THE BASIC LESSONS OF ECOLOGY

4.5 THE BASIC LESSONS OF ECOLOGY

Several lessons can be drawn from the above discussions of ecology. Among them, the following are most pertinent to the study of natural resource economics:

1 The substances that we often identify as natural resources (air, water, food, minerals, valleys, mountains, forests, lakes, watersheds, waterfalls, wilderness, etc.) evolved from a multitude of complex interactions of living and nonliving organisms that are powered by the energy of the sun over a period measured on a geological timescale. Viewed this way, the term natural resource refers to all of the elements that constitute the biosphere. In other words, natural resources include all the “original” elements that comprise the earth’s natural endowments or the life-support systems: the lithosphere, the hydrosphere and the atmosphere, together with the solar radiation from the sun. Furthermore, even from

a purely anthropocentric perspective, some of the services of nature’s ecosystem would include the items presented in Table 4.1 . An important implication of this is that it would be wrong to conceive of natural resources as just factors of production that can be directly used in the production and consumption processes of the human economy (see Chapter 1 ).

2 The interactions among the elemental components of the biosphere are governed by three basic principles. The first principle is that all matter in the ecosphere is mutually linked (Miller 1991). Furthermore, since everything is related to everything else, survival of the biosphere requires recognition of the mutual interdependencies among all the elements that constitute the biosphere. Strictly from an ecological viewpoint, then, the human economy cannot be viewed in isolation from the natural ecosystem or biosphere as depicted by the circular diagram, Figure 1.1 in Chapter 1 (Georgescu- Roegen 1993). Instead, the economy is a subsystem of the environment, both as a source of raw material inputs and as a “sink” for waste output as shown in Figure 4.2 (Boulding 1993). As will be further

explored in Chapters 8 and 9 , this vision of the human economy as a subsystem of the biosphere has very profound implications; especially for the issue of “optimal” scale (the size of human economy relative to the natural ecosystem).

The second principle deals with the fact that material recycling is essential for the growth and revitalization of all the components of the ecosphere (Miller 1991). In every natural ecosystem, what is

a by-product (waste) for one organism is a resource for another. In this sense there is no such thing in nature as waste. Furthermore, in nature, materials are continuously circulated through the biosphere by

a combination of atmospheric, geologic, biologic and hydrologic cycles. These cycles are essential for maintaining the long-run equilibrium of the elements in the atmosphere, hydrosphere and lithosphere. The third principle essential to the understanding of the functioning of the biosphere deals with the recognition that the various components of the biosphere (the ecosystems) go through developmental stages. A mature ecosystem supports a large diversity of species with a web of interrelationships. These diverse interrelationships in turn make the ecosystem quite resilient to changes in the physical

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environment. Thus, according to what seems to be the conventional wisdom, in nature it is through diversity that a particular ecosystem maintains stability.

3 The biosphere cannot escape the fundamental laws of matter and energy. By the first law of thermodynamics, the biosphere is composed of a constant amount of matter. In this sense, what typifies the activity in nature is not the creation but the transformation of matter. No activity in the biosphere creates matter (Georgescu-Roegen 1993). The first law clearly instructs us that natural resources are finite (Boulding 1993; Georgescu-Roegen 1993). Furthermore, it informs us that in the process of transformation of matter, we cannot get rid of anything. An important implication of this is that pollution is an inevitable by-product of any transformation of matter-energy (including, of course, the human economy).

The biosphere also operates within another restriction stemming from the second law. For any activities (i.e., transformation of matter) to occur in the biosphere, a continual flow of energy from an external source is required. As discussed earlier, this is because the second law states that energy cannot be recycled. Furthermore, the fact that energy cannot be recycled raises an important issue about the use of terrestrial energy resources, such as fossil fuels. These terrestrial resources are not

only finite, but also nonrecyclable. As will be shown in Chapters 8 and 9 , these are core concepts essential to the understanding of ecological economics and the argument for sustainable economic development.

Table 4.1 Nature's ecosystem services

Raw materials production (food, fisheries, timber and building materials, nontimber forest products, fodder, genetic resources, medicines, dyes)

Pollination Biological control of pests and diseases Habitat and refuge Water supply and regulation Waste recycling and pollution control Nutrient cycling Soil building and maintenance Disturbance regulation Climate regulation Atmospheric regulation Recreation, cultural, educational/scientific Source: Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 1997, p. 96. Copyright © 1997. Reprinted by permission.