Human world exceeds nature: our technosphere is growing rapidly!

Human world exceeds nature: our technosphere is growing rapidly!

Wien, Österreich - The world as we know it is becoming increasingly difficult - and this is not only to be understood physically. According to a recent study, coordinated by the University of Natural Resources and the McGill University in Canada, the technosphere, i.e. the entire infrastructure created by humans, has now reached a weight of around one trillion tons. This is simply astonishing, because it corresponds to the entire living biomass of the earth. This statement comes from Dominik Wiedenhofer, an expert in the Boku, who finds that the technosphere grows by about three percent annually and thus clearly achieves the development of our built world as that of all living things.

What exactly does the technosphere include? It not only includes buildings and roads, but also machines and digital infrastructure. About half of the mass comes from buildings, while another third is represented by traffic infrastructure such as bridges or pipelines. Interestingly, movable objects such as cars and aircraft only make up around two percent of the total mass, but the effects of which should not be underestimated. These mobile objects contribute significantly to resource consumption and impair biodiversity and climate change.

The challenge of growth

The quantitative knowledge of the technosphere makes it clear that a quick and persistent growth of this sphere is a challenge for the planetary limits. Again and again it turns out that the weight of the technosphere has doubled about every two decades since 1900. In the research work, too, profound interactions between the technosphere and other earth spheres are analyzed. These findings are particularly important for the development of sustainability strategies, because they also shed light on the challenges that the anthropocene, the “age of man”, brings with it.

Thanks to innovative research approaches, we can better understand how human societies are connected to the earth system, with many variable ecological conditions and fabric flows play a role. Interdisciplinary research explores the questions of how these structures cause long -term changes and which feedback loops are in the interactions.

a new perspective on the technosphere

In science, the concept of "anthroposphere" is often called the area in which human action influences the earth system. Recent studies now suggest that the technosphere should be made more clearly as an independent sphere of the earth system. This not only creates new starting points for climate research, but also helps to develop resource -saving strategies for the future. In addition to the concept of the technosphere, the bottlenecks and necessary adjustments for a more sustainable life are also considered.

The detailed results and further information on this topic can be found in the relevant studies published by the University of Natural Sciences. The Max Planck Institute offers further insights into the interaction of the technosphere and earth system.