Analytical surveys have provided new tools for understanding the changing environment of world civilizations. Using a combination of mapping tools, including remote sensing and radar for geologic interpretations of natural resources and the movement of people, specialists have built substantial data bases for environmental assessment that can be used by NGOs for the benefit of humankind.
Urbanization
Cities have become synonymous with growth, and as they increase, they become subject to dramatic crises, especially in developing countries. In areas of rapid growth, satellite and aerial remote sensing can monitor the distribution of services across a city frontier, optimize the locations of water ways, analyze health resources, model environmental information, and much more. Remote sensing can especially monitor natural resources in urban areas to avoid major disasters due to lack of water, renewable resources, and food, so that urban problems never become critical.
Remote sensing information allows NGOs to work with government agencies to assess the damage or potential for damage in order to develop the cost estimates for restoration work and the resettlement of people if required. The analysis of colorized images has ushered in new techniques that enable environmentalists and scientists to look at and understand landslide damage due to heavy rains and the pollution of water resources by industrial runoff. This information helps hydrologists, biologists, and engineers interested in locating land erosion and areas of pollution before rain compounds the damage.
Environmentally sound urban planning is a relatively recent innovation; until the last half of the nineteenth century, cities never attracted more than ten percent of the global population. In 1970, only 35 percent of all people lived in urban areas. Now, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, approximately 50 percent or more of the world’s population, according to United Nations estimates, live in cities, and that number is expected to continue to rise.
As Dr. Wally N’Dow [World Habitat Day, 1997] said: “The actual job of creating sustainable, healthy, urban centres requires a wide range of actors, starting with city officials but cutting through various strata to all aspects of civil society—the private sector, women and youth groups, coalitions of the elderly, foundations, labour unions, academies of science, professional and research groups”—and, of course, NGOs. Through the utilization of remote sensing data, NGOs and other governmental agencies have the ability to incorporate advanced warning systems so that they may work with local and state agencies in creating an adequate infrastructure to correct the most foreseeable problems.
The discussion has only recently changed from a central policy emphasizing a de-urbanization strategy in the 1990s to the acceptance of urban growth. The monitoring of environmental needs in urban areas is critical because the new policies being considered by the UMP (Urban Management Program) connected with HABITAT (UN Center for Human Settlements) are beginning to emphasize how to create an improved infrastructure in urban areas to accommodate increasing populations. Instead of unsuccessfully trying to slow the rural exodus, which constitutes only 50 per cent of the increase in urban population, it should be acknowledged that those who migrate to towns undoubtedly can obtain better employment and income opportunities and work in a safe and environmentally sound environment. Therefore, NGO efforts should focus on establishing proper urban planning, a better infrastructure, and education in the face of growing urbanization.
Remote sensing scanners can provide crop analysis and even check dams. The availability of different scanners allows researchers to examine sites in the spectral bands most appropriate to the terrain. In the hot and humid climates of Central and South America, reflected IR thermal radiation can be used to image the compacted earth beneath the jungle canopy. Landsat (NASA) thematic mapper (TM) thermal band, using a pixel resolution of 120 meters is often used for the study of urban areas because of their increased heat in humid environments. SIRC (Shuttle Imaging Radar from the Space Shuttle) Lband radar image shows tonal phenomenon as expressing strong reflections from building corners to avenues along the urban boundaries. This is connected with Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery which enhances urban morphological features and can even determine certain levels of air quality. SPOT (French satellite) images use two HRVs multispectral sensors processed with false color to provide a good resolution of urban areas.
Rain forests and jungle cover
Numerous methods have become available to critically examine the urban and rural environmental areas of the world. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) use of the SPOT monitoring system offers generally a 20 meter resolution, in terms of multi-spectral imagery, providing environmental engineers and scientists with the ability to delineate vegetated and non-vegetated parcels of land rapidly disappearing in crucial areas such as Brazil and Indonesia.
From an environmental point of view, social scientists, by allowing urbanization, are protecting the fragile rural environments from over farming and other ecological disasters, for migration to towns lessens the pressure exerted on fragile ecological zones. An example of the ecological damage in a large rural population area is most evident in the Amazon region of Brazil, where slash and burn programs in Rondonia from 19731998 devastated large areas of land and initiated a rapid deterioration of the environment.
In the 1980s and 1990s, an unusual combination of population movement into the interior of the Amazon territories and the burning of huge areas of the undergrowth and forest canopy created catastrophic fires. To monitor the situation, digital imagery from the NOAA 12 polar-orbiting meteorological satellites with the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) provided daily coverage of the area. The remote sensing coverage of the areas, scaled at 1 kilometer resolution per pixel image, forms a historical database of imagery for analyzing the increase of deforestation patterns since the early 1980s. Fire assessment from satellite images taken over 100 days in 1998 between July and October revealed 45,500 fires in Brazil in the state of Rondonia. The area covered is approximately 260,000 square kilometers. A realistic estimate of the yearly deforestation rate is about 20,000 square kilometers per year mainly destroyed during the burning season from July to October.
Brazil now has quite an ambitious program to predict where fires will occur, based on a plan developed by the team led by Dr. Nepstad, which includes IPAM (Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazônia), an NGO group based in Belem, Brazil. Nevertheless, because of the use of slash and burn techniques for farming, timber removal, and the need to establish cleared regions of forest for travel and habitation, large portions of Brazil’s tropical forests continue to disappear. SAR and other reflective and optical technologies, are being used to assist scientists in witnessing the firsthand destruction of countless hectares of forest, and to try to control these areas before the last major ecosystem is destroyed endangering the survival of the Indian people. SAR is a side looking radar with a short antenna, with imaging capabilities both at night and through cloud and jungle cover.
There is no doubt from the radar images that large scale environmental changes are being created by population influx, farmers and timber companies, especially in the state of Rondonia. Computer simulations based on this data suggest the Amazon’s rainfall can be expected to decline radically as drainage and deforestation proceed; within a relatively short period of time, reforestation will have become virtually impossible.
Brazil’s former Minister of the Environment, Dr. Jose Lutzenberger, was the leading Brazilian visionary who recognized the important role between the Amazon and the world. His plan was for education, additional research and protection policies to create a “consensus strategy” for long range preservation of both land and wildlife, but before long he was displaced from his position.
The Amazonian basin is not the only site of planetary devastation. Deforestation is proceeding at an unprecedented rate all over the world. In Central America, Malaysia, Indonesia, Zaire, and many other tropical regions, forests are succumbing to the chainsaw and the torch.
Remote sensing of Guatemala’s Petén region over a 20+ year period shows a relentless deforestation of the area. Until 1970, nearly 90 percent of the Petén remained forested. Since then, more than half of the forest has been cut down. In 1970 only about 20,000 people lived in the Petén. In 1990, the population was more than 300,000. The subsistence farmers, commercial farmers, and cattle ranchers who live in the area now are using methods that result in soil loss and regional degradation, including the forced migration of indigenous peoples due to economic hardship.
Historical perspective of water resources
Water is a critical element for all life, and we are just now learning that ancient civilizations understood not only urban planning but hydraulic planning. Investigations of the Academy For Future Science in the jungles of Guatemala Belize in the 1970s found that the northeastern Petén region of Guatemala was once inhabited by at least one million Mayan people before the civilization’s collapse in the 10th11th centuries. NASA’s SAR mapping of northern Guatemala in 1978 showed an extensive canal network, completely covered today with soil and vegetation. The visible, infrared, and microwave images show sophisticated roadways, canals, reservoirs and agricultural plateaus, none of which can usually be seen from the ground in areas of dense vegetation.
When archaeologists and environmentalists were brought together in this area in 1990, they discovered that the Petén today has a human population density of only 26 inhabitants per square mile, while ancient estimates of the Mayan population over a thousand years ago place densities as high as 2600 persons per square mile in the center and between 500 and 1300 per square mile in the more rural areas.
Remote sensing has discovered that the ancients were perhaps able to make better use of hydraulics in this area and in Mexico. There are many areas of seasonally flooded swamps, called bajos, in the Petén, and there has been clear evidence that the Mayan farmed these areas, which represent about 40 percent of the land surface in the Petén. The presence of elaborate waterworks around the bajos, and of populated living areas among the bajos, suggest that the Mayan used more sustainable agricultural methods than the typical slash and burn farming techniques employed by present day inhabitants.
But something did happen to the ancient Mayans: a cataclysmic collapse reduced the population by two-thirds before the Spanish conquistadors arrived and finished the job through violence and disease. The Mayan collapse may well be one of the greatest demographic disasters in human history. While the cause of the collapse is probably due to a variety of factors, it may be linked to deforestation. At the time of the collapse there was no tree pollen, and other evidence suggests that the forests of the Petén were nearly destroyed by the Mayan. There is evidence of a 200yearlong drought, which may be related to deforestation. Researchers studying climate in other parts of Central and South America note that without trees, cumulus clouds fail to form and rainfall diminishes.
Likewise, in Bolivia at 13,000 feet on the roof of the world, next to the ancient city complex of Tiahuanaco and the Lake Titicaca region, NASA discovered a series of strange rectangular grid patterns that when analyzed by local anthropologists confirmed that the ancient indigenous peoples made ingenious use of manmade water troughs and channels not only to irrigate their lands but to create a very elaborate ecological controllable “Green House Effect” through the use of water channels as temperature collectors. The altiplano of Peru and Bolivia was long thought to be unproductive agriculturally. However, archaeological projects initiated by NASA’s remote sensing images in the high Andes around Lake Titicaca have recently documented a vast complex of agricultural earthworks, referred to as “raised fields,” that supported ancient civilizations in the region. The raised fields were first used around 3000 years ago and were abandoned before or at the time of the arrival of the Spanish. The raised fields cover a total of 120,000 hectares (300,000 acres) of land, and represent an almost unimaginable effort. The water hydraulics would keep the neighboring land warm enough at night by holding and releasing solar radiation. Thus, food could be grown at high frigid elevations year around, systematically, to meet the needs of feeding a population at high altitudes—a feat which we did not comprehend until the last 30 years.
Indigenous cultures
Remote sensing and aerial surveillance have also helped in the dialogue with indigenous civilizations. Perhaps the best example is in the Amazon where modern man is meeting with cultures which have lived in protected isolation for hundreds of years. My associates, including the late researcher Pino Turolla, have worked closely with indigenous Amazonian peoples in studying the use of flora and fauna in medical applications. Turolla was a leading pioneer explorer of the upper Amazon who studied the cultural teachings of the various tribes. In talking to tribal medicine men he was one of the first to understand the tremendous resources of the flora and fauna in the Amazon, which are thought to hold the key to pharmaceutical breakthroughs in the twenty-first century.
The indigenous peoples of the Third World see planet Earth as a type of Gaia, a living motherly organism nurturing a multitude of life. The whole planet is thus one part of her super organism of intelligence. My colleague Dr. Rashmi Mayur, head of the International Institute for Sustainable Futures organization, a well known environmental NGO organization, has continually reported on the precarious imbalances created in these regions by the “First world” civilizations’ desire for cheap food and cheap natural resources. In the twentieth century alone, 90 of Brazil’s 270 reported tribes—one third of the known tribes—have already become extinct, and the Maloka tribe in the Amazon has a mere 10 surviving members.
In my research I have interviewed farmers and newcomers to the Amazon region, and what I have found is that they do not understand the devastation they are causing. They do not understand the fragile place where they live, and they do not understand that the land will not sustain crops for more than a few years. Nor do they realize that after that it will never return to its original pristine environment because the unique root structure of the original trees will have been permanently destroyed.
The Indians call the corporations and frontier farmers “termite people”—people moving suddenly across different environments with no regard for nature and culture. The Japura people of the Amazon have a particular folk teaching from their fathers, telling how strange people will come into their sanctuaries and depopulate their nations.
Many South American testimonials have begun to speak about the cycle of destruction by the termite people. Their dialogue is deeply moving and provides a unique look at a dialogue that must be heard. One testamential of the Elder Brother speaking to the Younger Brother tells us:
They [the outsiders] have taken the clouds of the rain. They have taken hold of the clouds. Mother is suffering. They have broken her teeth. They have taken out her eyes and her ears. She vomits and she is angry and she is ill. If we cut off our arms we cannot work, and if we cut off our tongue we cannot speak. If we cut off our legs we cannot walk. This is how it is with mother. The mother is suffering. She is dying.
Ann Crutcher, an internationally recognized cinematographer and documentarian, in recording the indigenous peoples at the Rio Summit (1992) for her film entitled Yakoana, similarly reveals the testimony of one rural Indian Kaiowa mother with little food and water resources for the tribe’s children:
“We Kaiowa—we are the owners of the land. How can [it] be that the whites do whatever they want? In our reservation, forests no longer exist anymore. Everything is finished. Our reservation is barren, everything is flattened. How are we going to live this way? Many people are hanging themselves, others take poison because they are tired of living…others see the situation and they go far away. People kill them—even on the reservation, on our own land many whites have already done this. They kill an Indian and throw him in the river, they kill Indians. Once we were 3000 Kaiowanow we are only 200!”
Fortunately NGOs such as CIR (Indigenous Council of Roraima) are working to protect the remaining forests and peoples in these danger areas. Other NGOs such as the Earth Council are working to try to protect indigenous peoples, and build bridges of understanding and cooperation between important actors of civil society and governments worldwide. These groups have been assisted by educators and engineers who are beginning to use the information afforded them by remote sensing technology.
The planetary assessment
Since the first Earth Day in 1970, worldwide devastation has spread over approximately 300 billion square miles to devour more land than is presently cultivated in China. The farmers of the world have lost approximately 480 billion tons of humus, a quantity equivalent to all the land capable of cultivation in China.
In short, in the aftermath of the Cold War, the measure of the injury done to our planet and to ourselves becomes only too clear. In the last twenty years the Earth has lost approximately 500 billion acres of forest, a region fifty times the area of Switzerland. Land is now measured in dollars per hectare based on tree populations and farming potential, with the Amazon basin, central Africa, and China presently being considered the most valuable.
What will happen if the Brazilian rainforest devastation continues at the present rate? Most everything could be gone by the year 2050 AD. Twenty thousand square kilometers of primeval forest are cut and burned each year. Combined with logging, 58,000 square kilometers are destroyed annually, according to a special commission of the Brazilian Congress. The accumulated result (from 1978 to present) is already about 52 million hectares (128. 4 million acres; 520,000 square kilometers) or close to 14 percent destruction of the existing forest, the devastation of an area the size of France. And since the forest is the result of a unique climate, the end result will inevitably be: (1) a change in weather, (2) an increase of drought and desert worldwide, and (3) massive starvation for many peoples, regardless of background and world economics. The forests that are destroyed will take a thousand years to regenerate. With their destruction goes the refuge of a species diversity entirely preserved from the early periods of evolution—the Pleistocene era in our “present” time: with color morphs, strange and beautiful zoological speciations, butterfly wings of color, as well as potentially critical medical products—lost forever.
NGOs and World Environmental Problem Solving
NGOs and the UNEP experts have worked hard to correct the problems, and this is also the time and place to encourage these groups to continue in their efforts, as well as to acknowledge the GEF (Global Environment Facility) which has provided funding to many NGOs for environmental services. I want to mention one other key area that the UNEP has been instrumental in addressing since 1977: the ozone problem. Under the auspices of UNEP, the governments of the world arrived at The Vienna Convention and initiated the Protection of the Ozone Layer in 1985. Through this Convention governments committed themselves to protect the ozone layer and to cooperate with each other in scientific research to improve understanding of the atmospheric processes.
A synoptic look at the global ozone problem from space through the TOMS (Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer) onboard the Nimbus 7 satellite has shown that the ozone hole has increased in size over the past twenty years. This increase has been blamed on industrial CFCs used in refrigeration, aerosol and foam manufacturing, which have attacked the ozone cover in the upper stratosphere over the north and especially the South Pole.
To paraphrase Richard Benedict, US representative to the Montreal Protocol (1987) and one of the principals involved with world leaders attempting to solve this problem, the ozone crisis has served as a model for how a wide range of interests can be marshaled to provide a dialogue between civilizations and create practical countermeasures to solve critical worldwide problems.
Since the early 1980s UNEP has helped many countries like China address the safety aspects of the substitution of ozone depleting products in industry. Together with other groups (e. g. NEPA), UNEP has held workshops on safety issues relating to CFC substitution in refrigeration, aerosols, and foam plants. Unfortunately, even with the cessation of the use of CFCs, it will take 50 years from that time forward for the chemicals to be reduced in our atmosphere. Yet, the ozone problem should serve as a successful model for NGO and other UN organizations working with scientists and engineers to network through diplomacy in the twenty-first century and find better ways to coordinate “thinking globally and acting locally. ”
Conclusion
As the twenty-first century progresses, the dialogue of civilizations will be critical for both urban and rural areas. NGOs should become the inspiring leaders in the increasingly urgent task of addressing the serious deterioration of the global habitat by using more effective tools for the timely recognition of immediate and potential problems facing our fragile planet. Utilizing a variety of aerial and space borne strategies now available to monitor natural resources, they should assist with local, state, and government agencies to ensure not only the immediate safety of the population, but also to utilize nondestructive technology for the ongoing preservation of Mother Earth.
Vast land degradation, lack of urban services, degeneration of existing infrastructure, and lack of access to land and adequate shelter should always be among the main areas of serious concern. The issues of fresh water and water pollution are also critical for the flourishing of civilization in both urban and rural areas, and the impact of industrial pollution and deforestation on the earth’s water systems must be more widely understood and recognized.
The overdue technical training in the Third World for the interpretation and sharing of knowledge from new scientific sources can speed up problem solving on a large scale from demographics to environmental countermeasures. A unified teamwork can lead to better approaches for environmental balance and a sustainable path to the future. A habitat of team players who know the positive options can overcome local obstacles and ensure that many civilizations will have a future.
References
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Deforestation Monitoring. 1993. “SPOT supplies uptodate Information onTropical Forest Losses in Brazil’s Amazon Basin,” in Earth Observation Magazine, February, 1993, 3031.
Forest Conservation Programme, IUCN World Headquarters, Rue Mauverney 28, CH1196, Gland, Switzerland. Hurtak, J. J. 2000. “Remote Sensing and the Rediscovery of Lost Worlds,” in Future History, Series 3, v. 4, 410. IPAN, Institute for the Environmental Research of the Amazon, Federal University of Para, Brasil, UN NGO.
Moreton, G. E. and J. A. Richards, 1984. “Irrigated Crop Inventory by Classification of Satellite Image Data,” in Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing, v. 50, 729737.
N’Dow, Wally. Presentation before the Second United Nations Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat), United Nations Centre on Human Settlements, 1997.