Where the Wild Things Are: The Challenge of Preserving Natural Resources

由专筑网雷军，Vigo编译

人类对自然界的破坏已经严重威胁了野生动植物的生存。这一事实将如何影响我们设计和建造的方式？

The Anthropocene upsetting of the natural world has led to a call for the creation of wildlife-only areas. How would that affect the way we design and build?



这1930至1945年发行的张明信片拍摄了在黄石国家公园建造的彩虹桥

A postcard, issued from 1930 to 1945, depicting the man-made Rainbow Bridge at Yellowstone National Park

生物学家加勒特哈丁在他的1968年论文“公地悲剧”中指出，对于自然资源的过度使用，我们没有合理的解决方案。他用一个牧场作为比喻，认为每一个牧民个人利益最大化是通过提高他的羊群超出可持续的数量。《在半个地球：地球为生命而战（书林，2016年）》，下个月出版，当代生物学家、普利策奖得主爱德华威尔逊以不同的手法，创建了一个只有一半地球的野生动物保护区，防止非人类生命大灭绝的情况发生。以他先前的作品《未来的生命》（双日，2002年）作为前提，威尔逊发现了好的公司和其他维护生物多样性损失的记者，包括同为普利策奖得主伊丽莎白科尔伯特，《灾难》的作者（Bloomsbury出版社，2006年），《第六次灭绝：不寻常的历史》（Henry Holt，2014年）。

相比《哈丁的牧场》，威尔逊提出了一个更大的挑战人类的关于资源囤积的问题。如果前者阐明了可持续的资源管理的问题，后者提出了建立一个不受限制地区对人类的影响。威尔逊提出了两个问题。首先，这样一个庞大的储备是否可能？其次，它对设计和规划有什么意义？

为了接纳威尔逊的半个地球的建议，我们首先要了解当前的形势范围。威尔逊的想法是基于合适的栖息地的数量对于一个物种的生存至关重要。科学家们已经计算出了栖息地面积变化与物种数量之间的关系-物种-区域关系是成反比的。科学家发现，当百分之九十的自然栖息地毁灭时，大约有一半的物种将消失。（这指的是独特的物种群体）虽然余下的物种可能勉强维持生存，威尔逊在他即将出版的书中解释说，“如果剩下的百分之十的自然栖息地也被-一个队的伐木工人在一个月内大部分砍伐，那么所有幸存的物种都会消失吧。”半个地球的巨型储备能够保护约百分之八十五的剩余物种，包括了各种濒危物种。

“《哈丁的牧场》阐明集体牧场可持续资源管理问题，威尔逊则提出了建立限制区域，对人类造成影响。”

根据联合国环境规划署公布的《2014年保护地球报告》，这是根据世界上保护区数据库的数据，目前的保护野生土地覆盖面积约为百分之十五的陆地和内陆海洋区域，和百分之三的海洋。在理论上，如果所有的非保护区被降解，只有百分之六十二的陆地物种和百分之四的海洋物种将保持生存。即使生物多样性公约（生物多样性公约）中实现2020年百分之十七陆地和内陆海洋，与百分之十个沿海和海洋地区的保护目标，这些地区将分别保护百分之六十四和百分之五十六的剩余物种。在美国，世界上第一个国家公园黄石公园，在1872年建立近1亿1000万英亩的保护荒野，将保存占地球百分之四十四的陆地物种。

人类只会推进物种灭绝的速度，估计今天的物种灭绝率至少比人类前辈的高出1000倍。那么，我们采用什么样的土地利用战略来减缓这一现状呢？一种方法是保护剩余的未开发和有生态价值的领土。这将我们共同努力，因为地球上仍有一些无人居住的地区。半地球的方法并不意味着将这个星球以半球、大陆甚至是国家的大片地区划分，而是通过公共、私人、政府联合的治理来增加对野生地的禁止购买和监管。这种剩余的方法是比较容易的，因为它通常涉及到野生领域，或是不发达地区。

“一个复杂的网络再生荒地很难保持真正的野生物种，这些地区将需要大量的人力监督以防对河马无情的伤害。”

这种策略的问题在于它分散的区域位置与人类交通组织间的矛盾 。为此，环保人士呼吁将这些地域与自然世界之间进行连接。“我看到一个不间断的走廊的形成，有的开放成为宽度足以容纳生物多样性国家公园，一个不会让物种消失的新的公园，”威尔逊2014年面对史密森杂志采访时说的。创建这样的大片荒野的问题是，他们往往与人类交通网络冲突。荒地到达西雅图必须通过建立野生动物过街天桥和地道桥和下面的公路和铁路才可以。该组织致力于重建美国的一个横跨海岸的野生动物走廊，一个在北美森林的屋顶，一个从加利福尼亚到阿拉斯加。这样一个艰巨的工程，必须克服了土地所有的挑战，主要是克服社会对这一问题的冷漠态度。

即使足够广泛和相互关联的野生动物通道可以组合成一个相当大的地形，我们也仍面临诸多挑战。河马生存地点分布、物种入侵、污染、人口过剩和过度采伐，以狩猎、捕鱼，人类生物多样性的威胁等等。我们尽量减少这些情况的再次发生，但如外来入侵物种和污染等威胁就会难以控制。《喧闹的花园：世界保护自然》（Bloomsbury出版，2011年），作者艾玛马里斯认为基于人类社会无所不在的影响，描述了荒野的再概念化，“新生态”发生在人与自然生态之间的交点。威尔逊则不同意这样的观点，他将其描述为“新的保护”的理念，并宣布这个角度是荒野“突击”。不过，始终认为一个复杂的网络和再生荒地将保持真正的野生物种真的很难，这些地区将需要大量的人力监督禁止对河马无情的伤害。

在这种方式下，半地球宣言的“共同的悲剧，”和一个精心建设的生物王国来替代《哈丁的牧场》。只有这样，资源才不为人类消费，降低了总面积，减少可以使用的人数。因此，我们面临一个问题：我们是否能认同哈丁对社会的不信任从而作出有共同利益的决定，我们人类会作出更大的承诺来帮助其他物种避免其他生物灾害吗？

布莱恩布劳内尔，是一个特色专栏作家，他的故事每个星期都会出现这个网站。他的观点和结论并不全是代表建筑师杂志，也不是代表美国建筑师协会。

In his polemical 1968 treatise "The Tragedy of the Commons," biologist Garrett Hardin concluded that there is no technical solution for the overuse of natural resources. He uses the metaphor of a pasture, arguing that each herdsman would simply try to maximize personal gain by increasing his herd numbers beyond what is sustainable. In Half-Earth: Our Planet's Fight for Life (Liveright, 2016), out next month, contemporary biologist and Pulitzer Prize winner Edward O. Wilson takes a different tact, making a case for setting aside half the planet as a wildlife preserve to prevent the mass extinction of non-human life. Building on a premise he had earlier proposed in The Future of Life (Knopf Doubleday, 2002), Wilson finds good company among other biodiversity-loss journalists, including fellow Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Kolbert, author of Field Notes from a Catastrophe (Bloomsbury, 2006) and The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (Henry Holt, 2014).
Compared to Hardin's pasture, Wilson's reserve presents an even greater challenge to humanity's resource-hoarding tendencies. If the former illustrates the problem of sustainable collective resource management, the latter presents the difficulty of establishing a territory that is off-limits to human influence. Wilson’s approach raises two questions. First, is such a massive reserve even possible? And, second, what implications does it have for design and planning?
Where the Wild Things Are—And Where They're Not
To evaluate Wilson's Half-Earth proposal, we first need to understand the scope of the current situation. Wilson bases his argument on the idea that the amount of suitable habitat left to a species is crucial to that species’ survival. Scientists have calculated the relationship between changes to habitat area and the number of surviving species—the species–area relationship—to be inversely proportional. When 90 percent of a natural habitat is eradicated, scientists found, about half of its existing species will eventually disappear. (This equation refers to the number of unique species, not populations of individual organisms.) Although the remaining species may eke out a sustainable existence, Wilson explains in his forthcoming text, “if 10 percent of the remaining natural habitat were then also removed—a team of lumbermen might do it in a month—most or all of the surviving resident species would disappear." The Half-Earth mega-reserve would protect roughly 85 percent of the remaining species, when calculating with a median value of the fourth root, or more if endangered species “hot spots” are included in this area, Wilson writes.
"If [Hardin's pasture] illustrates the problem of sustainable collective resource management, [Wilson's reserve] presents the difficulty of establishing a territory that is off-limits to human influence."
Current protected wild lands cover approximately 15 percent of land and inland marine areas and 3 percent of the oceans, according to the United Nations Environment Programme publication “Protected Planet Report 2014,” which is based on data from the World Database on Protected Areas. In theory, if all non-protected areas were degraded, only 62 percent of land species and 4 percent of marine species would remain. Even if the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) 2020 preservation targets of 17 percent land and inland marine along with 10 percent coastal and marine regions are achieved, these areas would protect only 64 percent and 56 percent of remaining planetary species, respectively. And in the United States, home to the world’s first national park—Yellowstone National Park, established in 1872—the now nearly 110 million acres of protected wilderness would safeguard only 44 percent of Earth’s land-based species.
Selecting Strategies for Land Use
Humanity is only driving up the rate of species extinction, which is estimated today to be at least 1,000-times higher than in pre-human eras. So, what land-use strategies could we adopt to slow our progress? One method is to preserve the remaining undeveloped and ecologically valuable territories. This would require a piecemeal effort, given that few expansive uninhabited areas remain on the globe. As a result, the Half-Earth method doesn’t mean dividing the planet into large tracts based on hemispheres, continents, or even nation-states but instead involves the incremental purchase and supervision of wild lands by public, private, indigenous, and combined governance structures. This residual approach is relatively easy for planners and developers to appreciate, as it typically involves the sequestration of areas still considered wild, or at least underdeveloped.
"It’s hard to argue that a complex network of reclaimed wild lands will remain truly wild, for these territories will require extensive human oversight to counter the unrelenting perils of HIPPO."
The problem with this strategy is that it results in a patchwork of small, disconnected territories not conducive to many species’ migratory or mobility needs. For this reason, conservationists call for wild connections to be made between these bits and pieces of the natural world. “I see a chain of uninterrupted corridors forming, with twists and turns, some of them opening up to become wide enough to accommodate national biodiversity parks, a new kind of park that won’t let species vanish,” Wilson told Smithsonian Magazine in 2014. The problem with creating such expanses of wilderness is that they often physically conflict with established human transportation networks. The Seattle-based Wildlands Network seeks to address this by building wildlife overpasses and underpasses above and below highways and railways. The organization is working to reestablish four wildlife corridors in the United States—one spanning each coast, one across the North American forest roof, and one from Baja California to Alaska. Such a herculean project must overcome the challenges of established land ownership and a society that is largely apathetic to such an agenda.
Challenges to Keeping the Wild Lands Wild
Even if sufficiently broad and interconnected wildlife thoroughfares can be stitched within a considerably Anthropocene terrain, other challenges remain. Conservationists employ the acronym HIPPO—habitat distribution, invasive species, pollution, human over-population, and over-harvesting by hunting and fishing—to summarize the list of human-influenced biodiversity threats. Some of these dangers are minimized in protected areas, but threats such as invasive species and pollution are harder to control. In Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World (Bloomsbury, 2011), author Emma Marris argues for a re-conceptualization of wilderness based on the omnipresent influence of human societies, and describes the “novel ecosystems” that occur at the intersections between human and natural ecologies as realms of fertile opportunity. Wilson is not enamored with such a view, which he describes as representing a “new conservation” philosophy, and declares such a perspective to be an “assault on wilderness.” Still, it’s hard to argue that a complex network of reclaimed wild lands will remain truly wild, for these territories will require extensive human oversight to counter the unrelenting perils of HIPPO.
In this way, the Half-Earth manifesto fuses with the "Tragedy of the Commons," and an elaborate super-reserve for the biological kingdom substitutes for Hardin’s pasture. Only, here, such a resource is decidedly not for human consumption and, by definition, reduces the overall area that may be used by people. As a result, we face an unsettling question: If we agree with Hardin’s mistrust of society to make decisions that benefit the common good, can we imagine humanity making an even greater commitment to aid other species—even in the name of avoiding a biological cataclysm?
Blaine Brownell, AIA, is a regularly featured columnist whose stories appear on this website each week. His views and conclusions are not necessarily those of ARCHITECT magazine nor of the American Institute of Architects.

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