Catering for 10 billion

E. O. Wilson is not ready to throw in the towel, says John Ashworth.

This is a most unusual but welcome and impassioned essay. Most books that try to alert us to the environmental consequences of unending economic growth and that assert something like "an Armageddon is approachingI. it is not the cosmic war and fiery collapse of mankind foretold in sacred scripture. It is the wreckage of the planet by an exuberantly plentiful and ingenious humanity", are profoundly pessimistic and depressing. They usually imply, even if they do not state, that nothing can be done to avert the catastrophe they so confidently predict.

The US biologist Edward O. Wilson is different. He yields to no one in his precise and scholarly description of the catastrophe that he says is on the way if things do not change, but he is optimistic and even excited by the possibilities of humanity's avoiding the planetary degradation whose early stages he describes so eloquently. This refreshing change of tone and style for books of this genre should make it required reading even for those sunk in millennial angst and gloom.

Wilson's scholarship is both impressive and lightly worn. He writes engagingly, as one has come to expect, about his own special field of interest and research, the colonial insects, but he has an enviable command of other areas of biology. He points out that we have only just begun to explore life on our planet. Most organisms are undiscovered and therefore unknown and unnamed; and their potential utility (or otherwise) is quite unforeseeable. Prochlorococcus , for example, arguably the most abundant organism on earth and responsible for a large part of the organic production of the oceans, was not known to science until 1988. Again, the extraordinary ecosystems that gather about the volcanic vents in mid-ocean ridges and that give the lie to the almost universal statement in school textbooks that all life ultimately depends on the energy of the sun, were discovered only in the 1990s.

Bedazzled as we have been by the spectacular advances of molecular biology, we have forgotten that we have merely scratched the surface of the huge diversity of living organisms that share the planet with us. Of course, the tools developed by the molecular biologists have meant that modern taxonomists and ecologists now have far more sophisticated ways of detecting and describing new species, especially the all-important microbial ones. Thus it is perhaps not too surprising that we are now seeing a renewed interest in ecology and systematics.

Sciences have always progressed in this way. Tools and procedures developed in one field are adapted for use in other, quite distinct areas of study and enlarge our understanding of them in unexpected ways. This is what is happening in ecology, and it is not only molecular biology that is providing the novelties but oceanography, geophysics and even the space sciences.

All of which gives Wilson grounds for optimism. He sees in the continuing rapid development of the biological sciences the possible roots of a changing comprehension among society at large of the biological consequences of humanity's economic development. These he outlines at length in the book's middle sections.

Inevitably his examples are slanted towards an American audience, but they are nonetheless impressive. His cataloguing of the biological degradation of Hawaii, for example, is a classic of the kind and should strike home to an audience for whom Hawaii is, or at any rate until recently was, an "unspoiled" paradise.

His basic argument is familiar. No matter what economists may say, humanity cannot continue to pre-empt more and more of the biosphere for its own use without serious consequences for the long-term sustainability of the planet's ecosystems. Currently we use about 40 per cent of the solar energy captured by the biosphere for the support of about 6 billion people. This leaves 60 per cent for all the other (mostly unknown) species, among which are those key ones whose activities help recycle our waste products. We have avoided the Malthusian consequences of our ever-increasing population growth only by degrading our environment - and this must have catastrophic consequences at some (Wilson says not-too-distant) time in the future. Although familiar, the case is developed thoroughly and convincingly with due attention to the equally familiar arguments of the economics profession, whose dismissal of Malthus Wilson shows to be biologically implausible in the long term. But unlike the authors of most such polemics, Wilson goes on to suggest a plausible solution to the problem he poses. His proposed strategy is three-pronged.

He advocates, first, continued technological development, so that humanity may make more productive use of the resources we pre-empt. He is resigned to there being at least 10 billion human beings on earth in future and accepts that if they are going to have an acceptable standard of living based on the maximum pre-emption of 50 per cent of incident solar energy, then there has to be a massive increase in productivity of all kinds. In particular, biological productivity; which will inevitably require increased use of genetically modified organisms. Never one to eschew controversy, Wilson has a good and balanced section reviewing the furore that has attended research on genetically modified organisms. He comes down firmly on the side of those who wish to see their rapid development and cultivation.

Second, Wilson calls for a significant change in the way the natural world is viewed. He calls for a "new strategy to save the world's flora and fauna (beginning) as always in all human affairs, with ethics". He argues passionately that we need to adopt a new value system that gives the other living organisms with which we cohabit a moral worth that transcends their simple economic utility to us, although he also argues that this purely economic value has been grossly underestimated and should be re-evaluated. Alongside this he calls for more focused and sensitive attention to the conservation of those parts of the undegraded biosphere that have survived, particularly the tropical rainforests and oceans. Existing religious and political ideologies will have to adapt if this is to happen, and Wilson does not shrink from exploring the implications, especially in his own country. However, he sees early signs of this adaptation and looks forward to the world's great religions becoming allies in the attempt to develop an ethical and moral framework in which humanity sees itself as a steward rather than an exploiter.

Finally, and most interestingly, Wilson sees the plethora of non-governmental organisations in the conservation-cum-environmental fields as the agents through which the necessary social and economic adaptations will occur. He gives numerous examples of how NGOs have been more flexible and effective than governments in reconciling the conflicting interests of human societies and the natural environment. Organisations such as the World Wildlife Fund and the Nature Conservancy in the US are singled out as prototypes of the kind of pressure groups that will bring about the changes in economic and ethical behaviour Wilson is calling for.

Here his optimism is evident. He is convinced that if enough individuals are persuaded of the case he presents, then they will find ways of collaborating to effect the changes that will lead to a planetary ecology capable of supporting 10 billion people in a sustainable way. Such a view is typically American. The notion that governments follow and do not lead fundamental change of this kind is one that Europeans, and I expect Asians and Africans, will find harder to accept. It is an argument that we should hear, however, and when presented with the passion and authority deployed in this book, it is bound to lead to furious debate. Wilson has a track record of provoking reaction, and in this book I suspect he has done it again.

John Ashworth was director, London School of Economics, from 1990-96.