ECONOMIC AFFAIRS最新文献_第9页

Human presence is a necessary part of the solution for environmental conservation and land use 人类的存在是解决环境保护和土地利用问题的必要组成部分

IF 1

ECONOMIC AFFAIRS Pub Date : 2024-11-20 DOI: 10.1111/ecaf.12681

José Ramón Arévalo

{"title":"Human presence is a necessary part of the solution for environmental conservation and land use","authors":"José Ramón Arévalo","doi":"10.1111/ecaf.12681","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ecaf.12681","url":null,"abstract":"Throughout history, overpopulation has consistently been recognised as a significant issue, causing concern even among early civilisations. In certain societies, such as the Neanderthal, Maori, Fijian and Congolese, cannibalism emerged to control population and provide a source of sustenance for the rest of the tribe (Culotta, 1999; Rubinstein, 2004). The Greeks were also among the first to raise awareness about the problem of overpopulation, expressing concerns about food supplies and population growth (Harrow, 1996). Even parts of the Bible can be seen as advocating population control to maintain balance in the world (Ehrlich, 1968), although it can be considered contradictory to the dictum “be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1: 28).These concerns have persisted over time and have been reinforced by the works of influential researchers on public policies. Examples include The Population Bomb (Ehrlich, 1968) and The Limits of Growth (Meadows et al., 1972), which made dire predictions about the future of humanity. These concerns continue to be relevant with regular media reports or reports by institutional agencies such as the International Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) indicating that we have passed the sustainable equilibrium point. Moreover, more extreme predictions are made pointing towards global warming exceeding 5 °C by 2100, undeniably alarming and posing an existential threat to the lives and well-being of billions. Furthermore, despite lacking recognition by the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS), the concept of the ‘Anthropocene epoch’ is now present in scientific literature.In the light of these ideas, human activity is often seen as incompatible with the preservation of the planet, and directly affects the continuance of the human population itself (Shukla et al., 2019). This is partly due to the limited availability of agricultural land and political proposals to control anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Although it has been nearly 250 years since Malthus (1798) and 150 years since William Stanley Jevons (Missemer, 2012) sounded the alarm, the message remains the same: humans are the problem.In this challenging situation, it is apparently difficult to reconcile continued human population growth with environmental conservation or the establishment of protected areas. Around the world, there are various types of such protected areas, including rural parks and marine protected areas, that attempt to balance human presence with environmental conservation. Indeed, some argue that humans should be removed from these areas altogether. In contrast, I aim to demonstrate that the presence of humans in many regions is not detrimental but rather beneficial. Even in densely p","PeriodicalId":44825,"journal":{"name":"ECONOMIC AFFAIRS","volume":"45 1","pages":"132-139"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2024-11-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ecaf.12681","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143389164","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}