Page 16 - Soil and water contamination, 2nd edition

1

General introduction

1.1 HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

Rapid growth of the world population and the pursuit of material prosperity have generated
a massive expansion in industrial and agricultural production in recent decades. The
associated increase in energy consumption and the generation of waste have enormously
increased the pressure on the natural environment and have led to changes in the
composition of the atmosphere, soil, fresh water resources, seas, and oceans. This, in turn,
has led to destabilisation of natural ecosystems and a deterioration of environmental quality
(i.e. the ability of the environment to support all appropriate beneficial uses by humans and
wildlife). The increasing population density has made human society increasingly vulnerable
to the natural variability of the environment and, especially, to environmental change.
Much pollution goes unnoticed and the resulting environmental deterioration is often
difficult to detect. As a consequence, environmental issues have long been ignored. In the
past 40 years, however, public awareness and concern about the state of the global and local
environment has grown dramatically. The pollution of air, water, and soil has attracted
particular interest, because of its direct adverse impact on landscapes and ecosystems (e.g.
rivers , lakes , wetlands, heaths, woodland, pasture), cultural heritage (e.g. listed buildings and
heritage sites), and human health. The first prominent publication that called attention to
the abuse of persistent, hazardous pesticides such as DDT was Silent Spring, by the biologist
Rachel Carson (1962). Ten years later, the publication of the book Limits to Growth by
the Club of Rome (Meadows et al., 1972) fuelled the debate about environmental issues.
Based on one of the first computer-based simulation models, the authors predicted that the
exponential increase of the world population and the accompanying growth of consumption
and environmental pollution would cause a massive reduction in the Earth’s ability to sustain
future life within a time span of 100 years. The pessimistic forecasts presented in Limits to
Growth have not come about, but the book’s assumptions, methods, and results generated
a vigorous debate among scientists and the general public. And whereas in the 1970s the
environmental debate focused on population growth, heavy metals , and persistent pesticides,
during the 1980s and 1990s it expanded to include smog, acid rain , radioactivity, the ozone
hole, the greenhouse effect, and biodiversity.
In the scientific world, many subdisciplines of the natural sciences (e.g. ecology, physical
geography , geology, geochemistry , hydrology , soil science ) and engineering (civil engineering,
agricultural engineering) started environmentally-oriented research, which developed
into a new interdisciplinary branch of environmental science. This led to the founding of
a number of specialised international journals in the field of environmental pollution, such
as Environmental Pollution (1970; Elsevier), Water, Air and Soil Pollution (1971; Kluwer,
now Springer), and the Journal of Environmental Quality (1972; The American Society of
Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America, and Soil Science Society of America).
In the meantime, many countries had created government departments or agencies to
provide decision-makers with the appropriate information needed for making effective

10/1/2013 6:44:03 PM
Soil and Water.indd 15 10/1/2013 6:44:03 PM
Soil and Water.indd 15