Peter Gleick: Population Dynamics Key to Sustainable Water Solutions
Congratulations to the New Security Beat, the blog of the Environmental Change and Security Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, for prospering into their 5th year of existence. Their efforts help me to share this quick Saturday morning reading (and watching). Click here for Peter Gleick, world renowned water expert, commenting on the relationship between water and population:
Peter Gleick – Addressing Water and Population Dynamics
“Water is tied to everything we care about,” said MacArthur “Genius” Fellow and President of the Pacific Institute Peter Gleick in an interview with ECSP. However, “we cannot talk about water or any other resource issue…without also understanding the enormously important role of population dynamics and population growth.”
As world population passes seven billion, there is substantial pressure on natural resources. Gleick, who recently launched the seventh edition of The World’s Water at the Wilson Center, spoke previously to ECSP about “peak water,” noting that people are, and have been for some time, using groundwater faster than it can be naturally replenished.
“Unless we talk about population, and its role in all of these resource issues,” said Gleick, “then we are never going to move to sustainable solutions.”
In the short-term, we should start by integrating our discussions about natural resources, water, food, energy, and population. “That is proving to be a challenge for policymakers, but it’s a challenge we are going to have to overcome,” he concluded.
February 3rd, 2012 at 7:50 am
There are too few scientists who will stand up and speak out loudly, clearly for science. Please support every scientist who seeks to have her/his work objectively examined, reported and openly discussed.
On our watch the human community appears to be inadvertently precipitating emerging and converging global ecological challenges to future human well being and environmental health. This is no time for broadcasting self-serving ideological idiocy to deny what could be real nor is now the time for scientists to choose elective mutism when confronted with apparently unforeseen science, even when the science is unwelcome. Willfully denying the presence of a non-recursive biological problem, for example, does not mean the problem is not there.
Take the example of the science of human population dynamics. Who is discussing the topic? Peter only makes makes mention of it. This science is not even discussed by scientists with appropriate expertise. Silence prevails. Where can we find population biologists, conservation biologists, human ecologists and other similarly-situated experts to discuss of the extant scientific research? Where are the population scientists who are ready, willing and able to talk about human population dynamics? Perhaps a failure of nerve has overtaken this particular community of scientists.
February 3rd, 2012 at 7:56 am
Peter Gleick notices the ignored topic of human population dynamics, but without saying a word about what he is talking about. What do we mean when we deploy the words, “human population dynamics”? Are human population dynamics essentially similar to, or different from, the population dynamics of other species? Where are the discussions of such a vital topic?
I would like to call on Bill Ryerson, Joe Bish, John Feeney and others associated with GPSO-2012 to find sensible ways to shed light on this subject this year. Although many words have been spoken out in the last few years regarding the human population since the inception of GPSO by John Feeney (a tip of the hat to him), I think John and many in PMC would agree that a general discussion of this kind has been avoided for too long a time. More than a decade has passed since I began trying unsuccessfully to bring this matter of concern to the attention of some of the most senior scientists. Mostly there was deafening silence. Occasionally a colleague would bury the research without noticing it to others or else would obstruct efforts to discuss this taboo topic. Why not break the silence and overcome the taboo by having a conversation about the science of human population dynamics? Let us not allow another year to pass by without a intellectually honest amd morally courageous discussion of this sort.