Global change
Encyclopedia
Global change refers to planetary-scale changes in the Earth
system. The system consists of the land, oceans, atmosphere
, poles, life
, the planet’s natural cycles and deep Earth processes. These constituent parts influence one another. The Earth system now includes human society, so global change also refers to large-scale changes in society.
More completely, the term “global change” encompasses: population
, climate
, the economy
, resource use, energy development
, transport
, communication
, land use
and land cover
, urbanization
, globalization
, atmospheric circulation
, ocean circulation, the carbon cycle
, the nitrogen cycle
, the water cycle
and other cycles, sea ice
loss, sea-level rise, food webs, biological diversity, pollution
, health
, over fishing, and more.
set up an international programme, the World Climate Research Programme
(WCRP), to determine whether the climate was changing, whether climate could be predicted and whether humans were in some way responsible for the change. The programme was sponsored by the World Meteorological Organization
and the International Council for Science
(ICSU). As time went on, there was a growing realisation that climate change was one part of a larger phenomenon, global change. In 1987, a team of researchers, led again by Bert Bolin, James McCarthy, Paul Crutzen, H. Oeschger and others, successfully argued for an international research programme to investigate global change. This programme, sponsored by ICSU, is the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme
(IGBP). The programme has eight projects investigating different parts of the Earth system and links between them.
IGBP, WCRP and a third programme, the International Human Dimensions Programme
(IHDP, founded in 1996), spearheaded a landmark science conference held in Amsterdam in 2001. The conference, Challenges of a Changing Earth: Global Change Open Science Conference, led to the Amsterdam Declaration which stated, “In addition to the threat of significant climate change, there is growing concern over the ever-increasing human modification of other aspects of the global environment and the consequent implications for human well-being. Basic goods and services supplied by the planetary life support system, such as food, water, clean air and an environment conducive to human health, are being affected increasingly by global change.”
The declaration goes on to say, “The international global change programmes urge governments, public and private institutions and people of the world to agree that an ethical framework for global stewardship and strategies for Earth System management are urgently needed.”
Many nations now have their own global change programmes and institutes, for example the US Global Change Research Program and the UK’s Quantifying and Understanding the Earth System (QUEST) programme. And since the Amsterdam conference another international programme focusing on biodiversity has been set up, DIVERSITAS
. These programmes form the Earth System Science
Partnership.
In 2012, these international programmes plan another major science conference in London, Planet Under Pressure: new knowledge towards solutions.
, volcanism
, proliferation and abatement of life
, meteorite
impact, resource depletion, changes in Earth
’s orbit around the sun and changes in the tilt of Earth on its axis. There is overwhelming evidence that now the main driver of planetary-scale change, or global change, is the growing human population’s demand for energy, food, goods, services and information, and its disposal of its waste products. In the last 250 years, global change has caused climate change
, widespread species extinctions, fish-stock collapse, desertification
, ocean acidification
, ozone depletion
, pollution
, and other large-scale shifts.
Scientists working on the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme have said that Earth is now operating in a “no analogue” state. Measurements of Earth system processes, past and present, have led to the conclusion that the planet has moved well outside the range of natural variability in the last half million years at least. Homo sapiens have been around for about 200,000 years.
What this means for the planet and society remains unclear. But, in the last 20 years there has been an enormous international research effort to understand global change and the Earth system. An aim of this research is to work out if there are planetary boundaries and are we approaching them. Scientists, international governmental organizations and lobbying organizations like World Wide Fund for Nature
argue that current consumption levels, particularly in developed countries, are not sustainable because there is a very real danger they will push the planet into a new state. What this new state might look like is still being debated, but sea levels are likely to rise several meters, the pH
of the oceans, a measure of its acidity, is likely to drop farther than it has in 20 million years, and global atmospheric and ocean circulations may shift markedly. The major cycles – carbon
, nitrogen
, sulfur
, phosphorus
, water
– and other important parameters would alter, bringing drought
to some places, floods to others. Governments will no longer be able to take for granted the relative environmental stability that has allowed human society to flourish and led to rapid globalization. Most of the population of the planet will be affected. The re-insurance industry is already taking measures to protect its interests and maximize profits as turbulent times approach.
in 1750. This event, followed by the invention of the Haber-Bosch process in 1909, which allowed large-scale manufacture of fertilizers, led directly to rapid changes to many of the planet’s most important physical, chemical and biological processes.
The 1950s marked a shift in gear: global change began accelerating. Between 1950 and 2010, the population more than doubled. In that time, rapid expansion of international trade coupled with upsurges in capital flows and new technologies, particularly information and communication technologies, led to national economies becoming more fully integrated. There was a tenfold increase in economic activity and the world’s human population became more tightly connected than ever before. The period saw sixfold increases in water use and river damming. About 70 percent of the world’s freshwater
resource is now used for agriculture. This rises to 90 percent in India and China. Half of the Earth’s land surface had now been domesticated. By 2010, urban population, for the first time, exceeded rural population. And there has been a fivefold increase in fertilzser use. Indeed, manufactured reactive nitrogen from fertilizer production and industry now exceeds global terrestrial production of reactive nitrogen. Without artificial fertilizers there would not be enough food to sustain a population of six billion people.
These changes to the human sub-system have a direct influence on all components of the Earth system. The chemical composition of the atmosphere has changed significantly. Concentrations of important greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide
, methane
and nitrous oxide
are rising fast. Over Antarctica a large hole in the ozone layer appeared. Fisheries collapsed: most of the world’s fisheries are now fully or over-exploited. Thirty percent of tropical rainforests disappeared.
In 2000, Nobel prize-winning scientist Paul Crutzen announced the scale of change is so great that in just 250 years, human society has pushed the planet into a new geological era: the Anthropocene
. This name has stuck and there are calls for the Anthropocene to be adopted officially. If it is, it may be the shortest of all geological eras. Evidence suggests that if human activities continue to change components of the Earth system, which are all interlinked, this could heave the Earth system out of a one state and into a new state.
and global integration. Globalization began with long-distance trade and urbanism. The first record of long distance trading routes is in the third millennium BC. Sumarians in Mesopotamia
traded with settlers in the Indus Valley, in modern-day India.
Since 1750, but more significantly, since the 1950s, global integration has accelerated. This era has witnessed incredible global changes in communications, transportation, and computer technology. Ideas, cultures, people, goods, services and money move around the planet with ease. This new global interconnectedness and free flow of information has radically altered notions of other cultures, conflicts
, religions and taboos. Now, social movements can and do form at a planetary scale.
Evidence, if more were needed, of the link between social and environmental global change came with the 2008-2009 global financial crisis
. The crisis pushed the planet’s main economic powerhouses, the United States
, Europe
and much of Asia
into recession. According to the Global Carbon Project
, global atmospheric emissions of carbon dioxide fell from an annual growth rate of around 3.4% between 2000 and 2008, to a growth rate of about 2% in 2008.
, or Arctic
sea ice, will reach a tipping point and flip from its current state to another state: flowing to not flowing, rainforest to savanna
, or ice to no ice. A domino effect could ensue with other components of the Earth system changing state rapidly.
Intensive research over the last 20 years has shown that tipping points do exist in the Earth system, and wide-scale change can be rapid – a matter of decades. Potential tipping points have been identified and attempts have been made to quantify thresholds. But to date, the best efforts can only identify loosely defined "planetary boundaries
" beyond which tipping points exist but their precise locations remain elusive.
There have been calls for a better way to manage the environment on a planetary scale, sometimes referred to as managing “Earth’s life support system”. The United Nations
was formed to stop wars and provide a platform for dialogue between countries. It was not created to avoid major environmental catastrophe on regional or global scales. But several international environmental conventions exist under the UN, including the Framework Convention on Climate Change
, Montreal Protocol
, Convention to Combat Desertification
, and Convention on Biological Diversity
. Additionally, the UN has two bodies charged with coordinating environmental and development activities, the United Nations Environment Programme
(UNEP) and the United Nations Development Programme
(UNDP).
In 2004, the IGBP published “Global Change and the Earth System, a planet under pressure.” The publication’s executive summary concluded: “An overall, comprehensive, internally consistent strategy for stewardship of the Earth system is required”. It stated that a research goal is to define and maintain a stable equilibrium in the global environment.
In 2007, France called for UNEP to be replaced by a new and more powerful organization, the “United Nations Environment Organization”. The rationale was that UNEP’s status as a “programme”, rather than an “organization” in the tradition of the World Health Organization
or the World Meteorological Organization
, weakened it to the extent that it was no longer fit for purpose given current knowledge of the state of the planet.
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...
system. The system consists of the land, oceans, atmosphere
Atmosphere
An atmosphere is a layer of gases that may surround a material body of sufficient mass, and that is held in place by the gravity of the body. An atmosphere may be retained for a longer duration, if the gravity is high and the atmosphere's temperature is low...
, poles, life
Life
Life is a characteristic that distinguishes objects that have signaling and self-sustaining processes from those that do not, either because such functions have ceased , or else because they lack such functions and are classified as inanimate...
, the planet’s natural cycles and deep Earth processes. These constituent parts influence one another. The Earth system now includes human society, so global change also refers to large-scale changes in society.
More completely, the term “global change” encompasses: population
Population
A population is all the organisms that both belong to the same group or species and live in the same geographical area. The area that is used to define a sexual population is such that inter-breeding is possible between any pair within the area and more probable than cross-breeding with individuals...
, climate
Climate
Climate encompasses the statistics of temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, wind, rainfall, atmospheric particle count and other meteorological elemental measurements in a given region over long periods...
, the economy
Economy
An economy consists of the economic system of a country or other area; the labor, capital and land resources; and the manufacturing, trade, distribution, and consumption of goods and services of that area...
, resource use, energy development
Energy development
Energy development is the effort to provide sufficient primary energy sources and secondary energy forms for supply, cost, impact on air pollution and water pollution, mitigation of climate change with renewable energy....
, transport
Transport
Transport or transportation is the movement of people, cattle, animals and goods from one location to another. Modes of transport include air, rail, road, water, cable, pipeline, and space. The field can be divided into infrastructure, vehicles, and operations...
, communication
Communication
Communication is the activity of conveying meaningful information. Communication requires a sender, a message, and an intended recipient, although the receiver need not be present or aware of the sender's intent to communicate at the time of communication; thus communication can occur across vast...
, land use
Land use
Land use is the human use of land. Land use involves the management and modification of natural environment or wilderness into built environment such as fields, pastures, and settlements. It has also been defined as "the arrangements, activities and inputs people undertake in a certain land cover...
and land cover
Land Cover
Land cover is the physical material at the surface of the earth. Land covers include grass, asphalt, trees, bare ground, water, etc. There are two primary methods for capturing information on land cover: field survey and analysis of remotely sensed imagery....
, urbanization
Urbanization
Urbanization, urbanisation or urban drift is the physical growth of urban areas as a result of global change. The United Nations projected that half of the world's population would live in urban areas at the end of 2008....
, globalization
Globalization
Globalization refers to the increasingly global relationships of culture, people and economic activity. Most often, it refers to economics: the global distribution of the production of goods and services, through reduction of barriers to international trade such as tariffs, export fees, and import...
, atmospheric circulation
Atmospheric circulation
Atmospheric circulation is the large-scale movement of air, and the means by which thermal energy is distributed on the surface of the Earth....
, ocean circulation, the carbon cycle
Carbon cycle
The carbon cycle is the biogeochemical cycle by which carbon is exchanged among the biosphere, pedosphere, geosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere of the Earth...
, the nitrogen cycle
Nitrogen cycle
The nitrogen cycle is the process by which nitrogen is converted between its various chemical forms. This transformation can be carried out by both biological and non-biological processes. Important processes in the nitrogen cycle include fixation, mineralization, nitrification, and denitrification...
, the water cycle
Water cycle
The water cycle, also known as the hydrologic cycle or H2O cycle, describes the continuous movement of water on, above and below the surface of the Earth. Water can change states among liquid, vapor, and solid at various places in the water cycle...
and other cycles, sea ice
Sea ice
Sea ice is largely formed from seawater that freezes. Because the oceans consist of saltwater, this occurs below the freezing point of pure water, at about -1.8 °C ....
loss, sea-level rise, food webs, biological diversity, pollution
Pollution
Pollution is the introduction of contaminants into a natural environment that causes instability, disorder, harm or discomfort to the ecosystem i.e. physical systems or living organisms. Pollution can take the form of chemical substances or energy, such as noise, heat or light...
, health
Health
Health is the level of functional or metabolic efficiency of a living being. In humans, it is the general condition of a person's mind, body and spirit, usually meaning to be free from illness, injury or pain...
, over fishing, and more.
History of global-change research
In 1980, a group of scientists led by Swedish meteorologist Bert BolinBert Bolin
Bert Rickard Johannes Bolin was a Swedish meteorologist who served as the first chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change , from 1988 to 1997. He was professor of meteorology at Stockholm University from 1961 until his retirement in 1990....
set up an international programme, the World Climate Research Programme
World Climate Research Programme
The World Climate Research Programme was established in 1980, under the joint sponsorship of International Council for Science and the World Meteorological Organization, and has also been sponsored by the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO since 1993. It is a component of the...
(WCRP), to determine whether the climate was changing, whether climate could be predicted and whether humans were in some way responsible for the change. The programme was sponsored by the World Meteorological Organization
World Meteorological Organization
The World Meteorological Organization is an intergovernmental organization with a membership of 189 Member States and Territories. It originated from the International Meteorological Organization , which was founded in 1873...
and the International Council for Science
International Council for Science
The International Council for Science , formerly the International Council of Scientific Unions, was founded in 1931 as an international non-governmental organization devoted to international co-operation in the advancement of science...
(ICSU). As time went on, there was a growing realisation that climate change was one part of a larger phenomenon, global change. In 1987, a team of researchers, led again by Bert Bolin, James McCarthy, Paul Crutzen, H. Oeschger and others, successfully argued for an international research programme to investigate global change. This programme, sponsored by ICSU, is the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme
International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme
The International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme is a research programme that studies the phenomenon of global change.The International Council of Scientific Unions, a coordinating body of national science organizations, launched IGBP in 1986...
(IGBP). The programme has eight projects investigating different parts of the Earth system and links between them.
IGBP, WCRP and a third programme, the International Human Dimensions Programme
International Human Dimensions Programme
The International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change is a research programme that studies the human and societal aspects of the phenomenon of global change....
(IHDP, founded in 1996), spearheaded a landmark science conference held in Amsterdam in 2001. The conference, Challenges of a Changing Earth: Global Change Open Science Conference, led to the Amsterdam Declaration which stated, “In addition to the threat of significant climate change, there is growing concern over the ever-increasing human modification of other aspects of the global environment and the consequent implications for human well-being. Basic goods and services supplied by the planetary life support system, such as food, water, clean air and an environment conducive to human health, are being affected increasingly by global change.”
The declaration goes on to say, “The international global change programmes urge governments, public and private institutions and people of the world to agree that an ethical framework for global stewardship and strategies for Earth System management are urgently needed.”
Many nations now have their own global change programmes and institutes, for example the US Global Change Research Program and the UK’s Quantifying and Understanding the Earth System (QUEST) programme. And since the Amsterdam conference another international programme focusing on biodiversity has been set up, DIVERSITAS
Diversitas
Diversitas is an international programme on biodiversity science. It is one of four such programmes that collectively come under the Earth System Science Partnership...
. These programmes form the Earth System Science
Earth system science
Earth system science seeks to integrate various fields of academic study to understand the Earth as a system. It considers interaction between the atmosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere , biosphere, and heliosphere....
Partnership.
In 2012, these international programmes plan another major science conference in London, Planet Under Pressure: new knowledge towards solutions.
Causes of global change
In the past, the main drivers of global change have been solar output, plate tectonicsPlate tectonics
Plate tectonics is a scientific theory that describes the large scale motions of Earth's lithosphere...
, volcanism
Volcanism
Volcanism is the phenomenon connected with volcanoes and volcanic activity. It includes all phenomena resulting from and causing magma within the crust or mantle of a planet to rise through the crust and form volcanic rocks on the surface....
, proliferation and abatement of life
Life
Life is a characteristic that distinguishes objects that have signaling and self-sustaining processes from those that do not, either because such functions have ceased , or else because they lack such functions and are classified as inanimate...
, meteorite
Meteorite
A meteorite is a natural object originating in outer space that survives impact with the Earth's surface. Meteorites can be big or small. Most meteorites derive from small astronomical objects called meteoroids, but they are also sometimes produced by impacts of asteroids...
impact, resource depletion, changes in Earth
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...
’s orbit around the sun and changes in the tilt of Earth on its axis. There is overwhelming evidence that now the main driver of planetary-scale change, or global change, is the growing human population’s demand for energy, food, goods, services and information, and its disposal of its waste products. In the last 250 years, global change has caused climate change
Climate change
Climate change is a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods ranging from decades to millions of years. It may be a change in average weather conditions or the distribution of events around that average...
, widespread species extinctions, fish-stock collapse, desertification
Desertification
Desertification is the degradation of land in drylands. Caused by a variety of factors, such as climate change and human activities, desertification is one of the most significant global environmental problems.-Definitions:...
, ocean acidification
Ocean acidification
Ocean acidification is the name given to the ongoing decrease in the pH and increase in acidity of the Earth's oceans, caused by the uptake of anthropogenic carbon dioxide from the atmosphere....
, ozone depletion
Ozone depletion
Ozone depletion describes two distinct but related phenomena observed since the late 1970s: a steady decline of about 4% per decade in the total volume of ozone in Earth's stratosphere , and a much larger springtime decrease in stratospheric ozone over Earth's polar regions. The latter phenomenon...
, pollution
Pollution
Pollution is the introduction of contaminants into a natural environment that causes instability, disorder, harm or discomfort to the ecosystem i.e. physical systems or living organisms. Pollution can take the form of chemical substances or energy, such as noise, heat or light...
, and other large-scale shifts.
Scientists working on the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme have said that Earth is now operating in a “no analogue” state. Measurements of Earth system processes, past and present, have led to the conclusion that the planet has moved well outside the range of natural variability in the last half million years at least. Homo sapiens have been around for about 200,000 years.
What this means for the planet and society remains unclear. But, in the last 20 years there has been an enormous international research effort to understand global change and the Earth system. An aim of this research is to work out if there are planetary boundaries and are we approaching them. Scientists, international governmental organizations and lobbying organizations like World Wide Fund for Nature
World Wide Fund for Nature
The World Wide Fund for Nature is an international non-governmental organization working on issues regarding the conservation, research and restoration of the environment, formerly named the World Wildlife Fund, which remains its official name in Canada and the United States...
argue that current consumption levels, particularly in developed countries, are not sustainable because there is a very real danger they will push the planet into a new state. What this new state might look like is still being debated, but sea levels are likely to rise several meters, the pH
PH
In chemistry, pH is a measure of the acidity or basicity of an aqueous solution. Pure water is said to be neutral, with a pH close to 7.0 at . Solutions with a pH less than 7 are said to be acidic and solutions with a pH greater than 7 are basic or alkaline...
of the oceans, a measure of its acidity, is likely to drop farther than it has in 20 million years, and global atmospheric and ocean circulations may shift markedly. The major cycles – carbon
Carbon
Carbon is the chemical element with symbol C and atomic number 6. As a member of group 14 on the periodic table, it is nonmetallic and tetravalent—making four electrons available to form covalent chemical bonds...
, nitrogen
Nitrogen
Nitrogen is a chemical element that has the symbol N, atomic number of 7 and atomic mass 14.00674 u. Elemental nitrogen is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, and mostly inert diatomic gas at standard conditions, constituting 78.08% by volume of Earth's atmosphere...
, sulfur
Sulfur
Sulfur or sulphur is the chemical element with atomic number 16. In the periodic table it is represented by the symbol S. It is an abundant, multivalent non-metal. Under normal conditions, sulfur atoms form cyclic octatomic molecules with chemical formula S8. Elemental sulfur is a bright yellow...
, phosphorus
Phosphorus
Phosphorus is the chemical element that has the symbol P and atomic number 15. A multivalent nonmetal of the nitrogen group, phosphorus as a mineral is almost always present in its maximally oxidized state, as inorganic phosphate rocks...
, water
Water
Water is a chemical substance with the chemical formula H2O. A water molecule contains one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms connected by covalent bonds. Water is a liquid at ambient conditions, but it often co-exists on Earth with its solid state, ice, and gaseous state . Water also exists in a...
– and other important parameters would alter, bringing drought
Drought
A drought is an extended period of months or years when a region notes a deficiency in its water supply. Generally, this occurs when a region receives consistently below average precipitation. It can have a substantial impact on the ecosystem and agriculture of the affected region...
to some places, floods to others. Governments will no longer be able to take for granted the relative environmental stability that has allowed human society to flourish and led to rapid globalization. Most of the population of the planet will be affected. The re-insurance industry is already taking measures to protect its interests and maximize profits as turbulent times approach.
Physical evidence for global change
Humans have always altered their environment. The advent of agriculture around 10000 years ago led to a radical change in land use that still continues. But, the relatively small human population had little impact on a global scale until the start of the industrial revolutionIndustrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times...
in 1750. This event, followed by the invention of the Haber-Bosch process in 1909, which allowed large-scale manufacture of fertilizers, led directly to rapid changes to many of the planet’s most important physical, chemical and biological processes.
The 1950s marked a shift in gear: global change began accelerating. Between 1950 and 2010, the population more than doubled. In that time, rapid expansion of international trade coupled with upsurges in capital flows and new technologies, particularly information and communication technologies, led to national economies becoming more fully integrated. There was a tenfold increase in economic activity and the world’s human population became more tightly connected than ever before. The period saw sixfold increases in water use and river damming. About 70 percent of the world’s freshwater
Freshwater
Fresh water is naturally occurring water on the Earth's surface in ice sheets, ice caps, glaciers, bogs, ponds, lakes, rivers and streams, and underground as groundwater in aquifers and underground streams. Fresh water is generally characterized by having low concentrations of dissolved salts and...
resource is now used for agriculture. This rises to 90 percent in India and China. Half of the Earth’s land surface had now been domesticated. By 2010, urban population, for the first time, exceeded rural population. And there has been a fivefold increase in fertilzser use. Indeed, manufactured reactive nitrogen from fertilizer production and industry now exceeds global terrestrial production of reactive nitrogen. Without artificial fertilizers there would not be enough food to sustain a population of six billion people.
These changes to the human sub-system have a direct influence on all components of the Earth system. The chemical composition of the atmosphere has changed significantly. Concentrations of important greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide
Carbon dioxide
Carbon dioxide is a naturally occurring chemical compound composed of two oxygen atoms covalently bonded to a single carbon atom...
, methane
Methane
Methane is a chemical compound with the chemical formula . It is the simplest alkane, the principal component of natural gas, and probably the most abundant organic compound on earth. The relative abundance of methane makes it an attractive fuel...
and nitrous oxide
Nitrous oxide
Nitrous oxide, commonly known as laughing gas or sweet air, is a chemical compound with the formula . It is an oxide of nitrogen. At room temperature, it is a colorless non-flammable gas, with a slightly sweet odor and taste. It is used in surgery and dentistry for its anesthetic and analgesic...
are rising fast. Over Antarctica a large hole in the ozone layer appeared. Fisheries collapsed: most of the world’s fisheries are now fully or over-exploited. Thirty percent of tropical rainforests disappeared.
In 2000, Nobel prize-winning scientist Paul Crutzen announced the scale of change is so great that in just 250 years, human society has pushed the planet into a new geological era: the Anthropocene
Anthropocene
The Anthropocene is a recent and informal geologic chronological term that serves to mark the evidence and extent of human activities that have had a significant global impact on the Earth's ecosystems...
. This name has stuck and there are calls for the Anthropocene to be adopted officially. If it is, it may be the shortest of all geological eras. Evidence suggests that if human activities continue to change components of the Earth system, which are all interlinked, this could heave the Earth system out of a one state and into a new state.
Global change and society
Global change in a societal context encompasses social, cultural, technological, political, economic and legal change. Terms closely related to global change and society are globalizationGlobalization
Globalization refers to the increasingly global relationships of culture, people and economic activity. Most often, it refers to economics: the global distribution of the production of goods and services, through reduction of barriers to international trade such as tariffs, export fees, and import...
and global integration. Globalization began with long-distance trade and urbanism. The first record of long distance trading routes is in the third millennium BC. Sumarians in Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia is a toponym for the area of the Tigris–Euphrates river system, largely corresponding to modern-day Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey and southwestern Iran.Widely considered to be the cradle of civilization, Bronze Age Mesopotamia included Sumer and the...
traded with settlers in the Indus Valley, in modern-day India.
Since 1750, but more significantly, since the 1950s, global integration has accelerated. This era has witnessed incredible global changes in communications, transportation, and computer technology. Ideas, cultures, people, goods, services and money move around the planet with ease. This new global interconnectedness and free flow of information has radically altered notions of other cultures, conflicts
Group conflict
Group conflict, or hostilities between different groups, is a pervasive feature common to all levels of social organization .. Although group conflict is one of the most complex phenomena studied by social scientists, the history of the human race evidences a series of group-level conflicts that...
, religions and taboos. Now, social movements can and do form at a planetary scale.
Evidence, if more were needed, of the link between social and environmental global change came with the 2008-2009 global financial crisis
Financial crisis
The term financial crisis is applied broadly to a variety of situations in which some financial institutions or assets suddenly lose a large part of their value. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, many financial crises were associated with banking panics, and many recessions coincided with these...
. The crisis pushed the planet’s main economic powerhouses, the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
and much of Asia
Asia
Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...
into recession. According to the Global Carbon Project
Global Carbon Project
The Global Carbon Project was established in 2001. The organisation seeks to quantify global carbon emissions and their causes.The main object of the group has been to fully understand the carbon cycle...
, global atmospheric emissions of carbon dioxide fell from an annual growth rate of around 3.4% between 2000 and 2008, to a growth rate of about 2% in 2008.
Planetary management
Humans are altering the planet’s biogeochemical cycles in a largely unregulated way with limited knowledge of the consequences. Without steps to effectively manage the Earth system – the planet’s physical, chemical, biological and social components – it is likely there will be severe impacts on people and ecosystems. Perhaps the largest concern is that a component of the Earth system, for example, an ocean circulation, the Amazon rainforestAmazon Rainforest
The Amazon Rainforest , also known in English as Amazonia or the Amazon Jungle, is a moist broadleaf forest that covers most of the Amazon Basin of South America...
, or Arctic
Arctic
The Arctic is a region located at the northern-most part of the Earth. The Arctic consists of the Arctic Ocean and parts of Canada, Russia, Greenland, the United States, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland. The Arctic region consists of a vast, ice-covered ocean, surrounded by treeless permafrost...
sea ice, will reach a tipping point and flip from its current state to another state: flowing to not flowing, rainforest to savanna
Savanna
A savanna, or savannah, is a grassland ecosystem characterized by the trees being sufficiently small or widely spaced so that the canopy does not close. The open canopy allows sufficient light to reach the ground to support an unbroken herbaceous layer consisting primarily of C4 grasses.Some...
, or ice to no ice. A domino effect could ensue with other components of the Earth system changing state rapidly.
Intensive research over the last 20 years has shown that tipping points do exist in the Earth system, and wide-scale change can be rapid – a matter of decades. Potential tipping points have been identified and attempts have been made to quantify thresholds. But to date, the best efforts can only identify loosely defined "planetary boundaries
Planetary boundaries
Planetary boundaries is the central concept in an Earth system framework proposed by a group of Earth system and environmental scientists led by Johan Rockström from the Stockholm Resilience Centre and Will Steffen from the Australian National University...
" beyond which tipping points exist but their precise locations remain elusive.
There have been calls for a better way to manage the environment on a planetary scale, sometimes referred to as managing “Earth’s life support system”. The United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
was formed to stop wars and provide a platform for dialogue between countries. It was not created to avoid major environmental catastrophe on regional or global scales. But several international environmental conventions exist under the UN, including the Framework Convention on Climate Change
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is an international environmental treaty produced at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development , informally known as the Earth Summit, held in Rio de Janeiro from June 3 to 14, 1992...
, Montreal Protocol
Montreal Protocol
The Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer is an international treaty designed to protect the ozone layer by phasing out the production of numerous substances believed to be responsible for ozone depletion...
, Convention to Combat Desertification
United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification
The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification in Those Countries Experiencing Serious Drought and/or Desertification, Particularly in Africa is a Convention to combat desertification and mitigate the effects of drought through national action programs that incorporate long-term strategies...
, and Convention on Biological Diversity
Convention on Biological Diversity
The Convention on Biological Diversity , known informally as the Biodiversity Convention, is an international legally binding treaty...
. Additionally, the UN has two bodies charged with coordinating environmental and development activities, the United Nations Environment Programme
United Nations Environment Programme
The United Nations Environment Programme coordinates United Nations environmental activities, assisting developing countries in implementing environmentally sound policies and practices. It was founded as a result of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in June 1972 and has its...
(UNEP) and the United Nations Development Programme
United Nations Development Programme
The United Nations Development Programme is the United Nations' global development network. It advocates for change and connects countries to knowledge, experience and resources to help people build a better life. UNDP operates in 177 countries, working with nations on their own solutions to...
(UNDP).
In 2004, the IGBP published “Global Change and the Earth System, a planet under pressure.” The publication’s executive summary concluded: “An overall, comprehensive, internally consistent strategy for stewardship of the Earth system is required”. It stated that a research goal is to define and maintain a stable equilibrium in the global environment.
In 2007, France called for UNEP to be replaced by a new and more powerful organization, the “United Nations Environment Organization”. The rationale was that UNEP’s status as a “programme”, rather than an “organization” in the tradition of the World Health Organization
World Health Organization
The World Health Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations that acts as a coordinating authority on international public health. Established on 7 April 1948, with headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, the agency inherited the mandate and resources of its predecessor, the Health...
or the World Meteorological Organization
World Meteorological Organization
The World Meteorological Organization is an intergovernmental organization with a membership of 189 Member States and Territories. It originated from the International Meteorological Organization , which was founded in 1873...
, weakened it to the extent that it was no longer fit for purpose given current knowledge of the state of the planet.
See also
- AnthropoceneAnthropoceneThe Anthropocene is a recent and informal geologic chronological term that serves to mark the evidence and extent of human activities that have had a significant global impact on the Earth's ecosystems...
- BiogeochemistryBiogeochemistryBiogeochemistry is the scientific discipline that involves the study of the chemical, physical, geological, and biological processes and reactions that govern the composition of the natural environment...
- Carbon cycleCarbon cycleThe carbon cycle is the biogeochemical cycle by which carbon is exchanged among the biosphere, pedosphere, geosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere of the Earth...
- Climate changeClimate changeClimate change is a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods ranging from decades to millions of years. It may be a change in average weather conditions or the distribution of events around that average...
- EarthEarthEarth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...
- Earth scienceEarth scienceEarth science is an all-embracing term for the sciences related to the planet Earth. It is arguably a special case in planetary science, the Earth being the only known life-bearing planet. There are both reductionist and holistic approaches to Earth sciences...
- Gaia hypothesisGaia hypothesisThe Gaia hypothesis, also known as Gaia theory or Gaia principle, proposes that all organisms and their inorganic surroundings on Earth are closely integrated to form a single and self-regulating complex system, maintaining the conditions for life on the planet.The scientific investigation of the...
- GeoengineeringGeoengineeringThe concept of Geoengineering refers to the deliberate large-scale engineering and manipulation of the planetary environment to combat or counteract anthropogenic changes in atmospheric chemistry The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded in 2007 that geoengineering options, such...
- GlobalizationGlobalizationGlobalization refers to the increasingly global relationships of culture, people and economic activity. Most often, it refers to economics: the global distribution of the production of goods and services, through reduction of barriers to international trade such as tariffs, export fees, and import...
- International Geosphere-Biosphere ProgrammeInternational Geosphere-Biosphere ProgrammeThe International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme is a research programme that studies the phenomenon of global change.The International Council of Scientific Unions, a coordinating body of national science organizations, launched IGBP in 1986...
- Ozone depletionOzone depletionOzone depletion describes two distinct but related phenomena observed since the late 1970s: a steady decline of about 4% per decade in the total volume of ozone in Earth's stratosphere , and a much larger springtime decrease in stratospheric ozone over Earth's polar regions. The latter phenomenon...
- Planetary managementPlanetary managementPlanetary management is intentional global-scale management of Earth's biological, chemical and physical processes and cycles . Planetary management also includes managing humanity’s influence on planetary-scale processes...
- Planetary boundariesPlanetary boundariesPlanetary boundaries is the central concept in an Earth system framework proposed by a group of Earth system and environmental scientists led by Johan Rockström from the Stockholm Resilience Centre and Will Steffen from the Australian National University...
- PopulationPopulationA population is all the organisms that both belong to the same group or species and live in the same geographical area. The area that is used to define a sexual population is such that inter-breeding is possible between any pair within the area and more probable than cross-breeding with individuals...
- SustainabilitySustainabilitySustainability is the capacity to endure. For humans, sustainability is the long-term maintenance of well being, which has environmental, economic, and social dimensions, and encompasses the concept of union, an interdependent relationship and mutual responsible position with all living and non...
- Tipping point (climatology)Tipping point (climatology)A climate tipping point is a point when global climate changes from one stable state to another stable state, in a similar manner to a wine glass tipping over. After the tipping point has been passed, a transition to a new state occurs...
- United NationsUnited NationsThe United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
- United Nations Environment ProgrammeUnited Nations Environment ProgrammeThe United Nations Environment Programme coordinates United Nations environmental activities, assisting developing countries in implementing environmentally sound policies and practices. It was founded as a result of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in June 1972 and has its...
External links
- International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme
- Earth System Science Partnership
- Earth System Governance Project (International Human Dimensions Project)
- Earth System Visioning (International Council for Science)
- Analysis, Integration and Modeling of the Earth System
- Global Carbon Project
- Global Water System Project
- Global Land Project
- International Global Atmospheric Composition
- Integrated Land Ecosystem–Atmosphere Processes Study
- Surface Ocean Lower Atmosphere Study
- Integrated Marine Biogeochemistry and Ecosystem Research
- Global Ocean Ecosystem Dynamics
- Past Global Changes
- United States Global Change Research Program
- The MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change
- Inter-America Institute for Global Change Research
- Pacific Institute – global change
- Aspen Global Change Institute
- Global Change Institute, The University of Queensland