2), 1990: 48-53.
Mitchell. J. G. The Man Who Would Dam the Amazon & Other Accounts from the Field. Bison Books, 1990. Dispatches from the various battlegrounds on which humans are attacking the Earth's ecological diversity and richness.
Pimentel, D., ed. World Soil Erosion and Conservation. CUP, 1993.
Wilkin, E. Assault of the Earth. Worldwatch, 8(2), 1995: 20-27. The threat from soil erosion & denutrification.
Wuerthner, G. Some Ecological Costs of Livestock. Wild Earth, Spring, 1992: 10-14.
Land Degradation and Pollution from Mining
Mining is one of the most devastating of all human activities. To its effects must be added those from other parts of a mineral's life cycle, especially smelting and refining. If it were just a problem of our factories running short of, say, nickel or tungsten, the barrier might not be insurmountable. In the past humanity has been able to switch from one resource base to another, even though individual communities sometimes paid a grievous price. What has changed is the sheer scale of our dependence on so many resources: metals, stone, sand, and gravel as well as water, fossil fuels, animal and plant products, wood, fertilizer, plastics, rubber, synthetic fibres...the list seems endless.
Each item is obtained at the expense of other resources-it takes energy to tap mineral (and, for that matter, energy, supplies)-and at the cost of human and environmental damage, at every stage from exploration and extraction, through processing to use and the discarding of the 'waste'. Environmental destruction apart, many functioning communities, including those of indigenous tribal groups, have been ground under to make way for more mines and quarries.
Sadly illustrative of these impacts is Nevada'a Blackfoot River, setting for the novel A River Runs Through It. The river is so polluted by mining (and neighbouring slopes so damaged by clear-cutting) that, when Robert Redford came to set the story to film, location shooting had to take place elsewhere.
Industrialism will increasingly have to feed itself from sources of poorer grade and in more remote locations. The ground subsidence, the waste tips, the oil spills and blow-outs, the water pollution, the health hazards, the boom-time inflation and the ghost towns associated with old minefields will be visited upon green fields and pastures new. The short-term cost is likely to be partly economic-inflation due to rising resource costs-and partly political. More communities will be forced to have on their doorsteps open-cast sites, mines and wells they do not want. Even more dangerous is that many resources only occur in a few locations. The leading industrial countries protect their stakes by military means-the French in Central Africa, the Americans in the Middle East, the British in the South Atlantic. The risk of 'resource wars' is plain to see.
In the long run paying such prices solves nothing. We will only be further down a blind alley from which future generations will find it almost impossible to escape. To be dependent upon on something that must become scarcer over time is not a route to sustainability, even if all other problems could be made to magically disappear.
Greer, J. The Price of Gold: Environmental Costs of the New Gold Rush. The Ecologist, 23(3), 1993; 91-96.
Hawes-Davis, D. Havevy Metal Madness. Z Magazine, Jan., 1993: 39-42. Case study from Ozark mountains in USA
Gordon, D. Kamchatka at Risk: Gold and the Struggle for Sustainability. Multinational Monitor, 17, Jan./Feb., 1996: page numbers missing. Siberia's habitats are being ruined by miners as wellas loggers.
Kennedy, D. US Mine Gouges for Gold. Earth Island, Spring, 1997: 24. The world's largest gold mine and the ruination it has caused in Indonesian rainforest.
Macmillan, G. At the End of the Rainbow: Gold, Land & People in the Brazilian Amazon. Earthscan, 1995.
Marr, C. Digging Deep: The Hidden Costs of Mining in Indonesia. Down to Earth (London), 1993.
Moody, R. The Gulliver File. Minewatch, 1992. Encyclopaedic study of the destruction caused by mineral extraction around the world and the companies that profit from it
Robinson, P. The Uranium Mines of Siberia. Baikal Watch (Earth Island Institute, USA), 1996.
Wuerthner, G. Subdivisions and Extractive Industries. Wild Earth, Fall, 1997: 57-62.
Young, J. Aluminium's Real Tab. WorldWatch, Mar./Apr., 1992: 26-34.
Young, J. Mining the Earth. WorldWatch Institute, 1992.
Deforestation, Tree Deaths, and Tree Monoculture
Forests function as the Earth's skin, performing many critical ecological roles. They are being destroyed at an enormous and suicidal rate both in the temperate and tropical areas. Other forests are sickening. Some effects of deforestation cause further destruction of forests. Disruption of atmospheric balances leading to climatic change will kill many trees since they cannot adapt quickly to the new weather patterns. In the background pollutants such as acid rain continue to take their toll too. The Earth, then, is being scalped. In some cases, tree cover seems to be increasing. But it is in the form of biologically uniform plantations, very poor substitutes for old-growth forests. Many goods today claim to be products of 'sustainably managed forests' yet these are often little more than timber 'mines'. Intensive timber production also fails to create sustainable jobs for foresters.
Deforestation contributes directly or indirectly to many of the problems covered on this Website. It leads to an irreversible loss of productive land (especially in the tropics where most nutrients are locked in the trees themselves), increased soil erosion, more flooding and landslips, increased sedimentation of waterways, damaging changes in rainfall patterns, loss of carbon dioxide 'sinks' plus additions of this greenhouse gas when woodlands are burned, destruction of tribal peoples and catastrophic blows to biodiversity. Many potential foodstuffs and medicines already have been lost due to the impoverishment of the gene pool as deforestation's effects on the diversity of plants and animals.
The effects are experienced at many levels, locally and more widely, both quickly and more slowly. In medieval Europe, for example, deforestation led to fuelwood shortages which in turn led people to burn dung and straw. This robbed farmland of essential nutrients and a collapse in crop yields which left people in an already weakened state when the Black Death arrived. Deforestation in the Himalayas today leads to local soil erosion and loss of fuelwood supplies but, in turn, it affects peoples living hundreds of miles downstream, particularly due to increasingly frequent and severe flooding.
Various factors are at work in the destruction of the world's forests. Their significance varies from one time and place to another. Perhaps the most consistent thread is the loss of the perceived need to care for forests (or the prevention of local peoples from exercising the care they once showed for their woodland). It is simplistic, however, to blame everything upon the rich industrialised countries. The assault upon Amazonia commenced in the 1930s and today is still driven to a considerable extent by purely domestic forces. Yet the enormous per capita demand for timber and pulp amongst the richer sections of world society plays a critical role in the felling of more and more old growth forests, both in temperate and tropical regions as well as their replacement by biologically impoverished plantations.
It should be remembered that felling rates are greater in, say, British Columbia, than Brazil. It is said that the 'clearcuts' of Western Canada, are so big that they can be seen from outer space. Similarly deforestation rates in sub-tropical and tropical areas such as Florida and Queensland exceeded those in their poorer neighbours. In some areas, notably Central America, the 'hamburger connection' lies behind the clearance of forests for ranches.
Inside the 'Third World' as a whole, population growth plays the most critical role. Practices that were once comparatively sustainable such as shifting slash and burn clearance become unsustainable once the number of cultivators increases beyond a certain point. Rising human numbers also create a general demand for more farmland and for fuelwood, all at the expense of forested areas.
But factors such as landlessness due to local inequalities in land ownership play an important role, especially in Latin America. So too do large-scale mining, HEP and industrial projects financed, at least in part, by international agencies and/or backed by national governments in pursuit of 'development'. Last but not least, the debts accumulated by many countries in the 'Third World', partly because of such projects, force them to sell out their 'valuables' to get foreign exchange. These factors interact. A road built to serve a dam, for example, might be the highway that allows more settlement and clearance of neighbouring forest.
Last but not least, warfare has been a significant agent of forest destruction. Many forests have been felled to build wooden warships. The clearance of Vietnamese forests to destroy guerrilla hideouts was nothing new. The English government, for example, destroyed Scottish woodlands to drive out Jacobite rebels in the 18th century.
For further references on deforestation, look under country listings (e.g. Brazil for more on the destruction of Amazonia). See under Technology for material on forestry, which concentrates more at actual forestry practices, the timber trade and timber-using industries.
Harrison, R. P. Forests: The Shadow of Civilisation. Chicago UP, 1993.
Lamb. R. World Without Trees: Dutch Elm Disease and other Human Errors. Wildwood, 1979.
Lean, G. , ed. Fate of the Forests. Observer/WWF, 1992. Excellent special magazine supplement.
Mitchell, J. G. Dispatches from the Deep Woods. Univ. of Nebraska, 1991. A review of the variety and scale of the assault on America's forests showing that the tree crisis is not just a Third World problem. Even woods that had been recovering, as in New England, are now under renewed attack.
Perlin, J. A. Forest Journey: The Role of Wood in the Development of Civilisation. Norton, 1989. Historical overview of deforestation of the planet.
Repetto R. & M. Gillis. Public Policies & the Misuse of Forest Resources. CUP, 1988.
Richards, J. & R. Tucker. World Deforestation in the 20th Century. Duke UP, 1988.
Tree 'Diseases' and Forest Dieback
See also references below under Air Pollution and particularly Acid rain
Goldsmith, E. The Future of Tree Diseases. The Ecologist, 9 (4/5), 1979: 139-154. Felling is not the only fate awaiting the world's surveying forests: many of keeling over due to disease which, in turn, is linked to the increasing burden of pollution.
Lack, L. Pest Plagues from Imported Wood. Earth Island, Fall, 1996: 30-31.
Little, C. The Dying of the Trees: The Pandemic in America's Forests. Viking, 1995.
Destruction of Temperate & Boreal Forests
Acharya, A. Plundering the Boreal Forests. Worldwatch, 8(3), 1995: 21-29.
Alverson, W. et al. Wild Forests: Conservation Biology & Public Policy. Island Pr., 1994. The politics of conserving American old growth forests.
Ashford, J. Forgotten Forests. Green Magazine, July, 1991: 25-28. Deforestation in Chile.
Ayers, H. et al, eds. An Appalachian Tragedy: Air Pollution and Tree Death in the Eastern Forests of North America. Sierra Books,1998.
Barr, B. & K. Braden. The Disappearing Russian Forest. Rowman & Littlefield, 1988.
(, E. Clear-Cut Madness in Russian Karelia. The Ecologist, 27(6), 1997: 237-241.
Carle, D. Whole-Tree Logging: Vacuuming the Northern Forests. Wild Earth, Spring, 1994: 35-37.
Dietrich, W. The Final Forest. Penguin, 1992. American forest issues.
Dudley, N. Forests in Trouble: A Review of the Status of Temperate Forests World-wide. WWF, 1992.
Gamlin, L. Sweden's Factory Forests. New Scientist, 26 Jan., 1989: 41-44.
Hirt, P. A Conspiracy of Optimism: Management of the National Forests Since World War Two. Univ. Nebraska Pr., 1994. Failure to protect American forests
Jardine, K. Finger on the Carbon Pulse: Climate Change and the Boreal Forests. The Ecologist, 24(6), 1994: 220-224.
Keith, E. Fragile Majesty: The Battle for North America's Last Great Forest. Mountaineers Pr., 1989.
Maser, C. Forest Primeval. Sierra, 1988. The great but threatened forests of Pacific Northwest of USA.
Norse, E. Ancient Forests of the Pacific Northwest. Island Pr., 1990. Another study of the once mighty North American forests
Pearce, F. How the West is Attacking Russia. Independent on Sunday, 28/3/93: 53
Petrof, D. Siberian Forests Under Threat. The Ecologist, 22(6), 1992: 267-270.
Routley, R. & V. Routley. The Fight for the Forests. Australian National University Pr., 1975. The destruction of Australian forests, which cover many forest types.
Tokar, B. Between the Loggers & the Owls: the Clinton Northwest Forest Plan. The Ecologist, 24(4), 1994: 149-153.
Destruction of Tropical Forests
Shiva, V. Forestry Crisis & Forestry Myths. World Rainforest Movement, 1987. Deforestation and Tree Monocultures in the Tropics
Bunyard, P. The Significance of the Amazon for Global Climatic Equilibrium. The Ecologist, 17(4/5), 1987: 139-141.
Caufield, C. In the Rainforest: Report from a Strange, Beautiful Imperilled World. Heinemann, 1985.
Colchester, M. & L. Lohmann. The Tropical Forest Action Plan: What Progress? FoE, 1990.
Cowell, A. Decade of Destruction. Doubleday, 1991. Assault on Amazonia
The Ecologist Magazine. Tropical Forests: A Plan for Action. The Ecologist, 1988. General plan and call for action.
Fearnside, P. Deforestation & International Economic Development Projects in the Brazilian Amazonia. Conservation Biology, 1, 1987: 214-221.
Fearnside, P. Deforestation in Brazilian Amazonia. The Ecologist, 19(6), 1989: 214-218.
Goodland, R., ed. Race to Save the Tropics. Island Pr., 1990.
Head, S. & R. Heinemann, eds. Lessons of the Rainforest. Sierra, 1990.
Hecht, S. & A. Cockburn. The Fate of the Forest: Developers, Destroyers and Defenders of the Amazon. Verso, 1989.
Hemming, J. Amazon Frontier: The Defeat of the Brazilian Indians. Macmillan, 1987.
Horta, K. The Last Big Rush for the Green Gold: The Plundering of Cameroon's Rainforests. The Ecologist, 21(3), 1991: 142-147.
Johnston, B. & G. Lean, eds. Paradise Lost. Earthlife Foundation, 1986. Special supplement magazine distributed by The Observer newspaper.
Lutzenberger, J. Who is Destroying the Amazon Rainforest? The Ecologist, 17(4/5), 1987: 155-160.
McGhie, J. Reclaiming a Natural Legacy. The Ecologist, 17(4/5), 1987: 200-202. Restoration of rainforest in Costa Rica.
Molion, L. The Amazonian Forests and Climatic Stability. The Ecologist, 19960, 1989: 211-213.
Myers, N. The Primary Source: Tropical Forests and Our Future. Norton, 1984.
Myers, N. Deforestation Rates in Tropical Forests and Their Climatic Implications. FoE, 1991.
Myers, N. Tropical Forests: The Policy Challenge. The Environmentalist, 12(1), 1992: 15-27.
Nations, J. & D. Komer. Rainforests & the Hamburger Society. The Ecologist, 17(4/5), 1987: 161-167. The 'hamburger connection' is sometimes exaggerated but it certainly has bitten into Central American forests.
Nichol, J. The Mighty Rainforest. David & Charles, 1990.
Repetto, R. Deforestation in the Tropics. Scientific American, 262, 1990: 36-42
Sioli, H. The Effects of Deforestation in Amazonia. The Ecologist, 17(4/5), 1987: 134-138.
Uhl, C. et al. Disturbance & Regeneration in Amazonia: Lessons for Sustainable Land Use. The Ecologist, 19(6), 1989: 235-240.
Vohra, B. Why India's Forests have been Cut Down. The Ecologist, 15(1/2), 1985: 50-51.
World Rainforest Movement. The Battle for Sarawak's Forests. FoE, Malaysia, 1992.
Industrialised Tree Farming
See also Forestry under Technology
Carrere CC. & L. Lohmann, Pulping the South: Industrial Tree Plantations & the World Paper Economy. Zed Books, 1996.
Devall, B, ed. Clearcut: The Tragedy of Industrial Forestry. Sierra, 1993
Isomaki, R. Paper, Pollution & Global Warming: Unsustainable Forestry. The Ecologist, 21(1), 1991: 14-16.
Swedish Society for Nature Conservation. Timber Versus Forests. S.S.N.C, no date. Short pamphlet which challenges the widespread image of Sweden as an environmentally friendlier nation as well as that suggested by labels on paper products about 'sustainably managed forests'.
Pollution-General
Society not only 'imports' resources from the environment; it also 'exports' wastes back to it. Overconsumption and attendant resource depletion by the human economy have been paralleled by greater pollution. Pollution is not simply as a sign of bad management: its roots lie in the very laws of energy and matter. Their transformation by the human economy inevitably generates by-products which return as pollutants to the environmental 'sink' of air, soil and sea.
There is nothing new about pollution. Some say that the ancient Romans were victims of lead poisoning from their drinking vessels, while the expression 'mad as a hatter' recalls the hazards of some traditional craft trades. Modern society, however, has dramatically speeded up the process. The problem has two dimensions, quantitative and qualitative:
First there is the sheer quantity Of energy & raw material throughput in the economy. This reflects both the scale of production and its concentration in specific locations. The impact of farming, quarrying, processing and manufacture interrupts natural cycles, diverting the flow of energy and materials through the environment. The radiation hazards of what comes out of nuclear reactors, for example, are far worse than the hazards associated with what goes into them. The Minimata mercury poisonings in Japan, asbestosis, eutrophication, nitrate pollution of drinking water and threats from cadmium and lead provide other illustrations. It is a price also being paid by the rest of the environment. Ecological systems can break down and recycle biodegradable wastes providing they are kept within assimilation limits. Overpopulation and overconsumption, however, are swamping nature's ability to provide this service.
The problem of quantity has been compounded by a revolution in the kinds of materials needed to satisfy human wants. In other words, there is a qualitative problem concerning the nature of the economic throughput, not just volume. From plastics to plutonium, humanity has created materials of which nature has no evolutionary experience (they are not simply another set of 'chemicals'). Their dangers have been highlighted by accidents at manufacturing plants such as Seveso in Italy and Bhopal in India.
More dangerous, though less spectacular, is the insidious effect of their everyday use. There is now ample evidence of the hazards of synthetic substances such as DDT, dioxin and PCBs on living systems. These may be but the tip of a chemical time bomb. A recent count in the Great Lakes of North America identified 460 toxic chemicals, literally from A (Aldrin) to Z (Zytron). Many of these substances are unknown to the public-until the media break the news of their sudden withdrawal because of their dangers. The deaths of birds such as eagles and pelicans, at the top of the local food chains, sounds a warning bell for all species.
People often get angry about farm smells, litter in the street and broken bottles on the beach. These problems are really just nuisances, though they may be symptomatic of deeper disorders and measures against them may also be good starting points for broader and deeper campaigns. The danger to our children's health from leaded petrol in cars also aroused a lot of concern yet lead is a less serious environmental threat than other emissions such as carbon monoxide, PAN, SOX, NOX and CO2.
The most serious problem is long-term threat from pollution which cause wholesale environmental degradation and climatic disruption: toxic contamination of food chains, acid rain, ozone layer depletion and alterations to the planet's heat balances. Unfortunately, attention tends to be grabbed by major accidents rather than slow growth in pollution which may be creating a longer term and more serious time bomb.
This dangers are aggravated by environmental degradation, by what we are taking out of the environment. Deforestation, for example, removes the life forms which help absorb the carbon dioxide during photosynthesis. Slowly but surely adding to this heating up of the planet is thermal pollution itself, the unavoidable by-product of every conversion of energy.
One of the worst changes that industrialism has made to pollution problems stems not simply from the addition of individual new pollutants, but from their combined effects. Acid rain and the photochemical smog above many modern cities are examples of what is known as synergy. Some half a million chemicals are in common use; about another thousand are added each year. Yet we know next to nothing about their interaction and combined effects while the scale of the problem suggests that we never will. We are treating the Earth as a living laboratory and ourselves as the chief guinea pigs. Artificial additions to natural back ground radiation are perhaps the greatest 'experiment' of all.
Yet any danger to the public is vigorously denied, small comfort for the victims of thalidomide, of Minimata, of Agent Orange in Vietnam and the A-bomb tests in Australia and the Pacific. In his book Cover-Up Nicholas Hildyard has documented just how systematically business and government set about concealing the risks to which the public is being subjected. When individuals do unmask the dangers, they often become the objects of vicious witch-hunts such as happened to Rachel Carson, author of the famed Silent Spring; in the case of Karen Silkwood it appears to have led to murder.
False Reassurances
Governments and others officials play down the pollution problem. In Britain, the Conservative government of the 80s and early 90s has consistently demanded conclusive evidence before taking even minimal action. Business has resisted change; the removal of lead from petrol was 'impossible' or 'unnecessary'. Scientists study pollutants in isolation and debate endlessly whether tree deaths are the result of a pest, a disease, or some specific type or source of pollutant. The problem might be better answered by turning the question round; why is nature losing its resistance and resilience? This would point us to the real issue: the total effect on living systems of industrial pollution, which is undermining them one after another.
Eugene Schwartz pinpoints the flaw in claims that new substances, or additional use of existing ones, are safe: 'Science and technology can provide no values to choose and guide the development of more science and technology, nor can scientists define safe limits for any of the negative aspects of technology such as radiation or pollution levels. The establishment of any limits affecting humans are not discoverable a priori for, according to the axioms of science, these limits can only be derived from observation and measurement. In a sense, technological civilisation is an experiment to test the "limits of the earth".'
The dangers can be overlooked by even the most diligent researcher, let alone those with a vested interest in the status quo. Many pollutants are difficult to detect, and monitoring is often inadequate. We do not know who has been exposed to what for how long. The real culprit of a disease or death may be masked by a more immediate factor. Medical diagnoses are not always accurate; people have often left their work or moved house. Effects may take very long periods to show up; symptoms of risk may not be spotted in small samples. Our attention is grabbed by major accidents rather than slow attrition. For many forms of pollution there may well be threshold levels below which they are safe. But we cannot tell in advance what these are and when they will be transgressed. In a field like radiation exposure, every advance in our understanding has led to calls for substantial revisions downwards from levels previously believed to be safe.
We should play safe and err on the side of maximum caution. In particular we should stop talking about 'average' levels and 'average' people. As Edward Goldsmith comments, 'if our government were really concerned about the effect of pollutants, it is not the critical groups of today that it would cater for, but all the possible critical groups of an unpredictable tomorrow. This means that we should not be catering for Mr Average but for Mr Maximum'. Fortunately, the precautionary principle is receiving more support, although often fine words are not translated into real action. More often, the industrial growth society sets permissible levels of pollution which are what its farming, forestry, mining and manufacture can cope with economically, not what is reliably safe for either people or the environment.
Failed Pollution Fixes
The conventional answers to pollution have failing. The policy of shifting wastes around or of concentrating them, in the hope that they will thereby become safer or more manageable, has proved far from safe. While incidents such as the Aberfan coal-tip disaster catch our attention, greater hazards lie in the slow leaching from the thousands of toxic chemical dumps (now joined by radioactive waste sites) dotted about the land.
The other conventional solution is dilution. People have great faith that the sheer size of the atmosphere and the oceans will dilute the pollutants we dump there, until they become harmless. In fact biological magnification works in reverse order. Poisons are progressively concentrated as they move through food chains-heading straight back in our direction.
Another conventional remedy is to use various gadgets to clean up polluting processes. Some forms of pollution, however, cannot be avoided, and are too large-scale and dispersed to be controlled by such means. Examples include waste heat, carbon dioxide release and fertiliser run-off. Others are too small. It is the tiniest of particles that are often the most dangerous, and they are the most difficult to contain. Technological gadgets merely shift the problem around, often at the expense of more energy and material inputs and therefore more pollution. Favourite devices such as refuse incineration, sulphur extractors in power stations and catalytic converters in cars cost money and energy while at the same time generating new pollutants.
There is no such thing as zero emission, and attempts progressively to reduce levels of pollution normally trigger off an explosive growth in the financial cost. Yet for some pollutants, especially deadly plutonium, nothing less than 100 per cent containment will do. Successes can sometimes be achieved by better controls and management, but these are quickly cancelled out if, in so doing, we produce and consume more energy and materials.
What about the dangers of accidental pollution? We hear about 'fail-safe' designs and procedures; for the 'fail safe' to be true, there must be flawless design and construction, no malfunctions, no operating errors and perfect protection from acts of God and acts of people. This might be conceivable in a make-believe world, but bears little relation to reality as newspaper headlines about the Torrey Canyon, Seveso, Bhopal, Amoco Cadiz, Chernobyl, assorted dam failures, 'plane crashes and many more disasters all attest.
Putting A Price On Pollution
An increasingly popular policy is that 'the polluter must pay'. This might seem a reasonable response to those enterprises, private or nationalised, which boost their profits by avoiding the full costs of the pollution they cause. The costs are passed on to the general public and the environment at large, for it is here that the bill is finally picked up. An ecologically responsible government would try to make the price that firms charge for their products reflect more accurately the true costs of their production.
However, there are serious limitations to this approach. Many forms of pollution are a combination of substances from diverse sources. Moreover, the contribution from an individual enter prise or household is often negligible; the damage arises out of cumulative additions. It would be impossible to calculate fairly who should pay what costs. And, critically, some consequences of pollution are irrevocable, and no amount of taxes can make amends even if we could put a price on what has been lost. So fines and other punishments are of limited application. They embody misleading notions about the pollution problem, not least that there is such a thing as 'optimal pollution'.
This fiscal approach is also flawed (like its technological cousin discussed above) by a false perception of pollution, seeing it merely as a failure to make use of waste by-products which, by a few pulls on the right lever, could be turned into new forms of wealth. The reality is that the rising tide of pollution is a by-product of the excessive throughput of energy and raw materials in our economy, which in turn is caused by the twin pressures of overpopulation and overconsumption.
Blowers A. Pollution and Waste-A Sustainable Burden? In Blowers A., ed., Planning for A Sustainable Environment. Earthscan, 1993. Work from a study group linked to the Town and Country Planning Association.
Carson, R. Silent Spring. Houghton Mifflin, 1993, originally 1964. A classic case study of pollution which helped to launch the modern environmental movement.
Commoner, B. The Closing Circle. Cape, 1972. Another famous study which put the blame for environmental problems firmly-and somewhat one-sidedly-on 'flawed' technologies and the pollutants they create.
Mitchell, J. Chemical Explosion. WorldWatch, 10(2), 1997: 26-36. The flood of synthetic chemicals is becoming a perilous deluge.
Epstein, S. Profiting from Cancer: Vested Interests & the Cancer Epidemic. The Ecologist, 22(5), 1992: 233-240.
Goldsmith, E. Can We Control Pollution? The Ecologist, Part 1 in 9(8/9), 1979: 273-290 and Part 2 in 9(10), 1979; 316-327. General overview of nature of pollution, the second part concentrating on limits to pollution control technology.
Gourlay, K. World of Waste. Zed, 1992.
Hall, R.H. Poisoning the Lower Great Lakes: The Failure of US Environmental Legislation. The Ecologist, 16(2/3), 1986: 118-123.
Hekstra, G. Impact of Global Pollutants on Climate and Ecosystems. Foundation for Ecological Development Alternatives (Netherlands), 1985. Useful booklet in 'Ecoscript' series' giving general overview.
Herber, L. Our Synthetic Environment. Knopf, 1962. A pioneering critique by Murray Bookchin, writing under a pseudonym, of modern patterns of pollution written before the more famous Silent Spring.
Leevanson, H. Wasting Away. Environment, 32(2), 1990: 10-36.
Markham, A. A Brief History of Pollution. Earthscan, 1994. Historical overview, with focus on London as a case study.
Morehouse, W. Unfinished Business: Bhopal Ten Years After. The Ecologist, 24(5), 1994: 164-169. How corporate power enables responsibilities to be evaded.
Murley, L., ed. The National Society for Clean Air Pollution Handbook. NSCA, 1994. General guide to pollution, not just air emissions, with emphasis on relevant legislation.
Price, B. FoE Guide to Pollution. Temple Smith, 1983. Short overview of main pollution problems.
Wagner, Travis. In Our Backyard: A Guide to Understanding Pollution & Its Effects. Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1994. A very accessible and up-to-date overview in a question and answer format, though legislative references are largely American.
Weale, A. The New Politics of Pollution. Manchester UP, 1992. British study.
Whitaker, J. Salvaging the Land of Plenty: Garbage & the American Dream. Morrow, 1994.
Noise Pollution
Kryter, R., ed. The Effects of Noise. Academic Pr., 1985. From discos to the drone of overhead aeroplanes, noise is endemic is modern society. It may not be wrecking ecosystems but it is making the lives of millions miserable, damaging physical and mental health. It also has severe impacts on wildlife, with, for example, harmful effects on breeding patterns.
Smith, J. Silence and Quiet Use. Wild Earth, Spring, 1998: 58-59. Even remote areas are under aural assault.
Waste Incineration
Bunin, L. & B. Edwards. Let the Air BreatheStop Incineration. Greenpeace, n.d.
Connett, P. E. Municipal Waste Incineration: Wrong Question, Wrong Answer. The Ecologist, 24(1), 1994: 14-20.
Denison, R. & J. Ruston. Recycling & Incineration: Evaluating the Choices. Island Pr., 1990.
Hellberg, T. Incineration by the Back Door: Cement Kilns as Waste Sinks. The Ecologist, 25(6), 1995: 232-237.
Lark, L., ed. Warning: Incineration Can Seriously Damage Your Health. Greenpeace, 1991. Detailed report.
Ryder, R. 'Sustainable' Incineration and Death by Dioxin. The Ecologist, 27(4), 1997: 135-136.
Toxic Pollution
Birkin, M. & B. Price. C is for Chemicals. Green Print, 1989. A-Z guide to chemical hazards.
Brown, M. The Toxic Cloud. Harper & Row, 1987.
Colborn, T., et al. Our Stolen Future. Penguin (USA), 1996. More case studies about the poisoning of the world, with focus on 'hormone imposters'.
Dudley, N. Nitrates: The Threat to Food & Water. Green Print, 1990.
Epstein, S. Hazardous Waste in America. Sierra Books, 1982.
Harris, T. Death in the Marsh. Island Pr., 1991. Selenium poisoning of marshes & ranchlands in USA, partly due to livestock industry.
Hirschom, J. Cutting Production of Hazardous Waste. Technology Review, 91(3): 52-61.
Hynes, P. The Recurrent Silent Spring. Pergamon, 1989.
Karliner, J., et al. The Barons of Bromide: The Corporate Forces Behind Toxic Poisoning and Ozone Depletion. The Ecologist, 27(3), 1997: 90--98.
Postel, S. Defusing the Toxics Threat: Controlling Pesticides & Industrial Waste. WorldWatch Institute, 1989.
Sexton, S. Reproductive Hazards of Industrial Chemicals: The Politics of Protection. The Ecologist, 23(6), 1993: 212-218.
Watson, A. Britain's Toxic Legacy: The Silence over Contaminated Land. The Ecologist, 23(5), 1993: 174-178.
Toxic Waste Dumping
Brown, M., and A. Mikkelsen. No Place To Hide. Univ. Calif. Pr., 1990. American study of threats to communities from toxic waste.
Bullard, R. Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class & Environmental Quality. Westview, 1990.
Hird, J. Superfund. The Political Economy of Environmental Risk. John Hopkins Pr., 1994. US toxic waste sites and their clear-up.
Levine, A.G. Love Canal: Science, Politics & People. Lexington Books, 1982. Toxic waste dump scandal in USA.
Mazmanian, D. & D. Morell. Beyond Superfailure: America's Toxic Policy for the 1990s. Westview Pr., 1992.
Szasz. A. Ecopopulsm: Toxic Waste & the Movement for Environmental Justice. Univ. Minnesota Pr., 1994. Study of how poor communities suffer the most from toxic waste dumping.
Vallette, J. & H. Spalding, eds. The International Trade in Wastes: A Greenpeace Inventory. Greenpeace (USA), 1990.
Pollution and Disruption of Hormonal Balances
Cadbury, D. The Feminisation of Nature: Our Future at Risk. Penguin, 1998.
Dibb, S. Swimming in a Sea of Oestrogens: Chemical Hormone Disrupters. The Ecologist, 25(1), 1995: 27-31.
Fluoride and Fluoridation
Griffiths, J. Fluoride: Industry's Toxic Coup. Earth Island, Spring, 1998: 38-40.
Sherrill, D. Rethinking Fluoridation. Earth Island, Spring, 1998: 40-41.
Pesticide Pollution
Bosso, C. Pesticides & Politics. Univ. Pittsburgh Pr., 1987.
Dudley, N. This Poisoned Earth: The Truth about Pesticides. Piatkus, 1987.
Pimentel, D. & H. Lehman. The Pesticide Question. Chapman & Hall, 1992.
Van Den Bosch, R. The Pesticide Conspiracy. Prism, 1980.
Radioactive Pollution
Bertell, R. No Immediate Danger. Women's Press, 1985.
Bunyard, P. & G. Searly. The Effects of Low-Dose Radiation. The Ecologist, 16(4/5/), 1986: 171-181.
Caufield, C. Multiple Exposures: Chronicles of the Radiation Age. Secker & Warburg, 1989.
Deere-Jones, T. Back to the Land: The Sea-to-Land Transfer of Radioactive Pollution. The Ecologist, 21(1), 1991: 18-23. Radioactive contamination of Irish Sea with specific reference to nuclear industry but with wider significance in terms of the mobility and magnification of pollutants in ecological systems.
Gofman, J. Radiation and Human Health. Sierra, 1981.
Gould, J. & B. Goldman. Deadly Deceit: Low-Level Radiation, High-Level Cover-Up. Four Walls Eight Windows Pr., 1990. The authors, one a former member of American EPA Science Advisory Board, allege large number of illnesses and premature deaths in the USA due to radiation from nuclear industry.
Wasserman, H. & N. Solomon. Killing Our Own: The Disaster of America's Experience with Atomic Radiation. Dell, 1982.
Electro-magnetic Pollution: The E-bomb
Becker, R. Cross Current. Tarcher, 1990.
Brodeur, P. The Zapping of America: Microwaves, Their Deadly Risk and the Cover-Up. Norton, 1977. Critique of the electronic 'smog' with which we are increasingly surrounded. Fears about the danger might be speculative than with more obvious toxic risks but certainly complacency about the issue would be foolish.
Firstenberg, A. Microwaving Our Planet. Earth Island, Summer, 1997: 32-33. Focus on cellular phones and other such paraphanalia of the telecommunications revolution
Smith, C. & S. Best. Electromagnetic Man: Health & Hazard in the Electrical Environment. Dent, 1989. Controversial and provocative argument that there is a very real timebomb ticking away, not least in our homes and offices, as well as above our heads in the form of electricity pylon lines.
General Air Pollution
One worthwhile by-product of space travel has been increased awareness of planetary systems, not least that thin layer of gas, the atmosphere. It is an absolutely crucial but often overlooked life-support system. Obviously the Earth's life forms, from people to plants, need to breathe. Many sci-fi films and novels rightly have spotlighted the problems of survival on planets with no atmosphere like our own. But this is not the only way in which we depend upon atmospheric systems.
News about holes in the ozone layer has helped to make more people aware of another free 'service'-the filtering out of harmful parts of incoming solar radiation. The atmosphere is also part and parcel of climatic systems and weather patterns, ones which we disrupt with grave potential dangers. The skies provide a giant 'sink'-an industrial city under an air tight dome soon would choke on its gaseous emissions. The aesthetic value of clear blue skies during the day or of twinkling stars in the night sky is harder to pin down but still very real.
However, the sky very much is the limit. It too has its balances which can be disrupted just like those of more obviously fragile systems. It cannot absorb endlessly the volumes and kinds of emissions now being released into it. The alteration of the Earth's ground cover is a similarly disruptive force. Once it was commonly thought that such problems were purely local ones, which might be solved by, for example, building taller chimney stacks. Now it is clear that such 'solutions' simply shift the problem around-they don't blow it away with the wind. In effect, some countries are waging chemical warfare on their neighbours through the export of their gaseous wastes.
The costs of atmospheric disruption are also clearer today-human health risks, damage to buildings, restricted plant growth, dying forests, more exposure to ultra-violet radiation, damaging climatic change Often ignored due to more scary stories about global warming is the level of sheer dust and dirt in the air. The view from space also shows that, in many places, dark nights no longer exist such is the level of human-generated lighting.
Ashby, E & M. Anderson. The Politics of Clean Air. OUP, 1981. British study.
Bryner, G. Blue Skies, Green Politics: The Clean Air Act of 1990. Congressional Quarterly Pr., 1993. American pollution policy issues.
Elsom, D. Atmospheric Pollution: A Global Problem. Blackwell, 1992.
Firor, J. The Changing Atmosphere A Global Challenge. Yale UP, 1992. Covers the sources and effects of acid rain, ozone depletion and global warming, with suggestions for controlling these and other forms of atmospheric deterioration
Friends of the Earth. Air Quality and Health. FoE, 1991. Covers sulphur dioxide, particulates, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide and ozone, looking at how they may be affecting the health of a fifth of the UK population.
Gibson, M, ed. To Breathe Freely: Risk, Consent & Air. Rowman & Allanheld, 1985.
MacKenzie, J. et al. Air Pollution's Toll on Forests and Crops. Yale UP, 1992.
United Nations Environment Programme/World Health Organisation. Urban Air Pollution in the Mega-Cities of the World. Blackwell, 1992.
Zeavin, E. Breath Taking: Stopping the Plunder of Our Planet's Air. R & E Publishers, 1992.
Acid Rain
Particularly since the industrial revolution, the acidification of the environment due to human activities has intensified. The critical change has been the dramatic increase in the burning of fossil fuels which, as an inevitable by-product produces gases such as sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide. Here is a classic example of synergy at work, where the combination of two things does far more damage than they do individually, in this case through the formation of what is popularly called acid rain.
Sulphur dioxide emissions stem in particular from combustion plants such as power stations. They also generate nitrogen oxides though road vehicles are a bigger source in countries like the UK. The phenomenon of acid rain is a kind of international chemical warfare since winds carry acid depositions way beyond the boundaries of the countries from which they originate. Damage from acid rain ranges from the 'forest death' syndrome to the rendering of waterways too acidic to sustain life. Changes to soil chemistry seem particularly damaging, threatening plants, including crop, health and therefore agricultural productivity. Buildings are corroded and it must be assumed that human health effects are not beneficial.
Acid rain illustrates the limits to technofixes such as the fitting of scrubbers in power plants and the use of catalytic converters in vehicles. Often the problem is only shifted from one form or place to another, with environmental degradation (e.g. due to limestone extraction for scrubbers) replacing pollution. Matter never disappears so there remains the problem of disposing trapped pollutants (usually a sludge residue). Acid rain also exposes the political aspects of the environmental crisis. Some countries have been keen to implement controls, setting tighter emission standards. Others, including the UK, have tended to block or at least water down such initiatives.
Bunyard, P. The Death of the Trees The Ecologist, 16(1), 1986: 4-13. Good discussion of how air pollution is the real problem, undermining the resilience of trees, even if specific infestations and diseases might be the surface cause of tree deaths.
Dudley, N. Acid Rain & Pollution Control Policy in the UK. The Ecologist, 16(1), 1986: 18-23.
McCormick, J. Acid Earth. Earthscan. 1989. Readable study.
Mello, R. A.. Last Stand of the Red Spruce. Island Pr., 1987. Case study of effects of acid rain of forests of eastern USA.
Pawlick, T. A Killing Rain: The Global Threat of Acid Precipitation. Sierra Books, 1984.
Pearce, F. Acid Rain. Penguin, 1987.
Ozone Layer Depletion
Friends of the Earth. Alternatives to CFCs. FoE, 1989. One of a series of documents from FoE on solutions for the ozone crisis.
Friends of the Earth. At the Crossroads. FoE, 1992. Critique of the Montreal Protocols and related funding arrangements.
Gribbin, J. Hole in the Sky. Corgi, 1988. Popular study of the ozone layer crisis
Passacantando & A. Carothers. Crisis? What Crisis? The Ozone Backlash. The Ecologist, 25(1), 1995; 5-7. Looks at the way that, as with many environmental problems, fears about ozone layers depletion were attacked as unwarranted alarmism.
Retallack, S. God Protect Us from Those Whoe Protect the Skies. The Ecologist, 27(5), 1997: 188-191. Demonstrates the celebrations of the Montreal Protocol are premature, showing that it is being flouted in many ways.
Roan, S. L. Ozone Crisis. Wiley, 1990. A history of the ozone crisis, from its discovery in 1973.
Shea, C. Protecting Life on earth: Steps to Save the Ozone Layer. WorldWatch Institute, 1992.
Tager, M. Depleting the Wild: Ozone Loss, Radiation Gain & Natural Systems. Wild Earth, Spring, 1994: 40-43..
United Nations Environment Programme. Protecting the Ozone Layer. UNEP, 1992. 5 volumes covering current uses of ozone-depleting substances and substitute.
Global Overwarming
The so-called greenhouse effect is actually a vital life-support system, maintaining the planet at a habitable temperature. However, additions to the insulating layer of 'greenhouse gases', of which carbon dioxide has been the most important so far, could change what has been a planetary asset into a liability-with drastic effects on climatic régimes, the incidence of storms and high winds, food production levels, disease patterns and sea levels, as average temperatures across the planet begin to rise.
Of all environmental problems, global 'overwarming' (a word which better describes the real problem) is surrounded by uncertainty, concerning not just its sources and likely effects but its very existence. There are, for example, great difficulties in modelling global weather patterns. There may also be counter-veiling tendencies at work (though it is a sad reflection on the human condition that so many people take comfort from the thought that pollution-induced cooling will counteract global warming).
Concern about the greenhouse effect came to the fore at the end of the 1980s but then it somewhat faded. Presumably people had expected to find one morning that the sky had changed colour and, when it didn't happen, they lost interest. Others actively mocked the theory. Not so long ago, a report from the Institute of Economic Affairs, dismissed the global warming as a load of 'hot air' and argued that we should not do anything, in the words of Roger Bates, director of their environmental unit, that 'leads to restructuring the way we live our lives'. (The study also argued that, if need be, the market would respond and make giant mirrors to reflect excess sunlight back into space)
Yet evidence that the greenhouse effect is underway is still accumulating. For example, the Antarctic ice sheets do seem to be contracting, with summers there having lengthened by 50%. Coral reefs in many areas appear to be dying partly due to rising water temperatures-just as prophets of the greenhouse effect warned would happen.
It must be remembered, however, that there are other perils which are undeniable and equally dangerous-soil erosion, water aquifer depletion, the destruction of biodiversity, for example. Even if the greenhouse effect is taking place, there is a danger that attention focuses one-sidedly on greenhouse gas sources, with inadequate appreciation of the other side of the equation-the loss of ecosystems such as forests which have acted as balancing 'sinks'. This unbalanced approach may be because ecosystem protection is less amenable to technological fixes and would raise unwelcome questions about human overpopulation.
Actions to counteract global warming are likely to be solution multipliers since they would solve many other environmental, social and economic ones as well. Second, to have any lasting effect, such action may involve nothing less than a wholesale break with the values, goals and structures of industrial growth society. It should never be forgotten that just as important as greenhouse gas sources is the loss of greenhouse gas 'sinks', as more and more of the Earth is deforested or are carbon 'storage times' contract through fast rotation systems, particularly in forestry.
Abrahamson, D., ed. The Challenge of Global Warming. Island Pr., 1989.
Agarwal, A. & S. Naraiin. Global Warming in an Unequal World. Centre for Science & Environment (India), 1991.
Bernhard, H. Global Warming Unchecked. Univ. Indiana Pr., 1993.
Boyle, S., & J. Ardill. The Greenhouse Effect. Hodder & Stoughton, 1989. Accessible study of global overwarming
Broome, J. Counting the Cost of Global Warming. White Horse Pr., 1992.
Bunyard, P. Industrial Agriculture-Driving Climate Change. The Ecologist, 26(6), 1996: 290-298.
Christie, I. Social & Political Aspects of Global Warming. Futures, Jan/Feb., 1992: 83-89.
Daily, G. & P. Ehrlich. An Exploratory Model of the Impact of Rapid Climate Change on the World Food Situation. Procs.Royal Soc., 241, 1990: 232-244.
Flavin, C. Slowing Global Warming. WorldWatch Institute, 1989.
Flavin, C. & O. Tunali. Getting Warmer Worldwatch, 8(2), 1995: 10-19.
Foley, G. Global Warming: Who is Taking the Heat? Panos, 1991.
French, H. Clearing the air: a Global Agenda. WorldWatch Institute, 1990.
Gates, D. Climate Change & Its Biological Consequences. Sinauer, 1993.
Gelbspan, R. The Heat is On. Addison-Wesley, 1997.
Gribbin, J. Hothouse Earth. Bantam, 1990.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Global Warming. CUP, 1991. Perhaps the key study group on this complex issue-up-dates have followed.
Jardine, K. Finger on the Carbon Pulse: Climate Change and the Boreal Forests. The Ecologist, 24(6), 1994: 220-224.
Leggett, J. Global Warming: The Greenpeace Report. OUP, 1990.
Lyman, F. The Greenhouse Trap. Beacon Pr., 1990.
McCully, P. Climate Change Dooms Dams. Earth Island, Fall, 1996: 28-29.
Oppenheimer, M., & R. Boyle. Dead Heat: The Race Against the Greenhouse Effect. Tauris, 1990
Parry, M. L. Climate Change & World Agriculture. Earthscan, 1990.
Peters, R.L. & T. E. Lovejoy, eds. Global Warming & Biological Diversity. Yale UP, 1992.
Schneider, S. Global Warming: Are We Entering the Greenhouse Century. Lutterworth, Pr., 1990.
Soulé, M. Health Implications of Global Warming and the Onslaught of Alien Species. Wild Earth, Summer, 1995: 56-61.
General Water Issues
Water has forced its way to the surface as one of the biggest problems facing society. Discussion, however, has tended to focus on pollution yet the long-term issue will be its sheer availability in desired quantities. Public debate has been dominated by questions of ownership and related matters such as water company profits. There is comparative silence on the big issues of what our population levels, lifestyles and land use patterns are doing to the most fundamental of all resources, water.
Water is essential to every aspect of living. Indeed, that great energy guzzler and polluter, the modern motor car, could not be constructed without vast quantities of water, something like 500,000 gallons per vehicle. We share our need for water with other lifeforms and the effects upon them of the water crisis are even worse. In many regions, water tables are falling, underground aquifers drying out, rivers and lakes shrinking. Lake Chad, once one of the biggest lakes in Africa, is now a tenth of its previous size. Freshwater supply should be a renewable resource but overpopulation, greater per capita consumption and water-wasteful technologies not only directly tap it to excess but create other effects which indirectly magnify the problem.
This is most clear in the case of pollution, deforestation and human-induced climatic change. Acid rain, for example, has been polluting waterways around the world. Deforestation destabilises water supply as the sponge of tree cover is lost and water runs off the land, often causing devastation downstream. However it is the emerging 'greenhouse effect' that makes the crisis most out of the ordinary. Though the total water budget may remain the same, the 'greenhouse effect' will mean more water falling in some areas and less elsewhere. The world will witness more devastating floods and more crippling droughts. The drying out of many parts of Africa is already creating havoc but Britain too seems set to become warmer and drier.
The conventional response in the past has been to treat the problem as a shortage of supply rather than a longage of demand. There may be hosepipe bans and other conservation measures but the focus remains firmly on new reservoirs, water movement schemes, including fantastic ideas about the towing of icebergs to water-short areas. Indeed we are faced with the prospects of a new round of what might be called hydraulic imperialism.
Plans are afoot for more powerful and richer regions to tap the resources of other communities (both human and wildlife). An example from earlier this century can be seen in the popular film, Chinatown, the background to whose plot is the colonisation by Los Angeles of the waters of other parts of California and Nevada. One of today's most far-reaching schemes is also to be found in the same part of the world. Under the plans of the North America Power and Water Alliance, Canadian resources would be hijacked to keep the inhabitants of the American south-west 'sunshine' states is the style to which they are accustomed.
Such schemes would require truly massive amounts of energy and raw materials to construct, all of which come with enormous environmental and economic price tags. Human and wildlife communities in the way of new dams and reservoirs will be destroyed. They would require highly centralised management systems too. Indeed in history 'hydraulic' civilisations have tended to be some of the most brutal and repressive on record, including those of Mesopotamia. And they have all suddenly collapsed with remarkable speed.
Less megalomaniac schemes may be still fundamentally flawed. The extra water they might deliver would only provide positive feedback to current patterns of overconsumption, just as more roads generate more traffic. In any case, in a changing climate coupled to increasing demand, there is no certainty that new dams will remain filled. In the long run, increased water supply, by itself, would exacerbate, not relieve, our thirst. No longer can we take for granted the Earth's water resources. We need a vigorous and radical programme of water conservation. Without it, not only will we experience more frequent and severe droughts but also the danger of water wars will increase. Then the future will be dammed !
Abramovitz, J. Freshwater Failures: The Crises on Five Continents Worldwatch, 8(5), 1995: 27-35.
Abramovitz, J. Imperiled Waters. Impoverished Future: The Decline of Freshwater Ecosystems. Worldwatch Institute, 1996.
Barker, R. And the Waters Turned to Blood. Simon & Shuster, 1997. Agribusiness pollution off the eastern seaboard of the USA coast and the devastating knockon ecological disrution it is causing there.
Bowden, C. Killing the Hidden waters: The Slow Destruction of Water Resources in the American Southwest. Texas Univ. Pr., 1977. How to turn a renewable resource into a non-renewable one.
Bowers, J. Water Privatisation & the Environment. Economic Review, 8(3), 1991: 9-14.
Brown, L. & B. Halweil. The Drying of China. WorldWatch, 11(4), 1998: 10-21.
Bulloch, J. & A. Darwish. Water Wars: Coming Conflicts in the Middle East. Gollanz, 1993.
Clarke, R. Water: The International Crisis. Earthscan, 1991. A strong overview.
Gardiner, G. A Tale of Three Aquifers. Worldwatch, 8(3), 1995: 30-36. Case studies from Saudi Arabia Libya, & the American Prairies.
Gleik, P. H., ed. Water in Crisis: A Guide to the World's Fresh-Water Resources. OUP, 1993.
Goldsmith, E. & N. Hildyard. The Social and Environmental Effects of Large Dams. 3 vols., WEC, 1984, 1986 & 1992. A comprehensive indictment of large-scale dam building.
Gottlieb, R. A Life of Its Own: The Politics & Power of Water. HBJ, 1989.
Gwynn, R. The Way of the Sea: The Use & Abuse of Oceans. Green Books, 1987.
Hinrichsen, D. Our Common Seas: Coasts in Crisis. Earthscan, 1990.
Kinnersley, D. Coming Clean: The Politics of Water and the Environment. Penguin, 1994.
Palmer, T. Lifelines: The Case for River Conservation. Island Pr., 1994.
Pearce, F. Watershed: The Water Crisis in Britain. Junction books, 1982. An older book but its tale of megalomaniac planning, wasted water and pollution is still sadly relevant.
Pearce, F. The Dammed: Rivers, Dams and the Coming World Water Crisis. Bodley Head, 1992.
Platt, A. Dying Seas. Worldwatch, 8(1), 1995: 10-19. Overview with case studies of Black Sea, Yellow Sea, Baltic Sea, Caspian Sea, Bering Sea, South China Sea & Mediterranean.
Starr, J. & D. Stoll, eds. The Politics of Scarcity: Water in the Middle East. Westview, 1988.
Weber, P. Abandoned Seas: Reversing the Decline of the Oceans. Worldwatch Institute, 1993.
Wilcove, D. & M. Bean, eds. The Big Kill: Declining Biodiversity in America's Lakes & Rivers. Environmental Defence Fund (Washington), 1994.
Water Pollution
Clark, R. B. Marine Pollution. OUP, 1992.
Cook, J. Dirty Water. Unwin Hyman, 1989.
Craig, F. & P. Craig. Britain's Poisoned Water. Penguin, 1989.
Davidson, A. In the Wake of the Exxon Valdez: The Devastating Impact of the Alaska Oil Spill. Sierra Books, n.d.
Gordon, S. Down the Drain: Water, Pollution and Privatisation. Optima, 1989. A critique of the impact of privatisation of water supply in the UK.
Gourlay, K. Poisoners of the Sea. Zed, 1988.
Jorgenson, E. The Poisoned Well: New Strategies for Groundwater Protection. Island Pr., 1979.
Maywald, A., et al. Water Fit to Drink? In Goldsmith E. & N. Hildyard, eds. The Earth Report, Mitchell Beazley, 1988.
Mele, A. Polluting for Pleasure. Norton, 1993. Pollution from boats, with special emphasis on pleasure craft.
Excessive Abstraction from water systems
Anon. High and Dry: The Impact on Wildlife of Taking Too Much Water from Our environment. WWF-UK, 1996.
Kahrle, W. Water & Power: The Conflict over Los Angeles' Water Supply in the Owens Valley. Univ. Calif. Pr., 1982.
Postel, S. The Last Oasis: Facing Water Scarcity. Earthscan, 1992.
Postel, S. Rivers Drying Up. Worldwatch, 8(3), 1995: 10-19.
Reisner, M. Cadillac Desert: The American West and its Disappearing Water. Viking Pr., 1986.
Reisner, M & S. Bates. Overtapped Oasis. Island Pr., 1990.
Overfishing
McCully, P. FAO & Fisheries Development. The Ecologist, 21(2), 1991: 77-80. Critique of conventional 'development' strategies.
Madeley, J. Fish: A Net Loss for the Poor. Panos, 1995.
Weber, P. Net Loss: Fish, Jobs and the Marine Environment. Worldwatch Institute, 1994.
Ecodegradation and physical homogenisation
The eruption of humanity is now spreading degradation to all corners of the world. It ranges from the rubbish heaps now piling up on the approaches to Mount Everest to the toxic chemicals contaminating wildlife in the most remote parts of the North and South polar regions. Once rich & diverse ecosystems are reeling under the blows.
Even when the assault is less drastic than, say, the clearance of the tropical moist forests, a general physical homogenisation and biotic impoverishment is nonetheless underway. Sometimes it visibly calls attention to itself. Across western Europe, for example, the planting in recent years of the rape plant spreads a yellow splotch each summer across huge areas with the same crop on land once dotted with woodland, meadow, and wetland. The modern countryside suffers almost as much from 'placelessness' as does the grey sprawl of conurbations.
The same process is at work across all land biomes and across the world's water systems. Fewer & fewer rivers run 'wild' while one estuary after another is dredged and drained. Surviving old growth woodlands are being toppled from Chile to Siberia., and only patches of unmodified grassland survive in regions such as the Prairies. Most attention has focused, of course, on the rainforests. It is indicative of the tide of destruction that the flora and fauna of the Vietnamese jungles are now being destroyed at a faster rate than during the worst years of the terrible Vietnam War.
Hummel, M., ed. Endangered Spaces. Key Porter, 1990. Comprehensive coverage of the on-going destruction of remaining wilderness areas around the world. It reinforces the fundamental point that it is spaces, i.e. habitats not individual species, that count.
Noss, R., et al. Endangered Ecosystems of the United States: A Peliminary Assessment of Loss and Degradation. USDI, Biological Service, Report no 28., 1995.
Whyte, W. The Last Landscape. Anchor, 1970. The blight of suburban sprawl
Wilson, A. The Culture of Nature: North American Landscape from Disney to the Exxon Valdez. Blackwell, 1992. Stimulating American study of how land use and landscaping reflects our basic attitudes and priorities and very relevant to other countries since they increasingly resemble the United States.
Biodiversity and 'Biodevastation'
Biodiversity is a bit like a bath. The 'tap' of evolution creates new species while the 'plughole' of extinction eliminates others. Humanity has been enlarging the plughole so much and so fast that evolution no longer can keep up. The assault on other lifeforms goes back a long way. Hunting and the use of fire by aboriginal peoples wiped out many species, especially larger ones, in prehistoric times. Today, however, humanity is a global force and causing unprecedented destruction. It is both a problem in its own right as well as a symptom of other problems the parallel is often drawn with the use of canaries down in mines to warn of the build-up of dangerous gases.
Unlike other forms of environmental dysfunction, the destruction of nonhuman lifeforms by people raises deep moral questions beyond the conservation of species which directly provide resources for human consumption or play an identifiable part of the maintenance of ecosystem services such as pest control and waste recycling.
Decreases in biodiversity are due to many factors:
· direct killing, e.g. trapping, poisoning, & shooting;
· indirect killing, e.g. marine species inadvertently caught in trawler nets, non-target species killed by pesticides etc.;
· pollution, e.g. the effects of acid rain & toxic chemicals;
· competition from introduced species;
· habitat fragmentation and habitat destruction.
The last pressure is the most pervasive one. It is primarily due to the expansion and intensification of agricultural land use. It is also stems from increasing timber production, more mining, industrial development, the growth in the transport infrastructure and the expansion of the built-up areas. Furthermore, if global warming takes hold, local ecosystems will undergo major changes, with many species unable to adapt, and, as a result, increasingly prone to extinction.
Few areas are unaffected. It is difficult, for example, to imagine that many upland areas in contemporary Britain would be able to rival this gamekeeper's bag from a single estate in the Grampians as late as in the years 1837 to 1840. His log records: 246 pine martins, 78 martins, 198 wild cats, 71 short-eared owls, 106 polecats, 63 goshawk, 67 badger, 35 long-eared owls, 48 otters, 27 sea eagles, 475 ravens, 18 ospreys, 462 kestrels, 15 golden eagle, 371 rough-legged buz-zards, 11 hobbys, 285 common buzzards, 6 gyrfalcons, 275 kites, 5 marsh harriers, 98 peregrine falcons, 3 honey buzzards, and 92 hen harriers.' Richard Gilbert, a hiking correspondent who quotes it in his column Walking World, goes on to note that on a walk today in the same area, 'I considered myself lucky to see several herds of deer, a golden eagle, a heron, a pair of red-throated divers and a dipper.'
Alasdair MacLean in 'Night Falls on Ardnamurchan (1984) paints a similar picture of land further west. 'In this ten years (from 1970), I saw my last molehill and my last roe deer. I heard my last corncrake. I bade farewell to woodcock, partridge, pheasant and sand martin. There were eagles as close as Plocaig once: not any more. I came across my last peregrine during this period: it was dead. Sanna is a bare place now stripped of much of its cover and many of its inhabitants and deprived of many delightful creatures'.
A similar story repeats itself across all continents and all seas. The fabric of life is being torn to shreds.
Burton, J. ed. The Atlas of Endangered Species. David & Charles, 1992.
Burton, R., ed. Animal Life. Blandford, 1994. Superb coffee table book, with not only excellent pictures but also strong text celebrating the diversity of the animal kingdom and the equally diverse range of threats to it.
Coppinger, R. P. & E. K. Smith. The Domestication of Evolution. Environmental Conservation, 18, 1983: 283-291. How a few domesticated species of plants and animals are fast replacing wild diversity.
Daily, G.C. & P. Ehrlich. Population Extinction and the Biodiversity Crisis. Wild Earth, 1997/98, Winter: 35-43.
Day, D. The Doomsday Book of Animals. Ebury Pr., 1981. Coffee table book giving historical overview of species lost due to human activity.
Ehrlich, P. Variety is the Key to Life. Technology Review, March/April, 1980: 59-68.
Ehrlich, P. & A. Extinction. Gollancz, 1981. Best review of the destruction of biodiversity and its many costs.
Grumbine, E. Ghost Bears; Exploring the Biodiversity Crisis. Earthscan, 1993.
Harris, L. D. The Fragmented Forest: Island Biogeography and the Preservation of Biotic Diversity. Univ. of Chicago Pr., 1984. A significant study with much important material on the effects of timber and the reform of forestry.
Kaufman, L. & K. Mallory, eds. The Last Extinction. M.I.T. Pr., 1994.
Leakey, R. & R. Lewin. The Sixth Extinction: Biodiversity & Its Survival. Weidenfeld, 1996.
Myers, N. The Sinking Ark: A New Look at the Problem of Disappearing Species. Pergamon, 1979. Now a bit dated but still very useful.
Myers, N. The Impending Extinction Spasm: Synergisms at Work. Conservation Biology, 14, 1987: 15-22.
Schulze, D. & H. Mooney, eds. Biodiversity and Ecosystem Function. Springer-Verag, 1993.
Simon, N., ed. The Guinness Guide to Nature in Danger: Threatened Habitats & Species. Guinness, 1993. General essays plus case studies.
Soulé, M. E.., ed. Viable Populations for Conservation. CUP, 1987.
Tuxill, J. Losing Strands in the Web of Life: Vertebrate Declines and the Conservation of Biological Diversity. WorldWatch Institute, 1998.
Vitousek, P. et al. Human Appropriation of the Products of Photosynthesis. Bioscience, 34(6), 1986: 388-373. How humans are taking bigger and bigger slices of the Earth 'cake' which must mean less for other species.
Western, D. & M. C. Pearl, eds. Conservation for the 21st Century. OUP, 1989. Losses in biodiversity are well covered in this volume. See, for example the chapters by Diamond 'Overview of Recent Extinctions', and Olsen, 'Extinctions on Islands: Man as a Catastrophe'.
Wilcox, B. A. & D. D. Murphy. Conservation Strategy; The Effects of Fragmentation on Extinction. American Naturalist, 125, 1985: 879-887. Study of the primary cause of biodiversity losses.
Wilson, E., ed. Biodiversity. Nat. Academic Pr., 1988. A major statement on the critical importance of biodiversity.
Windsor, D. Endangered Interrelationships: The Ecological Cost of Prasites Lost. Wild Earth, Winter 1995/96: 78-83. A reminder that biocomplexity is about more than cuddly creatures or photogenic plants.
Woodwell, G., ed. The Earth in Transition: Patterns and Processes of Biotic Impoverishment. CUP, 1990.
Wuerthner, G. Ecological Differences between Logging and Forest Fires. Wild Earth, Summer, 1995: 40-44. In passing, a rebuttal of the claim by loggers that their activities are no different to first fires or, for that matter, wind throws.
Wynne, G. et al. The Biodiversity Challenge: An Agenda for Conservation Action in the UK. RSPB, 1994. Report on threats to biodiversity in the UK and possible remedial measures.
Biodiversity and the Threat from Exotic Species
Bright, C. Biological Invasions. World Watch, 8(4), 1995: 10-19.
Campbell, F. & S. Schlarbaum. Fading Forests: North American trees & the Threat of Exotic Pests. Nat. Resources Defence Council, 1994.
Drake, J., et al. Biological Invasions: A Global Perspective. Wiley, 1989. A more academic study of the introduction of exotic species and its effects on indigenous ecological communities
McKnight, B. ed. Biological Pollution: The Control, & Impact of Invasive Exotic Species. Indiana Academy of Science, 1993.
Ricciardi, A. The Exotic Species Problem and Freshwater Conservation Wild Earth, Spring, 1998: 44-49.
Soulé, M. The Onslaught of Alien Species & Other Challenges in the Coming Decades. Conservation Biology, 4(3), 1990: 233-239.
Tropical Rainforests
Bramble, B. The Debt Crisis: The Opportunities. The Ecologist, 17(4/5), 1987: 192-199. Looks at debts-for-nature' swaps.
Caufield, C. In the Rainforest: Report from a Strange, Beautiful Imperilled World. Heinemann, 1985.
Colchester, M. & L. Lohmann. The Tropical Forest Action Plan: What Progress? FoE, 1990.
Cowell, A. Decade of Destruction. Doubleday, 1991. Assault on Amazonia
The Ecologist Magazine. Tropical Forests: A Plan for Action. The Ecologist, 1988. General plan and call for action.
Fearnside, P. Deforestation & International Economic Development Projects in the Brazilian Amazonia. Conservation Biology, 1, 1987: 214-221.
Fearnside, P. Deforestation in Brazilian Amazonia. The Ecologist, 19(6), 1989: 214-218.
Goodland, R., ed. Race to Save the Tropics. Island Pr., 1990.
Hecht, S. & A. Cockburn. The Fate of the Forest: Developers, Destroyers and Defenders of the Amazon. Verso, 1989.
Hemming, J. Amazon Frontier: The Defeat of the Brazilian Indians. Macmillan, 1987.
Horta, K. The Last Big Rush for the Green Gold: The Plundering of Cameroon's Rainforests. The Ecologist, 21(3), 1991: 142-147.
Johnston, B. & G. Lean, eds. Paradise Lost. Earthlife Foundation, 1986. Special supplement magazine distributed by The Observer newspaper.
Lutzenberger, J. Who is Destroying the Amazon Rainforest? The Ecologist, 17(4/5), 1987: 155-160.
McGhie, J. Reclaiming a Natural Legacy. The Ecologist, 17(4/5), 1987: 200-202. Restoration of rainforest in Costa Rica.
Myers, N. The Primary Source: Tropical Forests and Our Future. Norton, 1984.
Myers, N. Deforestation Rates in Tropical Forests and Their Climatic Implications. FoE, 1991.
Myers, N. Tropical Forests: The Policy Challenge. The Environmentalist, 12(1), 1992: 15-27.
Nations, J. & D. Komer. Rainforests & the Hamburger Society. The Ecologist, 17(4/5), 1987: 161-167. The 'hamburger connection' is sometimes exaggerated but it certainly has bitten into Central American forests.
Nichol, J. The Mighty Rainforest. David & Charles, 1990.
Repetto, R. Deforestation in the Tropics. Scientific American, 262, 1990: 36-42
Uhl, C. et al. Disturbance & Regeneration in Amazonia: Lessons for Sustainable Land Use. The Ecologist, 19(6), 1989: 235-240.
Vohra, B. Why India's Forests have been Cut Down. The Ecologist, 15(1/2), 1985: 50-51.
World Rainforest Movement. The Battle for Sarawak's Forests. FoE, Malaysia, 1992.
Temperate & Boreal Forests
Ashford, J. Forgotten Forests. Green Magazine, July, 1991: 25-28. Deforestation in Chile.
Barr, B. & K. Braden. The Disappearing Russian Forest. Rowman & Littlefield, 1988.
Berger, J. The Sierra Club Guide to Understanding Forests. Sierra Books, 1998.
Gamlin, L. Sweden's Factory Forests. New Scientist, 26 Jan., 1989: 41-44.
Isomaki, R. Paper, Pollution & Global Warming: Unsustainable Forestry. The Ecologist, 21(1), 1991: 14-16.
Maser, C. Forest Primeval. Sierra, 1988. The great but threatened forests of Pacific Northwest of USA.
Mueller, R.F. Central Appalachian Forests. Wild Earth, Fall, 1994: 37-49.
Norse, E. Ancient Forests of the Pacific Northwest. Island Pr., 1990. Another study of the once mighty North American forests
Pearce, F. How the West is Attacking Russia. Independent on Sunday, 28/3/93: 53
Petrof, D. Siberian Forests Under Threat. The Ecologist, 22(6), 1992: 267-270.
Routley, R. & V. Routley. The Fight for the Forests. Australian National University Pr., 1975. The destruction of Australian forests, which cover many forest types.
Swedish Society for Nature Conservation. Timber Versus Forests. S.S.N.C, no date. Short pamphlet which challenges the widespread image of Sweden as an environmentally friendlier nation as well as that suggested by labels on paper products about 'sustainably managed forests'.
Sub-Arctic and Polar regions
Hall S. The Fourth World: The Heritage of the Arctic and Its Destruction. Bodley Head, 1987.
Lopez, B. Arctic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape. Macmillan, 1986
Watkins, T., 1988. Vanishing Arctic: Alaska's National Wildlife Refuge. Aperture, 1988.
Wilkinson, P. Hands Off Antarctica. Green Magazine, Jan., 1990: 48-53.
Desert, Semi-desert & Grassland regions
Burman, A. Saving Brazil's Savannahs. New Scientist, 2/3/91: 30-34. Study of a less well-known environmental crisis in South America.
Clemings, R. Mirage: The False Promise of Desert Agriculture. Sierra Books, n.d.
Cole, M. The Savannahs: Biogeography & Geobotany. Academic Pr., 1986.
Council of Europe. Dry Grasslands of Europe. CoE, 1981.
Everden, N. Beauty and Nothingness: Prairie as a Failed Resource. Landscape, 273, 1983: 1-8. Study of why people have often failed to appreciate the value of regions like the original Canadian prairie.
Holroyd, G., ed. Endangered Species in the Prairie Provinces. Provincial Museum of Alberta, 1986.
Kuletz, V. The Tainted Desert: Environmental and Social ruin in the American West. Routledge, 1998.
Manning, R. Grassland: The History, Biology, Politics and Promise of the American Prairie. Viking, 1995.
Rowe, S. Virgin Prairie, Farewell. In part one of his collection of essays, Home Place, NeWest Pr., 1990.
Zeveloff, S. & C. McKell. Wilderness Issues in the Arid lands of the Western United States. University of New Mexico Pr., 1992.
Mountain regions
Allan, N., et al. Human Impact on Mountains. Rowman & Littlefield, 1992.
Denniston, D. High Priorities: Conserving Mountain Ecosystems and Cultures. Worldwatch
McNeil, J. R.,. The Mountains of the Mediterranean: an Environmental History. CUP, 1992.
Stone, P., ed. The State of the World's Mountains: A Global Report. Zed, 1992. How environmental degradation is reaching even the most isolated regions.
Wetland Destruction
Maltby, E. Waterlogged Wealth. Earthscan, 1986. Why wetlands are anything but wastelands and how they are being destroyed.
Dugan, Patrick, ed. Wetlands in Danger. Mitchell Beazley, 1993. A detailed and colourful atlas of wetlands, spotlighting the many threats to them and the importance of their protection.
Mitsch, W. & J. Gosselink. Wetlands. Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1993.
National Research Council. Wetlands: Characteristics & Boundaries. National Academy Pr., 1992.
Quarto, A. The plight of Bhitara Kanika: Emblematic of the Threats Mangroves Face. Wild Earth, Spring, 1995: 26-30. Case study from NE India.
Rezendes, P. & P. Roy. Wetlands; The Web of Life. Sierra Books, 1996.
Williams, M., ed. Wetlands: A Threatened Landscape. Blackwell, 1993
Freshwater Ecosystems
Abramovitz, J. Imperiled Waters. Impoverished Future: The Decline of Freshwater Ecosystems. Worldwatch Institute, 1996.
Ashworth, W. The Late, Great Lakes: An Environmental History. OUP, 1981.
Doppelt, B., et al. Entering the Watershed: A New Approach to Save America's River Ecosystems. Island, 1993.
Echeverria, J., et al. Rivers At Risk: The Concerned Citizen's Guide to Hydropower. Island Pr., 1989. Threat to American rivers.
Franklin, C. Let the Colorado River Run Free. Earth Island, Spring, 1997: 23. Why dams such as Glen Canyon were the wrong answer to the wrong question and why it is time to dismantle them.
Hall, R.H. Poisoning the Lower Great Lakes. The Ecologist, 16(2/3), 1986: 118-123. Chemical contamination in Canadian/US waters.
Matthieson, P. Baikal: Sacred Sea of Siberia. Thames & Hudson, 1992. Powerful portrait by a noted American writer of this unique lake which contains 20% of the world's freshwater but which has been badly damaged by Soviet industrial projects.
Palmer, T. Endangered Rivers & the Conservation Movement. Univ. Calif. Pr., 1986. Degradation and protection of American river systems.
Pearce, F. The Dammed: Rivers, Dams and the Coming World Water Crisis. Bodley Head, 1992.
Postel, S. Where Have All The Rivers Gone? Worldwatch, May/June, 1995: 9-17.
Ricciardi, A. The Exotic Species Problem and Freshwater Conservation Wild Earth, Spring, 1998: 44-49.
Rose, G. San Joaquin: A River Destroyed. Linrose Publsihers, 1993. Case study of destruction of a river, second largest in California.
Coastlines, Seas & Oceans
Ascherson, N. Black Sea. Jonathon Cape, 1995. A general history which, in passing, argues that the Black Sea could be the scene of the 'worst ecological catastrophe since the Ice Age'.
Elmgren, R. Man's Impact on the Ecosystem of the Baltic Sea. Ambio, 18(6), 1989: 326-332.
Gourlay, K. Poisoners of the Sea. Zed, 1988.
Horton, T. & W. Eichbaum. Turning the Tide: Saving the Chesapeake Bay. Island Pr., 1991.
Kotlyakov, V. The Aral Sea Basin: A Critical Environmental Zone. Environment, 33(1), 1991 :4-9.
Pickaver, A. The Pollution of the North Sea. Greenpeace, 1981.
Simon, A. The Thin Edge: Coast & Man in Crisis. Harper & Row, 1978.
Thorne-Miller, B. & J. Catena. The Living Ocean: Understanding & Protecting Marine Biodiversity. Island Pr., 1990.
Weber, P. Abandoned Seas: Reversing the Decline of the Oceans. Worldwatch Institute, 1993.
Weber, P. Net Loss: Fish, Jobs and the Marine Environment. Worldwatch Institute, 1994.
Wells, S. & N. Hanna. Greenpeace Book of Coral Reefs. Sterling Publishers, 1992.
Aquatic Life
Berrill, M. The Plundered Seas: Can the World's Fish Be Saved? Sierra Books, 1998
Busch, B. C. The War Against the Seals: A History of the North American Seal Fishery. McGill's-Queen's UP, 1985.
Cherfas, J. The Hunting of the Whale. Bodley Head, 1988.
Day, D. Whale Wars. RKP, 1987
Donoghue, M. & A. Wheeler. Dolphins: Their Life & Survival. Blandford, 1994. Passionate but erudite portrayal of the on-going destruction of the dolphin family, with many startling pictures
Frazer, N. Sea Turtle Conservation & Halfway Technology. Conservation Biology, 6, 1992: 179-184.
Fugazzotto, P. Texas Shrimp Net Massacre. Earth Island, Summer, 1997: 9. Tuna nets are not the only menace in the sea.
Leatherwood, S. & R. Reeves. The Sierra Club Handbook of Whales and Dolphins. Sierra Books, n.d.
Mowat, F. Sea of Slaughter. McClelland-Bantam, 1989. Destruction of marine life along seaboard of eastern North America.
Moyle, P. & R. Leidy. Loss of Biodiversity in Aquatic Ecosystems. In Fielder, P. & S. Jain, eds. Conservation Biology. Chapman & Hall, 1992.
National Research Council. Decline of the Sea Turtles: Causes & Prevention. Nat. Academy Pr., 1990.
North, R. Fish: Man's Last Hunted Prey. In Ch. 14 of his The Real Cost, Chatto & Windus, 1986.
Norse, E. A.., ed.. Global Marine Biological Diversity. Island Pr., 1993.
Phillips., K. Tracking the Vanishing Frog. St Martin's Pr., 1994. One more sign of the great biological meltdown now underway.
Reeves, R. et al. The Sierra Club Handbook of Seals and Sirenians. Sierra Books, n.d.
Thorne-Miller, B. & J. Catena. The Living Ocean: Understanding & Protecting Marine Biodiversity. Island Pr., 1990.
Wilcove, D. & M. Bean, eds. The Big Kill: Declining Biodiversity in America's Lakes & Rivers. Environmental Defence Fund (Washington), 1994.
William, H. Whale Nation. Jonathon Cape, 1988. Part poem plus excellent pictures with many press cuttings and extracts from books, all of which celebrate whales and denounce humanity's abuse of this amazing species. See also Falling for a Dolphin 1990 from the same author and publisher.
Windsor, D. From Pearls to Perils: The Imperilled Freshwater Clams.. Wild Earth, Spring, 1997: 31-35.
Bird & Insect life
Diamond, A. et al. Save the Birds. CUP, 1987. Encyclopaedic study, with wealth of information plus a strong commitment to bird conservation.
Flowers, R.W. Endangered Invertebrates & How to Worry about Them. Wild Earth, Winter, 1993/94: 25-31.
Ehrlich, P. et al. Birds in Jeopardy: The Imperilled & Extinct Birds of the United States & Canada. Stanford UP, 1992.
Grady, W. Vulture: Nature's Ghastly Gourmet. Sierra Books, 1998. How to appreciate a much unloved creature.
Terborgh, J. Where Have All The Birds Gone? Princeton UP, 1989.
Mammals and other land animals
Bass, R. The Ninemile Wolves. Clark City Pr., 1992. Case study of a group of wolves in Montana and the hostile forces they faced.
Busch, R. The Wolf Almanac. Lyons & Burford, 1995.
Callenbach, E. Bring Back the Buffalo. Island Pr., 1995.
Chadwick, D. The Fate of the Elephant. Penguin, 1995.
Cohn, J. Elephants: Remarkable and Endangered. Bioscience, 401, 1990: 10-14
Fitgerald, K. Troubles in the Mist: Civil War and Overpopulation Cloud Gorillas' Futures. Wild Earth, Fall, 1993: 40-43.
Fossey, D. Gorillas in the Mist. Houghton Mifflin, 1983. Author was subsequently murdered by gorilla poachers.
Geist, V. Buffalo Nation: History and Legend of the North American Bison. Voyageur Pr., 1996.
Goodall, J. A Plea for Chimpanzees. Am. Sci., 75, 1987: 574-577.
Gordon, N. Ivory Knights. Chapmans, 1991. Elephants and the ivory trade.
Grambo, R. The World of the Fox. Sierra Books, 1998.
Gruenau, D. Bison: Distant thunder. Takarajima Books, 1995.
Hamilton, I. & O.D. Hamilton. Battle for the Elephants. Viking Penguin, 1992.
Hornocker, M., ed. Track of the Tiger: Legend and Lore of the Great Cat. Sierra Books, 1998.
Hummel, M. & S. Pettigrew. Wild Hunters: Predators in Peril. Robert Rinehart, 1992.
Lopez, B. Of Wolves & Men. Scribers, 1978.
Mech, D. The Wolf: Ecology & Behaviour of an Endangered Species. Univ. Minnesota Pr., 1981.
Orenstein, R., ed. Elephants: The Deciding Decade. Sierra, 1991.
Peacock, D. Yellowstone Buffalo Slaughter. Wild Earth, Summer, 1997: 6-11. Attack on the allegedly 'necessary culls'.
Peterson, D. The Deluge and the Ark: A Journey into the Primate World. Univ. Chicago Pr., 1991. The threat to the ape family
Rabinowitz, A. Chasing the Dragon's Tail: The Struggle to Save Thailand's Wildlife. Doubleday, 1991. Personal account of conservationist battling against wildlife trade and other threats, with particular reference to the cat family. Tigers are being wiped out in Thailand simply to make Tiger Penis soup.
Schaller, G. The Last Panda. Univ. Chicago Pr., 1993.
Spragg. M., ed. Thunder of the Mustangs: Legend and Lore of the Wild Horses. Sierra Books, 1998.
Wuerthner, G. Last Chance for the Prairie Dog. Wild Earth, Spring, 1995: 21-25.
Direct Abuse of Other Creatures
Duce, C. Chicken & Egg: Who Pays The Price? Green Print, 1989.
Gold, M. Assault & Battery. Pluto, 1983. Critique of factory farming.
Hall, R. Voiceless Victims. Wildwood, 1984.
Johnson, W. The Rose-Tinted Menagerie. Heretic Books, 1990. Lifts the top off circuses, 'sea worlds' and the like.
Langley, G., ed. Animal Experimentation: The Consensus Changes. Macmilan, 1989.
McKenna, V. et al, eds. Beyond Bars: The Zoos Dilemma. Thorsons, 1987.
Martin, A. Food Pets Die For: Shocking Facts About Pet Food. NewSage Pr., 1997. Takes the lid off pet foods.
Newkirk, I. Save the Animals. Angus, 1991. Compendium of animal abuse & alternatives. Good source for organisations active in the field.
Ruesch, H. Slaughrer of the Innocent. Futura, 1979. Attack on animal testing.
Ryder, R. Victims of Science. National Anti-Vivisecton Society, 1983.
Sharpe, R. The Cruel Deception. Thorsons, 1988. Attack on the cruel futility of vivisection.
Townend, C. Pulling the Wool. Hale & Iremonger, 1985. Shears the sheep industry.
Thomas, R. The Politics of Hunting. Gower, 1983.
See also for animal-friendlier lifestyles, see Newkirk above and:
Gold, M. Living Cruelty. Green Print. 1988.
Culls and Other Onslaughts
It is common to see creatures being culled and otherwise done down, all for the own good. We are told that without such measures they would exceed carrying capacity, transmit diseases and otherwise do themselves and others harm. Strangely we never apply that logic to our own species. Usually bad science and/or commercial greed lie behind this further instance of humankind's war against its fellows.
McNally, R. Genetic Madness: The European Rabies Eradication Programme. The Ecologist, 24(6), 1994: 207-212.
Flora
Cherfas, J. Disappearing Mushrooms: Another Mass Extinction. Science, 254, 1991: 1458.
Huxley, J. Green Inheritance. Gaia, 1991.
Koopowitz, H. & H. Kaye. Plant Extinctions: A Global Crisis. Stone Wall Pr., 1983.
Prescott-Allen, R. & C. Genes From The Wild: Using Wild Genetic Resources for Food & Raw Materials. Earthscan, 1983.
Walsh, J. Germplasm Resources Losing ground. Science, 214, 1981: 421-423.
Wilkes, G. The World's Crop Plant Germplasm-An Endangered Resource. Bull. Atomic Scientists, XXXIII(2), 1977:9-16.
Impacts of Rural Land Use (mainly UK)
Baldock, D. and Conder, D., eds. Removing Land from Agriculture. C.P.R.E. and I.E.E.P., 1987.
Blunden, J. & N. Curry, eds. The Changing Countryside. Croom Helm, 1985. Very useful Open University course book.
Blunden, J. & N. Curry. A Future for Our Countryside. Basil Blackwell, 1988.
Blunden, J. & G. Turner. Critical Countryside. BBC, 1985. Based on Open University broadcasts with examples from France as well as the British countryside of the impacts of rural land use change.
Bowers, J. & Cheshire, P. Agriculture, The Countryside and Land Use. Methuen, 1983.
Buttel, F.H. & W. Flinn. Interdependence of Rural and Urban Environmental Problems. Sociologia Ruralis, 17, 1977: 255-280
Buttel, F.H. Agricultural Structure and Rural Ecology: Toward a Political Economy of Rural Development. Sociologia Ruralis, 20, 1980: 44-62
Buttel, F.H. & Newby, H., eds. Rural Sociology of the Advanced Societies. Croom Helm, 1980.
Harper, S., ed. The Greening of Rural Planning. Belhaven, 1992. With case studies from the UK, Sweden & the USA
Healey, M.J. & B.W. Ilbery. The Industrialisation of the Countryside. Geo Books, 1985
Highland Green Party. A Rural Manifesto for the Highlands: Creating The Second Great Wood of Caledon. Land Use Working Group, Scourie, 1989.
MacEwan, M., ed. Future Landscapes. Chatto & Whindus, 1976.
Newby, H. Green and Pleasant Land? Pelican, 1980. Emphasis on the undesirable social aspects of rural land use change.
Potter, C. Investing in Rural Harmony. WWF, 1983.
Pye-Smith, C. & C. Rose. Crisis and Conservation: Conflict in the British Countryside. Penguin, 1984.
Sargent, F., et al. Rural Environmental Planning for Sustainable Communities. Island Pr., 1991. American perspectives
Selman, P. Environmental Conservation or Countryside Cosmetics. The Ecologist, 6(9), 1976: 333-335.
Selman, P. Rural Planning and Biotic Resource Assessment. Town Planning Review, 53, 1982: 293-315.
Shoard, M. The Theft of the Countryside. Temple Smith, 1980.
Sinclair, G. How to Help Farmers and Keep England Beautiful. CPRE & CNP, 1985.
Sinclair, G. The Lost Land: Land Use Change in England, 1945-1990. CPRE, 1992.
See as well the sections on farming, forestry, mining, water supply and tourism. Land Ownership references are to be found under Society.
The Microcosm of the British Uplands
CPRE. The Future of the Uplands. C.P.R.E., 1983
Countryside Commission. The Lake District Upland Management Experiment. Countryside Commission, 1976.
Countryside Commission. Upland Landscape Change. Countryside Commission, 1976.
Countryside Commission. What Future For the Uplands? Countryside Commission, 1983.
Countryside Commission. A Better Future for the Uplands. Countryside Commission, 1984.
Curry-Lindahl, K. et al. The Future of the Cairngorms. North East Mountain Trust, Aberdeen, 1982.
MacEwan M. & G. Sinclair. New Life for the Hills. CNP, 1983.
Parry, M. & G. Sinclair. Mid Wales Upland Study. Countryside Commission, 1985.
Price, C. Conflict in the Uplands. Ecos, 4(3), 1983: 23-27.
Reed, T. Agents of Change in the Uplands. Ecos, 4(4), 1983: 13-18.
Robertson, J. Graeme. The Rural Land Use of Skye. Habitat Scotland, 1988.
Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. Hill Farming and the Birds: A Survival Plan. RSPB, 1984.
Watson, A. Wildlife Potential in the Cairngorms Region. Scottish Birds, 9, 1974: 245-262
Watson, D. Red Deer in Scotland: A Resource Out of Control. Ecos, 10(3), 1989: 28-34.
Urban land uses
Perhaps the best name for the modern city is one coined by Patrick Geddes, 'patholopolis', the extreme example of the environmental sickness afflicting the Earth's surface. Around the world there is increasing alarm at the state of city environments. Normally attention is focused at the exploding megacities of the 'Third World'.
However, the cities of the rich North are just as unsustainable and they too are growing as suburban sprawl flows over the countryside. Already geographers in the USA are talking about new conurbations with appropriately ugly names like Washbalt, Dalworth, San Angeles and Chimilgar. Theodore Roszak sums up the cancerous nature of this growth:
'The supercitystretches out tentacle that reach thousands of miles beyond its already sprawling parameters. It sucks every hinterland and wilderness into its technological metabolism. It forces rural populations off the land and replaces them with vast agroindustrial combines. Its investments and technicians bring the roar of the bulldozer and oil derrick into the most uncharted quarters. It runs its conduits of transport and communication, its lines of supply and distribution through the wildest landscapes. It flushes its wastes into every nearby river, lake, and ocean or trucks them awayThe world becomes its garbage can.'
Contrary to the writings of people like Jane Jacobs, who treat the city as the dynamo of human history and economic development, urban environments are actually parasitic upon non-urban environments o resource them and to carry away their wastes. Otherwise, cities would simply starve to death ,'dry out', drown in or suffocate on their own pollutants. As Roszak suggests, continued urban growth is draining the capacity of other environments to carry cities on their 'ecological shoulders'.
Environmental ills are paralleled by social and economic ones-crime, unemployment, falling revenues from declining inner city areas, deteriorating schools, health care and other services as well as trends which are less easily measured but none the less important, particularly the widely perceived decline in 'neighbourliness'.
There is a direct and thoroughly unsustainable interaction between out-of-town sprawl and inner city decline. While many urban areas have been allowed to decay, urbanisation has been permitted to engulf huge chunks of the countryside. The total area is now approx. 14.9% of land area of England and, if the current rate of land lost to tarmac and concrete continues, by the middle of the next century the urban area will cover 20% of England. At the same time, initiatives like Garden Festivals or luxury office complex/high cost housing developments on the lines of London's Canary Wharf do not seem to offer a viable road to more liveable and sustainable cities.
Brown, L., & Jacobson, J. L. The Future of Urbanisation: Facing The Ecological and Economic Constraints. Worldwatch Institute, 1987. A short study which covers most of the major points.
Bruning, N. Cities Against Nature. (other details not known)
Drakakis-Smith, D. The Third World City. Routledge, 1987.
Girardet, H. The Gaia Atlas of Cities. Gaia Books, 1992. A good overview.
Jacobs, J. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Vintage, 1961.
Jacobs, J. Cities and the Wealth of Nations. Random, 1985. An important overview, which, however, does not get to grips with the ecological basis of 'wealth' nor with the way cities are eroding it. But well worth reading.
Mumford, Lewis. The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformation and Its Prospects. Harcourt, Brace & World, 1961. Perhaps the classic study.
Newman, P. & J. Kenworthy, J. Cities & Automobile Dependence. Gower, 1989.
Rees, W.E. & M. Wackernagel. Ecological Footprints and Appropriated Carrying Capacity: Measuring the Natural Capital Requirements of Human Ecology. In A.M. Jannson et al, eds., Investing in Natural Capital. Island, 1994. How typical urban dwellers in the richer countries tread heavily on the planet.
St. Clair, D. Motorization of American Cities. Praegar, 1986.
The Limits of Conventional Environmental Protection Systems.
Concern about environmental destruction has grown rapidly since the turn of the century. It has led to the creation of various types of parks and reserves and, in some countries, quite elaborate systems of planning. Yet as a whole, such systems have been an almost complete failure (this website would be redundant otherwise!). Statutory systems of protection is only able to make belated attempts to mitigate the worst side-effects of what is accepted as 'inevitable' (more roads, more hotels, more dams, more factory estates, more suburbs). Often, it amounts to little more than cosmetics, providing a screen for destruction-as-usual.
Governments frequently commit themselves to quite incompatible conservation and development goals. In the UK, for example, the British government's policy on aggregate production (eg for building and road construction) refers to both the need for environmental protection of the country's national parks and the need for each part of the country (including, therefore, the national parks) to maintain its proportion of supply to the national aggregate market. Not surprisingly in areas such as the Yorkshire Dales and Peak District National Parks, limestone quarrying continues to damage the environment.
Some 'life-support' services, particularly genetic diversity, can only be provided by areas of land and water kept free from most forms of modern human activity. Plans for the sustainable use of tropical rainforests, for example, probably will destroy their essential ecological character as surely as the current operations of loggers, ranchers and miners. The well-known ecologist Paul Ehrlich argues that "in developed countries, disturbance of any more land should be forbidden and creation of exotic monocultures, be they golf courses, wheat fields, or tree plantations, restrained every where."
Colchester, M. & L. Lohmann. The Tropical Forest Action Plan: What Progress? FoE, 1990.
Finkler, E. Non-Growth as a Planning Alternative. American Society of Planning Officials, 1972. The option seldom considered.
Foreman, D. & H. Wolke. The Big Outside. Harmony/Crown Books, 1992. Review of America's wilderness areas, the multiplicity of threats to them and suggestions for proper protection.
Livingston, J. The Fallacy of Wildlife Conservation. McClelland & Stewart, 1981. Important critique of conventional approaches to wildlife conservation.
Livingston, J. Some Reflections on Integrated Wildlife and Forest Management. The Trumpeter, 3(3), Summer, 1986: 24-29.
Lohmann, L. Who Defends Biological Diversity? Conservation Strategies and the Case of Thailand. The Ecologist, 21(10, 1991: 5-13. Argues that putting a price on biodiversity, leaving its conservation to market forces, is a recipe for destruction.
Makino, G. Saturation: A Problem Avoided in Planning Land Use. Science, 149, 1965: 516-521.
The Limits of Parks and Reserves
Despite their real value-there would be far fewer foundatons on which to build a sustainable society without past initiatives-parks and reserves have failed to stem the tide of destruction.Tthe land set aside usually is too small to support viable population of threatened species. At the same time, air- and water-borne pollution can visit damage from outside the boundaries of protected areas. That many National Parks cannot tolerate the pressure of recreational activities emphasises the incompatibility of what might seem benign use and environmental conservation. Most National Park systems are little more than an exercise in conservation cosmetics while 'multiple use' is but a euphemism for a multiplicity of activities that ultimately destroy physical character and biological diversity of national parks and other such areas. Piecemeal schemes for nature reserves, as islands in the midst of development-as-usual', are doomed to extinction. Successful species conservation depends upon severely limiting all forms of access to protected areas as wellas making land uses such as agriculture and building much more environmentally appropriate or all the real good measures like reserves have done in specific situations, such piecemeal preservationism cannot cope with saturation levels of human pressure on the environment.
Anon. Sixteen Areas Added to Global Threatened Parks List. Ambio, 21(2), 1992; 187-188. Many examples from around the world of how national park or other forms of 'protected' status offer no security.
Baumgarten, F. Under Green Guise, Multi-Use Groups Work Against Environment. Audubon Activist, 11, 1991: 1, 4.
Bella, L. Parks for Profit. Harvest House, 1987. Canadian critique of Parks system.
Chase, A. Playing God In Yellowstone. Atlantic Monthly Pr., 1986. Although Chase makes somewhat strange and inaccurate attacks on the 'deep ecology' perspective, he forcefully documents the failure of the National Park system to conserve the Yellowstone ecosystem in the USA.
Dustin, D. & L. McAvoy. Hardining National Parks. Environmental Ethics, 2, 1980: 39-44. How open access slowly but surely eats away at protected areas, with case study of tourist pressures on Yosemite National Park. Based on Garrett Hardin's 'tragedy of the commons' thesis.
Ehrlich, P. Human Carrying Capacity, Extinctions and Nature Reserves. Bioscience, 32, 1982:331-333.
Fearnside, P. & G. Ferreira. Amazonian Forest Reserves: Fact or Fiction. The Ecologist, 15(5/6), 1985: 297-299.
Fremuth, J. Islands Under Siege: National Parks & the Politics of External Threats. Univ. Of Kansas Pr., 1991.
Frome, M. Regreening the National Parks. Univ. of Arizona Pr., 1991. The erosion of America's National Parks and how it might be reversed.
Hess, K. Rocky Times in Rocky Mountain National Park: An Unnatural History. Univ. Pr. Colorado, 1994.
Lien, C. Olympic Battleground: The Power Politics of Timber Preservation. Sierra Books, 1991. How the National Park Service has failed to conserve the temperate rainforests of the Pacific North West.
MacEwan, A. & M. National Parks: Conservation or Cosmetics. Allen & Unwin, 1982.
Machlis, G. E. & D. L. Tichness. Economic Development and Threats to National Parks. Environ. Conserv. 14(2), 1987: 151-56. Some American data
Orton, D. Canadian National Parks: Losing Ground. Wild Earth, Winter, 1991/2: 18-22.
Rowell, T. Sites of Special Scientific Interest: a Health Check. Wildlife Link, 1991. Review of the unhealthy state of many of the UK's SSSIs.
Runte, A. National Parks: The American Experience. Univ. of Nebraska Pr., 1987.
Runte, A. Yosemite: The Embattled Wilderness. Univ. of Nebraska Pr., 1990.
Sax, J. Mountains Without Handrails. Univ. Michigan Pr., 1981. A critical look at America's National Parks including the way they have been yoked to industrialised leisure.
Wilcove, D.S. & R.M. May. National Park Boundaries and Ecological Realities. Nature, 324, 1986: 206-207
Wolke, H. Wilderness on the Rocks. Ned Ludd Books, 1991. A devastating exposé of how the setting aside of fragments of wilderness in the USA has failed totally to provide the necessary protection.
Zoos market themselves these days as conservation organisations. Doubtless there are dedicated staff within their walls and in some cases vital work is being done. But
Seidman, M. Zoos and the Psychology of Extinction. Wild Eath, Winter, 1992.93: 64-69.
The Limits of 'Development Control' & Environmental Impact Assessment
One aspect of conventional protectionism is the regulation of specific developments, their form and location. However, most 'development control' vainly tries to ameliorate the worst aspects of particular developments (often by a 'beauty strip' of trees and the like or diverting it away from the most sensitive sites). As such, it is like the little Dutch boy sticking his finger in the dike, when holes are proliferating all over the sea wall. General development controls are insufficient and can encourage developers to keep coming back with their proposals, making minor modifications until they finally get their way.Techniques such as environmental impact assessment are more about testing (inadequately) how far we can manipulate environments rather than treading lightly and respectfully on the Earth.
Kreith, F. Lack of Impact. Environment, 15(1), 1973: 26-33. Critique of US National Environmental Policy Act.
Lang, R. Environmental Impact Assessment. In W. Leiss, ed. Ecology versus Politics in Canada. Univ. of Toronto Pr., 1979.
Shrader-Frechette, K.S. Environmental Impact Assessment and the Fallacy of Unfinished Business. Environmental Ethics, 4, 1982, 37-47.
Critiques of UK Environmental Legislation & Land Use Planning
Adams, W. Evidence on the Act. Ecos, 6(10, 1985: 9-10. Critique of UK Wildlife and Countryside Act of 1981.
CPRE. The Wildlife and Countryide Act Revisited. CPRE, 1984. Critique of the failure of the 1981 Act to improve significantly levels of environmental protection in the UK.
CPRE. Comments on the Gateshead Unitary Development Plan Development Strategy Plan. CPRE, 1990. Example from an old industrial area with a substantial amount of rural 'fringe' within its borders.
FoE. Sites of Special Scientific Interest: The Failure of the Wildlife & Countryside Act. FoE (London), 1984.
MacEwen, A & M. Nature and Landscape: Why the Great Divide? Ecos, 2(2), 1981: 24-29.
Critiques of Specific Statutory 'Environmental' Organisations & Measures
Both statutory and non-governmental conservation bodies also have a poor track record of success. Part of their difficulty lies in the totally inadequate scale of their resources but this is only part of the problem. In the name of 'realism' or in order to win friends in high places, some conservation groups pull their punches, restricting their demands to calls for more research and more information. Yet, if we wait for all the facts to come in, no action will ever be taken in time.
More generally, they fail to look beyond today's social order whose goals and methods inevitably bring about the crisis in the first place. Often they simply ignore burning matters such as population growth while foolishly calling for economic growth to be made 'greener'. For that reason alone, the efforts of mainstream environmentalism are doomed. They also indulge in a 'feel good' optimism which is not only totally unwarranted by the facts but also amounts to nothing more than what Michael Perlman once called a 'rousing call to inaction'. (A sample of the thining of such organisations can be found in An Enviromental Agenda for the Future, Island Pr., 1985, the collected thoughts of the leaders of top ten US environmental organisations)
There is even talk in such circles of acceptable losses and of the need to concentrate on those species that experts judge worth preserving. This is strategically wrong, for the complex interactions between species and habitats make simple classifications like useful/not useful or saveable/unsaveable meaningless. It is tactically foolish to announce a willingness to accept a lower price in advance of negotiations. Nothing is solved by the token preservation of a few habitats and a few species, to appease our conscience.
Anon. A Muzzled Watchdog: Is English Nature Protecting Wildlife? WWF-UK, 1997. A report documenting the failure of England's official nature protection quango. A similar document awaits to be written about the Countryside Commission.
Brussard, J., et al. Strategy and Tactics for Conserving Biological Diversity in the US. Conservation Biology, 6(2), 1992: 157-159.
Grumbine, E. Using Biodiversity as a Justification for Nature Protection in the US. Wild Earth, Winter 1996/97: 71-80.
Montague, P. Is Regualtion Possible. The Ecologist, 28(2), 1998: 59-61. Critique of the American Environmental Protection Agency and particularly the Toxic Substances Contro, Act of 1976.
Shaoul, J. Mad Cow Disease. The Ecologist, 27(5), 1997: 182-187. Includes expose of government-industry cover-up, in passing spotlighting the shameful role of the Environment Agency.
Willers, B. & J. Carlton. Last Chance to Save Yellowstone Ecosystem. Wild Earth, Winter 1991/92: 46-48. Assorted official agencies and voluntary groups purport to be protecting this famous regionthey have done a bad job.
Wuerthner, G. State Complicity in Wildlife Losses. Wild Earth, Winter, 1994.95: 29-33. Critique of American fish and wildlife agencies.
Zahner, R. Ecosystem Mismanagement of Cove Forests. Wild Earth, Spring, 1994: 26-29. An agent of so much habitat destruction in the past, the US Forest Service, like so many of its ilk, is talking green, with noises about 'ecosystem management' and so forth. This case study of the South Appalachian forests shows that behind the rhetoric it is destruction-as-usual
Critiques of Specific Voluntary 'Environmental' Organisations
Brower, D. Let the Mountains, Let the Rivers Run: A Call to Those Who Would Save the Earth. Harper Collins, 1995. A great little book by a giant of the movement who, in passing, smotes those droves of 'environmentalists' who would sell the Earth short.
Davoll, J. Population Growth and Conservation Organisations. Population and Environment, 10(2), 1988: 107114. Critique of the widespread tendency amongst many supposedly progressive organisations in environmental, development and other fields to sweep population problems under the carpet. Looks particularly at the stance of International Union for the Conservation of Nature.
Luten, D. et al. Immigration Commentary. Wild Earth, Summer, 1998: 90-96. A series of articles addressing another example of 'environmentalists', in this case the leadership of the Sierra Club, selling out Mother Earth, this time with regard to the threat from immigration to local carrying capacity.
Salzman, L. The Decline and Fall of Friends of the Earth in the United States. Philosophy and Social Action, 16(3), 1990: 53-64.
Stauber, J. & S. Rampton. "Democracy' for Hire: Public relations and environmental Movements. The Ecologist, 25(5), 1995: 173-180. In passing, it documents how various environmental organisations allow themselves to be seduced in thinking that, by being reasonable they have won influence in the corridors of power. However it they only get a broom cupboard in some outer office.
Vaughan, R. Compromising the Wilderness: How Mainline Environmental Groups Sold Out Alabama. Wild Earth, Winter 1991/92: 74-76.
For an example of a plea for rapprochment between traditional and more radical ecological groups, see:
McCloskey, M. Conservation Biologists Challenge Traditional Nature Protection Organisations. Wild Earth, Winter 1996/97: 67-70.
Regional Studies in Ecological Decline
The following are references to the state of particular regions and countries. Obviously there is much more material in other references on this website. One is particularly relevant-that of 'Easternisation' under Economics. It looks at the so-called 'economic miracles' of the East Asian Tigers (Japan, Taiwan, etc. ), ones often held up by politicians in the west as just the model for reinvigorating 'tired' economies like the UK. Indeed whole programmes of 'modernisation under leaders like Britain's Mr Blair amount to little more than pathetic attempts to lure oriental investment westwards and to copy the practices of the far eastern 'showcases' of technological progress. Reality is rather different as recent economic slowdowns have demonstrated. The social and environmental costs have been grossly unsustainable for the countries themselves and for other regions which they have pillaged for resources, dumping sites, and, in the case of Japan, places to dump their old people (in this case, Mexico)
Western and Northern Europe
Anon. Concern for Tomorrow. National Institute of Public Health & Environmental Protection (Bilthoven), 1989. Dutch study of their country's state and prospects.
Anon. Sweden: Timber Versus Forests. Swedish Society for Nature Conservation, n.d. Short leaflet which deeply cuts into the image of Sweden as an environmentally friendly country.
Baldock, D. Agriculture and Habitat Loss in Europe. WWF, 1990.
Bunting, M. They Shall Not Pass. The Guardian, 2/11/90:22. How motorways and bridges are carving up the Alps.
The Environmental Institute. Environment & Development in Ireland. University College Dublin, 1993. Detailed description of the state of the Irish environment
Gamlin, L. Sweden's Factory Forests. New Scientist, 26/1/1989: 41-44.
Harle, N. The Ecological Impact of Overdevelopment: A Case Study for the Limburg Borderlands. The Ecologist, 20(5), 1990: 182-189.
Irvine, S. An Overpopulated Continent. In S. Parkin, ed. Green Light on Europe. Heretic Books, 1991.
Isomaki, R. Paper, Pollution & Global Warming: Unsustainable Forestry. The Ecologist, 21(1), 1991: 14-16. Finnish study.
Poleszynski, D. The Dominant Way of Life in Norway: Positive and Negative Aspects. In I. Miles & J. Irvine, eds. The Poverty of Progress. Pergamon, 1982.
Raitio, K. & B. Forbes. Finland-A Country of Forests Turned into a Country of Plantations. Wild Eart, Summer, 1995: 31-32. Les than 2% of Finnish woodland is actually old growth!
Southern Europe, from Iberia to the Balkans
Farino, T. Spain: Europe's Ecodelinquent. Conservation Now, n.d. (1992?): 25-30.
Harris, R. No Wild Rivers. Wild Earth, Fall, 1997: 46-51. A look at the destruction of river environments in Catalonia.
Zogaris, S. Save Wild Greece. Western Canada Wilderness Committee, Education Report 10(6), 1991.
Eastern Europe
Bahro, R. The Alternative in Eastern Europe. New Left Books, 1978. One of the first 'eco-dissidents in the Communist Bloc.
Beres, Z. Hungary in Transition: The Ecological issue. In S. Parkin, ed. Green Light on Europe. Heretic Books, 1991.
DeBardeleben, J. To Breathe Free: The East European Environmental Crisis. John Hopkins Pr., 1991.
Ecoglasnost. The Rise of the Ecology Movement in Bulgaria. In S. Parkin, ed. Green Light on Europe. Heretic Books, 1991.
French, H. Green Revolutions: Environmental Reconstruction in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Worldwatch, 1990.
Guminska, M. Air pollution & Health in Poland. In S. Parkin, ed. Green Light on Europe. Heretic Books, 1991.
Manser, R. Going West: Market Reform and Environment in Eastern Europe. The Ecologist, 24(1), 1994: 27-32.
Marcinkiewicz, J. S.O.S. Poland. Environment Now, Oct./Nov., 1987: 48-50.
Nagiecki, J. Bread and Freedom: Agriculture in Poland. The Ecologist, 26(1), 1996; 13-18.
the CIS and former Soviet Union
Barr, B. & K. Braden. The Disappearing Russian Forest. Rowman & Little field, 1988.
Bergland, E. Clear-Cut Madness in Russian Karelia. The Ecologist, 27(6), 1997: 237-241.
Feshbach, M. & A. Friendly. Ecocide in the USSR: Health & Nature Under Siege. Aurum Pr., 1992.
French, H. Green Revolutions: Environmental Reconstruction in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Worldwatch, 1990.
Goldman, M. The Spoils of Progress. MIT Pr., 1972. Comparatively early study of the destructiveness of Soviet farming and industrialisation.
Komarov, B. The Destruction of Nature in the Soviet Union. Pluto Pr., 1978. An early example of 'ecowhistle-blowing' in the former Communist bloc.
Kotlyakov, V. The Aral Sea Basin: A Critical Environmental Zone. Environment, 33(1), 1991 :4-9.
Matthieson, P. Baikal: Sacred Sea of Siberia. Thames & Hudson, 1992. Powerful portrait by a noted American writer of this unique lake which contains 20% of the world's freshwater but which has been badly damaged by Soviet industrial projects.
Medvedev, Z. The Environmental Destruction of the Soviet Union. The Ecologist, 20(1), 1990: 24-29.
Millinship, W. Mother Russia's Poisoned Legacy. The Observer, 31/5/92:49-50.
Newell, J. & E. Wilson. The Russian Far East: Foreign Direct Investment and Destruction. The Ecologist, 26(2), 1996 : 68-72.
Pearce, F. The Scandal of Siberia. New Scientist, 27/11/1993: 28-33.
Peterson, D. Troubled Lands: The Legacy of Soviet Environmental Destruction. Westview Pr., 1993.
Petrof, D. Siberian Forests Under Threat. The Ecologist, 22(6), 1992: 267-270.
Robinson, P. The Uranium Mines of Siberia. Baikal Watch (Earth Island Institute, USA), 1996.
Scmidt, E. The World Bank and Russian Oil. The Ecologist, 27(10, 1997; 21-27. Destructive effects of oil development in western Siberia
Vidal, J. Drawing The Poison: Toxic Dumping by the West in Russia. The Guardian, 23/4/93:8-9.
Wolfson, Z. Soviet Conservation Policy-A Battle Against the Clock. Ecos, 11(3), 1990: 35-40.
Africa
Bennett, O., ed. Greenwar: Environment and Conflict. Panos, 1991. Look at vicious circle of environmental degradation and war in Sahel region in Africa.
Colchester, M. Slave & Enclave: The Political Ecology of Equatorial Africa. The Ecologist, 23(5), 1993: 166-173.
Dudley, J. Biodiversity in Southern Africa. Wild Earth, Fall, 1996: 26-30.
Dumont, R. Stranglehold on Africa. Deutsch, 1983.
Durning, A. Apartheid's Environmental Toll. Worldwatch Institute, 1990.
Ferguson, J. The Anti-Politics Machine: 'Development' and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho. The Ecologist, 24(5), 1994: 176-181.
Finkelstein, D. The Future of Biodiversity in the New South Africa. Wild Earth, Winter, 1993/94: 82-83.
Harrison, P. The Greening of Africa. Paladin, 1987.
Graham, O. A Land Divided: The Impact of Ranching on a Pastoral Society. The Ecologist, 19(5), 1989: 184-185. Break-up of Maasai tribal land system in Kenya and its effects.
Horta, K. The Last Big Rush for the Green Gold: The Plundering of Cameroon's Rainforests. The Ecologist, 21(3), 1991: 142-147.
Lanning, G. & M. Mueller. Africa Undermined: Mining Companies and the Underdevelopment of Africa. Penguin, 1979.
Linear, M. The Tsetse War. The Ecologist, 15(1/2), 1985: 27-35. Critique of the campaign to eradicate the Tsetse fly in Africa.
Marnham, P. Fantastic Invasion: Dispatches from Africa. Penguin, 1987.
Horta, K. The Mountain Kingdom's White Oil: Lesotho Highlands Water Project. The Ecologist 25(6), 1995: 227-232.
Massinga, A. Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Development Dilemmas in Mozambique. The Ecologist, 26(2), 1996 : 73-75.
Matthieson, P. Shadows of Africa. Frank Abrams, 1992.
Matthiessen, P. African Silences. Random House, 1991. The devastation of wildlife in west and central Africa.
Mitchell, T. The Use of an Image: America's Egypt and the Development Industry. The Ecologist, 26(1), 1996: 19-25.
Pereira, W. & J. Seabrook. Asking the Earth: Farms, Forestry & Survival in Africa. Earthscan, 1991.
Timberlake, L. Africa in Crisis. Earthscan, 1988.
Middle East
Arab countries like Egypt have been grouped under Africa although they are intimately linked to developments in the Middle East.
Baker, M. Thicker Than Oil: A Green Perspective on the Gulf. Green Party, 1991. Short pamphlet.
Bloom, S., et al. Hidden Casualties: Environmental, Health & Political Consequences of the Persian Gulf War. Earthscan, 1993.
Bulloch, J. & A. Darwish. Water Wars: Coming Conflicts in the Middle East. Gollancz, 1993.
McKinnon, M & P. Vine. Tides of War: Eco-Disaster in the Gulf. Boxtree, 1991. The environmental destructiveness as well as the human costs of modern warfare in a conflict which, many argue, has its roots in competition for control of future oil supplies.
Smith, G. Dead Sea is Dying. Earth Island, Fall, 1997: 15.
Starr, J. & D. Stoll, eds. The Politics of Scarcity: Water in the Middle East. Westview, 1988.
Various. The Deep Wells of Conflict. The Guardian, 12/10/1990: 33. The danger of 'water wars' in the Middle East.
Whitman, J. The Environment in Israel. Environment Protection Service (Jerusalem), 1988.
China
Barber, M. & G. Ryder, eds. Damning the Three Gorges: What Dam Builders Don't Want You to Know. Earthscan, 1993. Spotlights one of the world's true megafollies, an insane scheme backed by pre-Communist, Communist and market-oriented Chinese governments, demonstrating that ecostupidity transcends conventional political classifications.
Brown, L. Who Will Feed China? WorldWatch Institute, 1995.
Brown, L. & B. Halweil. The Drying of China. WorldWatch, 11(4), 1998: 10-21.
Cannon, T. Colonialism From Within. China Now, 135, 1990: 6-14.
Edmonds, R. Patterns of China's Lost Harmony: A Survey of the Country's Environental Degradation and Protection. Routledge, 1994.
Forestier, K. The Degreening of China. New Scientist, 1/7/1989: 52-58.
Leckie, S. Housing as Social Control in Tibet. The Ecologist, 25(1), 1995: 8-15. Part of the Chinese destruction of tibetan society has been housing clearance of traditional Tibetan housing.
Lowe, J. The Scorched Earth: China's Assault on Tibet's Environment. Multinational Monitor, Oct., 1992: 15-19.
Smil, V. China's Environmental Crisis. Sharpe, 1993.
Various. China: The Ecological Challenge. Earthwatch, 34, 1989: 2-9.
Vermeer, E. Agriculture in China: A Deteriorating Situation. The Ecologist, 14(1), 1984:
Wenhua, L & Z. Xianying. China's Nature Reserves. China Books, 1990.
Japan
Huddle, N., et al. Island of Dreams: Environmental Crisis in Japan. Autumn Pr., 1975. The very deep down-side to the Japanese economic miracle which has also been bought by raping environments in many other countries.
Williams, T. Japan Bashing Reconsidered. Audubon, 9/10, 1991: 26-36. Japans' role as leading ecocriminal.
Taiwan & Philippines
Anderson, J. Lands At Risk, People At Risk: Perspectives on Tropical Forest Transformations in the Philippines. In P. Little, ed. Lands At Risk in the Third World. Westview Pr., 1987.
Bello, W. et al. Development Debacle: the World Bank & the Philippines. Institute for Food & Development Studies, 1982.
Bello, W. & S. Rosenfeld. High-Speed Industrialisation and Environmental Devastation in Taiwan. The Ecologist, 20(4), 1990: 125-132.
Bello, W. & S. Rosenfield. Dragons in Distress. 1992. Critical look at the so-called tiger economies of the Far East.
Broad, R. & J. Cavanagh. Plundering Paradise: The Struggle for the Environment in the Philippines. Univ. Calif. Pr., 1993.
Drucker, C. Dam the Chico: Hydropower Development & Tribal Resistance. The Ecologist, 15(4), 1985: 149-156. Philippine case study.
Mincher, P. The Philippine Energy Crisis. The Ecologist, 23(6), 1993: 228-233. The threat from large-scale energy projects.
Pakistan and Bangla Desh
Ahmed, M. Poverty, Food and Aid Politics in Bangladesh. The Ecologist, 15(5/6), 1985: 261-262
Ahmed, M. Bangladesh: How Forest Exploitation is Leading to Disaster. The Ecologist, 17(4/5), 1987: 168-169.
India & Himalayan states
Bandyopadhyay, J. & V. Shiva. Chipko: Rekindling India's Forest Culture. The Ecologist, 17(1), 1987: 26-34.
Banerjee, S. & S. Kothari. Food and Hunger in India. The Ecologist, 15(5/6), 1985: 257-260.
Bhatari, R. et al. The Narmada Valley Project-Development or Destruction? The Ecologist, 15(5/6), 1985: 269-290. Critique of World Bank mega-project in India.
Bunyard, P. Can Self-Sufficient Communities Survive the Onslaught of Development? The Ecologist, 14(1), 1984: 2-5. Case study of Ladakh in the Himalayas.
Centre for Science & Environment. The State of India's Environment. CSE (New Delhi), 1982.
Dogra, B. Forcing the Starving to Export Their Food. The Ecologist, 15(1/2), 1985: 42-48. Critique of export-oriented agricultural development.
Dogra, B. India's White Revolution: Another World Bank Financed Disaster. The Ecologist, 15(4), 1985: 183-186. Critique of dairy products scheme.
Gadgil, M. & R. Guha This Fissured Land: An Ecological History. Univ. of Calif. Pr., 1992.
Gadgil, M. & R. Guha. Ecology & Equity: The Use & Abuse of Nature in Contemporary India. Routledge, 1995.
Gittings, J. Hidden Faults of an Indian Super Model. The Guardian, 20/3/96. Critical look at the state of Kerala, often hailed as a model of social progress and more sustainable forms of development.
Guha, R. The Unquiet Woods: Ecological Change & Peasant resistance in the Himalayas. Univ. Calif. Pr., 1990.
Guha, R. The Malign Encounter: The Chipko Movement & Competing Visions of Nature. In T. Banuri & F. Marglin, eds. Who Will Save The Forests. Zed, 1993.
Pereira, W. & J. Seabrook. Asking the Earth: Farms, Forestry & Survival in India. Earthscan, 1990/
Sampat, P. What Does India Want?. WorldWatch, 11(4), 1998: 30-. The politicians and the military want bigger bombs but that does not address the real threat to India's security-environmental degradation.
Sharma, R. Assessing Development Costs in India. Environment, 29(3), 1987: 6-111, 34-38.
Vikas, G. & Pradan group. Communal Rights vs. Private Profit: Tribal Peoples and tea plantations in Northeast India. The Ecologist, 20(3), 1990: 105-107.
Vohra, B. Why India's Forests have been Cut Down. The Ecologist, 15(1/2), 1985: 50-51.
Sri Lanka
Rupesinghe, K. The Effects of Export-Oriented Industrialisation in Sri Lanka. The Ecologist, 15(5/6), 1985: 246-256.
Tampoe, M. Economic Development & Coastal Erosion in Sri Lanka. The Ecologist, 18(6), 1988: 225-230.
Burma
Greer, J. US Petroleum giant to Stand Trial Over Burma Atrocities. The Ecologist, 28(4), 1998: 34-37. Highlights the links between the country's vicious military dictatorship and transnational corporation, Unocal.
Welling, P. A Pipeline Killing Field: Exploitation of Burma's Natural Gas. The Ecologist, 24(5), 1994: 189-193.
Thailand
Lohmann, L. Commercial Tree Plantations in Thailand: Deforestation By Any Other Name. The Ecologist, 20(1), 1990: 9-17.
Lohmann, L. Who Defends Biodiversity? Conservation Strategies and the Case of Thailand. The Ecologist, 21(1), 1991: 5-13.
Phantumvanit, D. & S. Khunying. Thailand: Degradation & Development in a Resource-Rich Land. Environment, 30(1), 1988: 11-15, 30-32.
Siam Society, ed. Culture & Environment in Thailand. Siam Society, 1989.
Tuntawiroon, N. The Environmental Impact of Industrialisation in Thailand. The Ecologist, 15(4), 1985: 161-164.
Vietnam & Laos
Kemf, E. Casualties of Vietnam's Recovery. New Scientist, 14/9/91:38-43. Peace may have come but the war against nature is intensifying in Vietnam.
Lam, A. A Fate Worse Than War. Earth Island, Summer, 1995: 26. The military war might have ended but the war against nature is intensifying in Vietnam.
Westing, A. Ecological Consequences of the Second Indochina War. Almquist & Wiksell, 1976.
Malaysia and Indonesia
Anon. Pulping the Rainforests: the Rise of Indonesia's Paper & Pulp Industry. Down to Earth (London), 1991.
Bawe, L. Private Profit at Public Expense: The Bakun HEP Project. The Ecologist, 26(5), 1996: 29-233. Sarawak case study.
Brosius, P. River, Forest & Mountain: the Penan Gang Landscape. Sarawak Museum Jnl, XXXVI(57): 173-184.
Hurst, P. Forest Destruction in South East Asia. The Ecologist, 17(4/5), 1987: 170-174.
Kaur, N. Food Production in a Developing Country: The Malaysian Experience. The Ecologist, 15(5/6), 1985: 263-264
Marr, C. Digging Deep: The Hidden Costs of Mining in Indonesia. Down to Earth (London), 1993.
Ngau, H., et al. Malaysian Timber: Exploitation for Whom? The Ecologist, 17(4/5), 1987: 175-179.
Runyan, C. Indonesia Now. WorldWatch, 11(3), 1998: 12-23.
Rush, J. The Last Tree: Reclaiming the Environment in Tropical Asia. Asia Society, 1991.
SKEPHI & R. Kiddell-Monroe. Indonesia: Land Rights & Development. In M. Colchester & L. Lohmann. The Struggle for the Land and the Fate of the Forests. Zed, 1993.
Various. Indonesia's Transmigration Programme. The Ecologist, 16(2/3), 1986: 58-117. Extended description and analysis of a case study in internal colonisation and exploitation.
Australasia & Pacific Ocean
Filer, C. The Bougainville Rebellion: The Mining Industry & the Process of Social Disintegration in Papua New Guinea. Canberra Anthropology, 13(1), 1990: 1-39.
Flannery, T.F. The Future Eaters: An Ecological History of the Australian Lands and Peoples. Braziller, 1995.
Good, K. Papua New Guinea: A False Economy. Anti-Slavery Society, 1990.
Hyndman, D. Ok Tedi: New Guinea's Disaster Mine. The Ecologist, 18(1), 1988: 24-29.
Lines, W. Taming the Great South Land: A History of the Conquest of Nature in Australia. Univ. College Pr., 1994.
Moorehead, A. The Fatal Impact: An Account of the Invasion of the South Pacific, 1767-1840. Hamish Hamilton, 1966.
Roberts, J. Massacres to Mining: The Colonisation of Aboriginal Australia. Dove, 1981.
Routley, R. & V. Routley. The Fight for the Forests. Australian National University Pr., 1975. The destruction of Australian forests, which cover many forest types.
Saunders, D., et al, eds. Australian Ecosystems: 200 Years of Utilisation, Degradation and Reconstruction. Surrey Beatty, 1990.
Szabo, M. New Zealand's Poisoned Paradise. New Scientist, 31/7/1993: 29-33.
Wehrheim, J. Paradise Lost. The Ecologist, 1(10), 1971: 4-8. Americanisation and environmental destruction in Hawaii.
Young, E. Third World in the First: Development and Indigenous People. Routledge, 1995. Includes Australian case studies.
North America
Arnold, S. & D. Goulet. The 'Abundant Society' and World Order: Dominant Ways of Life in United States. In I. Miles & J. Irvine, eds. The Poverty of Progress. Pergamon, 1982.
Ashworth, W. The Late, Great Lakes: An Environmental History. OUP, 1981.
Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides. Nova Scotia's Forests Under Assault. Green Web (N.S.), 1991.
Davidson A. In the Wake of the Exxon Valdez. Sierra, 1990.
Denniston, D. The Temperate Rainforest: Canada's Clear-Cut Secret. Worldwatch, 6(4), 1993: 9 & 34.
Diem, A. Clearcutting British Columbia. The Ecologist, 22(6), 1992: 261-266.
DiSilvestro, R. The Endangered Kingdom: The Struggle to Save America's Wildlife. Wiley, 1989.
Dowie, M. The Selling Out of the Greens. The Nation, 18/4/94. Prsident Clinton treats the environment as badly as he appears to treat women.
Dunlap, T. Saving America's Wildlife. Princeton UP, 1988.
Epstein, S. Hazardous Waste in America. Sierra, 1982.
FoE. Reagan & the Environment. FoE (USA), 1982.
Gabel, M. Empty Breadbaskets: The Coming Challenge to America's Food Supply & What We Can Do About It. Rodale Pr., 1986.
Hall, R.H. Poisoning the Lower Great Lakes. The Ecologist, 16(2/3), 1986: 118-123
High Country News. Reforming the Western Frontier. Island Pr., 1989.
Hummel, M. Whither Wilderness in Canada. Wild Earth, Winter, 1991: 12-15.
Jensen, D. B., et al.. In Our Hand: A Strategy for Conserving California's Biological Diversity. Univ. Calif. Pr., 1994. Includes strong account of the destruction of biodiversity in California.
Kuletz, V. The Tainted Desert: Environmental and Social ruin in the American West. Routledge, 1998.
Lash, J. et al., eds. A Season of Spoils: the Reagan Administration & the Administrative Attack on the Environment. Pantheon, 1984.
Maser, C. Forest Primeval. Sierra Books, 1989.
McConnell, R. The Real Environnmental Crisis. Population & Environment, 12(4), 1991: 407-416. Overview of overpopulation and environmental degradation in the USA.
Mello, R. Last Stand of the Red Spruce. Island Pr., 1987. Acid rain threat in eastern USA.
Mowat, F. Sea of Slaughter. McClelland-Bantam, 1989. Destruction of marine life along seaboard of eastern North America.
Naar, J. & A. This Land is Your Land: A Guide to North America's Endangered Ecosystems. Harper, 1993.
Palmer, T. The Wild & Scenic Rivers of America. Island Pr., 1993.
Palmer, T. California's Threatened Environment. Island Pr., 1993.
Petulla, J. American Environmental History. Merrill, 1988.
Regenstein, L. America The Poisoned. Acropolis Books, 1982.
Reisner, M. Cadillac Desert: The American West & Its Disappearing Water. Viking Pr., 1986.
Runte, A. Yosemite: The Embattled Wilderness. Univ. Nebraska Pr., 1990.
Shepard, J. The Forest Killers. Weybright & Tally, 1975.
Sheridan D. Desertification of the United States. Resources for the Future, 1981.
Sierra Club. Ancient Rainforests At Risk. Sierra Club (BC), 1991.
Terborgh, J. Why American Songbirds Are Vanishing. Scientific American, May, 1992: 98-104.
Tokar, B. Between the Loggers and the Owls: The Clinton Northwest Forest Plan. The Ecologist, 24(4), 1994: 149-153. Another sell-out by the Clinton administration.
Valhalla Society. British Columbia's Endangered Wilderness. Valhalla Society (New Denver, BC), 1988.
Wilcove, D. & M. Bean, eds. The Big Kill: Declining Biodiversity in America's Lakes & Rivers. Environmental Defence Fund (Washington), 1994.
Wilkinson, C. Crossing the Next Meridian: Land, Water & the Future of the West. Island Pr., 1992.
Wolkie, H. Wilderness on the Rocks. Ned Ludd Books, 1991. The destruction of North America's wild species and landscapes-and the failure of official conservationism to protect them.
Worster, D. Under Western Skies: Nature & History in the American West. OUP, 1992.
Wuerthner, G. Yellowstone & the Fires of Change. Dream Garden Pr, 1989.
Wuerthner, G. How The West Was Eaten. Wilderness, Spring, 1991: 26-37.
Young, E. Third World in the First: Development and Indigenous People. Routledge, 1995. Includes Canadian case studies.
Central America & West Indies
Barry, T. Roots of Rebellion: Land & Hunger in Central America. South End Pr., 1987.
Colchester, M. Guatemala: The Clamour for Land & the Fate of the Forests. In M. Colchester & L. Lohmann. The Struggle for the Land and the Fate of the Forests. Zed, 1993.
Faber, D. Environment Under Fire: Imperialism and the Ecological Crisis in Central America. Monthly Review Pr., 1993.
Gardner, F. et al. Guatemala: a Political Ecology. Environment Project on Central America (San Francisco), 1990.
Hansen-Kuhn, K. Sapping the Economy: Structural Adjustment in Costa Rica. The Ecologist, 23(5), 1993: 179-184. Impoverishment and environmental destruction courtesy of the World Bank and IMF.
Kopinak, K. Desert Capitalism. Univ. Arizona Pr., 1996. The realities of the assembly plants that have set up along the northern Mexico border.
Kurlansky, M. Haiti's Environment Teeters on the Edge. International Wildlife, 18(2), 1988: 35-38.
Leith, W. Mexico City: Choking to Death. Independent on Sunday, 30/6/91: 3-4.
Nations, J. & D. Komer. Rainforests & the Hamburger Society. The Ecologist, 17(4/5), 1987: 161-167.
Simon, J. Endangered Mexico: An Environment on the Edge. Sierra Books, 1998.
Wallace, D. The Quetzal and the Macaw: The Story of Costa Rica's National Parks. Sierra Books, n.d.
Weinberg, B. War on the Land: Ecology & Politics in Central America. Zed, 1991. The ecological destructiveness of conflicts in that region.
South America
Barnes, J. Driving Roads through Land Rights; The Columbian Plan Pacifico. The Ecologist, 23(4), 1993: 135-140.Bourne, R. Assault on the Amazon. Gollancz, 1978.
Bourne, R. Assault on the Amazon. Gollancz, 1978.
Branford, S. & O. Glock. The Last Frontier: Fighting Over Land in the Amazon. Zed, 1985.
Bunyard, P. The Columbian Amazon: Policies for the Protection of Its Indigenous Peoples & Their Environment. Ecological Pr., 1989.
Carrere, R. Pulping the South: Brazil's Pulp and Paper Plantations. The Ecologist, 26(5), 1996: 206-214.
Colby, G. & C. Dennett. Thy Will Be Done: The Conquest of the Amazon, Nelson Rockefeller & Evangelism in the Age of Oil. Harper Collins, 1995.
Colchester, M. Sacking Guyana. Multinational Monitor, Sept., 1991: 8-14.
Corry, S. Cycles of Dispossession: Amazon Indians & Government in Peru. Survival International Review, 43, 1984: 45-70.
Davis, S. Victims of the Miracle. CUP, 1977. How the Brazilean economic 'take-off' has ground under many of its communities and environments.
Dean, W. Brazil & the Struggle for Rubber. CUP, 1987.
Gribel, R. The Balbina Disaster: The Need to Ask Why? The Ecologist, 20(4), 1990: 133-135. Critique of Brazilian HEP scheme.
Hecht, S. The Sacred Cow in the Green Hell: Livestock & Forest Conversion in the Brazilian Amazon. The Ecologist, 19(6), 1989: 229-226.
Hecht, S. & A. Cockburn. The Fate of the Forests: Developers, Destroyers & Defenders of the Amazon. Harper, 1990.
Hecht, S. Brazil: Landlessness, Land Speculation & Pasture-Led Deforestation. In M. Colchester & L. Lohmann. The Struggle for the Land and the Fate of the Forests. Zed, 1993.
Hemming, J. Red Gold: The Conquest of the Brazilian Indians. Macmillan, 1978.
Jensen, D. Lessons from Peru. Earth Island, Summer, 1997: 40-41. Oppression and environmental despoilation marching hand in hand.
Lutzenberger, J. The World Bank's Polonoroeste Project: A Social & Environmental Catastrophe. The Ecologist, 15(1/2), 1985: 69-72. Huge and devastating transformation of Brazilian forest region.
Shankland, A. Brazil's BR-364: A road to Nowhere?. The Ecologist, 23(4), 1993: 141-147.
The United Kingdom
Britain is a highly populated, urbanised, and industrialised society, from which fact flow a whole cocktail of environmental problems. Once largely covered in rich deciduous forest, the landscape is now dominated by farmland monocultures, blocks of plantation forestry, interspersed with the occasional reservoir, mine and quarry, plus, of course, huge swathes of suburbia, office and retail complexes, factory estates and communications infrastructure.
Contrary to widespread perceptions that the country's population is static or even falling, human numbers in this already crowded island are set to rise by 5 million by the year 2027. The environmental impact of Britain's dense urban conurbations are well known. The problems of poor air quality, for example, regularly hit the headlines. Air pollution is also a major export, as Scandinavians regularly have objected with reference to acid rain. Large tracts of land are contaminated as a result of past mining and industrial activity while new development is absorbing swathes of farmland. Some of the country's best soils, for example, now lie beneath Heathrow airport and its surrounding estates. Yet, for many species, suburban gardens and industrial wasteland are now havens such is the intensity of land use in the countryside.
National governments of both Labour and Conservative administrations in the UK have not enjoyed a good reputation amongst either British environmentalists or foreign governments, particularly those receiving air-borne pollutants from Britain or sharing waters into which British wastes are being dumped. For this reason, the epithet of 'dirty old man of Europe' has been widely used. The issue of the disposal of the Brent Spar oil rig was only one of many instances when the UK government found itself at odds with its political neighbours.
Every administration has been committed to traditional goals such as faster economic growth and more trade. At the same time, the electorate has been promised ever increasing levels of physical consumption, even though the average citizen (though not an impoverished minority) lives a lifestyle of unprecedented affluence, one which could not be generalised to the rest of the world. If environmental conservation got in the way of such goals, so much the worse for the environment. Monuments to this track record range from now destroyed Twyford Down, sacrificed to save drivers a few minutes of their time, to the nuclear waste repositories of Sellafield.
In terms of governmental organisation, the Department of the Environment covers a multitude of roles, many of which are highly incompatible with environmental conservation. The hideous building occupied for much of its life by the DoE in London perhaps symbolises its actual role. Yet British governments have introduced examples of what were pioneering examples of land use planning, not least the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act. Conservation measures have ranged from the designation of 'green belts' to the creation of national parks. However, within the latter, land is still largely privately owned and the pressure from owners to maximise development potential still threatens to undermine conservation gains.
More generally, planning systems are still embedded in the value system and goals of Industrial Growth Society. Basically, the British planning system has functioned to plan for growth, not against it. Techniques like environmental impact assessments tend to be used to facilitate further exploitation of the environment, assessing how far it can be stretched-they are not about reducing human impacts or about environmental protection, restoration and rehabilitation. Often, environment is treated as just an 'amenity', a word popular in the planning literature and which has connotations of the same significance as a swimming pool or a tennis court and much less important than a factory estate or housing development.
It might be noted that in Britain at least, post-war planning was perceived as a means to protect the countryside from urban sprawl. Yet first the 1945 Labour administration and its Conservative successors were committed to economic and social policies which industrialised rural land use. The real environmental threat, then, came from 'within' the countryside than from the towns outside.
Britain also an impressive record of visionary proposals for model towns and new garden cities, with some interesting achievements on the ground (New Lanark and Welwyn Garden City). Most urban development has fallen far short of such ideals and a bland uniformity, profligate in its use of land, energy and other resources, has poured over many urban and suburban areas. Many communities which, for all their physical shortcoming functioned well at a social level were bulldozed to the ground and their inhabitants rehoused in tower blocks. The record is even less impressive when to the efforts of war-ravaged countries like Germany and Poland to rebuilt from the ruins their historic town centres.
Though the British 'countryside' holds a special place in many hearts, it is not easy to define what it is. There are many indices of rurality, though clearly the absence of built-up areas and extensive land uses are striking features. However, amongst the general public, sentiment often clouds the picture, with images of past bucolic idylls. Some environmental organisations also approach rural issues in a very superficial way, focusing mainly on public access and the maintenance of cherished landscapes. This is the case in the battles to preserve the look of open moorlands, which in reality are grossly degraded habitats, the product to a large extent of years of human abuse.
It is of course impossible to discuss the countryside in isolation from cities. Many rural problems are the consequence of the unsustainable demands generated by current patterns of urbanisation. Agriculture, for example would not be so intensive if it were not for the demand for food from urban centres where, usually, there has been little attempt to cater for their needs from city-based production systems (as happens to a considerable extent in some Chinese cities). However, there are more sustainable ways in which those pressures for food and a host of other supplies could be managed. For examples see under the heading of Technology.
Blunden, J. & N. Curry. The Changing Countryside. Croom Helm, 1985. Very useful Open University course book.
Campaign for the Protection of Rural England/Green Alliance. Putting Our Own House in Order-the UK's Responsibilities to the Earth Summit. CPRE, 1992.
Craig, F. & P. Craig. Britain's Poisoned Water. Penguin, 1989.
FoE. How Green is Britain? Hutchinson, 1990.
Goldsmith, E. & N. Hildyard, eds. Green Britain or Industrial Wasteland. Polity Pr., 1988.
Harvey, G. The Killing of the Countryside. Cape, 1997. Powerful critique of the devastation of Britain's rural environment.
Pye-Smith, C. & C. Rose. Crisis and Conservation: Conflict in the British Countryside. Penguin, 1984.
Rose, C. The Dirty Man of Europe. Simon & Shuster, 1991.
Shoard, M. Theft of the Countryside. Paladin, 1980. The assault on the 'traditional' English countryside.
Sinclair, G. The Lost Land: Land Use Change in England, 1945-1990. CPRE, 1992.
Wheeler, D. Britain's Polluted Drinking water. The Ecologist, 16(2/3), 1986: 130-131.
Wynne, G. et al. The Biodiversity Challenge: An Agenda for Conservation Action in the UK. RSPB, 1994. Report on threats to biodiversity in the UK and possible remedial measures
Critiques of UK Government Policy
The following mainly refer to the Tory years. Little has changed with the advent of a Labour government.
British Association of Nature Conservationists & Media Natura. Ground Truth: a Report on the Prime Minister's First Year. BANC, 1989.
FoE. The Environment-The Government's Record. London: FoE, 1988.
FoE. Disinheriting the Earth: Government Inaction Since the Publication of 'This Common Inheritance. FoE, 1991.
FoE. Stealing Our Future: Critique of 'This Common Inheritance'. London: FoE, 1990.
Juniper, T. Government Still Taking Chop. Earth Matters, Summer, 1992: 12-13. Critique of government record regarding tropical deforestation.
Media Natura. Why Britain Remains 'The Dirty Man of Europe'. Greenpeace, 1990.
Media Natura. This Common Incompetence: Mismanagement of Environment Policy Since the Publication'This Common Inheritance'. Greenpeace, 1991.
Ecosystem 'Health', Carrying Capacity & Sustainability
Agee, J. K. & D. R.. Johnson, eds. Ecosystem Management for Parks & Wilderness. Univ. Washington Pr., 1988. Looks specifically at the greater Yellowstone ecosystem in the USA but with relevance to general measures and management structures for greater sustainability
Brakel, M. von & M. Buitenkamp. Sustainable Netherlands: A Perspective for Changing Northern Lifestyles. FoE, Netherlands, 1992. What ecological sustainability and an assumption of global equity might mean for the average citizen in a rich country.
Catton, W. Carrying Capacity, Overshoot, & the Quality of Life. In J. Yinger & S. Cutler, eds. Major Social Issue: A Multidisciplinary View. Free Pr., 1978.
Catton, W. Social & Behavioral Aspects of the Carrying Capacity of Natural Environments. In I. Altman & J. Wohlwill, eds. Bahaviour & the Natural Environment. Plenum Pr., 1983.
Catton, W. The World's Most Polymorphic Species: Carrying Capacity Transgressed Two Ways. Bioscience, 37(6), June, 1987: 413-419.
Catton, W. Carrying Capacity and the Death of Culture: A Tale of Two Autopsies. Sociological Inquiry, 63(2), 1993:202-223. Looks particularly at the ecological suicide of the Easter Island culture on Polynesia.
Catton, W. What Have We Done To Carrying Capacity. Wild Earth, Winter, 1997/98: 64-70.
Costanza, R, et al, eds. Ecosystem Health. Earthscan, 1993
Daily, G. & P. Ehrlich. Population, Sustainaiblity & the Earth's Carrying Capacity. Bioscience, 42(10), 1992: 761-771.
Daly, H. Towards Some Operational Principles of Sustainable Development. Ecol. Econ., 2, 1990: 1-6.
Fremlin, J. An Optimum Population for Britain. New Scientist, 21/12/67: 717-719. A far-fetched but interesting comparison of quantity versus quality of life.
Goodland, R., et al, eds. Population, Technology & Lifestyle: The Transition to Sustainability. Island Pr., 1992.
Goodland, R. The Concept of Environmental Sustainability. Ann. Rev.Ecol. Syms., 26, 1995: 1-24.
Hardin, G. Cultural Carrying Capacity: A Biological Approach to Human Problems,' Bioscience, 36, 1986: 599-606
House, P. The Carrying Capacity of A Region: a Planning Model. Omega, 2(5), 1974: 667-676.
Noss, R. Sustainability & Wilderness. Conservation Biology, 5(1), 1991: 120-122. Argues for the importance of large areas of comparatively unmodified and unmanaged areas ('wilderness') in plans for sustainability.
Odum, E. Optimum Population & Environment. Current History, June, 1970: 355-359, 365.
Focus on state of Georgia in USA.
Odum, E. Ecology and Our Endangered Life-Support Systems. Sinauer, 1989.
Orians, G. Ecological Concepts of Sustainability. Environment, 32(9), 1990: 10-39.
Orr, D. The Question of Management. Conservation Biology, 4, 1990: 8-9.
Pacific Northwest Rivers Basins Commission. Ecology & Economy. PNRBC (Vancouver), 1972.
Peterson, R. Carrying Capacity Analysis of the Pacific Northwest. Environment Protection Agency, 1973.
Pimentel, D. & M. Land, Energy & Water: The Constraints Governing Ideal US Population Size. Negative Population Growth, Forum Paper 3, 1990.
Pimentel, D., et al. Natural Resources & an Optimum Human Population. Population & Environment, 15(5), 1994: 347-369.
Rapport, D., et al. Ecosystem Behaviour Under Stress. American Naturalist, 125, 1985: 617-640.
Rapport, D. What Constitutes Ecosystem Health. Perspectives in Biology & Medicine, 33(1), Autumn, 1989: 120-132.
Rees, W. Conserving Natural Capital. Int. Jnl. Canadian Studies, 4, Fall, 1991:7-27.
Slesser, M. & J. King. Population, Resources, Environment & Development: A Natural Capital Accounting approach to the Assessment of Carrying Capacity. Brit. Soc. for Population Studies, Annual Conf. Proceedings, Sept., 1992.
Smith, J.W., ed. Immigration, Population & Sustainable Environments: The Limits to Australia's Growth. Flinders Pr., 1991.
Vitousek, P. et al. Human Appropriation of the Products of Photosynthesis. Bioscience, 34(6), 1986: 388-373.
Wisniewski, R. Carrying Capacity: Understanding Our Biological Limitations. Humboldt Jnl. of Soc. Relations, 7, 1980: 55-70.
Woodley, S., et al. Ecological Integrity and the Management of Ecosystems. St Lucies Pr., 1993 A mainly Canadian collection.
Programmes for Ecological Sustainability
Aberley, D. ed. Futures by Design: The Practice of Ecological Planning. New Society Publishers, 1994.
Andruss Van, et al, eds. Home! A Bioregional Reader. New Society Publishers, 1990. An interesting collection of articles based around the notion of bioregionalism. It takes as its organising framework the underlying realities of geology, drainage patterns, flora and fauna, plus the human cultures that mesh with them.
Ausubel, K. Restoring the Earth: Visionary Solution from the Bioneers. Kramer, 1997. Case studies of 'bioneers' who are pioneering the way to a healed Earth.
Bender, T. Sharing Smaller Pies. In Lane de Moll and Gigi Coe, eds., Stepping Stones: Appropriate Technology and Beyond, Marion Boyars, 1979. An example of how, contrary to myths spread in particular by left-wing writers, the link between ecological sustainability and equity long has been recognised in political ecology circles.
Brown, L, et al. Saving the Planet. Earthscan, 1992. Greener alternatives from the Worldwatch Institute.
Coates, G., ed. Resettling America: Energy, Ecology & Community. Brick House, 1981. A varied but always interesting collection of programmes and specific initiatives.
Ehrlich P. & R. Harriman. How to be a Survivor: A Plan to Save Spaceship Earth. Pan, 1971. An older work which provides, amongst other things, an opportunity to assess how accurate were the diagnoses and prescriptions of 60s environmentalists. It is worth noting that its contents provide evidence that refutes the charge that such thinkers ignored inequity and narrowly focused on physical resources at the expense of related social issues.
Ehrlich, P. & A. Ehrlich. Healing the Planet. Addison-Wesley, 1991.
Goldsmith, E. et al. Blueprint For Survival. Penguin, 1972. One of the classic analyses of the human predicament and how to build a sustainable society. Its authors now dissent from the original book's exaggerated faith in the capacity of governments to act. However, as an overview of what is to be done, it generally stands the test of time.
Green Party, Highland Region. A Rural Manifesto for the Highlands: Creating The Second Great Wood of Caledon. Green Party of Scotland Land Use Working Group, 1989. An investigation of possible land use and lifestyle alternatives to revive a long degraded environment, the Scottish Highlands.
IUCN/UNEP/WWF. Caring for the Earth: A Strategy for Sustainable Living. Earthscan, 1991. A programme put forward under the umbrella of sustainable development. Whether it gets to grips with overdevelopment and overpopulation is open to question. It tends to focus upon aims rather than specific mechanisms, leaving unclear what sustainability will mean in practical terms. Will, for example, present levels of air travel continue? Or, to look at institutional aspects, will banks maintain their role in the economy?
Trainer, T. The Conserver Alternatives for Sustainability. Zed, 1995. Outlines the features of a sustainable society and spotlights examples of what is being done now to shift lifestyles and social structures in that direction.
Work on specific indicators can be sampled in:
Anon. Green Gauge 96': Indicators for the UK Environment. WWF-UK and other UK organisations
Anon. Signals for Success: a Users' Guide to Indicators. WWF-UK.
Ecological Land Use Planning, Taxation & Ownership
Dresser, P. van. A Landscape for Humans: A Case Study of the Potentials for Ecologically Guided Development in an Uplands Region. Biotechnic Pr., 1972. One of the few attempts to conceptualise regional development within ecological constraints.
Freyfogle, E. Land Ownership, Private and Wild: a Proposed Strategy. Wild Earth, Winter 1995/96: 71-77.
Girardet, H., ed. Land for the People. Crescent Books, 1976.
Harrison, F. Land Tenure. Paper to The Other Economic Summit, London, 1984.
McHarg, I. Design With Nature. Doubleday, 1969. Classic study of how to plan land use so that it harmonises with ecological tolerances, rhythms and cycles, for example, not citing dense settlements on flood plains.
McHarg, I. Human Ecological Planning. Landscape Planning, 8(2), 1981: 109-120.
Newsom, M. Land, Water and Development-River Basin Systems and their Sustainable Management. Routledge, 1992. Looks at a critical framework for land use planning-watersheds and river basins.
Shoard, M. This Land is Our Land. Paladin, 1987. Particular reference to land taxation.
Stillman, P.G. Property Rights, Ecological Limits and the Steady State. In D. Pirages, ed. The Sustainable Society. Praeger, 1977.
Protection & Restoration Of Biodiversity
Barker, R. Saving All The Parts. Island Pr., 1993.
Berger, J. Restoring the Earth. Knopf. 1986. A look at the work of individual and groups in America.
Berger, J., ed. Environmental Restoration: Science & Strategies for Restoring the Earth. Island Pr., 1989.
Burton, R., ed. Nature's Last Strongholds: Conserving the World's Wild Places. OUP, 1991.
Cairns, J., ed. The Recovery Process in Damaged Ecosystems. Arbor Sci. Pub., 1980
Cairns, J., ed. Rehabilitating Damaged Ecosystems. (2 vols.) CRC Pr., 1988
Cairns, J. The Status of the Theoretical & Applied Science of Restoration Ecology. Environmental Professional, 13, 1991: 186-194.
Chadwick, D. The Biodiversity Challenge Defenders of Wildlife. Washington, 1990.
Davis, S., & Ogden, J., eds. Everglades: The Ecosystem & Its Restoration. St. Lucie Pr., 1994. Detailed case study of a severely threatened but rich and vital ecosystem.
Ehrenfeld, D. Biological Conservation. H.R.W., 1970.
Ehrenfeld, D. Conserving Life on Earth. OUP, 1972.
Falk, D. et al, eds. Restoring Diversity: Strategies for the Reintroduction of Endangered Plants. Island Pr., 1995.
Foreman, D. A Modest Proposal for a Wilderness Preservation System. Whole Earth Review, 53, 1986: 42-45
Friedman, M., ed. Forever Wild. Mountain Hemlock Pr., 1988. Practical study of how to conserve a wild area Cascades in NW of the USA
Frome, M. Regreening the National Parks. Univ. Arizona Pr., 1992. Exploration of how to rescue America's national Parks from the industrialised tourism and other depredations
Grumbine, E. Environmental Policy & Biodiversity. Island Pr., 1994.
Grumbine, E. Protecting Biodiversity through the Greater Ecosystem Concept. Natural Areas Jnl, 19(3), 1990: 114-120.
Helliwell, D. R. Planning for Nature Conservation. Packard, 1985. British focus.
Hemenway, D. Eight Principles for Designing Natural Systems. Whole Earth Rev., 48, 1985: 72-73
Hudson, W., ed. Landscape Linkages & Biodiversity. Island Pr., 1991.
Jensen, D. B., et al.. In Our Hand: A Strategy for Conserving California's Biological Diversity. Univ. Calif. Pr., 1994. Includes strong account of the destruction of biodiversity in California.
Karr, J. Biological Integrity & the Goal of Environmental Legislation. Conservation Biology, 4(3), 1990: 244-250. The need for a broad conservation approach in legislative initiatives.
Kusler, J. & M. Entula. Wetlands Creation and Restoration: The Status of the Science. Island Pr., 1990.
Jordan, W. R., et al. Restoration Ecology: A Synthetic Approach. CUP, 1987.
McGhie, J. Reclaiming a Natural Legacy. The Ecologist, 17(4/5), 1987: 200-202. Restoration of rainforest in Costa Rica.
Margolin, M. The Earth Manual: How to Work on Wild Land Without Taming It. Heyday, 1985.
Mills, S. In the Service of the Wild: Restoring & Reinhabiting Damaged Land. Beacon Pr., 1995. Survey of a variety of practical initiatives.
Moffe, G. & R. Carroll. Principles of Conservation Biology. Sinauer, 1994.
Nilsen, R., ed. Helping Nature Heal : An Introduction to Environmental Restoration. Ten Speed Press, 1991. Some excellent case studies
Norton, B., ed. The Preservation of Species. Princeton Univ. Pr., 1986.
Norton, B., ed. Why Preserve Natural Diversity? Princeton Univ. Pr., 1987.
Noss, R. A Regional Landscape Approach to Maintain Diversity. Bioscience, 33, 1983: 700-706.
Noss, R., 1985. On Characterising Presettlement Areas: How and Why. Nat. Areas Jnl., 5(1), 1985: 5-19.
Noss, R. Do We Want Diversity? Whole Earth Review, 55, 1987: 126-128.
Noss, R. Protecting Natural Areas in Fragmented Landscapes. Nat. Areas Jnl., 7, 1987: 2-13
Noss, R. Wilderness Recovery: Thinking Big in Restoration Ecology. Environmental Professional, 13, 1991: 225-234.
Noss, R. & L. Harris. Nodes, Networks, MUMS: Preserving Diversity at All Scales. Environmental Management, 10(3), 1986: 299-309.
Noss, R. & A. Cooperrider. Saving Nature's Legacy: Protecting & Restoring Biodiversity. Island Pr., 1994
Noss, R. et al. The Science of Conservation Planning: Habitat-Based Conservation Under the Endangered Species Act. Island Pr., 1997.
Primack, R. Essentials of Conservation biology. Sinauer, 1994.Shafer, C. Nature Reserves: Island Theory & Conservation Practice. Smithsonian Institute, 1990.
Smith. D. & P. Hellmund. Ecology of Greenways: Design & Function of Linear Conservation Areas. Univ. Minnesota Pr., 1993.
Smyser, C., et al. Nature's Design: A Practical Guide To Natural Landscaping. Rodale Pr., 1982.
Soulé, M. E., ed. Conservation Biology. Sinauer, 2 vols., 1980 & 1986.
Soulé, M. E. The Onslaught of Alien Species, and Other Challenges in the Coming Decades. Conservation Biology, 43, 1990: 233-239
Trombulak, S. How to Design an Ecological Reserve. Wild Earth, Special Paper 1.Western, D., & M. Pearl, eds. Conservation for the Twenty-First Century. OUP.
Westman, W. E. Managing for Biodiversity: Unresolved Science and Policy Questions. Bioscience, 40, 1990: 26-33
Wilson, E. The Diversity of Life. Harvard UP, 1992.
Wilson, M., et al. Native plants, Native Ecosystem and Native Landscapes. Wild Earth, Summer, 1992: 34-36. A look at a much used and abused little word' native', one often derided as a means of justifying 'anything-goes' land (ab)use.
Wolf, E. On the Brink of Extinction: Conserving the Diversity of Life. WorldWatch Institute, 1987.
Wuerthner, G. Envisioning Wildland Restoration. Wild Earth, Fall, 1993: 70-74. Argues that areas of marginal economic activity could be focus for speedier restoration work.
Wynne, G. et al. The Biodiversity Challenge: An Agenda for Conservation Action in the UK. RSPB, 1994. Report on threats to biodiversity in the UK and possible remedial measures.
Rural Land Use, Wildlife and Habitats
Adams, W. Nature's Place; Conservation Sites and Countryside Change. Allen & Unwin, 1986.
Blunden, J. & N. Curry. A Future for Our Countryside. Basil Blackwell, 1988.
CPRE. Conserving the Countryside: Costing It Out. C.P.R.E., 1989.
CPRE. Less Intensive Farming. C.P.R.E., 1988.
CPRE. Protecting the Countryside? C.P.R.E., 1987.
Harper, S., ed. The Greening of Rural Planning. Belhaven, 1992. With case studies from the UK, Sweden & the USA
Highland Green Party. A Rural Manifesto for the Highlands: Creating The Second Great Wood of Caledon. Land Use Working Group, Scourie, 1989.
Mabey, R. The Common Ground: A Place for Nature in Britain's Future. Arrow Books, 1980. A look at the vanishing features of the 'traditional' countryside.
MacEwan, M., ed. Future Landscapes. Chatto & Whindus, 1976.
Nature Conservancy Council. Nature Conservation and Agriculture. N.C.C., 1977
Potter, C. Investing in Rural Harmony. WWF, 1983.
Pye-Smith, C. & C. Hall. The Countryside We Want. Green Books, 1987.
Sargent, F., et al. Rural Environmental Planning for Sustainable Communities. Island Pr., 1991. American perspectives
Selman, P. Rural Planning and Biotic Resource Assessment. Town Planning Review, 53, 1982: 293-315.
Sinclair, G. How to Help Farmers and Keep England Beautiful. CPRE & CNP, 1985.
Terrason, F.& G. Tendron, G. The Case for Hedgerows. The Ecologist, 11: (5), 1981 210-221
Warren A. & B. Goldsmith, eds. Conservation in Perspective. Wiley, 1983. Many chapters deal with rural land use change.
Conserving & Restoring Woodlands
The following provide guides to the conservation of old growth woodland and the restoration of equivalent wooded areas, in other words new forests not plantations.
Alverson, W. et al. Wild Forests: Conservation Biology & Public Policy. Island Pr., 1994.
Hunter, M. Wildlife, Forests and Forestry: Managing Forests for Biological Diversity. Prentice-Hall, 1990. American study.
Küchli, C. Forests of Hope: Stories of Regeneration. New Society, 1997
Peterken, G.F. Habitat Conservation Priorities in British and European Woodlands. Biol. Conserv., 11, 1977: 223-236
Peterken, G.F. Woodland Conservation and Management. Chapman & Hall, 1981.
Smith, M. How to Save the Forests of Snowdonia. New Scientist, 1/7/82: 14-17
Conserving Biodiversity in Wetlands & Coastline
Burke D., et al. Protecting Nontidal Wetlands. American Planning Association, 1989.
Carr, S. & M. Bell. Practical Conservation: Boundary Habitat. Hodder & Stoughton, 1991.
Dailber, F. C. Conservation of Tidal Marshes. Van Nostrand Reinhold. 1986.
Waal L. de et al. Ecology and Management of Invasive Riverside Plants. Wiley, 1994.
Greener Cities
An increasing number of initiatives are looking at ways to cure the diseases of contemporary urbanism. Already, we have had the Environment City projects in cities like Leicester. However, it is critical to get clear what we mean by a sustainable city. Otherwise, there will be nothing more than cosmetic changes, with a few extra tree plantings, some energy efficiency schemes, the odd cycle way and a bit of traffic calming, measures which, though very useful, scarcely get to grips with the ecological burden created by contemporary cities.
What we need is a programme of urban 'eco-redevelopment'. Already there are stimulating examples of the urban environments we need. Sometimes they are to be found in very old cities which escaped 'development' and which provide working models, warts and all, of human-scale and convivial neighbourhoods. However, ecocities will harness some of the latest designs and technological innovations. Perhaps the most notable case is the town of Davis in California, where, for example, the building codes encourage high standards of energy efficiency and use of solar water and space heating.
Sustainable guidelines for urban (re)development should include
houses built within a 5 minute walking distance of village centres with village greens, shops and businesses;
architectural standards emphasising traditional designs, sloping gabled roofs, vertical windows etc.;
bans on materials including urea-formaldehyde products, CFC & HCFC blown foams, petroleum-based paints and floor finishes, vinyl siding, asphalt;
recycling and composting areas to be incorporated into all building design;
a Community Land Trust, removing land from the market;
non-profit development companies to deliver 'affordability' initiatives;
wildlife corridors and full protection for watercourses, including no-build strips around them and minimum distances from water storage of for hazardous materials,; 50% of the site to be green space, predominantly with native species; 40% of each single family lot to be soft landscaped no gravel, concrete etc. ;
covenants on land to restrict use of chemical pesticides, herbicides, and fertilisers as well as protect tree cover;
a pre-entry source control programme for liquid wastes, a tertiary biological sewage treatment and a community composting plant; large-scale recycling programmes; community resource sharing co-op to reduce purchasing cars, tools etc.;
building permits conditional on a construction wastes recycling plan;
water rates set to encourage conservation with high water efficiency standards for all homes and appliances;
energy-saving incentives in energy tariffs as well as runs programme for purchase of solar systems and energy-efficient equipment;
community-owned utilities; village and street design to encourage pedestrian travel; electric golf cart vehicles for non-pedestrian internal trips;
a community transportation administrator to develop car-pooling, flexiwork, worksharing etc.
The economic plan focused upon initiatives such as: construction industry focused upon resource conserving building technologies; added-value wood products industry-doors, cabinets etc.; a 70 acre park for innovatory environmental, telecommunications and instrumentation industries; a business network providing mutual support, information and resource sharing; electronic conferencing & bulletin board. A rich programme of arts and cultural development has featured in the plans.
Alexander, C. A New Theory of Urban Design. OUP, 1987. All Alexander's works are worth reading, with this one giving a more general overview.
Appleyard, D. Living Streets. Univ. California Pr., 1981.
Barton, H., et al. Sustainable Settlements-A Guide for Planners, Designers & Developers. Univ. West England (Faculty of Built Environment), 1995.
Berg, P. et al, eds. A Green City Program for San Francisco. Planet Drum, 1989.
Cadman, D. & G. Payne. The Living City: Towards a Sustainable Future. Routledge, 1989.
Calthorpe, P. The Next American Metropolis. Princeton Architectural Press, 1993. Develops the case for integrated, walkable communities, with, however, an emphasis on suburban living, linked by rapid transit systems, not too different from the present lifestyles rather than radical restructuring of urban life.
Canfield, C., ed. Ecocity Conference 1990: Report of the First International Ecocity Conference. Berkeley: Urban Ecology Institute, 1990.
Coates, G., ed. Resettling America: Energy, Ecology & Community. Brick House. 1981
Corbett, M. A Better Place to Live: New Designs for Tomorrow's Communities. Rodale. 1982.
Dobson, R., 1993. Bringing the Economy Home from the Market Black Rose. Canadian study suggesting an approach to urban regeneration and greater sustainability by 'closing the loops', i.e. reducing the outflow of human, financial and physical resources from cities, leading to greater urban self-reliance and thereby to a reduction in overall environmental impacts and a better life particularly for poorer members of the urban community.
Elkin, T., et al. Reviving the City: Towards Sustainable Urban Development. FoE, 1991. Emphasis on practical action in the UK context, linking social improvements with greener urban living.
Farallones Institute. The Integral Urban House. Sierra, 1979. An older book looking at ways to make urban living more self-reliance and less environmentally destructive, focusing on individual buildings and neighbourhoods.
Fowler, E. Building Cities That Work. McGill-Queen's Pr., 1992.
Fox. T. et al. Struggle for Space: The Greening of New York. Neighbourhood Open Space Coalition, 1985.
Francis, M., et al. Community Open Spaces: Greening Neighbourhoods Through Community Action and Land Conservation. Island, 1984.
Gordon, D., ed. Green Cities: Ecologically Sound Approaches to Urban Space. Black Rose, 1990. Useful definitions and case studies.
Hart, J. Saving Cities, Saving Money: Environmental Strategies That Work. Washington: Resource Renewal Institute, 1992.
Hayden, D. Redesigning the American Dream: The Future of Housing, Work & Family Life. Norton, 1984.
Hester, R. The Community Design Primer. Ridge Times Press 1990. An American overview of community-related principles and goals, with practical exercises.
Holloway, D. The Appropriate Technology Vision and the Future of Our Communities. In G. Coates, ed., Resettling America: Energy, Ecology & Community Brick House. A study of possibly conservation measures for a whole town Winona, Minnesota
Hough, M. City Form and Natural Process. Routledge, 1989.
Hunt, M. & D. Bainbridge. The Davis Experience. In G. Coates, ed., Resettling America: Energy, Ecology & Community Brick House, 1981. A look at a pioneering urban development in California.
Leckie, J., et al. More Homes & Other Garbage. Sierra, 1975. Earlier study of how to live more sustainably in a city context.
Lowe, M Shaping Cities: The Environmental and Human Dimensions. Worldwatch Institute, Paper 105, 1992.
Marcus, C. & W. Sarkissian. Housing as if People Mattered. Univ. of California Pr., 1986.
Moll, G, & Ebenreck, S., Shading Our Cities: A Resource Guide for Urban and Community Forests. Island Pr., 1989.
Morris, D. Self-Reliant Cities. Sierra, 1982.
Nozick, M. No Place Like Home: Building Sustainable Communities. Canadian Council on Social Development, 1992.
Owen, S. Planning Settlements Naturally. Packard, 1990.
Platt, R. et al. The Ecological City. Univ. Mass Pr., 1994.
Register, R Ecocity Berkeley : Building Cities for a Healthy Future. North Atlantic Pr., 1987. A long-term programme, using Berkeley, California, as a case study.
Register, R. et al. Ten Point International Ecological Rebuilding Programme. Urban Ecology Institute, 1991.
Ruff, A. & R. Tregay. An Ecological Approach to Urban Landscape Design. University of Manchester, 1982.
Ryn, S. van der & Calthorpe, P. Sustainable Communities. Sierra, 1982.
Stren, R. et al, eds. Sustainable Cities: Urbanisation and the Environment in International Perspective. Westview, 1992. Urban problems and possible solutions from around the world
Todd, J. & G. Tukel, Reinhabiting Cities and Town: Designing for Sustainability. Planet Drum 1990. Short booklet outlining broad principles for more sustainable urban environments
Vale, B., and Vale, R. Green Architecture. Thames and Hudson, 1991.
Walter, B., et al. Sustainable Cities: Concepts and Strategies for Eco-City Development. Eco-Home Media, 1991.
Watkins, D. Urban Permaculture. Permanent Publications, 1993.
Wells, M. Gentle Architecture. McGraw-Hill, 1982.
Whyte, W. City: Rediscovering the Centre. Doubleday, 1988.
Yanarella, E.J. & R.S. Levine. The Sustainable Cities Manifesto. Built Environment, 18/4, 1992: 300-313. Based on the work of the Centre for Sustainable Cities at the University of Kentucky.
An issue of Environment & Urbanisation 4/2, 1992 focused on the sustainable cities theme.
See also:
Blowers, A. Planning for a Sustainable Environment. Earthscan, 1993. Though based on the notion of 'sustainable development' , which still is not grounded in the limits-to-growth model, outlined elsewhere, this has many useful chapters on urban design and management, especially Ch.9, Planning the Sustainable City Region, by Breheny & Rookwood.
Nicholson-Lord, D. The Greening of the Cities RKP, 1987. A look on practical initiatives
Owens, S. Energy, Planning and Urban Form. Pion, 1986.
City Farms & Forests
A significant dimension of greater urban sustainability is greater self-reliance, not least in food production. This in turn would reduce pressures on the countryside and decrease the volume of transportation. Clearly, such initiatives must be linked to the reduction of air pollution in cities as well as the provision of affordable sites.
Britz, R., et al. The Edible City Resource Manual. Kaufmann, 1981.
Creasy, R. The Complete Book of Edible Landscaping Sierra, 1982.
Hynes, P. H. A Patch of Eden: America's Inner City Gardeners. Chelsea Green, 1996.
Kourik, R.. Designing and Maintaining Your Edible Landscape Naturally. Metamorphic Pr., 1986.
Olkowski, H. & W. Olkowski. The City People's Book of Raising Food. Rodale, 1975.
Olkowskil, W. & H. Urban Agriculture: A Strategy for Transition to a Solar Society. In Coates, G., ed. Resetling America: Energy, Ecoogy and Community. Brick House, 1981.
Somers, L. The Community Gardening Book: New Directions for Creating & Managing Neighbourhood food Gardens in Your Town. National Gardening Assoc., USA, 1984.
Towards Greater Biodiversity in the Cities
Baines, C. The Wild Side of Town. Hamish Hamilton, 1986.
Emery, M. Promoting Nature in Cities & Towns: A Practical Guide. Croom Helm, 1986. A genuinely practical guide, using, amongst other things, the work of the Ecological Parks trust in the UK.
English Nature. Wildlife in Towns and Cities. English Nature, 1991.
Laurie, I., ed. Nature in Cities: The Natural Environment in the Design and Development of Urban Green Space. Wiley, 1979.
Roberts, E., et al. Rebuilding Central Park: A Management and Restoration Plan. MIT, 1987.
Royal Society for Nature Conservation. Nature Conservation in Urban Areas and Communities; A Draft Statement. RSNC, 1993.
Spirn, W. The Granite Garden: Urban Nature and Human Design. Basic Books, 1984
Trees Please.
As an increasing number of initiatives now reflect, greener cities will be leafier cities. In other words, we need more trees in towns. Obviously, care is needed, not least since tree roots can cause serious damage to buildings. Furthermore, we need to look beyond plantings purely for the sake of camouflaging eyesores or schemes tied to the expansion of car-based leisure activities. Real community woods would serve many needs, not least greater biodiversity in urban and urban fringe areas. See, for example:
Miller, R. Urban Forestry: Planning and Managing Urban Greenspaces. Prentice-Hall, 1988.
Treepeople with A & K Lipkis. The Simple Act of Planting a Tree: Healing Your Neighbourhood, Your City and Your World. Tarcher, 1990. A very practical American guide, inspired by the idea that lots of small-scale initiatives can really make a difference
Biodiversity, Back Gardens & Estate Management
Chinery, M. The Living Garden. Dorling Kindersley, 1986.
CPRE. The Water Conservation Garden. CPRE, 1993. A short review of how to be more frugal with water and thereby reduce environmental impacts elsewhere.
Creasy, R. The Complete Book of Edible Landscaping. Sierra, 1982
Gibbons, B. & L. Gibbons. Creating a Wildlife Garden. 1988
Harper, P. The Natural Garden Book: Gardening in Harmony With Nature. Gaia, 1994.
Jeffcote, M. Conservation & Its Potential in the Private Gardens of Leicester. Environ., Aug., 193. Look at possibilities in an English city where gardens cover some 27% of its surface area.
Kourik, R. Designing and Maintaining Your Edible Landscape Naturally. Metamorphic Pr., 1986.
Payne, M., 1987. Gardening for Butterflies. British Butterfly Association)
Stein, S. Noah's Garden: Restoring the Ecology of Our Own Back Yards. Houghton Mifflin, 1993. American work on wildlife gardening
Stevens, J. The National Trust Book of Wildflower Gardening Dorling Kinnersley, 1987.
Stevenson, V. The Wild Garden. Windward, 1985
Towards a Greener and Greater Sense of 'Place'
Alexander, C., et al. A Pattern Language. OUP, 1977.
Creasy, R. The Complete Book of Edible Landscaping. Sierra, 1982.
Diekelmann & R. Schuster. Natural Landscaping: Designing with Native Plant Communities. McGraw-Hill, 1982.
Harper, P. The Natural Garden Book: Gardening in Harmony With Nature. Gaia Books, 1994.
Hiss, T. The Experience of Place. Knopf, 1990.
Hough, M. Out of Place: Restoring Identity to the Regional Landscape. Yale UP, 1990.
Kourik, R. Designing and Maintaining Your Edible Landscape. Naturally Metamorphic Books, 1986.
Lucas, P. Protected Landscapes: A Guide for Policy Makers and Planners. Chapman & Hall, 1992. Case studies from around the world
Lynch, K. Managing the Sense of the Region. MIT, 1980.
McPherson, E.G. Energy-Conserving Site Design. American Society of Landscape Architects, 1984.
Moffat, A. & M. Schiler. Landscape Design that Saves Energy. Morrow, 1981.
Preece, R.A. Designs on the Landscape. Belhaven, 1991.
Robinette, G. Water Conservation in Landscape Design and Management. Van Nostrand, 1984.
Smyser, C., et al. Nature's Design: A Practical Guide To Natural Landscaping. Rodale Pr., 1982.
Wilson, H, W. Landscaping with Native Plants and Communities. Ortho Books, 1984.
Biodiversity and Specific Sites
Baines, C. & J. Smart. A Guide to Habitat Creation. Packard, 1991. Practical guide from the London Ecology Unit)
'Healing the Wounds': Specific Remedial Measures
Cairney, T. The Re-Use of Contaminated Land: A Handbook of Risk Assessment. Wiley, 1995.
Return to Real World HomePage