People-Natnie:Bnilding aNew Netwotk

Assessing Humans& Nature: 5 Impacts

by Micbael Gallis, Gary Moil, and Heatber Millar

H B H I '̂ ^̂ ^"^ more people agree that prob-

I B I H lems exist with the environment, but

I ^B H what exactly are those problems? Global

I H w ^ ^ 1 warming? Unchecked constmiption?

Too many cars? Species extinction? Pollution?

They're all right. And they're all wrong.

Today's environmental issues, while all Important,

are really just pieces of a larger truth, symptoms of

the overarching problem: the "global human net-

work." This global human network is a giant web of

economic and social activity—shipping, air, road, rail,

and digital lines that overlie the larger natural system.

While the natural system is self-sustaining, the

human network must constantly replenish itself from

nature, drawing resources, cutting through ecosys-

tems, producing waste. But how much of this can the

earth withstand? How much can humanity take from

the planet without paying a price?

An orbital view of southern Florida taken by NASA, prominentlyfeaturing Lake Okeechobee, the Atlantic Ocean, and the Florida

Everglades. Issues in these places and elsewhere are sympto-matic of a larger problem: the human network, a web of

economic and social activity that overlays the natural world.

34 .\MFRICAN FORESTS

AUTUMN 2007 :i5

People-Natnie:Building aNew Network

Studies continually

show that people

have done moxe

damage to the eaxth's

natural systems in

the last 50 yeazs than

in aU of preceding

human history.

America's current methods of mitigating envi-ronmental damage fall woefully short.Enviroimiental Impact Reports assess the potentialdamage of human activity project hy project hutdon't consider how a given project fits into the larg-er picture. The Clean .Air and Clean Water actsfocus on point source pollution rather than attemptto manage the global network as a whole. TheEndangered Species Act has saved many individualspecies but doesn't talk about the need to saveentire ecosystems—the oak prairies of theNorthwest, the high deserts of Arizona, the hard-wood forests of New England, or the fisheries ofTCape Cod. If wn preserve these natural habitats, wewill save not only endangered species, but entireliving systems.

Each month scientific journals publisb scores ofpapers on the micro-effects of human activities.Officials and professors tend to focus on environ-mental problems piece-by-piece rather than puttingall the pieces together. Oftentimes the big-pictureview is thought to result in answers that are toogeneralized, with a scale so large that the datapoints become meaningless.

But we are at a turning point in our planet's eco-logical history. Studies continually show that peoplehave done more damage to the earth's natural systemsin the last 50 years than in all of preceding human his-tory. We must make the cfForl to address our environ-mental and economic situation as a whole.

For millennia, we have constructed our econom-ic and social systems in a world where cash wasscarce and resources plentiful. Now thai relationshipis reversing; In today's world, cash has becomeincreasingly plentiful and resources increasinglyscarce. The inllux of capital allows the human net-work to grow exponentially at the point when naturecan least absorb that growth.

We must begin to quantify our impact on theplanet at a regional, continental, and global scale.We may not have all the data yet, but we must beginto address the broad-brush interaction betweenhumanity and nature.

It's an idea that is beginning to catch on. TheEcological Society of America earlier this year pub-lished an issue of its journal that examined ecology"in an age of globalization." Using a global context,authors analyzed the environment and the impact ofhuman migration, production systems, and invasivespecies. The Society proposed a glohal "EcologicalKnowledge Index," where environmental data canbe shared internationally. Proposals to trade carboncredits, cap CO2 emissions, mandate better gasmileage for new cars, and value ecosystem services area good start—but they need to be expanded to a moresystem-wide way of tliinking.

To start, to understand the relationship betweenman and nature, it helps to group humanity's impacton natural systems into five categories: fragmenta-tion, depletion, pollution, erosion, and extinction.

[•OHI'ISTS

FRAGMENTING NATURE.\s tlui liuinjui network grows, it cuts througb natu-ral systems like a bandsaw. Tbe website of theWorld Bank, which funds dovelopment in poor coun-Irios. points to tbe construction of about 37,282miles of new rural roads, similar to the number ofroad-miles tbe U.S. Interstate system covers.

Wbilo tbose World Bank-funded tborougbfaresprovide more mobility to the communities they con-nect, they shatter ecosystems into an ever-finergrain. All across the world, development is destroy-ing tb(> natural systems that sustain these commu-nities. In Congo, for example, logging roads—someas widn as freeways—are carving up tbe rainforest,opening previously inaccessible areas to loggingand bushmeat hunting, according to a 2007 reportby Greenpeace. In Australia, development has frag-mented populations of its iconic koala, leaving theanimal's population ever more thinly dispersed.

Anu-rica will add more than 100 million new cit-izens in the next .'iO years. As suburbs expand, thenew residential roads btiilt to connect them williidd tens of thousand of road miles, cutting tbroughiH'osystcms and limiting their ability to function.

Hut there are positive signs, accommodations toriaturo tbat need to become the norm, rather thanthe celebrated exception: In April, Taiwaneseauthorities shut down one lane of a btisy elevatedroad near Linei township to allow for tbe safemigration of the country's purple-spotted butterflies.

"Human beings need to coexist with the otherspecies, even if they are tiny butterilies," Lee Tbay-tnlng. bead of the National Freeway Bureau, toldCosmos magazine.

And tbe Inlornational Maritime Organizationhas sbiitcd shipping ianos through the Alboran Sea20 miles furtber south off the coast of Almeria toreduce acoustic and water pollution and minimizeIbo impact of accidental oil spills on coastal habi-tats and tourist beaches, according to tbe websitewww.latost-sciencn-npws.com.

Tbr change will protect bottlenose dolphin for-aging grounds off tbe southern coast of Spain. The.Mhoran Sea is a critical feeding site for dolphinsand sea turtles but it also received nearly 30 per-cent of world maritime traffic, according to theonline report.

(Conservation planners have entered the debate,proposing "connectivity indexes" tbat measure howswathes of natural hahitat connect. One Spanishstudy proposed an index that allowed scientists toanalyze the effectiveness and potential improve-ment of a network of protected areas.

The goal should be to routinely develop and usetbese types of indexes wben communities are plan-ning ro;ids or residential/commercial developmentsor when government bodies are approving the(Extraction of resources like coal or oil shale.

DEPLETING NATUREGlobal population wiil grow hy 50 percent during thenext few decades. The global economy will grow hy400 percent, creating an even greater demand onresources. AM[:IU<L\\ Foitixis bas worked for moretban a century to preserve the country's woodlands,yet despite its efforts and those of others, only 6 per-cent of the nation's old-growth trees remain. Theglobal network is extracting resources at a rate thatfar exceeds nature's ability to repair itself.

If current fish declines continue, catches of allmarine organisms will fall to 10 percent of their his-toric highs, according to the November 2006 issueof Science.

Eigbty percent of the world's forests have beendestroyed or degraded—half of tbat in the last 30years. Al the current pace of cutting, natural forestsin Indonesia and Bui'ma will be exhausted withm adecade as more and more trees are cut, more tbanhalf of them going to China. Forests in Papua NewGuinea are expected to he usnd up within 13 years.

Agriculture worldwide is depleting the planet'ssoil, according to the book Dirt: The Frosion ofCivilizations. When the earth's population wassmaller, people could move from one place toanother and allow soil to regenerate. But witb morethan 6 hillion people inhabitating the planet, thatoption no longer exists.

"We're farming about as much land as we can ona sustainable basis," explains author DavidMontgomery, a University of Washington professor."We have to learn to farm without losing the soil."

Resource depletion slowly is becoming a centralfocus in policy discussions. Marine scientists andpolicymakers are beginning to talk about ecosys-tem-based fishery management, in the PacificNorthwest and in the Chesapeake Bay, for example.

Workers load timberonto a logging truck inTllamook State Forestin Oregon. The humannetwork is usingnatural resources atan alarming rate.

AUTUMN 2(107 ;-{7

People-Nature:Building aNew Nelwoik

A coal-burning powerplant dominates theskyline in Conesville.Ohio. A majority ofscientists worldwidebelieve carbon dioxideemissions from burningfossil fuels arewarming the earth.

but there is limited data on exactly how to do this.In Kenya's semi-arid Samburu region.

Earthwatch institute scientists helped locals com-pile a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) data-base to better manage water resources. Thoseresponsible for agricultural policy, energy policy,water policy, and fishing policy should take theseexamples to heart.

POLLUTING NATUREPollution has figured in environmental discussionsfor decades, and yet continues to increase. Buriedin the February 2007 Fourth Assessment report bythe United Nations' international Panel on ClimateChange is this prediction: If CO2 pollution—green-house gas emissions—continue to rise at currentrates, giobai warming by the end of the centurycould total 6.4C, Scientists don't say so explicitly,hut that rise would create an extreme greenhousestate not seen for nearly 100 million years, whendinosaurs grazed on polar rainforests and desertsreached into Europe. It could cause a mass extinc-tion, decimating most of human civilization, accord-

ing to British journalist Mark Lynas, author of SixDegrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet.

The rapid urbanization of coastal lands is turningthe oceans into garbage dumps. As much as 80 per-cent of ocean pollution originates on land, accordingto an October 2006 report by the United NationsEnvironment Program. Especially in developingcountries, nutrients from agriculture and animalwastes are triggering algae blooms and creating oxy-gen-deficient "dead zones." The number of thesedead zones in the world's oceans has increased from149 to 200 in just the last two years, the UN found.

On land, ozone pollution stresses forests and lim-its tree growth in the United States, a 50-year reviewin the Journal Environmental Pollution found. In2004, U.S. industrial facilities released 1.5 billionpounds of toxic poUutants^more than 70 millionpounds of known carcinogens and 826 millionpounds of neurotoxins. according to a 2007 report bythe U,S, Public Interest Research Group.

Increasing pollution not only affects natural sys-tems, it threatens human health. More than 200common chemicals, many found in urban areas and

-AMERICAN FORESTS

consumer products, were linked to breast cancer inanimal studies sponsored by the American CancerSociety. And a recent study by Cornell Universityblamed air, water, and soil pollution and the growthof human population for ahout 40 percent of deathsworldwide.

Addressing air pollution, contaminated drinkingwater, and other environmental risks could save 13million lives annually, the World Health Organizationestimated in a June 2007 report.

The global transportation networks that feedour cities transport plants, animals, and diseasearound the world, to places they were never meantto be. A few of those organisms become invasive:multiplying in the absence of natural predators andwreaking havoc. In the American Southwest,tamarisk trees native to South America have spreadacross the landscape, sucking up scarce water andcrowding out native species. Chestnut hlight, Dutchelm disease, sudden oak death, Asian longhornedheetle, emerald ash borer—for trees alone, the listgoes on and on.

In the Croat Lakes, an aggressive virus thought tohave been imported iJi the ballast water of interna-tional ocean-going ships is devastating native fish.Ihe virulent illness has already affected some 37species of fish, including salmon, trout, perch andwhite bass. Almost every species caught conmier-cially or for sport in the Great Lakes' $4 billion fish-ing business has been liit.

One of Britain's largest ptiffin colonies is threat-ened by an invasive weed. The weed chokes out theburrows that pulfins use year after year, making itharder for them to nest and leaving them vulnerableID predators. On the other side of the world, in theAustralian state of Tasmania, European foxes threat-en to take over the niche held by the falteringTasmanian devil population, which could throw theisland s ujiique marsupial ecosystem into chaos.

Almost every place on earth has similar examples(if ihe predations of invasive species. We need to befighting more than just point-source pollution fromfactories and tailpipes. We need to strenuously try to(ontrol all pollution, making this part of the discus-sion in all policy and planning dialogues, whetherthey involve industrial systems, suhurban develop-ment, or transportation efTiciency,

ERODING NATURElaking land away from nature through urban sprawlis the most obvious way humanity erodes nature. Ascities and farms grow, they use more resources. Anddespite outcries against urban sprawl, cities contin-ue to expand with no end in sight. Nearly 200 yearsago, London was the only city to boast more than amillion residents. Today, that distinction is shared byEiearly 400 cities.

The Atlanta metro area gobbled up nearly 50

acres of open space daily in the mid-1990s, accord-ing to U.S. Forest Service calculations. But sprawl isnot a uniquely American problem. Similar problemscan be found from Beijing, China and Mumbai, Indiato Nairobi, Kenya and Sao Paolo, Brazil. As people

worldwide demand American-style living spaces,sprawl can increase even as urban populationdeclines, as is the case in places like Copenhagen,Denmark and Munich, Germany.

Cities occupy only 2 percent of the planet's sur-face, but consume three-quarters of the resourcesused. When an industrial park or subdivisionreplaces an ecosystem, nature's ability to function iseroded still further.

MAKING NATURE EXTINCT(ilobal wanning and unmanaged urban growth arecausing plant and animal species to disappear at 100to 1,000 times the natural rate, the U.N. 2007Millennium Ecosystem Assessment report says.Statistics on the loss of biodiversity suggest at least20 percent of bird species have completely vanishedand 23 percent of mammals, 25 percent of conifers,and 32 percent of ampliibians face a serious threatof extinction. And we have discovered and namedperhaps just a quarter of the planet's species,according to noted Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson.

Though it would have been unthinkable even 50years ago, the human global network is growing soquickly that it threatens to make nature extinct.

The threats are not limited to exotic species infaraway rain forests. In June 2007, the NationalAudubon Society quantified what many birdershave known for years: many of America's mostcommon species of hirds have plummeted over thelast 40 years.

Many of the places of greatest biodiversity—places like Brazil, India, and sub-Saharan Africa—are places that still battle poverty, places where gov-

Global warming

and munanaged

urban growth are

causing plant

and animal species

to disappear at 100

to 1,000 times the

natural rate, the V.N.

2007 Millenninm

Ecosystem

Assessmnent

report says.

AUTUMN 2007 3

People-Natnie:Building aNew Netwoik

Developing this new

framewozk between

nature and the net-

work is cutting

edge science that is

starting to blossom.

ernments have neither the knowledge nor the politi-cal will to enforce regulations tbat might saveendangered plants and animals.

The developed world needs to recognize its rolein these problems. For example. Chinese companiesare mowing down teak in Burma and mahogany inIndonesia for flooring or luxury lawn furniture tbatis sold in places like Home Depot, a Washington Postinvestigation found. When America outsourced itsmanufacturing to China, the Chinese hegan buildingfactories and bouses on prime farmland and out-sourced its agricultural production to Brazil. NowBrazil is plowing up its savannah and cutting downits rainforests to meet Chinese demand for soybeans.

As we try to devise systems to address environ-mental damage, we must begin to make connectionslike tbese. We must think about endangered systems

A view of the "LaguanaWest" housingdevelopment during itsconstruction next towetlands inSacramento County,California.

not just endangered species. It will take creativity atall levels to devise ways that human and natural sys-tems can coexist.

Agricultural research is showing some promise.In New Zealand, scientists have studied how organ-ic farmland can contribute significant ecosystemservices. In Cuba, residents of cities and townsgrew more than 1 million tons of vegetables andspices between January and March 2006, signifi-cantly reducing pesticide pollution and transporta-tion costs.

And in Japan, some farmers are experimentingwith "complex farming systems." which meansfarming a wide variety of plants and animals tbatcomplement each other rather than simply plantinga rice monoculture. This approach has increasedyields and reduced the need for pesticides.

Other fields need to look at tbese types of solu-tions, solutions that accommodate nature rathertban destroy it.

THE WAY FORWARDOur current mctbods of limiting environmentaldamage clearly bave not stopped us from frag-menting, depleting, polluting, eroding and extin-guishing nature. And these five impacts are multi-plying, largely because we've moved from aresource-rich, cash-poor world to exactly tbe oppo-site, a planet tbat is resource-poor and cash-rich.

We desperately need a radical new way ofthinking. We need a vision that results in creativenew ways of meeting human needs, one thatresists the urge to rush to judgment with quick,easy solutions. Solutions to the nattire-and-net-work conflict are neither simple nor quick. Whatworks in one place will not work in anotherbecause both nature and the network are uniquein that place. First, though, we must determine theplace. Political boundaries, like cities and countiesdon't work; they slice into the natural system andthe human network.

Instead we should propose a framework thatwill produce an answer. We should assemble lead-ers from a region to evaluate natural and humannetwork resources and tben decide how to producethe most efficient and effective operating system.

Developing this new framework between natureand the network is not an abstract concept or anuntested theory; it's cutting edge science that isjust starting to blossom. Tbe Orlando, Florida,region—seven counties and 86 municipalities—justspent 18 months developing a strategic develop-ment framework for their region (see "In CentralFlorida. Committed to Consensus," AmericanForests, Summer 2006). Tbey presented tbis planto the regional community in August. The plan hadthe support of tbe region's leaders—as well as20,000 citizens. Tbeir vision for 2050 was built ona new framework tbat brings together theirregion's natural systems and growing human net-work. It is an example of bow to find a solution tothe conflict.

In May 2008, AMEKICAN FOKI'STS will conduct anational conference in Orlando that will startbuilding a new national-scale framework fornature and tbe network. The people who makedecisions about the transportation network needto be at tbe same table as tbe experts in tbe func-tion of our ecological systems. Looking foranswers to the nature and network conflict? Wehope you'll consider attending tbe conference andjoining the process. AF

Architect and city planner Michael Gallis is princi-pal of Michael Gallis & Associates, Charlotte, NorthCarolina. Gary Moll is a \T at AMI-WCAM FoitliSTS.Heather Millar is a Brooklyn-based writer and edi-tor For more on this series, visit our website,www.americanforests.org

40 AM!'RIC-\N FORl-STS