Sustainable earth system engineering: Incentives and perspectives

Abstract

Sustainable earth system engineering (SESE) is defined as deliberate, careful, and science-based management of the three major components of the life support system of the Earth: climate, biodiversity, and stability of societies and economies. Unintended interventions into these basic assets have led to major global crises. It appears that mankind is confronted with four major, widely interrelated problem areas. Keywords in this context are water and food deficiency, societal and economic instability, loss of the self-regulation capacity of ecosystems, and last but not least the crisis caused by global warming and the resulting climate change. Growth of the human population in conjunction with global changes of life style is the underlying reasons for the evolvement of such crises. A holistic approach is to be taken to counteract the mankind's impacts into the generic life supporting system of the Earth. This chapter describes the interrelationships to be considered when planning to direct the development of the Earth system toward a steady-state which enables the multibillion size humanity to maintain its niche.