“Interspecies Equity” or “4.7 Acres”

All Creatures of our God and King,
Lift up your voice and with us sing,
O praise ye! Alleluia!
O brother sun with golden beam,
O sister moon with silver gleam!
O praise ye! Allelulia! Alleluia! Allelulia!

(Francis of Assisi, ca. 1225; trans William H. Draper, 1925, 

adapt. 1987)

Francis of Assisi was known for his love of all creation. So was Albert Schweitzer, who apparently had his wooden organ covered with cooper while serving as a doctor in Africa so that he didn’t have to poison, kill or injure the wood bores who were in the process of attacking it. I wonder, how anthropocentric a world view did either Francis or Schweitzer have?

Jim Merkel provides some thought-provoking details, especially if we long to follow in the just as radical today as it was then footsteps of Francis or Schwitzer.

Ecological Overshoot of the Human Economy, states that there are 28.2 billion acres of bioproductive land on Earth – the total surface area minus the deep oceans, deserts, icecaps and built-up land. When divided between six billion people, each person gets a 4.7-acre share – we’ll call this area each person’s “personal planetoid.” But this assumes that humanity uses the entire planet’s annual production. The question then becomes “How much of my 4.7-acre share do I want to use for myself and how much do I want to leave for other life forms?” You might think, “I want to share it all.” A generous thought. But the reality is, you need to consume to survive. And what you use is not available for the deer, rabbits, or coyotes. For example, assume I am fenced into a one-acre garden with one deer and we eat the plants almost as fast as they grow, but don’t deplete them. After 60 years, the land is still just as productive as it was when w entered. Generous me then invites a friend inside the fence. Now the plants can’t keep pace with our appetites, and the land becomes depleted. Renewable “resources,” or the planet’s “bioproductivity,” takes time to regenerate. They are only renewable if they’re consumed at a rate slower than their annual growth or yield.
With a mere 1.5 million of the estimated 7 to 25 million species identified worldwide, caution is in order. And, with the current extinction rate estimated at 100 to 1,000 time faster than the natural rate, humanity’s current idea of sharing nature is deeply challenging.*

As I will mention in a later blog, this is in part due to humanities consuming beyond the tipping point. We are no longer just consuming nature, we are consuming ourselves (see 1978 or Intergenerational Equity to come).

Remember too that the 4.7-acres is to deal with our complete footprint (carbon, waste, housing, etc). 

If a visual would help, an acre (4,840 square yards) is slightly smaller than a USA football field (5,330 square yards).

Conservation biology looks at the question of interspecies equity through the needs of entire ecosystems. “Reed F. Noss, a specialist in the field, has outlined four objectives that will maintain native biodiversity in perpetuity:

• Represent, in a system of protected areas, all native ecosystem types and serial stages across their natural range of variation.
• Maintain viable populations of all native species in natural patterns of abundance and distribution.
• Maintain ecological and evolutionary processes, such as disturbance regimes, hydrological processes, nutrient cycles, and biotic interactions, including predation.
• Design and manage the system to be responsive to short-term and long-term environmental change and to maintain the evolutionary potential of lineages.**

Noss further figures that to create such an arena where biodiversity and viability of species is preserved would require between 25 to 75 percent of the total land area in most regions would need to be put into reserves with buffer zones surrounding them.

To put this into perspective:

To maintain a minimum population of 1,000 animals would require 242 million acres for grizzly bears, 200 million acres for wolverines, and 100 million acres for wolves. Even the six-million-acre Adirondack Park, which contains the combined areas of Yosemite, Yellowstone, Olympic, and Grand Canyon National Parks struggled to support a reintroduction of lynx. … If the area outlined … was extensively restored, a 200 million acre (312,000 square mile) core area could be formed in New England and Canada. With a drastic reduction of roads and traffic, and a citizenry ready to co-exist with wildlife, these animals might make their way back down from Canada. Sound impossible? Living in British Columbia for seven years among grizzlies, cougars, and wolverines, I leaned that co-existing is not rocket science, not costly, and not even difficult. But it would take a redesign of the human environment and a willingness to change habits.***

Merkel points out that the real issue is one of Anthropocentrisms, in which we hold that humans are the measure of things. A Biocentric or Deep Ecology viewpoint might be needed if we were to truly change course.

I might also add, from a theological viewpoint, that anthropocentrism can be a hindrance in understanding the Divine.

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* Jim Merkel. Radical Simplicity: small footprints on a finite Earth. Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers, 2003. 55–6, 56–7 .
** Ibid. 57. Merkel quotes Reed F. Noss. “The Wildlands Project: Land Conservation Strategy”, Wild Earth Special Issue (1993): pp.10-21.
***Ibid. 57, 58.