Understanding The Anthropocene, Intrinsic And Instrumental Environmental Values, Ownership And Commodification Of Resources, And Planetary Urbanism

1. Define ‘the Anthropocene’ and discuss whether you think it is a useful or problematic concept.

2. Explain what is meant by ‘intrinsic’ and ‘instrumental’ environmental values, providing an example of each.

3. How is the idea of ownership linked to the commodification of resources? Discuss with reference to a specific example of a resource impacted by ownership claims.

4. Explain what is meant by ‘planetary urbanism’ and discuss how planetary urbanism is linked to the circulation of resources and wastes. In your answer, provide a specific example of a place that has been drawn into the process of planetary urbanism.

The Anthropocene as a Useful or Problematic Concept

This is a review of how both places and environmental outcomes are produced through socio-ecological flows and entanglements. It established by discussing circulation processes role in linking cities with more distant places in relation to metabolic rift and environmental justice.

According to Foster (2000), the metabolic rift is a physical expression of human separation from the material conditions of life, and from nature. The urbanization is seen as a procedure of de-territorialization and re-territorialization of metabolic circulatory streams, composed via societal and physical channels or systems of 'metabolic vehicles' (Wolf 2012). These procedures are injected in relation to the intensity in which social artists endeavor to protect and make their own surroundings in a set of class, ethnic, racial and additionally sex clashes and power battles.

Metabolism isn’t limited to the limits of a town yet includes an intricate procedure of connecting places, and the people and non-people inside these spots, in irregular and unexpected manners. These frequently profoundly out of line arranges through which urban areas and their occupants are connected with individuals and places somewhere else have started to be uncovered in ongoing work on the conveyance of  squander, family unit reusing and excess boats from the urban areas of worldwide North to those in the worldwide South (Heynen, Perkins& Roy 2006). ' Flow' and 'metabolism ' have turned out to be progressively prominent and hypothetically propelled focal points through which to comprehend a progression of interconnected, heterogeneous (human and non-human), dynamic, challenged and contestable procedures of ceaseless measurable and subjective changes which re-orchestrates people and non-people in new, and frequently sudden, arrays (Swyngedouw  2006). These focal points allow thinking about the social and the physical in non-dualistic and profoundly political ways.

Advanced town progresses toward becoming seen as a procedure of intertwining the social and the physical together to create an unmistakable 'half and half' or 'cyborg' urbanization (Gandy 2005). Such socially-determined material procedures deliver broadened and ceaselessly reconfigured, expected plus unplanned spatial game plans. These are immersed with heterogeneous emblematic and fanciful requests by the summed up product frame that supports the industrialist 'nature' of urbanization.

The observational investigation has started to examine the collections, control imbalances, and treacheries enclosed in the metabolism of urban communities. Be that as it may, we accept assist thought of the metabolic flow of cyborg urban areas is essential. From one perspective, it will uncover advance the unforeseen, continually moving and profoundly irregular power associations and treacheries enclosed in its creation. Then again, facilitate us to think fundamentally around kinds of urban communities we ought to live later on, and what metabolic systems and disseminations cause these city ideals. Such an exploration venture requires disentangling the complex, moving and control loaded social connections that work inside urban areas and the manner, these are interceded by and organized via procedures of environmental variation.

Intrinsic and Instrumental Environmental Values Explained

The future inquire about this ought to inspect the way urban is comprised via socio-natural metabolic streams, for example, Carbon IV Oxide, water, and gases,  maintained by a progression of mechanical frameworks and social, political and institutional help structures, and how these are enclosed in the generation of exceedingly irregular socio-environmental designs.

Exclusively we do not need to outline, break down or comprehend the socio-natural metabolism of urban areas, past what's more present, additionally, we must basically foresee the used socio-ecological associations that can work under extreme idealistic options for example, of post-carbon networks that are starting to rise.

On the other hands, urban environmental justice pays contemplations to the associations amidst social joining/preclusion from socio-environmental circumstances and socio-political exercise. As a rule, natural fair-mindedness focuses on the refinement revelation to biological stock and bads looked by exceptional societal get-togethers with a particular weight on characteristic bads (Schneider, Kallis& Martinez-Alier 2010). The improvement itself ascended in the US out of two significant biological events that happened amid the 1980s, one that molded in opposition to the territory of perilous goals close denied systems and another that tested 'regular bias' (Schlosberg 2009). The initiating work by a researcher and radical, Robert Bullard and a report by the Assembled Church of Christ's (UCC) Bonus for Racial justcice went about as the impulse for a watchful educational responsibility with the environmental jusitice improvement and thought. Bullard's underlying work fought that unsafe waste workplaces were too much found and deliberately sited in predominately dull neighborhoods inside the South US. Essentially, the UCC (1987) attested that over th US, black commuinities s have encountered regular ecological racism. In the prerequisite of controls and laws in powerful authority cognizant centering of systems of shading for hurtful waste exchange and the siting of dirtying ventures in the expert embracing of the unsafe closeness of poisonous substances and poisons in systems of shading and the verifiable background of banning minorities from the standard environmental social affairs, fundamental authority sheets, commissions, and authoritative organs. Bullard and the UCC related what incredibly separated records of peril that are an ethnically identifiable case of inappropriate behavior". As these formative examinations, amount of natural equity thinks about has grown stupendously over various controls. Test examinations have regularly fixated on alluding to structures of exchange, stockpiling, workplaces transfers and dirtying enterprises, their social proposals and system protection from these. Research has extended out of late to look at a wide collection of issues from the unsafe material the movement to the non-indistinguishable confirmation from socio-ordinary. These examinations have contributed towards a perception of 'condition' and 'equity', and the noteworthiness of race and class inside characteristic injustice. These issues will now be viewed as in this way. Reverberating work in political science, natural equity activists and analysts have attempted to 'denaturalize' the earth, setting highlight on its social relations and social creation. This is gotten by the natural equity fanatic Dana Alston who thought about that the issues of the earth don't stay single without any other person's information. Plus, ecological equity activists and analysts have natural equity considerations of 'perfect nature' to review the urban state of "the dull lung conveying workplace, the asbestos clad home and the fumes cloud stacked play zone". The possibility of value has been a key to the natural equity improvement. Exchanges have risen inside the educational expounding on what kind of value the ecological equity improvement has and ought to take a stab at. David Schlosberg (2009) fights that in spite of the way that the composition and advancement are swarming concerning value and equity, they are consistently dark or indeterminate about the kinds of value they imagine. Making Iris Marion young's (2011) manage the administrative issues of complexity, Schlosberg (2009) suggests that three estimations of value are imperative to ecological equity: distributional value, procedural value, and cognitional value. In a later duty, Schlosberg (2009) incorporates the fourth estimation of value: the value of limits. It is basic to take a gander in every estimation in more detail. Distributional value has for a long while been a point of convergence of the environmental justice. It suggests the conviction that characteristic bads should not be stuffed in or contiguous, ruined systems but instead re-distributed. This dispute concentrated on a Rawlsian thought of distributive value, has become stern criticism from Dobson (2003) who prescribes that calls for redistributing socio-environmental issues, disregard to deal with its principle drivers.

Ownership and the Commodification of Resources

Cognitional value suggests the call for affirmation and respect for the troubled systems who encounter the evil impacts of biological injustice and the people who share in the natural equity improvement. The direct point here is that there is a significant association between the nonappearance of affirmation and the vile scattering of environmental bads. 

Schlosberg's (2009) argument, for the most part, basic learning, in any case, is that these estimations of value can't be considered or acknowledged in repression. The value of limits requires a political focus on distributional value: strong systems require some sort of redistribution of condition bads and stock. With the true objective to achieve distributional value and the value of limits, procedural value and cognitional value is critical. Continuing forward, a critical piece of the work on ecological equity has examined whether spatial models of characteristic unevenness are associated with the issues of class or race. Different examinations have used open environmental and measurement data, programming, and quantitative systems to investigate the spatial associations between normal issues and masses traits. From these, a couple of many have agreed with Bullard and the UCC's underlying assessments that race is the key choosing segment in ecological equity. For Ringquist (2005), the inability to recognize the social determiners of natural awkwardness has blunted the credibility of the ecological equity improvement's solicitations. On the other hand, Downey (1998) trusts that these 'class versus race' talks about neither are befuddled as neither class nor race-based aberrations work in disengagement. Or maybe, they are identified with both sorting out models of common dissimilarity. Consequently, he reasons that audits should investigate the exchange between these two tomahawks of divergence.

Following this investigation, different continuous examinations have risen venting their failure with the author's nonattendance of understanding of how sex relations shape environmental disparities and ecological justice advancement. 

Anthropocene is a projected time marking the commencing of important human effects on the world’s ecosystem and geology (Baskin 2014).  Mostly, anthropocene defines world’s most recent geologic time. Major influences of time on earth are human caused, therefore, anthropocene is said to have human roots.   According to Ruddiman (2007), Anthropocene time period is said to start about 10,000 years ago, just after the last glacial period.  He argues that the anthropocene time period is defined by human impact on the emission of greenhouse gas, during the industrial revolution.

 This concept is of great importance in human society as it explains the intensity of the current world situations, for instance, this concept has recently been employed by climate scientists to describe the phenomena like climate change, which is a major challenge the world is facing today. The initial domestication of plant and animals, advancement of agricultural economies and landscapes in early days marks the start of anthropocene epoch.  

Planetary Urbanism and its Link to Resource Circulation

This is a non-instrumental value of the ecosystem and the species that comprise the environment. Normally,   this value that the environment/natural resource has in itself for what it’s or as an end. What value is inherent to an object? (McShane 2007) Example of intrinsic value is the aesthetic nature of plants. This value is made by human valuing.  Human beings will preserve and conserve natural resources because they know and believe that their existence is of great importance.

This is the value that ecosystem and species have as a mean to desired or valued end (Justus, Colyvan, Regan, Maguire 2009). Here the natural resources are valued for the end results gained from them.  For example, a tree can value from timbers that ard forms them. Also, the rocks can be valued from the building materials made from them. This suggests that instrumental value is attributable to the use and need to be met by a certain natural resource in human life. 

Commodification is an assertion of human control over nature, where natural resources cease to be an ecosystem entity and become a privatized property (Heynen& Robbins 2005). This is attributed to capitalism, where most people are after optimizing their profit from farms, mines, and forests. This urge and greed for high income create great interest for the ownership and possession of natural resources among people as they strive and work toward making and maintain a higher profit from their economic use of land and other natural resources. The end result is the overexploitation of natural resources. This exposes these resources to destruction as they turn to be private means of production and the owners can use them the manner they want. This vividly shows that the idea of commodification is a contributing factor to the ownership of natural resources like land, mines and wild animals. This implies that people can buy and them whenever they need to do so. 

Planetary urbanism is a circumstance where even sections that are situated beyond the traditional city centers become central parts of the global urban fabric (Mitchell 2014). This is as a result continued urbanization process and massive migration of people to major cities. Cities are overpopulated and available resources are overstrained, people move to the outskirts of major cities as result, new sections/areas have become urbanized and transformed into new economic centres.

 As a result, planetary urbanism causes the city to act as a central and pivotal point where resources can be received from a different part of the global as it’s at the junction of all infrastructural networks.  

Socio-Ecological Flows and Metabolic Rift

Areas that have experiences planetary urbanism are the major cities from developed countries like China, USA, Japan, and Russia. These cities are have turned out to be a major global centre due to their good connection with the infrastructural network from most parts of their origin country and world. 

The statement is true.  Due to the need of an inclusive ecosystem, cities have been turned to habitat for every life, both human and nonhuman. The process of urbanization has transformed even area that had no plant cover for example desert area, as cities’ authorities have enacted afforestation and reafforestation programmes, which has a facilitated the enlargement of vegetation cover in these towns, as they strive to add the aesthetic value to cities. These have caused citeies to be habitats for human and nonhuman lives.

 Also, cities have game parks, museum and water bodies, both natural and manmade.  Game parks are homes for wild animals and plants and a place for recreation activity.  Water bodies hold the aquatic lives and Museum holds the remains of dead and rare animals. Also human are the main inhabitants of the city. All these portray cities as space for the natural life of all kinds and as a true multi-species metropolis Forman (2008) 

According to Carney (2001), “the Columbian exchange is an unparalleled exchange of crops”.   This is term is basically used to describe the interchange of plants, animals, culture, human population, ideas nd technology among the world continents.   This exchange is attributed to European colonization and trade following Christopher Columbus journey to America and Africa in late 1400(Nunn& Qian 2010), hence the name Columbian.  The process draws its attention from the initiative of the Europeans to transform the food system by introducing the Amerindian and Asian seeds to Africa. Carney argues that Columbian exchange neglects the tremendous role that was played by African crop domestication in America by establishing many Africa Staples food. Instead, it introduced Amerindian foods to replace many life-sustaining African bowls of cereal.

Eventually, Columbian Exchange has reunited the world continents that had drifted apart.   People are able to share their ideas, technology, plants, and animas with the other parts of the word. Thus marked the beginner of globalization, where the world has become a village. 

According to Jarman, P. J., & Brock (2004, p. 3), the assumptions behind the 19^Th  century game protection law are:

• Uncontrolled hunting would threaten game populations and reduce sport in future

Over hunting leads to the direct killing of too many wild lives, which threatens the existence of many wild species, hence the need for legislations to control over hunting of the endangered species

• Populations would survive as long as hunting did not target the breeding stock or occur during the breeding season.

Environmental Justice and its Relationship to Urbanization

 This advocate for selective, monitored and timely hunting, where citizens are allowed to hunt only the specific species, they are not allowed to hunt animals that are likely to be in their gestation period.   In this case, laws are needed to prevent ill-motivated hunters from getting into the animal's habitats.

• People who had invested to increase the public good by importing game species (in particular) should have their investment protected. 

 According to Sarkar (1999), Pinchot’s focus is on knowledge of how to utilize natural resources without destroying them.  Pinchot advocated on wise use of these resources, where people for can forest resources while conserving and preserving the future generational use.  Pinchot was concerned with eradicating two threats: waste and inefficiency in the use of natural resources and focused on controlling these resources in the hand of the powerful people who can have vested interests.   Inclusion, Pinchot main focus was on educating people to need to conserve and preserve natural resources, and enacting legislation that can curb the misuse and mismanagement of natural resources.

Muir used s religious, analogy to explain to people the need of taking care and managing the natural resources, for example, he urged that wilderness provides inspiration for humans.  His argument was based on the consideration that natural resources like forest have great spiritual and aesthetic value (Sarka 1999).  

The year 1788 is referred to as emerged border (Head 2011).  This is dateline that used to define whether a plant species is indigenous/native or non-native/non-indigenous. The year 1788 marks the arrival of the British colonizers.  If the plant existed before the arrival of the British, it/ ’s named as native, but if it emerged after their arrival, will be known as a non-native plant. On the other hands, Rose (1997), refer to this year as “Zero Year”,   due to the fact that new species of plants emerged in this year upon the arrival of the colonizers.

This dates key to the conceptualization of the nativeness of species in Australia.  It used as a reference date to make the emergence of new species in the land of Australia. Scientists are able to examine the authenticity of different animals’ species, by just determining whether they existed before 1788 or not. By doing so, they bale to identify the indigenous species of plants and animals.

According to Foster (2000), the metabolic rift is a physical expression of human separation from the material conditions of life, and from nature.  Liebig (1855) argued that the metabolic rift is a temporal/spatial separation of spaces of production and consumption through the emergence of long distance trade and urbanization process, which adversely affect the productivity of agricultural land while intensifying the challenging buildups of sewage and garbage in city centers.   According to Wolf (2012), the metabolic rift is the end result of the continued urbanization process, which has deprived natural resources like land their authentic usefulness. Therefore, man is estranged for himself/herself as a producer from the production process, species and from other fellow human beings.

A good example of metabolic rift taking place in the planetary boundary is a material and energetic exchange that takes place between human being and the environment regulated by natural laws that control varying physical process, and societal law,  like norms that regulate division of labor and wealth distribution.

A food desert is a geographical area in which it’s difficult to access nutritious and affordable diet (Jarman & Brock 2004). Mostly, this includes an urban area which is inhabited by low-income people and that is not connected to the good transport network. Food desert can also be experienced when, people have disposable income but are interested in acquiring quality food at affordable and reasonable prices to make a heathy diet for their families but they are not able to obtain these from the local shops, groceries, and supermarkets. The most affected group of people by the impacts of food desert are people earning a small income, people living far away from supermarkets and groceries, and people living in areas inaccessible by good transport network system.

The major effect of a food desert is lack of healthy foods. This implies that most people will not obtain a healthy and balanced diet. Consequently, people will suffer from food deficiency diseases.

The water crisis is a lack of fresh water f or human and animal consumption. This is as a result of the following, groundwater depletion, ecological destruction due to human activities, water reallocation by nature, drought-driven conflict. (Bakker 2010). This affects human wellbeing. The water crisis is characterized by the following:

First, there’s unsustainability of the persons. This is caused by the decline of water stock that results in a long-term decline in future human wellbeing, as the resources are not sufficient to cater for the human need.

Second, the human being will become more vulnerable.  The high variation of water and inadequate managing capability results to fall in human wellbeing.

Finally, there is chronic scarcity. This is as a result of the persistent inadequacy of water resources to an unsustainable level. This leads to low conditions of human water security. The eventuality of this is the death of animals and plant due to lack of water to sustain their lives.

Biodiversity is the diversity of all levels of biological organization (Sarka 1999). These levels include alieles, population, species, communities, and ecosystems. In other words, biodiversity is composed of plants, animals, fungi and other living things which are within the ecosystem.

On the other hands, the wilderness is a place which is not habited by human populous. (Langton 1996).  This place is inhabited both wild animals and vegetation cover.  Most wildernesses are natural, there are no human activities that take place due to the conservation measure enacted by the governments or due to adverse conditions in their environs that threaten human lives, for instance, marshy areas and forest with hostile wild animals

Biodiversity task, therefore, are not identical to with wilderness task but they converge some point. Commonly, the spread of wilderness preservationism like the establishment of national parks for recreation is wilderness task, which also leads to the attainment of biodiversity conservation role.

The alternative economy is an economic structure that runs separately from the traditional economy aiming to uphold the self-sufficiency of the stakeholders while maintaining the sustainability principle (Gibson-Graham& Roelvink 2011). The main reason for the alternative economy is to come up with an economic system that eradicates the challenges like the insecurity of fund, of the old economic system.  It lays a lot of emphasis on the security, convenience, and efficiency among the stakeholders. Moreover, it emphasizes individual associations. Here other currencies system like loyalty and reciprocity are utilized along the monetary system.

The alternative economy tends to have strong ecommerce capacity, most transactions are to be done online using alternative currencies like crypto currencies and electronic money, where money transfer is to be done via the mobile phone. It is established upon the local market network (LocalMart). The following are three examples of alternative economies, community economy, Islamic banking, and household economy.

According to Bakker (2010), the hydro-social cycle is a socio-natural process, which is frequently made and remade by society and water.    Water is perceived as a social natural resource. An emphasis is put on individuals’ social-political connection with water.

The elements of the hydro social cycle are discussed below.

Water: this is the main element.

Hydrological cycle:  this is a continuous cyclic movement of water on the earth.  It entails processes such as evaporation, precipitation and runs off. The process starts with the evaporation of water from water bodies, then precipitation, which is a fall of atmospheric moisture and Runoff of water on the earth surface. All these help in the circulation of water on the earth

Social, Political and economic practice: This entails the use of water resource to satisfy the human quest, for instance, the generation of hydro-electric power, family and industrial use, and selling water to earn income.  For this reasons, water has become part of humanity.

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