Reducing the Agricultural Eco-Footprint: Reflections of a Neo-Darwinian Ecologist

We humans live on a finite planet. Yet, our numbers have been increasing exponentially for thousands of years and continue to do so. At the turn of the century we numbered over 6 billion (United Nations, 1999). During the early 1980s, the human ecological footprint (Wackernagel and Rees, 1996) surpassed Earth’s capacity to maintain our current lifestyles and, by the end of the twentieth century, it was estimated that it had exceeded the bio-capacity of the planet by some 20% (Rees, 2002; WWF, 2002; Wackernagel et al., 1999; 2002a, b). In short, we now require more than 1.2 planet Earths to support present conditions. By 2050, the United Nations predicts that the human population will have increased to about 9 billion (United Nations, 2003). The problems facing the planet—or, more precisely, the human species—are well documented and have been discussed in previous National Agricultural Biotechnology Council (NABC) Reports (e.g. Kirschenmann, 2003). As the global human population grows, resources (especially non-renewable) continue to be depleted and the environment becomes increasingly degraded (e.g. Meadows et al., 2004). Our unsustainable practices include the clearing of forests (Pimm, 2001), the loss of productive soils (Chesworth, 2004; Jackson, 2004), and the overexploitation of fisheries (FAO, 2002a; Pauly et al., 2002), all of which contribute to the on-going loss of biodiversity that some have characterized as the “sixth extinction” (Leakey and Lewin, 1996; Eldredge, 2001; Ward, 2004). In addition, we are interfering with fundamental evolutionary processes through the exploitation of natural resources (e.g. selective hunting, such as trophy hunting, fishing, and forestry), the introduction of exotic, alien, or non-native species, and, most recently, through the production and release of genetically modified (GM) organisms into the environment (S.J. Holt, pers. comm.). We are also depleting reserves of oil and natural gas (P. Roberts, 2004), increasing greenhouse-gas emissions and contributing to global climate change (IPCC, 2001). Superimposed Reducing the Agricultural Eco-Footprint: Reflections of a Neo-Darwinian Ecologist