In 1972 something changed…
The announcement was made in the middle of the pandemic, when we believed that nothing could be more alarming than the health crisis itself, though the announcement was likely overshadowed by the magnitude of the pandemic in every way. In October 2020, the famous scientific journal Nature published an article showing that for the first time in the history of the planet,?the anthropogenic mass surpassed the existing biomass on Earth?(Elhacam?et al., 2020). In other words, today there is more plastic, concrete, textiles, cars, microchips, buildings, glass, and other manmade materials than algae, sequoias, insects, tigers, fungi, salamanders, cacti, condors, sharks, lichens, and everything else that nature created. This news, although devastating, was not surprising, especially in the year in which we were forced to contemplate the absolute imbalance in which the human species lives. The idea that human activity has profoundly and rapidly disrupted Earth’s system is being expressed in more and more ways.
Concern for the various ecological problems across Earth permeates many of our ideas, practices, and discourses. Concepts such as “environment,” “conservation,” or “ecology” are historical; that is, they have changed over time and, in turn, are likely to keep changing. Moreover, the perception and enunciation of environmental problems are conditioned by the social context and place in which they occur. In this sense, in order to critically review the discourses and practices surrounding the environmental crisis, its causes, consequences, and possible solutions,?it is important to think historically.?
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World Environment Day is commemorated every June 5. The ephemeris was proposed by the United Nations (UN) in 1977 to establish a discourse of learning and awareness of the various environmental problems in order to promote actions that can reverse and improve the situation.?The reason why it is specifically celebrated on June 5 is to commemorate something that happened on the same day but in 1972: The Stockholm Earth Summit, also known as the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment.
Having been convened and organized by the UN, the Stockholm Conference had a higher quorum and visibility. However, this event was not the first to focus on environmental issues. An example of this is the Intergovernmental Conference of Experts on the Scientific Basis for Rational Use and Conservation of the Resources of the Biosphere, organized by UNESCO in 1968. This conference focused on projecting actions for the utilization of natural resources and environmental conservation, managing the interaction between biological, physical, and social sciences to promote better ways of coexisting with the environment, and the introduction of the concept of “biosphere” as an ecosystem where the levels of organization of life and the environment coexist. During this period, the adoption of planned programs for rational exploitation and conservation was projected, such as the Man and the Biosphere Program (MAB), to which, as Gonzalo Halffter mentions, the contributions of Mexican scientists were fundamental (Halffter, 2002).
Of course, this is not to say that before this time there was no concern for the environment. Since the 19th century, debates and ideas about the degradation of forests, air, and water pollution have been evident in several parts of the world. However, the idea that natural resources were infinite and?the utilitarian notion of nature—framed in the era of the second Industrial and Technological Revolution—allowed for environmental degradation. Thus, during the first half of the 20th century, other phenomena began to emerge: the industrialization of the economy in North America and Europe, urbanization processes, large-scale use of fossil fuels, and the construction of large dams.
After 1945, in a world shaken by the use of the atomic bomb, the aforementioned phenomena grew exponentially and with an acceleration never seen before. Historians and scientists have called this process the Great Acceleration, in which “humanity has become a geological force on a planetary scale” that has modified the Earth’s natural systems (Crutzen?et al., 2007). Rapid population growth, cities, pesticide use, resource extraction, greenhouse gas emissions, oil spills, species extinction due to anthropogenic activities, and deforestation became a constant in several parts of the world. The environmental problem began to be conceived as a global issue, beyond local contexts.?
The 1972 Stockholm Summit was fundamental for the understanding of the environmental issue as a global topic.?It was undoubtedly a historical precedent for the establishment of common points for environmental agendas and policies, presenting twenty-six principles, more than a hundred recommendations, and an action plan to face the environmental problem. In the declaration of the Conference, one of the challenges was to?integrate the ideas of environmental conservation and restoration with economic development and human well-being. The first principle of the Conference Declaration summarizes as follows:?
In the long and tortuous evolution of the human race on this planet, a stage has been reached when, thanks to the rapid acceleration of science and technology, man has acquired the power to transform, in innumerable ways and on an unprecedented scale, his surroundings. Both aspects of the human environment, the natural, and the man-made are essential to human well-being and the enjoyment of fundamental human rights, including the right to life itself (UN, 1973).
It is important to note that, although it was beginning to be on our collective radar, the concept of climate change was not yet consolidated as a global problem. Even though UN member countries were advised to establish better policies for the use of natural resources, territorial planning, international cooperation, nuclear disarmament, and other measures, these were not enough.
As a result, international conferences on the environment began to become increasingly recurrent. More than a decade later, in 1987, the Montreal Protocol was established, focused on reducing the hole in the ozone layer that was detected since 1985. Years later, the UN reconvened what was called the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, also known as the?Earth Summit, held in Rio de Janeiro in 1997. Two decades after Stockholm, this event showed that the environmental crisis was still worsening. It is interesting to note that by this conference, concepts such as “biodiversity” and “sustainable development” had already been integrated into the environmental policy agenda. In 1997, the famous—but not very much enforced—Kyoto Protocol was established. It entered into force in 2005, with clearly insufficient results in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, despite the options given to governments to be entitled to a certain amount of emissions in exchange for offsetting them with other environmental programs. The inadequacy of the Kyoto Protocol and the risk of the planet’s average temperature rising more than 2 °C led to the?Paris Agreement?(2015), within the framework of the United Nations Climate Change Conference. In 2017, President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the agreement, an action remedied by his successor Joe Biden as soon as he entered the presidency. The list concludes with the most recent 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference COP 26 held in Glasgow, Scotland. At this meeting, the problem of global warming and the goal of not increasing the planetary temperature to more than 1.5 °C was presented again. China, the world’s highest CO2?emitting country, notably did not show up to that summit.
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Rivers of ink have flowed and many words have been used to describe the planet’s predicament. Moreover, the environmental crisis and “ecology” have become commodities in which?green?is simply a commercial prefix (Fernandez and Heiblum, 2021). At each conference, concepts are refined, actions seem to become more specific, and plans are inflated with narratives that seem to take environmental and social factors into account. However, one does not have to dig very deep to realize that the picture has not changed very much. While the narrative that has accompanied the environmental crisis and climate change has taken many forms, it is important to distance it from certain notions about our residence on this planet.
One of these is the dichotomy between nature and culture. Stimulated by modern thought and with deeper roots, this idea, in which?we self-represent ourselves as a species alien to the rest of living beings, is not only limiting but also dissolves the historical experiences that diverse people have had in a shared history of evolution with their own environment. The idea of pristine nature must be replaced by the idea that human beings can—and have—established collaborative relationships with other species, modifying and producing their environment, but without destroying it or destroying themselves along the way.
On the other hand, it is important to be wary of?individualistic discourses?that pretend to echo liberal thinking but which, in the end, erase from the map the structural and historical causes of the environmental crisis. The ways of production and habitation are historical products that have resulted in models of exploitation of nature. Large corporations and industrialized countries must assume a special responsibility because their environmental impact is incomparable to that of “developing” countries and other social actors. This is not to say that individual actions are useless, but an overall solution cannot be found in such a vision.
It is clear that in 1972 something changed. The consequences of that change are still being debated in history and the environmental sciences. What is undeniable is that?the Stockholm summit was a wake-up call to distinguish the global scale of the environmental crisis, as well as the more concrete actions that all countries could have taken. Sadly, half a century later, it seems that these meetings are largely echo chambers.
Against this backdrop, maxims such as “act local and think global” can become calls for community action only if they are filled with content and experiences in which it is not only the scientific communities or academic experts who dictate the steps to be taken. Different communities and social sectors can establish links that lead to alternative ways of relating to the natural environment. Interdisciplinarity, plurality, and the incorporation of different knowledge and know-how (avoiding the romanticization of the traditional and biopiracy) can illuminate the way in a world in which self-destruction seems irreversible.
About the author: Ayamel is a contributor to Toroto's blog and a student of the Master’s degree in Philosophy of Science at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).
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1 年Excellent article!