BIOCENTRIC PERSPECTIVE PRESENTATION

"Since early history, the earth was esentially a closed system and materials were recycled and reused in this closed sytem" (pg2)

Environmental Engineering -  By D.Srinivasan

ISBN 978-81-203-3600-1

The Gaia hypothesis, also known as Gaia theory or Gaia principle, proposes that all organisms and their inorganic surroundings on Earth are closely integrated to form a single and self-regulating complex system, maintaining the conditions for life on the planet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_hypothesis

In contrast to modern approaches to political economy, Gaia interprets life as the ability of cooperative networks to simultaneously adapt to, alter and enhance their environments to their natural benefit.  A sustainable global economy, by way of contrast, would consist of symbiotic networks acting in harmony with Gaia.  In living systems, networks continuously reconstitute their elements in cyclical processses.  In ecosytems, and in Gaia as a whole,  recycling is the rule: one species waste is a lways another species' source of nourishment.  Cyclical exchanges of energy and resourses in a living system are sustained by pervasive cooperation.

Gaia in turmoil: climate change, biodepletion, and earth ethics in an age of Crisis.

 By Eileen Crist, H. Bruce Rinker, Bill McKibben (pg206)

Ecological systems are extremely complex. Their working is a function of myriad inter-relationships between and within their biotic and abiotic components.

"All life is one.  This is not a cliche but a biologival fact.  Over

Species diversity not only stabilizes ecosystem processes in the face of annual variation in environment but also provides insurance against drastic change in ecosystem structure or processes in response to extreme events (Walker 1992, chapin et al. 1997).  Any change in climate or climatic extremes that is severe enough to cause extinction of one species is unlikely to eliminate all members from a functional type (Walker 1995). The more species there are in a functional type, the less likely it is that any extinction event or series of events will have serious ecosystem consequences (Holling 1986).

Differences in environmental response among functionally different species may accentuate ecosystem change.

The species diversity of earth is changing rapidly due to frequent species extinctions (both locally and globally), introductions, and changes in abundance. We are, however, only beginning to understand the ecosystem consequences of these changes. Many species have traits that strongly affect ecosystem processes through their affects on the supply or turnover of limiting resources, microclimate, and disturbance regime. The impact of these species traits on ecosystem processes depends on the abundance of a species, its functional similarities to other species in the community, and species interactions that influence the expression of important traits at the ecosystem scale. Diversity per se may be ecologically important if it leads to complementary use of resources by different species or increases the probability of including species with particular ecological effects. Because species belong to the same functional type generally differ in their response to environment, diversity within a functional type may stabilize ecosystem processes in the face of temporal variation or directional changes in environment, introduction of functionally different species to an ecosystem, in contrast, may accelerate the rate of ecosystem change. The effects of species traits on ecosystems processes are generally so strong that changes in the species composition or diversity of ecosystems are likely to alter their functioning, although the exact nature of these changes is frequently difficult to predict.

Aldo Leopold (1949:203) observed that our "land-relation is still strictly economic, entailing privileges but not obligations". The traditional capitalist economic ethic has indeed shaped the path of development and dominated the social ethic in industrialised countries. As Leopold points out, this ethic has been largely exploitative, with little concern for "obligations" to the land. The general "mind-set in which economic thinking determines objectives" means that the basic capitalist drive for growth takes precedence over environmental concerns (Gauthier 1991:122)