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This Nasa Earth Observatory image shows a
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Nasa-funded study: industrial civilisation headed for
'irreversible collapse'?
Natural and social
scientists develop new model of how 'perfect storm' of crises could unravel
global system
Posted by
Nafeez Ahmed
Friday 14 March
2014 / The Guardian
A new study sponsored by Nasa's Goddard Space Flight
Center
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 Motesharrei 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
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