Environmental (and Cultural) Benefits

Environmental (and Cultural) Benefits

Henry Bakker, Field Sparrow Farms

Feb 24. 2014

Sustainability

sustain: provide with the basic necessities required to support or preserve life livelihood, or existence; maintain or keep (an action or process) going continuously

sustainable: “Ecology” (esp. of development) that conserves an ecological balance by avoiding depletion of natural resources; that may be maintained, esp. at a particular level

- Oxford Canadian Dictionary

Our Common Future

Our Common Future, published in 1987 by the World Commission on Environment and Development (the Brundtland Commission), defined it as development that “seeks to meet the needs and aspirations of the present without compromising the ability to meet those of the future.”

- Oxford Concise Dictionary of Ecology

Photosynthesis = Energy

There are many different types of ecosystem but the foundation of all of them, and therefore the basis for all life on earth, is photosynthesis.

It is the only way that energy is introduced into the system…Within an individual ecosystem photosynthesizers (such as plants, trees and grasses) provide the basic energy input.

Responsible grazing seeks to maximize solar collection through optimal plant management.

The first law of thermodynamics

Energy is conserved, that is to say, indestructible. There is always the same total amount of energy in the universe. It can be neither created, nor destroyed; it just changes form, such as from chemical energy in fuel, to heat. Energy is simply available or unavailable for use.

The second law of thermodynamics

The entropy of the universe tends to a maximum. Entropy is the measure of the degree of disorder in a system. As entropy increases systems evolve from a state of relative order to one of disorder. Entropy can also be thought of as a measure of the amount of unavailable energy in a system.

Recycling

The fact that the earth is a closed system means that nothing can get out. All waste products must go somewhere.

The recycling of the materials necessary for life is an essential function of all ecosystems and the other physical and chemical processes on earth.

Soil

Soil is the product of an ecosystem – it has been created by living plants and animals and it continues to rely on them to remain fertile and productive.

Fertility is built up and maintained as an active process through the interaction of the plant cover, the existing soil, the work of decomposers and other environmental factors such as rainfall and temperature. All of these processes make the various types of soil found in different parts of the globe one of the most complex living systems on earth.

A Fragile Resource

Although soils are created over time this process is, on a human timescale, so slow that the soil is in effect a non-renewable resource. It is also a highly fragile one. Ecosystems develop naturally in a way that protects the soil on which they depend. Once the trees and plants of an ecosystem are destroyed or badly damaged then the underlying soil is very quickly subjected to severe strain and can be easily destroyed or eroded away by wind and rain leaving only a degraded remnant.

When was this written?

“One thing is sure. The earth is now more cultivated and developed than ever before. There is more farming with pure force, swamps are drying up, and cities are springing up on unprecedented scale. We’ve become a burden to our planet. Resources are becoming scarce, and soon nature will no longer be able to satisfy our needs.”

- Tertullian, Roman theologian, 200 A.D.

Here’s Another One…

“What now remains compared with what then existed is like the skeleton of a sick man, all the fat and soft earth having wasted away, and only the bare framework of the land being left… there are some mountains which now have nothing but food for bees, but they had trees not very long ago… there were many lofty trees of cultivated species and… boundless pasturage for flocks. Moreover, it was enriched by the yearly rains from Zeus, which were not lost to it, as now, by flowing from the bare land into the sea; but the soil it had was deep, and therein it received the water, storing it up in the retentive loamy soil, and… provided all the various districts with abundant supplies of springwaters and streams, whereof the shrines still remain even now, at the spots where the fountains formerly existed.”

- Plato, Critias, ca. 340 BC

Hillside in Jordan

The Ancient Roman City of Cuicul

“Scrawny” sheep graze near the ruins

Timgad – another Roman city of North Africa

Abandoned American farm house

Bare Capped Soil - Zimbabwe

6 months later – 200 cattle & 100 goats rotating through a new area each day

Two Years Later

Our Task…

“The most important task in all human history has been to find a way of extracting from the different ecosystems in which people have lived enough resources for maintaining life – food, clothing, shelter, energy and other material goods. Inevitably this has meant intervening in natural ecosystems. The problem for human societies has been to balance their various demands against the ability of the ecosystems to withstand the resulting pressures.”

- Clive Ponting, from A Green History of the World: The Environment and the Collapse of Great Civilizations