This week we are going to address some key concepts regarding the regulations of fisheries and the waste-absorption capacity of the Earth, but first let’s define some key terms that are part of the concepts we will be addressing.
Biotic Resource: A living resource, such as trees, fish, and cattle, as well as any of the fund-services they provide, such as climate regulation, water regulation, and waste-absoption capacity.
Ecosystem Services: Ecosystem functions of value to humans, though given the tightly interconnected nature of ecosystems, it would be difficult to say with certainty that any particular ecosystem function is not of value to humans.
Maximum Sustainable Yield: Each level of an exploited population has a growth rate that can be harvested, leaving the population undiminished in the next year. There is one level of population for which the sustainable yield is a maximum. In general, however, the biologically maximum sustainable yield is not the economically optimal yield.
Ecosystem Structure: The individuals and communities of plants and animals of which an ecosystem is composed, their age and spatial distribution, and the abiotic resources present. The elements of ecosystem structure interact to create ecosystem functions as emergent properties generated of such a large complex system.
Carrying Capacity: Originally the maximum population of cattle that can be sustained on a given area of rangeland. By extension the population of humans that can be sustained by a given ecosystem at a given level of consumption, with a given technology.
Now that we have established and defined the key terms behind regulation and waste-absorption capacity, we can now look at markets that are regulated just enough by world political leaders to sustain. An example of this is the National Marine Fisheries Service, which regulates the U.S. fisheries through Maximum Sustainable Yield (MSY) principles. The strengths and weaknesses vary with these principles, to start, the strengths include, by using MSY principles the U.S. fisheries are managed better than if they were simply managed in economically optimal yield principles, which would only view the population of fisheries as a profitable yield and neglects sustainable management. The weaknesses behind MSY principles to manage U.S. fisheries include, if the population fluctuates in a short-term and the delay oscillations are not foreseen then the population of fish can decrease as the exploitation rate stays the same, which defeats the purpose of MSY principles.
Next, the concept of waste-absoption capacity is important, because if our society chooses ignorance over revelations on the impact of our presence then our demise is only hastened, so with the idea of a capacity limit in which waste-absorption is regulated, our society is creating a standard which is understood and implemented. The problem with the waste-absorption capacity limit is, that as our society continues to grow and expand, all the while using more resources at the same time the capacity for waste-absorption slowly decreases, and this is the reason as to why the waste-absorption capacity number is ever changing and fluctuating. As the population of homo sapiens increases forever exponentially, the biotic resources available for harvest and exploitation continually decrease, which directly correlates to the decreasing capacity at which our planet can absorb our waste, causing countless problems that we currently are searching for solutions to. But it is still important that our society has developed this capacity number for us to realize that this planet we live on IS finite, and there are limits that the Earth holds on every aspect to continue in a comfortable equilibrium.
So has our species reached a carrying capacity for our planet? Can technology solve our problems, as every political figure currently states? What are the solutions to all our problems? Are humans entitled? All these questions are quite improbable to solve, and take global scale cooperation to find answers to them. If our species can utilize the information we have collected through the millennia it is definitely possible to find solutions to the problems we face today. Competitive advantage is an outdated term as far as human development goes, because what other species do you know of on this planet that tries to destroy each other over views on religion and resources? The answer is none, or at least none that last longer than their ecosystem services can support them.
Thank you for your interest, please comment and subscribe.
Onward,
Hayden van Andel
