送交者: mangolasi 于 2005-4-05, 08:46:19:
An introduction to the report on envir0nmental problem's effect on "ecosystem service" to human welfare. One thing to bear in mind is climate change is global. People suffering from this change should not bear the sole blame.
With the anti-enviroment trend with the excuse of "human first", this kind of research is desperately needed. Hoping it won't be too late if some important negative results with a decent degree of certainty do come out (I don't hope for it, just thinking one possibility).
Excerpts:
...Many of the regions where such natural assets are being most rapidly degraded are also the world's poorest, the scientists said. And as a result, deteriorating environments are likely to hamper efforts to stem poverty, disease and hunger in developing countries....
And as always, stupid policy makers play an important role:
...Subsidies and other artificial incentives to overharvest resources are especially vexing problems, said Dr. Harold A. Mooney, a biologist at Stanford and a lead author of the report.....
But it might be someone else suffer from the result of your stupidity and indifference:
...A prime example is the parched band of Africa below the Sahara Desert, where drought, combined with ever-growing demands for water, has contributed to recent social upheavals and bloodshed in Sudan.
Around the world, Dr. Mooney said, "the dry-land problem really jumps out at you."
"You have two billion people there and huge limits on water," he continued. "Some of the world's highest population growth rates are in these dry regions and in mountain systems that are the least productive. That creates conditions for conflict."
He added that global warming, which is expected to disrupt weather patterns in the same dry regions, will make matters only worse....
However,
...Dr. Botkin said an unavoidable weakness in this kind of assessment was that the complexity of global ecology and economic activity made it hard to specify causes and effects....