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Biosphere, Markets, and Governments
Working paper
Geoffrey Heal
March 1999 |
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| Human economic activities are forcing changes in the biosphere, the thin habitable layer at the surface of the planet and just above it.This is where we live and die, the environment to which millions of years of evolution have adapted us. Significant changes in this environment can have far-reaching implications for human life and welfare. Human impacts on the biosphere at a global level are a new phenomenon. For most of history we have had local rather than global impacts on our planetary environment. In contrast over the last half-century we have begun to affect the operation the basic biogeochemical cycles that support life on earth: the carbon cycle, the hydrological cycle, the nitrogen cycle, and the composition of the web of species that accompany us. Because these impacts are new, we have not yet developed institutions that can mediate between human activities and the biosphere. In many cases the important aspects of the biosphere are common property resources: in some cases they are systems and commodities that are not even recognized as resources. Concrete examples are the need to mediate our impacts on the stratospheric ozone layer and on the carbon cycle. These will no doubt be followed by similar needs relating to the loss of biodiversity and to the planet’s nitrogen cycle. |
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| Last updated on: 12/21/2006 |
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