History
Academic work on calculations of the Ecological Debt came later. A remarkable article with the title "The debt of nations and the distribution of ecological impacts from human activities" was published by U. Thara Srinivasan et al. (from Berkeley) in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2008, 105(5):1768-1773.
Studies were produced at regional level also. For instance, S. Khatua and W. Stanley, "Ecological Debt: a case study from Orissa, India" (2006) http://www.ecologicaldebt.org/publicaciones/Chapter5(125-168).pdf
Some government officials from developing countries have argued - at meetings on Climate Change - that the principle of shared responsibility demands that rich nations go beyond donations or adaptation credits and make reparations that recognize an ecological debt for excessive emissions over several decades. The top US ambassador to the COP in Copenhagen in December 2009, Todd Stern, flatly rejected arguments by diplomats from poor lands that the United States owed such a debt. (A.C.Reukin & T. Zeller, New York Times, 9 Dec. 2009).
Ecological Debt has been used to describe the consumption of resources from within an ecosystem that exceeds the system's regenerative capacity. This is seen in particular in non-renewable resources wherein consumption outstrips production. In a general sense, it can be used refer to the overall depletion of global resources beyond the Earth's ability to regenerate them. The concept in this sense is based on the bio-physical carrying capacity of an ecosystem; through measuring ecological footprints human society can determine the rate at which it is depleting natural resources. Ultimately, the imperative of sustainability requires human society to live within the means of the ecological system to support life over the long term. Ecological debt is a feature of unsustainable economic systems.
Read more about this topic: Ecological Debt
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“If man is reduced to being nothing but a character in history, he has no other choice but to subside into the sound and fury of a completely irrational history or to endow history with the form of human reason.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“The thing that struck me forcefully was the feeling of great age about the place. Standing on that old parade ground, which is now a cricket field, I could feel the dead generations crowding me. Here was the oldest settlement of freedmen in the Western world, no doubt. Men who had thrown off the bands of slavery by their own courage and ingenuity. The courage and daring of the Maroons strike like a purple beam across the history of Jamaica.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)
“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)