Biosphere Relations

FROM - Exploiting the natural environment purely as a resource for human consumption and advancement.

TO - Protecting and nurturing the environment in the spirit of stewardship and reciprocity..

Description of tensions and questions to be explored

The world has turned on its head. It used to be that natural resources were abundant and that manufactured and artistic products were rare and precious. Now it is products that swamp us and we recognise that nature’s resources are in fact finite.

Humans are just one aspect of an interconnected biosphere. We all understand this intellectually, without really acting on it. We have become so removed from the systems of the biosphere that it is hard for us to behave appropriately as one organism within a vast network. This behaviour is crucial if we want to conserve natural resources so that future generations can also be sustained.

How is viable agricultural land distributed between countries and what impact will the changing atmosphere and climate have on this? Is it really wise to devote cropland to producing fuel when food security and rising food prices are already an issue? Climate change impacts fresh water availability in many ways, not least by rising sea levels contaminating fresh water systems with salt water.

This is about the intrinsic value of preserving the Earth’s ecosystem as well a the human cost of not protecting our finite natural resources, most profoundly food and water. What are the economic costs to us of not preserving the subtleties of a system created through millennia as the perfect environment for human development? Is the term ‘externalities’ part of the old or new paradigm? How do we make the ecological and economic costs felt and confronted by urbanised individuals ad societies sheltered from the realities of this fragile system?

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