Natural and social
scientists develop new model of how 'perfect storm' of crises could unravel
global system
by Dr. Nafeez Ahmed
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2014/mar/14/nasa-civilisation-irreversible-collapse-study-scientists
A new study sponsored by
Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center has highlighted the prospect that global
industrial civilisation could collapse in coming decades due to unsustainable
resource exploitation and increasingly unequal wealth distribution.
Noting that warnings of
'collapse' are often seen to be fringe or controversial, the study attempts to
make sense of compelling historical data showing that "the process of
rise-and-collapse is actually a recurrent cycle found throughout history."
Cases of severe civilisational disruption due to "precipitous collapse -
often lasting centuries - have been quite common."
The research project is
based on a new cross-disciplinary 'Human And Nature DYnamical' (HANDY) model,
led by applied mathematician Safa Motesharri of the US National Science
Foundation-supported National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, in
association with a team of natural and social scientists. The study based on
the HANDY model has been accepted for publication in the peer-reviewed Elsevier
journal, Ecological Economics.
It finds that according to
the historical record even advanced, complex civilisations are susceptible to
collapse, raising questions about the sustainability of modern civilisation:
"The fall of the Roman
Empire, and the equally (if not more) advanced Han, Mauryan, and Gupta Empires,
as well as so many advanced Mesopotamian Empires, are all testimony to the fact
that advanced, sophisticated, complex, and creative civilizations can be both
fragile and impermanent."
By investigating the
human-nature dynamics of these past cases of collapse, the project identifies
the most salient interrelated factors which explain civilisational decline, and
which may help determine the risk of collapse today: namely, Population,
Climate, Water, Agriculture, and Energy.
These factors can lead to
collapse when they converge to generate two crucial social features:
"the
stretching of resources due to the strain placed on the ecological carrying
capacity"; and "the economic stratification of society into Elites
[rich] and Masses (or "Commoners") [poor]" These social
phenomena have played "a central role in the character or in the process
of the collapse," in all such cases over "the last five thousand
years."
Currently, high levels of
economic stratification are linked directly to overconsumption of resources,
with "Elites" based largely in industrialised countries responsible
for both:
"... accumulated
surplus is not evenly distributed throughout society, but rather has been
controlled by an elite. The mass of the population, while producing the wealth,
is only allocated a small portion of it by elites, usually at or just above
subsistence levels."
The study challenges those
who argue that technology will resolve these challenges by increasing efficiency:
"Technological change
can raise the efficiency of resource use, but it also tends to raise both per
capita resource consumption and the scale of resource extraction, so that,
absent policy effects, the increases in consumption often compensate for the
increased efficiency of resource use."
Productivity increases in
agriculture and industry over the last two centuries has come from
"increased (rather than decreased) resource throughput," despite
dramatic efficiency gains over the same period.
Modelling a range of
different scenarios, Motesharri and his colleagues conclude that under
conditions "closely reflecting the reality of the world today... we find
that collapse is difficult to avoid." In the first of these scenarios,
civilisation:
".... appears to be on
a sustainable path for quite a long time, but even using an optimal depletion
rate and starting with a very small number of Elites, the Elites eventually
consume too much, resulting in a famine among Commoners that eventually causes
the collapse of society. It is important to note that this Type-L collapse is
due to an inequality-induced famine that causes a loss of workers, rather than
a collapse of Nature."
Another scenario focuses on
the role of continued resource exploitation, finding that "with a larger
depletion rate, the decline of the Commoners occurs faster, while the Elites
are still thriving, but eventually the Commoners collapse completely, followed
by the Elites."
In both scenarios, Elite
wealth monopolies mean that they are buffered from the most "detrimental
effects of the environmental collapse until much later than the
Commoners", allowing them to "continue 'business as usual' despite
the impending catastrophe." The same mechanism, they argue, could explain
how "historical collapses were allowed to occur by elites who appear to be
oblivious to the catastrophic trajectory (most clearly apparent in the Roman
and Mayan cases)."
Applying this lesson to our
contemporary predicament, the study warns that:
"While some members of
society might raise the alarm that the system is moving towards an impending
collapse and therefore advocate structural changes to society in order to avoid
it, Elites and their supporters, who opposed making these changes, could point
to the long sustainable trajectory 'so far' in support of doing nothing."
However, the scientists
point out that the worst-case scenarios are by no means inevitable, and suggest
that appropriate policy and structural changes could avoid collapse, if not
pave the way toward a more stable civilisation.
The two key solutions are to
reduce economic inequality so as to ensure fairer distribution of resources,
and to dramatically reduce resource consumption by relying on less intensive
renewable resources and reducing population growth:
"Collapse can be
avoided and population can reach equilibrium if the per capita rate of
depletion of nature is reduced to a sustainable level, and if resources are
distributed in a reasonably equitable fashion."
The NASA-funded HANDY model
offers a highly credible wake-up call to governments, corporations and business
- and consumers - to recognise that 'business as usual' cannot be sustained,
and that policy and structural changes are required immediately.
Although the study is
largely theoretical, a number of other more empirically-focused studies - by KPMG and
the UK Government Office of Science for instance - have warned that
the convergence of food, water and energy crises could create a 'perfect storm'
within about fifteen years. But these 'business as usual' forecasts could be very
conservative.
Dr Nafeez Ahmed is
executive director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development and
author of A User's Guide to the Crisis of Civilisation: And How to Save It among
other books. Follow him on Twitter@nafeezahmed
