Date: April 21, 2008 (Mon.) 16:00-18:00PM
Venue: E207, 2nd floor of East Building, CSEAS
Presentation:
1. Kaoru Sugihara (Professor, CSEAS)
2. Yasuyuki Kono (Professor, CSEAS)
3. Noboru Ishikawa (Associate Professor, CSEAS)
4. Akio Tanabe (Associate Professor, Institute for Research in Humanities)
Chairman:
Naoki Shinohara (Professor, RISH)
Kaoru Sugihara (Convener, CSEAS)
Titel: Sustainable Humanosphere Research: Zoom In and Zoom Out
1. A historical view of the 3 spheres(geosphere/biosphere/humanosphere) and their definitions
If one takes the history of earth to be a history of the development of spheres, there are broadly three (1) geosphere, (2) biosphere, and (3) humanospheres. While separate theories/knowledge bases have been developed for each sphere, the spheres do not exist independent of each other but rather through mutually interaction. In the future, it is necessary to study the relationship between these three spheres.
Some 4.6 billion years ago, the birth of the planet marked the beginning of the geosphere, comprised of lithosphere, pedosphere, atmosphere, and hydrosphere, and the creation of conditions which made the development of life possible (John McNeill, Something new under the sun). About 4 billion years ago, the development of life marked the beginning of the biosphere. Although it is possible to define the biosphere as a sum of the biota, another definition is the history of the evolution of life up to the higher animals. The humanosphere began 200,000 years ago with the evolution of early humans. Given the confusion due to the differences in English and Japansese understanding of term "humanosphere", I propose the term ningenken (human habitat) to refer to the humanosphere in the narrow sense, and seizonken (join the following three spares together: geosphere, biosphere and "humanosphere in the narrow sense") to refer to the humanosphere in the broad sense.
2. The 3 spheres and approach to research
In modern social science there is a tendency to think about nature from a geosphere perspective, and not a biosphere perspective. For example, in economics, facts are summarized based on geographic or land units, energy is thought of only in terms of coal or petroleum, while humans were considered labor force for production, ignoring their reproductive function. However, it can be said that the geosphere is significantly impacted by the humanosphere and biosphere. It is necessary to operationally (as a practical research strategy) divide the three spheres and to think about the following relationships.
Given the division of nature into 3 spheres, the research approaches can be summarized as follows.
(1) Natural Science Perspective (focus on the relationship between the geosphere and biosphere)
(2) Social Science Perspective (focus on the relationship between the geosphere and humanosphere, in the narrow sense)
(3) Bio-Moral Perspective (focus on the relationship between the geosphere and humanosphere, in the narrow sense)
It is necessary to discuss what a humanosphic perspective, which integrates these three perspectives, should look like.
3. What is the issue of highest priority for each of the 3 spheres?
(1) Geosphere: Ecological destabilization
What should be humanity’s response to changes in the geopsphere?
e.g. El Nino
(2) Biosphere: Loss of biodiversity
How should we respond to the loss of biodiversity due to human action?
(There is an ideology that the Biosphere also has “rights”)
(3) Humanosphere: Shortage of clean energy
How do we fulfill our energy needs, while limiting the impact of human population growth on the biosphere and geosphere?
4. What is a sustainable Humanosphere path?
Based on Dr. Kono’s presentation regarding Initiative 2 at the International Symposium, the three paths are presented in 2-dimensions with natural resource utilization and production as axes.
1. Productivity-driven path:
A path where natural resources are selectively used to increase productivity. This is the development path currently followed by countries mainly in the temperate zone.
2. Environmentally sustainable path:
A path that has as its #1 priority harmonizing with the potential of natural resources, and not emphasizing increase in productivity. Environmentally deterministic.
3. Humanosphere-sustainable path:
A path that strives for increased productivity while harmonizing with the potential of natural resources.
(Takahiro Sato, Taizo Wada)
Yasuyuki Kono (CSEAS)
If Initiative 1 can be said to have followed the time axis, we would like to consider spatial distribution in Initiative 2. We will discuss how the natural environment of the tropics, as exemplified by Southeast Asia, differs from other regions and technologies that make best use of the potential of these regions.
For example, in the case of agriculture, the demand-based model emphasizes production, marketing, and distribution, and thus the stability of production and price is prioritized. As a result, technologies were developed to make the environment conform to standard conditions and a system of technologies to deal with standardized products was put in place. We may call this form of agriculture temperate-region or market-dependent agriculture. On the one hand, we suggest that in order to develop an agriculture that is appropriate for tropical regions, the first step should be development of environment-inspired technologies that are appropriate for the tropical environment. An example would be development of a system for getting agricultural goods, which are not stably produced, to market efficiently. In other words, this would be a tropical-region, self-sufficient agricultural system. At the previous seminar there were comments from several of the natural scientists that the assertions of area studies researchers sounded like the mere concept of “local production for local consumption.” With development of new technologies, however, it should be possible to create a new paradigm for agricultural systems. In the past, the green revolution provides an example of a shift from traditional agriculture to use of high-yielding, irrigation- and fertilizer-dependent varieties.
Turning our attention to different agricultural/economic sectors, in East Africa, for example, livestock farming shifted for a period of time from traditional methods to owned land-enclosure farming, but this ended in failure. In this region, change in environment can be drastic, covering long distances as well as long time spans, and farming methods that don’t take advantage of these changes will not work. Another example is the afforestation of Southeast Asia, where natural forests have been clear cut and replaced with large-scale monoculture. This change does not leave many options for the future. It is with this perspective that I want to evaluate the direction that our technology leads us.
In proceeding with this research, I would first like to evaluate the tropical environment from a natural science perspective. For example, Köppen’s classification of climate was proposed in 1923 and amended in subsequent years. Although he explained empirically the distribution in vegetation as a function of temperature and precipitation, this is inaccurate in Asia and Africa, where there is particularly little data. Later, Budyko presented a heat balance of the earth in 1963, and using the latent heat of evaporation to express both the heat balance and the water balance, discussed the distribution of vegetation based on quantifiable estimates from a geophysical model. While the techniques used to analyze environment and vegetation at a global scale are simple and rough, they are useful when comparing tropical regions with other climatic regions.
In the case of livestock farming in East Africa, the strategy failed because they assumed that external conditions were statically balanced. Simple plans were inadequate to deal with the greater than expected change in environment over time. It is necessary to understand the dynamic equilibrium in a way that we deal with large changes in the long run or we move geographically to deal with them.
To summarize, we should be moving towards connecting large distances rather than limiting the target subject of our study inside a certain space, considering long term equilibrium and cycles rather than single years and seasons, unifying technology and institutions as means of development rather than separating them, promoting efficient use of water and natural resources to improve lifestyle rather than population growth to propel market economy. I think that these are the issues which should be discussed in the future.
(Osamu Kosan)
Noboru Ishikawa (CSEAS)
Titel:Biomass-resource society in time and space
In recent years, in Indonesia where deforestation has been considerable, it has been said that industrial forestry plays an important role in reforestation and development of related industries. However, because increase of these endeavors has led to greater tensions with surrounding communities and in some cases promotion of further deforestation, what is desired is a “sustainable forest sphere” which balances coexistence with local communities and forest management.
In research seminars up to now, a variety of research related to industrial forestry from both natural science and social science perspectives has been presented, including soil nutrient and carbon cycling of forested sites, ecological functions of peat swamp, the conflict between plantations and small farms, and space-time database systems using GIS. At the International Symposium held in March 2008, Our presentations, titled “Forest Metabolism: Changing Nature of Biomass in Humanosphere,” included the relationship between people and forest cover over the last 400 years, the 140-year history of change in a “biomass resource society” of Sarawak, the importance of biosphere reserves, and the potential and issues of carbon sequestration and sustainable forestry using Acacia mangium.
This initiative, which promotes cooperative research in specified locations, also serves as a place to comprehensively evaluate other initiatives’ research approaches. For example, taking industrial forestry as the interface between humanosphere and biosphere, enables us to investigate technology and view-of-nature – how the ambiguous dividing line between natural and artificial worlds is created – in a biomass resource society. It allows us to analyze how zairai-chi (indigenous, local knowledge) adapts to changes in the forest sphere and the relationship between scientific knowledge and zairai-chi. Through these concrete investigations, we can promote organic relationship-building with other initiatives and give feedback in order to rebuild the unit of analysis and research framework.
(Fumikazu Ubukata)
The Potential of Sustainable Humanosphere and Region
Akio Tanabe (Institute for Research in Humanities)
The humanosphere considered in Initiative 4 is defined as the social and ecological environments in which people with diverse values live. Our goal is to build a framework to enrich human life that is closely-intertwined with its environment.
To do so, it is necessary to rethink the relationship between nature and society. From the perspective of modern science, Nature has been treated as an autonomous entity that is separated from Society, and manipulated scientifically and technologically. Given our increased ability to intervene in the body and environment due advances in technology, it is difficult to move forward with our discussion while viewing nature and society as divided. It is not likely that our current hyper-consumption society, which views nature only as a resource and exploits it uni-directionally, will survive. We need a framework connecting new technologies for a sustainable humanosphere with institutions and practices that make possible to improve the quality of life for human as a whole.
Therefore, nature should be understood as something built within the entirety of life on earth including human beings, through interactions with human beings. Thus it is necessary a paradigm shift in which “nature” is not viewed – as it currently is – as “the nature” as a given object to be used, but rather as “natures,” which act as key players in both the local and global environment. This conceptualization, in which natures and societies are considered parts of a whole, requires an integrated science that can describe the entire unity, or network, avoiding dichotomizations such as modern/traditional, global/local, objective scientific view/traditional world view. It takes both modern and zairai-chi (indigenous, local knowledge) as its base, interlinking the two, so that we might enable nature to express its full potential. This would be a true general science of sustainable humanosphere. Such potential for a sustainable humanosphere exists in regions of Africa and Asia. Focusing on the local ecosystem, institutions, technologies, values, and practices (subjectivity), which exist in each locale, research in area studies should strive to understand human-society-ecosystem network through concrete examples.
(Masato Kasezawa)