Canberra
AUSTRALIA is heading for extinction. The world鈥檚 driest habitable
continent, already groaning under the weight of its existing population, is
exhausting its soils and may well go the way of Easter Island鈥攚here
civilisation descended into anarchy and eventually collapsed.
That is the prognosis of several prominent scientists speaking at the ANZAAS
meeting in Canberra last week. According to Barney Foran, of the Division of
Wildlife and Ecology of the CSIRO, Australia鈥檚 national research organisation,
the current population of 18.3 million is already close to consuming all the
continent鈥檚 life-sustaining resources.
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The 鈥渆cological footprint鈥� of modern Australians鈥攖he amount of good
arable land needed to provide food, water, forest products and energy鈥攊s
4.1 hectares per person. But Australia is losing its soils at an alarming rate
as a result of intensive agriculture.
鈥淎ustralia is very, very short of good soils. We鈥檙e an old weathered
continent,鈥� said Foran. Once the ecological footprint gets up to about 3 to 4
hectares per person and the population hits about 20 million, 鈥渨e start to about
equal our stock of reasonable soils鈥�, he said. 鈥淚f our science and technology
can鈥檛 deal with the ageing soil at the rate of 1 per cent a year, just to
maintain it, then that is a problem. It is our core life support,鈥� Foran
said.
Although Australia has enough land devoted to food production to sustain the
population into the middle of the next century, other resources such as energy,
water and forests will dry up more quickly. 鈥淏y the time we get to 40 million
people in 2050, the standard of living will not win you many elections,鈥� he
said.
The noted American biologist Jared Diamond, who has visited Australia every
year since 1964, was more forthright. He told the meeting that modern
Australians are consuming the meagre resources of their parched continent so
fast that they are heading for extinction.
As inhabitants of a dry land mass at the mercy of El Ni帽o, the often
unpredictable climatic phenomenon that periodically brings drought to the
country, Australians cannot afford to be as cavalier with their environment as
people living in wetter climes. And yet Australians treat the country like a
slice of Europe, with scant regard for the fact that they live in 鈥渂y far the
smallest, the flattest, the driest, the least fertile and climatically the most
unpredictable continent鈥�.
Diamond compared Australia to Easter Island, off the coast of Chile and also
subject to the visitations of El Ni帽o. Although drier than most of
Polynesia, Easter Island is not as dry as most of Australia, and has more
fertile volcanic soils.
Archaeological finds and ancient pollen show that when the Polynesians
arrived on Easter island, it was covered with 鈥渁 lush subtropical forest of palm
trees and giant sunflowers, inhabited by land birds and breeding sea birds鈥�,
said Diamond.
A sophisticated civilisation arose which not only carved and
transported the famous stone statues, and developed a written language, but
sustained a population of 58 people per square kilometre. But the burgeoning
population stripped the forests bare and killed the native animals. By 1500, all
that was left was grassland.
鈥淧eople turned to the largest protein source around鈥攃annibalism,鈥� said
Diamond. 鈥淓aster Island society collapsed in an epidemic of warfare.鈥� When the
first Europeans reached the island in 1722, two-thirds of its population had
died.
This was not an isolated case. In the past few thousand years, 12 other dry
land masses in the Pacific subject to the whim of El Ni帽o have seen human
societies collapse, in some cases leading to the complete disappearance of a
people. Meanwhile, Polynesian societies on wetter islands with more predictable
climates, such as Tonga and Samoa, survived the changes wrought by humans.
鈥淭he main difference seems to be that societies in low-rainfall environments
were the ones especially prone to collapse by destroying vegetation. Low
rainfall means that vegetation regrows slowly, so it can easily happen that
regrowth doesn鈥檛 keep pace with cutting,鈥� said Diamond. He warned that Australia
might meet a similar fate, even if it could harness technology to delay the
collapse for a while. 鈥淎ustralia is the continent whose human population faces
the most problematic future,鈥� he said.
Foran was less pessimistic. But without technological fixes over
the next 20 years, he said, living standards would fall. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 not being
gloomy鈥hat鈥檚 what the data say. You can鈥檛 ignore it. But hopefully,
science and technology will have the answers.鈥�
Foran鈥檚 colleague, Doug Cocks, disagreed that collapse was imminent. He
believes that while Australia will become much more crowded and polluted in the
next 50 years, there was no foreseeable combination of events that would make
the continent uninhabitable for up to 36 million people by 2045.