Natural ecosystems are sustainable. That means that they can maintain themselves with some integrity. It does not mean that they remain in a fixed state; nothing can. Sustainable systems can and do change.
Sustainability is an emergent property of ecosystems. An emergent property is a behavior or quality of a system that demonstrates synergy (the whole is greater than the sum of its parts). |
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Emergent properties are not features of system parts |
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Emergent properties cannot be predicted |
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Emergent properties prove that nature is creative |
Take water as an example. A molecule of water is a simple system, with three parts, two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen. When they are separate atoms, they are not wet. When those three atoms incline themselves to come together, they create H2O, water, which has many emergent properties (wetness, liquidity, solidity, etc.), none of which are predictable.
When communities of microscopic lives began to organize themselves some billions of years ago, they discovered that they could be self-maintaining, thus sustainable. Bacteria organized themselves into complex layered communities called biofilms, and still do. Although bacteria are too small for us to directly perceive, we can perceive biofilms easily. They are the slightly slimy film that coats unbrushed teeth. Biofilms cover every moist surface on earth.
Whether microscopic or macroscopic, organisms are all enmeshed in a complex web of relationships with other lives and with their environment. These webs of life are ecosystems, and they are generally sustainable.
Humanity is now realizing that our societies, especially industrialized societies, are not sustainable and are far from any sort of homeostasis. A few scientists and thinkers are deeply engaged in finding solutions to this enormous set of problems. In brief, an unsustainable system will collapse.
Ecosystems are "complex dynamic adaptive systems," the key word being adaptive. An ecosystem can be "perturbed," which means that something outside it has changed in a way that requires an ecosystem response. Air quality, for example, is changeable, or climate warming.
Ecosystems have the ability to "ride out" many pertubations. This is called resilience. Resilience is an emergent property of biodiversity.
The principle of biodiversity is simple:
In any living community, the more different kinds of organisms there are, the stronger that community will be.
In other words, The more variety of life-forms in an ecosystem, or the more differences there are among the inhabitants, the healthier the community will be, and the more adaptable and resilient the community will be.
This is fundamentally important knowledge that has profound implications for human societies. Biodiversity may be the most important idea on earth.
But we don't get it.
Most people know deep down that Earth is in trouble, and we are in trouble, but dare not think about it. Most of us insist on seeing the Earth through rose-colored glasses.
The word “biodiversity” names ideas that should carry enormous urgency for us. But they don’t.
Why is that? We don’t, or can’t, seem to care all that much about it. Why not? The evidence is that we find it an extraordinarily difficult concept to grasp.
We resist understanding biodiversity It seems that we cannot “buy into” biodiversity because the concept conflicts so completely with our experience of the world.
Biodiversity is counter–intuitive for us.
Our minds are simply not prepared to accept it as true.
What Gets in Our Way?
Wearing Machine-Colored Glasses
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Several things obstruct our understanding:
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We still believe that “It’s a jungle out there!” and simultaneously believe the contradictory statement that humans are above Nature. This is called “doublethink.” |
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We see the physical world through “machine-colored glasses.” |
For centuries, Western civilization has been simultaneously denying that humans are animals, and busy claiming that we have evolved beyond our animal origins to the point where we control nature rather than it controlling us.
Our special relationship with a Creator, many claim, makes our membership in Nature irrelevant, because this Earth and this life was created for humans as a preparation for eternal life somewhere else. This is a way of saying that the rules don’t apply to us: “Hey, you can’t arrest me—I’m the Mayor’s kid!” This is also a way of saying that, in the long run, it doesn’t really matter what we do to Earth, for it is only a way-station on our trip to Eternity.
We wear machine-colored glasses. Even ecologists, who should know better, describe natural processes as mechanisms.
For 200 and more years, Westerners have been seeing the world through machine glasses. By 1661, philosophers had begun to formulate a new conception of Nature as an intricate, impersonal, and inert machine. Seventeenth Century science, in the persons of Descartes and Isaac Newton, left us with a view of the universe as an enormous mechanism, a sort of clockwork set in motion by its Creator that has been ticking along ever since.
In other words, our society has inherited a way of seeing Nature as a mechanism, which operates under certain rules, or laws, like any machine, so it behaves like a machine. And in our mechanically–sophisticated society, there are certain things everyone ‘knows’ about machines.
We ‘know’ that the more parts a machine has, the more vulnerable it is to failure. The space shuttle has an enormous number of parts. It breaks down. Complication in machines is a problem; a machine that is too complicated is likely to break. In the Machine–World, More is Less.
| Monocultures: Where More is Always Less |
Monoculture is the practice of growing single crops on a piece of land, often for year after year. Midwestern cornfields are a typical monoculture. Usually that crop is one bred variety of one species.
Monoculture is also found in forestry, where a forest complex has been clearcut and re-planted in only one species, often poplar, sometimes one species of pine.
We know the adage, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket,” but it seems to be an extraordinarily hard lesson.
Monoculture is a managed refusal of diversity.
The results of monoculture include:
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heavy use of chemical fertilizers |
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heavy use of chemical poisons (herbicides, insecticides) |
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increased susceptibility to diseases |
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low tolerance to stresses of drought or temperature |
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reduced resistance to insects |
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crop failures resulting in famines |
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reduced soil fertility |
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increased soil erosion |
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permanent loss of genetic variety in the crop species |
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increased habitat for “pest” species |
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reduced habitat for beneficial species |
The way we raise chicken, turkeys, pigs, lambs, calves, and cattle is near monoculture. We use only a few breeds, all but cloned for maximum food production and turned into factory products.
Animals raised in monoculture are so highly susceptible to disease that we routinely dose them with antibiotics.
Oops! We just discovered that bacteria and insects evolve much faster than we ever dreamed, and this use of antibiotics has quickly created many resistant organisms that endanger our own health, not just that of our meat.
Not long ago, scientists cloned a sheep named Dolly. Cloning of food animals, if it becomes widespread, will eventually lead to a true monoculture, for only the best milk-producing cows will be cloned, perhaps thousands of times over, and only the best ham-producing pigs will be cloned, and only the best steak-producing cattle will be cloned.
The result will be very odd. We may all end up eating the same animal, over and over. The species of animals will lose genetic diversity, and the clones will be increasingly vulnerable to disease and defects, because of a process called genetic drift.
Wearing Green–Colored Glasses:
When More Really Is More |
All of our experiential intuitions of both the mechanical and social worlds tell us that More is Less. They tell us that complexity equals complication which is a bad thing.
But in Nature, in the actual workings of life on earth, More Really is More. Nature's system processes are synergistic (wholes are more than the sum of their parts).
The First Principle of Biodiversity: In any living community, the more different kinds of organisms there are the stronger that community will be.
There was an older knowledge and model of reality that the machine glasses replaced. Our re-discovered awareness of ecology marks a return to our ancient understanding of nature, a knowledge we held for many thousands of years.
For that time, we saw the world through Green–colored glasses. That is, we saw the world and its workings through a perceptual set and knowledge that we acquired as we evolved into human beings, as we became ourselves.
These green glasses we are beginning to wear again show us Earth’s ecosystems as they really are: the flourishing of diversity is strength; the flourishing of diversity is resilience; the flourishing of diversity is health. Complexity is related to success more than breakdown. We are beginning to know again:
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All species in a community interlive (are essentially symbiotic). |
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Everything is connected to everything else, and all lives are interdependent |
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In a natural community, all members benefit and all members suffer interdependently. Each has its role. |
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Cooperation is a force in nature as powerful as competition. A diversity of organisms is a living example of synergy.
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Green-colored glasses look at complexity and see blessing and strength. |
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