Measuring Welfare With The ‘ISEW’, A Niche In Economics That May Prompt Us To Reflect On Human Impacts On The Natural World

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tadhg O’Mahony
Keyword(s):  
Human Impacts ◽  
Natural World

scholarly journals The status of current and tentative marine natural World Heritage areas

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caitlin Kuempel ◽  
Blake Alexander Simmons ◽  
Madeline Davey
Keyword(s):  
Threatened Species ◽  
Human Impacts ◽  
Conservation Status ◽  
Climate Change Impacts ◽  
World Heritage ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Global Strategy ◽  
Cultural Sites ◽  
Outstanding Universal Value ◽  
The Status

The 1972 World Heritage Convention (WHC), along with the 1994 Global Strategy, aim to preserve the outstanding universal value of internationally important cultural and natural sites within a "representative, balanced and credible" network of highly-protected areas. Increasing human pressures and shortfalls in representation have been documented across the World Heritage network, particularly in terrestrial and cultural sites, threatening the integrity and primary goals of the WHC. However, the conservation status of current and tentative (i.e., proposed) marine natural World Heritage areas remains relatively unknown. We assessed the extent of recent (2013) and historical (2008-2013) cumulative human impacts and several metrics of representation (country, continent, ecoregion, wilderness, and threatened species) within existing and tentative marine natural World Heritage areas. We found moderate yet increasing cumulative human impacts across most existing sites, and high or very high impacts across the majority of tentative sites. Climate change impacts comprised nearly 75% of impact scores, on average, and differences in land and marine impacts across sites could help prioritise management decisions. Over 75% of marine ecoregions and 85% of threatened species considered in this study have no representation within the existing marine natural World Heritage network. We outline examples of how prioritizing representation across tentative sites for future World Heritage listing could greatly increase these measures. We urge the WHC to adopt quantitative, systematic and transparent evaluations of how current and tentative sites contribute to the overarching goals of maintaining a representative World Heritage network and preserving their outstanding universal values for future generations.

1. Origins

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Robin Attfield
Keyword(s):  
Side Effects ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Human Impacts ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Silent Spring ◽  
Holmes Rolston Iii ◽  
Ecological Science ◽  
Arne Næss ◽  
Arne Naess

For centuries we have been changing the natural world around us, through hunting and farming; building, mining, and engineering; and travelling and trading. But we can no longer take it for granted. ‘Origins’ outlines the rise of ecological science in the 20th century and the new awareness of the unexpected side-effects of human impacts on the environment raised by Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac (1949) and Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962). It also describes the emergence of environmental ethics with the work of philosophers Richard Routley, Arne Naess, and Holmes Rolston III. One common feature of their contributions was their rejection of a human-interests-only or ‘anthropocentric’ approach to ethics.

scholarly journals On the need for an ecologically dimensioned medical humanities

2020 ◽  
pp. medhum-2019-011720
Author(s):  
Jonathan Coope
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Climate Change ◽  
Human Health ◽  
Medical Humanities ◽  
Human Impacts ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Medical Professionals ◽  
Significant Opportunity ◽  
Impacts Of Climate Change

Increasing calls from medical professionals and scholars suggest an urgent need for better and more widespread understandings of the ecological dimensions of health. Such calls have included: two recent Lancet special commissions on impacts of climate change on health; and recognition by senior figures from the WHO and United Nations of relationships between human impacts on the natural world and disease pandemics, with some suggesting prevention of future pandemics may require a radical reassessment of modernity’s relationship with the natural world.Among the medical humanities as a whole, however, calls for better and more widespread understandings of the ecological dimensions of health have not always been as prominent, or urgently expressed, as they might be.This paper, which presumes there is an urgent need for better and more widespread understandings of the ecological dimensions of human health, draws on ecological public health and other models to propose an ecological re-visioning of our conceptions of health and medical humanities; and in ways that challenge some contemporary assumptions about health, well-being and the ‘good society’. Indeed, once we begin to heed what ecocritic Tim Morton terms ‘the ecological thought’, we may discover few areas of healthcare and the humanities remain untouched by its implications.With growing recognition that the fate of global human health and the fate of the biosphere are inextricably entwined, the project of a more ecologically dimensioned medical humanities appears both timely and urgent. Such a project may represent a significant opportunity for the medical humanities, and a significant responsibility.

scholarly journals Global areas of low human impact (‘Low Impact Areas’) and fragmentation of the natural world

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew P. Jacobson ◽  
Jason Riggio ◽  
Alexander M. Tait ◽  
Jonathan E. M. Baillie
Keyword(s):  
Habitat Fragmentation ◽  
Human Impact ◽  
Habitat Loss ◽  
Protected Area ◽  
Human Impacts ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Primary Response ◽  
Natural State ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
Critical Question

Abstract Habitat loss and fragmentation due to human activities is the leading cause of the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services. Protected areas are the primary response to this challenge and are the cornerstone of biodiversity conservation efforts. Roughly 15% of land is currently protected although there is momentum to dramatically raise protected area targets towards 50%. But, how much land remains in a natural state? We answer this critical question by using open-access, frequently updated data sets on terrestrial human impacts to create a new categorical map of global human influence (‘Low Impact Areas’) at a 1 km2 resolution. We found that 56% of the terrestrial surface, minus permanent ice and snow, currently has low human impact. This suggests that increased protected area targets could be met in areas minimally impacted by people, although there is substantial variation across ecoregions and biomes. While habitat loss is well documented, habitat fragmentation and differences in fragmentation rates between biomes has received little attention. Low Impact Areas uniquely enabled us to calculate global fragmentation rates across biomes, and we compared these to an idealized globe with no human-caused fragmentation. The land in Low Impact Areas is heavily fragmented, compromised by reduced patch size and core area, and exposed to edge effects. Tropical dry forests and temperate grasslands are the world’s most impacted biomes. We demonstrate that when habitat fragmentation is considered in addition to habitat loss, the world’s species, ecosystems and associated services are in worse condition than previously reported.

A Māori Girl Watches, Listens, and Learns – Coming of Age from an Indigenous Viewpoint: Mauri (Merata Mita, 1988)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alistair Fox
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous People ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Feature Film ◽  
Indigenous Woman ◽  
Spiritual Dimension ◽  
The World ◽  
Life Force ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter examines Merata Mita’s Mauri, the first fiction feature film in the world to be solely written and directed by an indigenous woman, as an example of “Fourth Cinema” – that is, a form of filmmaking that aims to create, produce, and transmit the stories of indigenous people, and in their own image – showing how Mita presents the coming-of-age story of a Māori girl who grows into an understanding of the spiritual dimension of the relationship of her people to the natural world, and to the ancestors who have preceded them. The discussion demonstrates how the film adopts storytelling procedures that reflect a distinctively Māori view of time and are designed to signify the presence of the mauri (or life force) in the Māori world.

The Life of Rural Scenery

Romanticism ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-201
Author(s):  
Paul Chirico
Keyword(s):  
Natural World ◽  
Abstract Concept ◽  
John Clare ◽  
Material Basis ◽  
The Moment

John Clare observed and described the natural world with an unsurpassed accuracy and intimacy. But his landscapes also bore the memories of life and labour. Like Wordsworth, he sought to create textual objects in transmissible forms, to deliver their reported worlds – expansive, dynamic, somehow inhabitable – to distant readers, drawing them into sympathetic intercommunion with a complex living scene. His intimate descriptive poetry reveals the tangible qualities of light and sound, and the material basis of the apparently abstract concept of time. Memory and imagination are understood to inhabit bodily spaces, provoking ‘real transport’: an observer lost in – and to – the moment. From his place and time, Clare felt solidarity with isolated birds, alienation from labour, estrangement from human communities. Publications such as annuals often showcased formulaic reflections on nature and on memory; Clare exploited textual duplicability, his meditative descriptive poetry spanning the history and futurity of an observed scene.

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