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Ecological Integrity: Integrating Environment, Conservation, and Health
Ecological Engineering 19 (2002) 177– 179
www.elsevier.com/locate/ecoleng
Book review Ecological Integrity: Integrating Environment, Conservation, and Health Edited by David Pimentel, Laura Westra, Reed F. Noss, Island Press, 2000, ISBN 1-55963-808-7, US$35 paperback, 428 pp. Having usually read criticisms of the concept of environmental health and integrity, we were surprised to see a complete and recent book devoted to the subject. The book was also interesting because it claimed to reach a synthesis and be able to prescribe solutions to the problems of threatened and unequal human well-being, degradation of the ecosphere, and unsustainable economies. The book has chapters from many famous scientists and philosophers from different areas, including ethics, philosophy, environmental economics, epidemiology, health, forestry, fisheries, public policy, and ecology. The list of contributors is truly impressive, and certainly everyone interested in sustainability, conservation, and ecological integrity issues should be familiar with their work. However, the mystery of how they came together as The Global Integrity Project is never solved. Most principles and agreed points are referenced as conclusions of ‘The Global Project’. We can only infer that it is an epistemic community based in North America which came together in 1992. A preface is lacking where a historical background, frequency and medium of interaction, funding resources, or path to the book are usually given. The book has 22 chapters, which are divided into six sections. Chapters 1 and 2 are an introduction to the integrity concept where the emphasis on wild nature, which underlines most of what is said, is later invalidated throughout the book by the extensive documentation of human influence. It never gets mentioned that in some areas,
such as the country we live in, which has been the home to civilizations for millennia, nature has coevolved with humans. The prescription that humans should live everywhere as if in a buffer zone to protected wild areas seems more practical where inhabitants do not have the luxury of setting aside wilderness without humans but need to provide sustainable livelihoods. The history and philosophy of ecosystems and integrity are discussed in the next four chapters. Most interesting and useful for ecological engineers in this section is Chapter 6, in which Ulanowicz rebuts some of the philosophical criticisms of the ecosystem and ecosystem integrity concept and describes how to measure ecological integrity. The project identifies four concepts concerning integrity: (1) system ‘‘health’’ or the continued successful functioning of the community, (2) the capacity to withstand stress, (3) ‘‘optimum capacity’’ for the greatest possible ongoing development options, and (4) continued ability for ongoing change and development, without human interference. Thus Ulanowicz discusses how to quantify the organization, vigor and resilience of ecosystems. With a network of trophic interactions, ecosystem integrity can be assessed quantitatively by this method. Vigor is the sum of all individual exchanges that occur in the ecosystem. Organization is defined as the degree of constraint that guides a typical flow in a system. Ascendancy is defined as the product of vigor and organization. Ascendancy increases with increasing speciation, specialization, internalization, and cycling. Thus, in the absence of major perturbations, ecosystems exhibit a propensity toward configurations of ever greater ascendancy. An upper bound can be calculated for ascendancy, which is defined as ecosystem capacity. A systems overhead can be calculated as capacity minus ascendancy. There is
0925-8574/02/$ - see front matter © 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 9 2 5 - 8 5 7 4 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 0 3 5 - 6
178
Book re6iew
a trade-off between ascendancy and overhead; more overhead is needed for a system to survive perturbations. Ecological engineers then should design a system with the largest capacity and an overhead sufficient to survive the largest perturbations. Another section of the book is concerned with the sustainability and integrity of natural resources. Goodland and Pimentel discuss the agricultural sector and further the argument of why we should all be eating lower on the food chain. Pauly examines the future of marine fisheries and makes recommendations in order to retain their ecological integrity. Noss discusses how to protect the ecological integrity of the landscape and the criteria for protected areas, and Rees discusses ecological footprints. A new dimension to ecological footprints we had not encountered before was humans as ‘‘patch disturbers.’’ Patch disturbers degrade a small central place greatly, and disturb much larger areas further away from the central core to a lesser extent. Karr, who developed the IBI for streams and rivers, discusses criteria for developing multimetric indices of integrity. He argues that integrity should be measured with multimetric biological indices rather than the theoretical concepts of productivity, self-organization, and resilience. How the IBI approach has been adapted to forests is discussed in two chapters. Miller and Ehnes show how measurements of primary productivity and nutrients might be used to determine the sustainability of forest management practices. Loucks presents an MFI (mean functional integrity) that is based on the measurement of ecosystem functions such as net primary productivity. He applies this index to forest study areas in the eastern US and Canada with different pollution impacts. Three chapters examine the relationship between human health and ecological integrity. McMichael discusses the sustainability of recent gains in human health and concludes that ecological degradation is threatening those gains, with climate change being an added threat, especially for those in little-consuming countries. Soskolne, Sieswerda, and Scott describe epidemiological methods for determining relationships between ecological degradation and human health. Westra
argues that governments are committing ‘‘ecoviolence’’ by tolerating certain activities that are harming human health. She argues that this violence will continue until it is recognized as such, and she supports extensions of human rights and criminal law to cover these activities, which are currently institutionally accepted. In the section concerned with the economics and ethics of achieving ecological integrity, Schrecker looks at the relationship between environmental protection and equitable economic development. This chapter, more than the others, seems to get at the crux of the problem, namely the large disparity between rich and poor nations. Crabbe´ argues that people live in cities because of the benefits they provide and thinks we should/ cannot limit the growth of large cities. Sterba argues for protecting ecosystem integrity from a biocentric ethical perspective. Manno describes the process of ‘‘commoditization’’ in which commercial goods and services are systematically valued over noncommercial means of satisfying human needs and goals. He argues that governments must intervene in markets to counter the commoditization pressures and move towards sustainable development. Brown assesses the state of the world 5 years after the Rio conference and the prospects for protecting ecological integrity. Five years after Rio, there has not been much progress made and the North is not living up to its promises; after 10 years, more of the same will be repeated in Johannesburg. Consequently the South feels no obligation to live up to its part either. Maybe the best chapter is the last chapter where all that is said is categorized, bulleted, and summarized. This chapter can be of great use to the conservationist who can use arguments and back these up with references or take some of the ideas and put them into practice. Some of the suggestions have already crept into NGOs in Turkey who initiated projects to help cut the ecological footprint of individuals and companies. Much of what the book discusses has been said before; however, given the wide range of topics from a variety of disciplines, there are probably
Book re6iew
at least a few new ideas for most readers. The goal was a presentation and synthesis of wide-ranging but complementary topics. The authors whose work is already multidisciplinary provide a synthesis that is very useful. Further such attempts to synthesize should be highly encouraged and should include scholars from the less-consuming societies in order to have a truly global perspective.
179
Uygar O8 zesmi, Stacy L. O8 zesmi Department of En6ironmental Engineering, Erciyes Uni6ersity, Kayseri 38039, Turkey [email protected] [email protected]
www.elsevier.com/locate/ecoleng
Book review Ecological Integrity: Integrating Environment, Conservation, and Health Edited by David Pimentel, Laura Westra, Reed F. Noss, Island Press, 2000, ISBN 1-55963-808-7, US$35 paperback, 428 pp. Having usually read criticisms of the concept of environmental health and integrity, we were surprised to see a complete and recent book devoted to the subject. The book was also interesting because it claimed to reach a synthesis and be able to prescribe solutions to the problems of threatened and unequal human well-being, degradation of the ecosphere, and unsustainable economies. The book has chapters from many famous scientists and philosophers from different areas, including ethics, philosophy, environmental economics, epidemiology, health, forestry, fisheries, public policy, and ecology. The list of contributors is truly impressive, and certainly everyone interested in sustainability, conservation, and ecological integrity issues should be familiar with their work. However, the mystery of how they came together as The Global Integrity Project is never solved. Most principles and agreed points are referenced as conclusions of ‘The Global Project’. We can only infer that it is an epistemic community based in North America which came together in 1992. A preface is lacking where a historical background, frequency and medium of interaction, funding resources, or path to the book are usually given. The book has 22 chapters, which are divided into six sections. Chapters 1 and 2 are an introduction to the integrity concept where the emphasis on wild nature, which underlines most of what is said, is later invalidated throughout the book by the extensive documentation of human influence. It never gets mentioned that in some areas,
such as the country we live in, which has been the home to civilizations for millennia, nature has coevolved with humans. The prescription that humans should live everywhere as if in a buffer zone to protected wild areas seems more practical where inhabitants do not have the luxury of setting aside wilderness without humans but need to provide sustainable livelihoods. The history and philosophy of ecosystems and integrity are discussed in the next four chapters. Most interesting and useful for ecological engineers in this section is Chapter 6, in which Ulanowicz rebuts some of the philosophical criticisms of the ecosystem and ecosystem integrity concept and describes how to measure ecological integrity. The project identifies four concepts concerning integrity: (1) system ‘‘health’’ or the continued successful functioning of the community, (2) the capacity to withstand stress, (3) ‘‘optimum capacity’’ for the greatest possible ongoing development options, and (4) continued ability for ongoing change and development, without human interference. Thus Ulanowicz discusses how to quantify the organization, vigor and resilience of ecosystems. With a network of trophic interactions, ecosystem integrity can be assessed quantitatively by this method. Vigor is the sum of all individual exchanges that occur in the ecosystem. Organization is defined as the degree of constraint that guides a typical flow in a system. Ascendancy is defined as the product of vigor and organization. Ascendancy increases with increasing speciation, specialization, internalization, and cycling. Thus, in the absence of major perturbations, ecosystems exhibit a propensity toward configurations of ever greater ascendancy. An upper bound can be calculated for ascendancy, which is defined as ecosystem capacity. A systems overhead can be calculated as capacity minus ascendancy. There is
0925-8574/02/$ - see front matter © 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 9 2 5 - 8 5 7 4 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 0 3 5 - 6
178
Book re6iew
a trade-off between ascendancy and overhead; more overhead is needed for a system to survive perturbations. Ecological engineers then should design a system with the largest capacity and an overhead sufficient to survive the largest perturbations. Another section of the book is concerned with the sustainability and integrity of natural resources. Goodland and Pimentel discuss the agricultural sector and further the argument of why we should all be eating lower on the food chain. Pauly examines the future of marine fisheries and makes recommendations in order to retain their ecological integrity. Noss discusses how to protect the ecological integrity of the landscape and the criteria for protected areas, and Rees discusses ecological footprints. A new dimension to ecological footprints we had not encountered before was humans as ‘‘patch disturbers.’’ Patch disturbers degrade a small central place greatly, and disturb much larger areas further away from the central core to a lesser extent. Karr, who developed the IBI for streams and rivers, discusses criteria for developing multimetric indices of integrity. He argues that integrity should be measured with multimetric biological indices rather than the theoretical concepts of productivity, self-organization, and resilience. How the IBI approach has been adapted to forests is discussed in two chapters. Miller and Ehnes show how measurements of primary productivity and nutrients might be used to determine the sustainability of forest management practices. Loucks presents an MFI (mean functional integrity) that is based on the measurement of ecosystem functions such as net primary productivity. He applies this index to forest study areas in the eastern US and Canada with different pollution impacts. Three chapters examine the relationship between human health and ecological integrity. McMichael discusses the sustainability of recent gains in human health and concludes that ecological degradation is threatening those gains, with climate change being an added threat, especially for those in little-consuming countries. Soskolne, Sieswerda, and Scott describe epidemiological methods for determining relationships between ecological degradation and human health. Westra
argues that governments are committing ‘‘ecoviolence’’ by tolerating certain activities that are harming human health. She argues that this violence will continue until it is recognized as such, and she supports extensions of human rights and criminal law to cover these activities, which are currently institutionally accepted. In the section concerned with the economics and ethics of achieving ecological integrity, Schrecker looks at the relationship between environmental protection and equitable economic development. This chapter, more than the others, seems to get at the crux of the problem, namely the large disparity between rich and poor nations. Crabbe´ argues that people live in cities because of the benefits they provide and thinks we should/ cannot limit the growth of large cities. Sterba argues for protecting ecosystem integrity from a biocentric ethical perspective. Manno describes the process of ‘‘commoditization’’ in which commercial goods and services are systematically valued over noncommercial means of satisfying human needs and goals. He argues that governments must intervene in markets to counter the commoditization pressures and move towards sustainable development. Brown assesses the state of the world 5 years after the Rio conference and the prospects for protecting ecological integrity. Five years after Rio, there has not been much progress made and the North is not living up to its promises; after 10 years, more of the same will be repeated in Johannesburg. Consequently the South feels no obligation to live up to its part either. Maybe the best chapter is the last chapter where all that is said is categorized, bulleted, and summarized. This chapter can be of great use to the conservationist who can use arguments and back these up with references or take some of the ideas and put them into practice. Some of the suggestions have already crept into NGOs in Turkey who initiated projects to help cut the ecological footprint of individuals and companies. Much of what the book discusses has been said before; however, given the wide range of topics from a variety of disciplines, there are probably
Book re6iew
at least a few new ideas for most readers. The goal was a presentation and synthesis of wide-ranging but complementary topics. The authors whose work is already multidisciplinary provide a synthesis that is very useful. Further such attempts to synthesize should be highly encouraged and should include scholars from the less-consuming societies in order to have a truly global perspective.
179
Uygar O8 zesmi, Stacy L. O8 zesmi Department of En6ironmental Engineering, Erciyes Uni6ersity, Kayseri 38039, Turkey [email protected] [email protected]