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The mark of man on the surface of the earth is as old as the early beginning of mankind. The history of humanity may be envisaged as a struggle against its environment, involving a progressive liberation from the local, natural conditions and the gradual enslavement of the living world by man’s own inventions. Biological motivations explain this tendency. But, as in every human activity, cultural traditions and beliefs encourage us to modify our simple actions and reactions. A philosophical attitude is the primary determining factor of any human attitude. Western philosophies emphasize the supremacy of man over the rest of the world, which only exists to serve him— or so they contend. Since the time of Francis Bacon and Descartes early in the seventeenth century, we have been convinced that we are the masters and possessors of nature. The prodigious progress of the sciences seems to give us the right to do what we want and so to confirm this philosophical attitude. Therefore, it is no wonder that protection of wildlife and sound management of the surface of the earth according to biological laws, did not receive any support from this western philosophy.

It is a good scientific principle to begin a paper by defining the terms which are being used: in the present case, ‘atmosphere’, ‘monitoring’, and‘environment’.

This Conference is to be about the global environment in the future, which implies that we are not entirely satisfied with it in the present and that we have some inkling of what it was like in the past. The geologists have told us the story of the aeons before there was life, of the spread and recessions of oceans, of the appearance of life, and the rise and fall of great forests in the days long before man came. The palaeontologists have mapped for us the development of living organisms in the past as manifested in the fossil record. The early history of man is still obscure, but we have some notion of his activities as a hunter and fire-raiscr-positive environment-influencing activities, but probably very slow-acting ones, conducted with complete unconcern for, and lack of knowledge of, any influence of change.

Wondering recently in London how to present this enormous subject to an enlightened but very mixed audience, I strolled out into St James’s and then through Green and Hyde Parks. The grass was still short and the trees were bare, but here and there fine clumps of daffodils and flashes of crocuses were in full bloom, and the ‘lakes’ were alive with all manner of waterfowl. In quiet corners I met more blackbirds than one generally sees in a long walk in the country—not to mention the hordes of pigeons and sparrows. Some early-flowering Prunus trees added a delicate tinge of pink. The entire prospect was delightful in early spring, though almost entirely artificial: not at all typical of the biosphere, but an impressive display of what man has created—and can do even better—when the will, knowledge, and money, are available. Given these last three prerequisites, it is also a portent of what we may expect to see more and more of in future, as human population burgeons and great cities multiply, extend, and ultimately coalesce.

Pesticides are toxic substances that are deliberately released into our environment to kill organisms which, from the point of view of man, are undesirable. The perfect pesticide would eliminate the target organism and be otherwise harmless. Unfortunately, as Dr Wurster and others have shown, some pesticides become environmental contaminants and have harmful effects that are often distant in time and space from the place where they were applied. These are calculated risks which have to be taken when the pesticide is used; the user believes that the advantages of application outweigh the disadvantages when, or perhaps more particularly if, he himself will not suffer from the side-effects of his actions. My present purpose is to deal with some of the other chemicals which man may introduce into his environment—usually accidentally, but sometimes deliberately, as in the cases of wastes discharged into the air or the sea as a method of disposal— which can also be the cause of environmental degradation.

I had seriously thought of beginning this global account of freshwater supplies and pollution with a porcine analogue to the human population explosion. Projection of the latest fifteen-year period for which figures are available, indicating a pig population doubling-time of about twenty years up to 1967–68, suggests that the global balance in numbers between pigs and men will shift in favour of pigs by the year 2060 (cf. United Nations, 1970). Each pig being more or less equivalent to two humans in terms of food consumption and physiological waste production, a still more meaningful shift in these terms will take place approximately one pig doubling-time earlier, namely about the year 2040. These facts prepare the ground for a question posed at the end of this paper—namely, are we really solving our problems today? They also help to establish a proposition pertaining to human populations that, for some reason or other, seems acceptable only when applied to some animal other than man, namely: that the world population explosion of pigs will persist on its seemingly inevitable course only as long as humans want to have more and more pigs around them. In a like manner, the world population explosion of humans will persist on its seemingly inevitable course only as long as humans want to have more and more humans around.

Ecologists who have attempted in recent years to look into the crystal ball to find out what is likely to be the biosphere-to-come, will surely, sooner or later, have reached the conclusion that the future depends almost entirely on how man handles the biosphere within the coming decades. Such forecasting also involves a series of problems, such as the following: (a) How can we circumscribe our vision to make it operational? Should a specific date be set, for instance the year 2000? Or should there be a continuous or periodic appraisal over a definite period of time, as obviously we cannot foresee indefinitely into the future? (b) How far and how reliably can present trends be projected into the future? In this connection an evaluation should be made of the extent to which current trends will generate reactions by mankind, and there- by deflect some of the curves which we have drawn on the basis of past experiences. Some of these problems were admirably illustrated in a recent paper by Peccei (1971), who included part of the accompanying diagram (Fig. 1). This diagram, resulting from the use of computer simulation models, is one example of what has been obtained by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology team working under the direc- tion of Professor Jay W. Forrester and aiming at studying the dynamic behaviour of interacting systems and how they would react to certain policy changes (C. L. Wilson, 1971).

When we consider the theme of ‘Marine Productivity and Pollution5 within the framework of an International Conference on Environmental Future, we find it necessary to deal in some detail with the topic of how pollution is affecting marine productivity at the present time, before attempting any prediction for the future. In such a prognostication of what in our opinion is most likely to happen in this highly important matter, a clear distinction must be made between the ultimate results that are to be expected from the present trends and the effects of man’s decisions to apply remedial measures—or, practically, between scientific predictions and political decisions. Without legislative and other counter-measures, the present trend would be amenable to prediction with some accuracy (and despondency). However, man’s counter-measures may well result in greatly reduced trends or even in reduction of the eventual pollution. One worthy instance of this nature is the present downward trend of smoke and sulphur dioxide pollution of the air above the United Kingdom (Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, 1971).

Each of the main land-masses of the world is largely divided piecemeal into catchment areas of drainage systems supplying major rivers, the example of Africa being illustrated in Fig. i. A river may be defined as a mixture of water, rock detritus, and other materials, flowing in a channel having pro-gressively lower levels. Strahler (1951) quotes from John Playfair’s Law (published in 1802): ‘Every river appears to consist of a main trunk, fed from a variety of branches, each running in a valley proportioned to its size, and all of them together forming a system of valleys connecting with one another, and having such a nice adjustment of their declivities that none of them joins the principal valley either on too high or too low a level; a circumstance which would be infinitely improbable if each of these valleys were not the work of the stream which flows in it.’ This statement comprises three main points: (1) valleys are proportioned in size to streams flowing in them, (2) stream junctions are accordant in level, and (3) therefore, valleys are carved by streams flowing in them.

Santayana tells us that those who cannot remember history are condemned to repeat it. Disraeli defined the practical man as one who can be counted on to repeat the errors of his ancestors. But for this moment in time there is no history or precedent, and we have no handbooks, charts, or maps; nor have we any pharmacopoeia, or vaccine for the world epidemic of which we see the initial symptoms.

On some 1938 postage stamps of Czechoslovakia are shown the smoking chimneys of factories. These stamps were not issued in support of a campaign against air pollution, but instead were intended to be symbolic of industry and prosperity. To many people of the world this picture still seems true of life, whereas actually, man has so harnessed the energy symbolized by the smoking chimney that the resulting air pollution has become a problem which erodes the prosperity of nations, undermines their health, and even modifies the very physical and biological environments in which we all live.

When the organizers of this Conference asked me to contribute a paper on sustained biological productivity, I presumed they had in mind the International Biological Programme (IBP) which runs for the decade of 1964–74, with more than sixty countries participating. Its purpose is the world study of ‘biological productivity and human welfare’, and it seemed that the Conference organizers were thinking in terms of sustained biological productivity linked to man’s use thereof. Other speakers were billed to deal with conservation for its own sake, but my first point is that there is no real scientific difference between the two. Whether one considers a biological system of very high productivity (say, a field of cane-sugar or a carp pond), or of very low productivity (say, the arctic tundra or the Dead Sea), the flow of energy through the biological system is sustained, somewhere near the maximum, within the limits imposed by environmental factors. However, when it comes to management to meet human needs, we have to define our objectives carefully, because manipulation of a particular ecosystem is often possible in two quite different and even opposing directions.

The price of survival for modern man in a finite world is restraint of his insatiable demands upon the natural environment and due treatment of that environment with the respect and care which he would accord to the life- support system of a space-ship upon which he was a passenger. Self-control has now become the quality that is perhaps most essential to the individual and to society alike. Collective self-control became essential when man found himself the greatest threat to his own survival and development.

World opinion has been awakening to a variety of man-made environmental problems during the past few years, and few of these have received more public debate than ‘the pesticide problem’. Strong emotions are evoked in people when they get the idea that they or other animals are being poisoned, regardless of whether the threat is real or imagined. ‘The pesticide problem5 is by no means a single problem, but instead consists of a host of individual and highly diverse problems depending on the pesticide and circumstances involved. In considering the effects of pesticides on nontarget organisms, I propose to organize my remarks into several categories, touching only on those aspects of pesticides that seem more important, and omitting much that in my view appears less critical.

Environmental studies are nowadays coming more and more to the fore and emerging as a highly complex interdisciplinary science. In this paper, however, I shall confine myself to that part of the environment which is created by human activities, dealing particularly with the urban environment. The disciplines which are concerned with this field include architecture, town planning, the sociology of housing and of cities, communal hygiene, various aspects of engineering, and some more modern fields such as ekistics or the science of human settlements (Doxiadis, 1970).