ABSTRACT

---

Karakurum International University

Gilgit Baltistan

Ecosystem and Human well being

By

Ali Mardan Shah 

June 2014,

Abstract: The Ecosystem plays an important role in well being of human. In search of well being, humans are destructing the ecosystem which directly or indirectly harms the human being. If present generations continue the way of using ecosystem, the future generation will be highly suffered. The problem can be mitigated through the sustainable development. Our present and future generation will both take benefit and individual concern to environmental change can bring a huge change.

Ecosystems and Human Well-being

Introduction

Ecosystem and human well being generally discusses the impact of human being on ecosystem due to usage for their well being or welfare.

The impacts of human activities on ecosystems have increased rapidly in the last few decades. While the majority of these can be considered beneficial to human well-being, there is growing evidence of bad effects. Clear analysis of these unwanted impacts and their consequences for people have been difficult because of the numerous other causes of ecosystem change that operate and interact at different social, geographical, and temporal scales. For some people, especially those buffered by relative affluence, the problem is scarcely visible or at least accorded low priority.

The dependence of humans on ecosystem services reflects directly the profound co-evolutionary processes that underlie the origins of Earth’s biosphere. The biosphere and its ecosystems provide life support to all species. Further, the biosphere is itself the product of life on Earth. The composition of the atmosphere and soil, the cycling of nutrients through waterways, and many other ecological assets are all the result of living processes and all are maintained and replenished by living ecosystems.

The effects of adverse ecosystem changes on human well-being can be classed as direct and indirect. Direct effects occur with some immediacy, through locally identifiable biological or ecological pathways. For example, destruction of the water-cleansing capacity of wetlands may adversely affect those who drink that water. Building dams can increase mosquito breeding and thus the transmission of malaria. The deforestation of hillsides can expose downstream communities to the hazards of flooding.

Indirect effects take a charge on well-being through more complex ways of causation, including through social, economic, and political routes. Some may take decades to have an impact. For example, where farmlands under irrigation become saline, crop yields are reduced; this in turn may affect human nutritional security, child growth and development, and susceptibility to infectious diseases. Beyond threshold points, limited or degraded supplies of fresh water may make worse political tensions, impair local economic activity (and livelihoods) including industry and reduce aesthetic amenity. These dynamic, interacting processes jeopardize various aspects of human well-being.

By the sustainable development ecosystem can be neither destructed and human well being can be improved but minor destruction of ecosystem affects the human directly or indirectly.

Linkages between Ecosystem Services and Human Well-being

The formulations recognize that the relationship of ecosystem conditions and the flow of services to the well-being of groups of people as well as individuals is diverse and complex. The relationship changes over time. Many ecosystem changes are planned, but many are unplanned consequences of other human activities. Human interventions in nature have had unexpected and surprising consequences, some of which have harmed and further broke those who are disadvantaged. Equitable and sustainable well-being depends heavily on links with ecosystem services and on who gains and who loses over time from their use. According to an assessment ecosystem is identified as four major categories of ecosystem services that bear directly on human well-being: provisioning, regulating, cultural, and supporting services.

The provisioning function of ecosystems supplies goods and other services that sustain various aspects of human well-being. By the same token, shortages of food, fiber, and other products have adverse effects on human well-being, via both direct and indirect pathways. Livelihood sustainability has three aspects:

·        A livelihood is sustainable “when it can cope with and recover from stresses and shocks and maintain or enhance its capabilities and assets both now and in the future”

·        A livelihood is sustainable in a social context when it enhances or does not diminish the livelihoods of others.

·        A livelihood is sustainable when it does not deplete or disrupt ecosystems to the prejudice of the livelihoods and well-being of others now or in the future.

The regulating functions of ecosystems also affect human well-being in multiple ways. These include the purification of air, fresh water, reduced flooding or drought, stabilization of local and regional climate, and checks and balances that control the range and transmission of certain diseases, including some that are vector-borne. Without these regulatory functions, the varied populations of human and animal life are inconceivable. Thus changes to an ecosystem’s regulatory function may have consequences for human health and other components of well-being.

Ecosystems also have many consequences for human well-being through the cultural services they provide through, for example, totemic species, sacred groves, trees, scenic landscapes, geological formations, or rivers and lakes. These attributes and functions of ecosystems influence the aesthetic, recreational, educational, cultural, and spiritual aspects of human experience.

Many changes to these ecosystems, through processes of disruption, contamination, depletion, and extinction, therefore have negative impacts on cultural life and human experience.

The challenge for society is thus to retain and, indeed, sustain a sufficient level of ecosystem services in a way that contributes to the enhancement of human well-being and the reduction of poverty. Explicit recognition of these links and of substitutability among the various forms of capital will help policy-makers and other stakeholders to make informed decisions. Those, in turn, may produce the most efficient and equitable outcome.

Components of Human Well-being

Many people gave their concepts about well being which are quite different from each other. Most people agree that it includes basic material needs for a good life, the experience of freedom, health, personal security, and good social relations. Together, these provide the conditions for physical, social, psychological, and spiritual fulfillment.

A distinction is sometimes made between the determinants of or means to well-being and its constituents that is, well-being as an end. In other words, well-being is experiential, what people value being and doing. The determinants are sometimes expressed as commodity inputs, many of which are provided by ecosystem services. They include food, fiber, fuel, and clean water, materials for shelter, marketed crops, livestock, forest products, and minerals. Enabling physical, environmental, and social conditions and access for example, to resources and space are also relevant as determinants of or means to well-being. Viewed within this frame, some key elements of well-being can be both determinants and constituents. For example, education and health can be both ends in themselves and the means to experience well-being.

There is widespread agreement that well-being and poverty are the two extremes of a multidimensional continuum. In fact, the World Development Report 2000/01 defined poverty as “the pronounced deprivation of well-being”.

How well-being and ill-being, or poverty, are expressed and experienced is context- and situation-dependent, reflecting local social and personal factors such as geography, ecology, age, gender, and culture. Although these concepts are recognized as complex concepts, Some elements are nevertheless widespread if not universal. This was evident in the “voices of the poor” research (Narayan et al. 1999; 2000), in which poor people in 23 countries were asked to reflect, analyze, and express their ideas of the bad and the good life. The respondents stressed many aspects, including the importance of secure and adequate livelihoods, cultural and spiritual activities, and the ability to provide for their children. Repeatedly, they indicated five linked components:

·        The necessary material for a good life (including secure and adequate livelihoods, income and assets, enough food at all times, shelter, furniture, clothing, and access to goods);

·        Health (including being strong, feeling well, and having a healthy physical environment);

·        Good social relations (including social cohesion, mutual respect, good gender and family relations, and the ability to help others and provide for children);

·        Security (including secure access to natural and other resources, safety of person and possessions, and living in a predictable and controllable environment with security from natural and human-made disasters)

·        Freedom and choice (including having control over what happens and being able to achieve what a person values doing or being).

These five dimensions reinforce each other, whether positively or negatively.  A change in one often brings about changes in the others.

Ecosystem of present versus future

The relationship between ecosystem change and human well-being has both current and future dimensions. The overexploitation of ecosystems may temporarily increase material well-being and alleviate poverty, yet it may prove unsustainable. That is, to solve today’s pressing problems, society is often tempted to deplete tomorrow’s ecological resource base. This can jeopardize future well-being and, in some cases, even survival. The World Commission on Environment and Development first proposed a now widely accepted definition of sustainable development as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (WCED 1987:43). That is, each generation should bequeath to its successor at least as large a productive base as it inherited. Thus the concept of sustainable development incorporates not only intra generational but also Inter generational equity.

In practical life, the present generation can be expected to pursue sustainable development policies. Like if all parents care about both the current and future well-being of their children. Since their children’s well-being will depend upon the well-being of their grand children and that of their grand children will in turn depend upon their great grand children’s, and so on parents will tend to take at least some account of the interests of their distant descendants, even if they are directly interested only in their children.

Such individual concerns find a reflection in societal preferences only when prevailing property rights and other institutional structures take them into account. This is rarely the case. Instead, bad or weakly functioning institutions not only permit adverse consequences for human well-being from past and present actions but also hold no one to account. Often, the damage to ecosystems is the result of elite and powerful groups, both domestic and international, extracting short-term values for quick gains,

Thereby overriding the often longer-term interest of individuals and local communities (Jepson et al. 2001). If property rights to local ecosystems are ill defined or inadequately protected, such actions can have long-term adverse effects on ecosystem services that no one is responsible for.

Just as such actions can adversely affect contemporaries, they can have unintended consequences over time. For example, fish farms created by clearing mangroves can benefit economically the company that has created the farms, but the action will inflict future damage on those who would otherwise have depended on the mangroves for provisioning, regulating, supporting, and cultural services.

Institutions and Freedoms

The ecosystem services are not infinite and are subject to scarcity. Although there are potentials for substitutability with other forms of capital, thresholds exist beyond which substitutes are not possible. For example, while many pharmaceuticals can be produced synthetically, the therapeutic potential of extinct, undiscovered species can never be developed.

It has also been shown that ecosystem services are not infinite and are subject to scarcity. Although there are potentials for substitutability with other forms of capital, thresholds exist beyond which substitutes are

not possible. For example, while many pharmaceuticals can be produced synthetically, the therapeutic potential of extinct, undiscovered species can never be developed. In most cases, inequitable distribution of or access to ecosystems and their services occurs when formal or informal institutions break down. This happens either when institutions do not exist or when they are inefficient or ineffective. There are many reasons for institutional failure. Commonly, powerful individuals or groups prevent the establishment of institutions.

Existing bodies that mediate the distribution of goods and services may also be appropriated for the benefit of powerful minorities. Agricultural subsidies in western industrial countries are an example of this.

Creating, revising, and modifying institutions is a social process. Certain preconditions, or “freedoms,” are necessary to ensure that this process is equitable and fair. These freedoms, by permitting a fair and equitable social process, play a critical role in preventing or mitigating institutional failure. Five freedoms that have been identified (Jordan 1996; Sen 1999; Chopra and Duraiappah ) are participative freedom, economic facilities, social opportunities, transparency guarantees, and protective security. For example, access by the poor to credit at reasonable interest rates the provision of an economic facility has been facilitated by microcredit schemes.

The Five freedoms that have been identified are participative freedom, economic facilities, social opportunities, transparency guarantees, and protective security  provide the space that allows individuals to define their rights legal, political, social, ecological and to create institutions to protect and oversee a fair and equitable distribution of these rights for all members of society. In this manner, individuals, especially the poor, are given the ability to make their own choices for self-determination. This process allows them to become agents of change.

Conclusion

The well-being of present and future human populations depends on ecologically sustainable and socially equitable ways of living in the world. In determining how to achieve these, value judgments have to be made concerning equity and ecosystem stewardship. These are the sphere of policy-makers. Depending on context, decision-makers are faced with questions of who gains and who loses in rights, access, and the ability to enjoy ecosystem services.

Toward these ends, and toward the reduction of poverty, an essential step is fuller understanding of the myriad ways in which human activities and well-being are related to ecosystem changes and services. Such understandings will always be needed to inform and support responsible and farsighted governance. It is implicit in this chapter that enhancing those understandings will be an essential and permanent part of human endeavor. To achieve sustainable well-being for all will be a perennial challenge. And in the constant flux and interaction of ecosystems and people, no answers can ever be final.