Conservation and Sustainable Use of the Biosphere - WBGU

Life in the Earth System: BIOSPHERE I F 1.1
213
F 1.4
Towards global control: BIOSPHERE III
With hindsight, the essential failure of the BIOSPHERE
II experiment was anything but a surprise. The physiological
and metabolic complexity of BIOSPHERE I,
which was given a broad-brush outline in the last section,
is after all the result of thousand millions of
years of evolution in the interaction of opportunism
and functionality. Spurred on by variously intense
external and internal disruptions somewhere
between the two extremes of chance and purpose, a
system has organized itself that, perhaps, is only possible
just once in the entire universe.
Despite the failures, NASA is pushing forward
under its CELSS programme (Controlled Ecological
Life Support Systems) to develop artificial agricultural
ecosystems that are intended to secure maximum
food production in extra-terrestrial conditions
(Volk, 1996). And ‘geo-engineering’, the science that
is seeking to ‘repair’ the unintentional ecological
faux pas of the industrial society (such as the
thoughtless release of CFCs and CO 2
) on a grand
scale, can already look back on initial successes. For
example, fertilizing the tropical ocean west of the
Galápagos Islands with just 500kg of iron sulphate
triggered a large bloom of algae (Coale et al, 1996).
This demonstrated that the marine ‘biological pump’
can be strengthened in a targeted fashion to precipitate
carbohydrate from the water column (at least for
a short period).
The quality of such experiments to control habitats
is still very low, but is there really an alternative
to progressing on the road to BIOSPHERE III, a controlled
global environment? Humankind is already
rebuilding the planetary ecosystem with rapidly
growing depth and scale of intervention, so far it has
to be said without any kind of comprehensive blueprint!
For example, in BIOSPHERE I approx 40 per
cent of the area able to sustain vegetation is covered
with forest (Burschel, 1995; WRI, 1997); this proportion
has shrunk in the landscapes shaped by
humankind to a current average of some 27 per cent
(FAO, 1997b).And the great CO 2
atmosphere enrichment
experiment ‘staged’ by the burning of fossil
fuels will ultimately impact the biosphere less indirectly
through the ‘side effect’ of climate change, but
more directly through the overfertilization shock.
Compelling evidence for the CO 2
fertilization
effect is the observation that the annual respiration
of planetary life is becoming deeper (Box F 1.1-1).
The impact on the composition of terrestrial ecosystems
as a result of changed competitive conditions
cannot be predicted clearly, but will no doubt be considerable.
The older C 3
plants (which include wheat
and rice), older in terms of evolutionary history, have
adapted in an optimum fashion to the carbon-dioxide-rich
atmosphere and could deny the ‘younger’ C 4
plants (such as maize, sorghum and sugar cane, but
also many natural grasses) of their place in the rankings
in terms of nutrient use. This tendency is however
countered by the fact that a warmer ambient
temperature tends metabolically to favour the C 4
plant (Taiz and Zeiger, 1991; Monson and Moore,
1989).
There is much that would speak in favour of transferring
this largely erratic process into a well controlled
process in the sense of biosphere governance,
just as at the latest with the advent of the Kyoto Protocol,
management of the Earth’s atmosphere
became a project of the modern age. But what would
that type of governance be like? A grand typology of
possible strategies can be sketched out in advance.
There are three main roles from which humankind
must chose: the role of the preserver (‘Noah’), the
nurturer or steward (‘curator’) and the shaper/architect
(‘demiurge’). The modern Noah would not just
try to save all species in creation, but also every type
of landscape and ecosystem, too.The biosphere curator,
mindful of his responsibility, would carefully and
after great thought select or transform individual elements
from the existing biotic world. The demiurge
of the Third Millennium would by contrast try as an
architect to ‘improve’ the biosphere and its conditions
of subsistence – ameliorative aspirations ranging
from key agrarian plants to a global land use concept.
Proponents of the demiurge principle are ultimately
motivated by the insight that today’s biosphere
is only operating at around 30 per cent of its
true potential as a photosynthetic energy reservoir
(Volk, 1998). As indicated above, this could change
very quickly, if the industrial society understood how
to make intelligent use of the combination of humaninduced
environmental trends, CO 2
enrichment in
the atmosphere, nitrogen enrichment in ecosystems
and global warming. The American agroscientist S B
Idso waxes lyrical at such thoughts: ‘... for we appear
to be experiencing the initial stages of what could
truly be called a rebirth of the biosphere, the beginning
of a biological rejuvenation that is without
precedent in all of human history, but which is not
atypical of great periods of our geological past, where
the CO 2
content of the atmosphere was several times
greater than it is today. Biologically speaking, those
bygone eras of high CO 2
were truly “the good old
days” [...] Fortunately for us, and for all of the other
life forms with which we share the planet, the mounting
array of evidence [...] suggests that humanity may
well be in a course that will carry us back to such