Peter Vitousek in his article “Human Domination of Earth’s Ecosystems” has made his points clear: humans have dominated Earth and are managing it poorly, at the cost of the deterioration of Earth’s many ecosystems and the extinctions of many species that had come before us.
The term “urban ecology” is explained by the author as “human-dominated ecosystems” in which “most aspects of the structure and functioning of Earth’s ecosystems cannot be understood without accounting for the strong, often dominant influence of humanity.” In this “human-dominated” Earth, the transformation of many ecosystems are heading toward a very dimmed end. For example, humans exploit land to yield goods and services , altering every other ecosystems associating with it (the atmosphere, aquatic systems) and causing global, environmental change in a bad way. Even another ecosystem that is harder to keep track like the marine ecosystems show a substantial influence caused by human alteration. Fisheries and more often over-fisheries brought the marine ecosystems out of balance by removing the predators, causing overabundance in harmful organisms at the bottom of the food chain, while damaging the habitats altogether as humans drag their equipments all over the sea floor.
Moreover, the connection between seemingly irrelevant events such as land transformation and biological invasion proves that there are much more about Earth’s ecosystems that we have yet to understand. The authors advise that before we make any more changes to them, we have to really understand the connection between these changes and unforeseeable events that would take place randomly elsewhere. Humans have dominated Earth, and it is up to humans to manage it effectively, according to the authors, first to reduce the rate of human expansion, second to understand nature more extensively, and third, not to bail on our fatefully handed job, to manage. I agree on his second and third solution to the problem, to increase our knowledge of the problem and not to deny our responsibilities, but not to his first solution, to reduce the rate of human exploitation of nature and human expansion. The size of the human population is and will keep expanding exponentially and dragging with it the continuous changes to nature.
Yet on the other hand, according the Michelle Kareiva in her report “conservation in the anthropocene,” humans are succeeding at making things worse for nature rather than saving it as intended. Humans are losing many more species than we are saving despite saving the creation of parks, game preserves, and wilderness areas.
Since the earlier times, conservation has been viewed as the making of places for people who love to dwell in solitary spiritual renewal “naturalists” and people who view nature as a place to escape modern life and enjoy solitude “tourists.” Hence this thinking was used as a justification for parks devoid of all people except the two said kinds of people. Ironically, the result “create parks that are no less human constructions than Disneyland.”
Kareiva’s solution to the problem of conservation lies deeply in what is termed “the Anthropocene,” a new geological era in which humans dominate every flux and cycle of the planet’s ecology and geochemistry. This view is directly opposite to Vitousek’s view of halting human’s growth and expansion into nature. Instead of fighting and halting the change, Kareiva promotes embracing human development and the “exploitation of nature” for human uses. She promotes viewing nature as a “garden” in which nature coexists with urban life, a view that is more acceptable in “boardrooms and political chambers, as well as at kitchen tables.”
Kareiva’s solution to the problem seems fine at first, but “embracing the change” sounds more like an appeasement in which humans give up the fight for nature and their survival for temporary peace of the mass, it is too political and far more inconclusive than Vitousek’s solutions.
