Chapter Summary

Everyone is connected to the earth in ways that are critical to our future. The earth is a shared resource, and its natural assets—clean air, a healthy environment, and access to the oceans and outer space—may be conceptualized as global commons. Scholar Garrett Hardin captured the conflicts that may arise best in his 1968 essay “Tragedy of the Commons,” in which he explained how individual actions that compromise commons harm everyone as a whole. The concept of sustainable development, as first conceived by the Bruntland Commission in the 1980s, proposes environmentally sound practices to address our global issues. Understanding physical borders is critical to addressing these issues.

We can begin with a broad study of geography to understand how humans interact with their environment. Geography, a field of study dating back to the time of Eratosthenes in ancient Greece and modernized by Alexander von Humboldt in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, is now split into two main disciplines: physical geography and human geography. We can learn a lot from the study of maps, or cartography, as they can depict the five types of borders. Modern technologies, such as geographic information systems and global positioning systems, allow us to better understand our physical world and the challenges we face together.

Global issues are wide ranging and include human settlements, population growth, and unsustainable energy resources. The earth’s rapidly growing population strains its carrying capacity and threatens the global commons. Population could one day exceed food supply in what is known as the Malthusian dilemma, leading to food insecurity. A larger population also increases demands on energy, including coal, oil, and other nonrenewable resources that tax the earth’s environment.

Humans contribute to the tragedy of the global commons in many ways. Demand for land to support agriculture or for commercial timber has led to deforestation. Human activities may also cause desertification, which compromises food production, protection against flooding, and water quality. These changes to the environment, along with air pollution, has resulted in the greenhouse effect, where to much greenhouse gasses are released into the earth’s atmosphere, leading to climate change.

The global response to these problems has been uneven. Many governmental and nongovernmental actors met in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 for the Earth Summit and again in 2012 for the Rio+20 Conference to discuss possible solutions and ways forward. The Kyoto Protocol was developed to limit anthropogenic causes of climate change. However, these agreements have been difficult to implement.

You, too, can contribute to the solution through individual conservation efforts. You can calculate your carbon footprint, for example, and make adjustments in your daily routine to reduce your carbon emissions. You can also follow the three Rs—reduce, reuse, recycle. We each have a responsibility to the earth and future generations to do what we can to protect the environment.