The Hindu Business Line : After societies collapse, only ruins remain for tourists

JARED DIAMOND'S Collapse from Penguin is an unusual bestseller. The author is a professor of geography, in his third career after teaching physiology and ecology, and the book is on "How societies choose to fail or survive". A heavy topic for most mortals, whose major worry is only to survive in the game of the fittest, be it in a job or on the Cabinet.

The collapse of civilisations has left monumental ruins that interest archaeologists and tourists. But Diamond goes behind the `romantic mystery' to plant a nagging thought: "Might such a fate eventually befall our own wealthy society?" He traces the trigger for the fall to ecology: "People inadvertently destroying the environmental resources on which their societies depended," causing ecological suicide or ecocide.

Diamond classifies the cause of death into eight categories — "deforestation and habitat destruction, soil problems (erosion, salinisation, and soil fertility losses), water management problems, overhunting, overfishing, effects of introduced species on native species, human population growth, and increased per capita impact of people."

Perhaps you realise that many of these problems stare at us now more than ever. Yet, if you dismiss collapses such as what Diamond talks of as things of the past, this can leave you gasping. "Collapses have already materialised for Somalia, Rwanda, and some other Third World countries. Many people fear that ecocide has now come to overshadow nuclear war and emerging diseases as a threat to global civilisation."

Diamond notes that the world is now fighting not only the eight old problems but new ones too. Such as "human-caused climate change, build up of toxic chemicals in the environment, energy shortages, and full human utilisation of the Earth's photosynthetic capacity." But the book promises to help as a survival kit.

There are chapters on lost societies that should make great reading. But let me lead you to `China, lurching giant', a discussion past the middle of the book. Disquietingly, "China's environmental problems are among the most severe of any major country, and are getting worse," records Diamond.

The country's problems will spill over to the rest of the world, warns the author. "China is already the largest contributor of sulphur oxides, chlorofluorocarbons, other ozone-depleting substances, and (soon) carbon-dioxide to the atmosphere; its dust and aerial pollutants are transported eastwards in the atmosphere to neighbouring countries and even to North America."

High level of pollution is attributable to the country's poor energy efficiency in industrial production, with 75 per cent of energy consumption depending on coal. "China's coal-based production of ammonia, required for fertiliser and textile manufacture, consumes 42 times more water than natural-gas based ammonia production in the First World," is a statistic that highlights the accelerated rate of resource depletion. Hundred cities there suffer from severe water shortage, you'd learn; "China already has the world's worst problem of cessation of river flows."

Diamond dissects China's less-known statistics too: 3.5 per cent p.a. growth of households over the last 15 years, trebling of per-capita floor area per house, and decrease in household size from 4.5 in 1985 to 3.5 in 2000 and projected at 2.7 by 2015.

"Decreased household size causes China today to have 80 million more households than it would otherwise have had, an increase exceeding the total number of households in Russia" points out the author. In 10 years China will add 126 million new households, "more than the total number of US households." Urbanisation is also worrisome, because over the past half a century China's population has `only' doubled, while its urban population has increased seven-fold to nearly half a billion.

News from Down Under is also not encouraging. "Australia's soils have caused bigger problems than has its water availability," writes Diamond. Do you know that Australia is the most unproductive continent, with soils that have the lowest nutrient levels, and the lowest plant growth rates? Reason, as the author explains, is that Australian soils are so old that they have become leached of their nutrients by rain over billions of years.

"The oldest surviving rocks in the Earth's crust, nearly four billion years old, are in the Murchison Range of Western Australia." Low on nutrients but so high in salt that "some Australian soils contain more than 200 pounds of salt per square yard of surface area."

To accentuate the continent's problems, rainfall in most places depends upon ENSO or the El Ninõ Southern Oscillation, "which means that rain is unpredictable from year to year within a decade, and is even more unpredictable from decade to decade." Thus, a farmer who does the ploughing and sowing may find that "in half or more years there is no resulting crop." Worse, the exposed soil is vulnerable to erosion in the long run.

How does all this affect the country's economics? "It is cheaper to grow oranges in Brazil and ship the resulting orange juice concentrate 8,000 miles to Australia than to buy orange juice produced from Australian citrus trees."

A pithy line summarises the position: "From early colonial times, continuing until today, Australian land use has gone through many cycles of land clearance, investment, bankruptcy, and abandonment." Soil quality hits fishery too. As a result, though Australia has the third-largest exclusive marine zone surrounding it, it ranks 55th among the 200 countries in the value of marine fisheries.

Part four of the book is invaluable for it has `practical lessons' for societies and businesses. "Why do some societies make disastrous decisions?" asks Diamond and answers with a whole sequence of reasons: "Failure to anticipate a problem, failure to perceive it once it has arisen, failure to attempt to solve it after it has been perceived, and failure to succeed in attempts to solve it."

These are simple truths, but he says them with the conviction of evidence. Diamond is no doomsayer. For, he concludes positively that we have the opportunity to learn from the mistakes of our distant peoples and past peoples. "The world would not have to decrease its current consumption rates of timber products or of seafood... if the world's forests and fisheries were properly managed."

A big `if'. Yet, Collapse is an essential survival kit that may double as a worthy vacation read

Economics@TheHindu.co.in

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After societies collapse, only ruins remain for tourists