“Think
about what it takes to feed 7.5 billion people. Only 20 percent of
the planet is habitable, yet within our own lifetimes one out of
every four hectares of productive land has become unusable, three out
of every four hectares have been altered from their natural state,
and while agriculture drives that change, we waste a third of the
food,” said head of the UNCCD Ibrahim Thiaw who added, increasing food
production by 50 percent, when land degradation and climate change
will be decreasing crop yields by 50 percent, makes restoring and
protecting the fragile layer of land an issue for “anyone who wants
to eat, drink or breathe.”
UNCCD-Science
Policy Interface co-chair Dr. Mariam Akhtar-Schuster, explained, The
main message is: things are not improving. The issue of
desertification is becoming clearer to different communities, but we
now have to start implementing the knowledge that we already have to
combat desertification. It’s not only technology that we have to
implement, it is the policy level that has to develop a governance
structure which supports sustainable land management practices...On
all continents you have the issue of land degradation, so there’s
no continent, there’s no country which can just lean back and say
this is not our issue. Everybody has to do something...There
is no top-down approach. You need the people on the ground, you need
the people who generate knowledge and you need the policy makers to
implement that knowledge. You need everybody. Nobody in a community,
in a social environment, can say this has nothing to do with me. We
are all consumers of products which are generated from land. So, we
in our daily lives – the way we eat, the way we dress ourselves –
whatever we do has something to do with land, and we can take
decisions which are more friendly to land than what we’re doing at
the moment.”
75
percent of the land area is very significantly altered, 66 percent of
the ocean area is experiencing increasing cumulative impacts, and 85
percent of the wetland area has been lost.
UNCCD
Lead Scientist Dr. Barron Joseph Orr said,“We’ve
got a situation where 75 percent of the land surface of the earth has
been transformed, and the demand for food is only going to go up
between now and 2050 with the population growth expected to increase
one to two billion people. That’s a significant jump. Our demand
for energy that’s drawn from land, bio energy, or the need for land
for solar and wind energy is only going to increase but these studies
are making it clear that we are not optimising our use.” He added,
“We
need better incentives for our farmers and ranchers to do the right
thing on the landscape, we have to have stronger safeguards for
tenures so that future generations can continue that stewardship of
the land,” he added.
Socialism
has become discredited in the view of many environmentalists who
argue that socialism is fundamentally anti-ecological, high-lighting
the destructive ecological actions of “workers'” states like the
Soviet Union and its satellites. For socialists, society’s
productive forces is the material basis for social progress and
higher level of development is critical to build world socialism. To
many environmentalists, however, this overly concern with expanding
production is at the expense of ecological considerations. Ecologists
must face the reality that much of the world does need higher levels
of consumption. Billions of people in the world need, in order to
have better lives, secure food and water, decent housing, improved
transport and communications infrastructure, and health services. But
there would also be more parks and gathering spaces that facilitate
community interaction. If people have no secure means of subsistence
to live, they will survive as best they can using what means are
available to them, which tend to be highly destructive to their
eco-systems. Millions of people still use wood for heating and
cooking. India alone has millions who live without access to
electricity. Poverty is a major part of the reason there is so much
deforestation in India, Africa, and parts of Asia. Renewable
electricity provision for the entire planet — and the eradication
of poverty — would have to be part of any move to living
sustainably with the Earth. In order to solve the global ecological
crisis, we must undertake an enormous transfer of resources to the
poor and offer a comfortable life to the billions of people from whom
capitalism have left in misery. The only way to develop human
potential and generate a healthier planet is through a developing the
productive forces of society. A democratically planned and
ecologically rational society will be able to overcome the ways in
which capitalism is holding us back from producing more efficiently
and sustainably. All these transformations in production and the
rational allocation of resources are possible with technologies that
exist now, but capitalism’s drive for profit holds us back from
implementing them.
Understanding
capitalism is essential to address the environmental crisis. An
ecologically benign society is incompatible with capitalism. The
reason, why capitalism is eco-destructive is its need to grow
endlessly. Production is not geared to satisfy need, but instead to
produce profit. Capitalists produce with the hope of gaining as large
a share of the market as possible. This leads to shattered lives,
unemployment, disease and violence. The relationship towards nature
that socialists advocates is one that restores us to nature. In an
ecologically sustainable society, the means of production and
distribution would be democratically controlled and organised to
provide the greatest possible social benefit, which would entail
ecological sustainability. Because the economy would be structured to
further the development of human potential, technological advances in
production would be used to shorten work hours rather than to produce
more, leading to more free time to do truly fulfilling activities and
allow us greater variety in how we spend our lives. A sustainable and
just society would be a more efficient way to fulfill people’s
needs. Work would be structured in ways that allow people to feel a
closer connection with the production of food and resources. A
socialist society would offer the freedom to live rewarding lives
less centered around consumption.
Certainly there would be changes in
what people consume in a sustainable society — an ecologically
sound agricultural system would probably rear less meat and grow less
out-of-season produce — but this would occur because of a change in
production in context of revolutionary liberation leading to a better
life. Overall, such an agricultural system would supply healthier,
more nutritious and better-tasting food), so it would not be
experienced as a sacrifice. With the establishment of socialism, a
democratic, planned use of resources goods and services could be
produced in different, more efficient and environmentally sound ways
reducing the ecological footprint. A sustainable society and a
socialist society are inseparable.
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