Cumulative environmental assessment and global change

This paper assesses the role of cumulative assessment in the context of global change. The case is made that it is no longer adequate to assess only the local or regional cumulative effects of development, but that global constraints must also be taken into account. The four- to five-fold expansion of economic activity since the Second World War has produced a level of material and energy exchange between the ecosphere and the economy that is already capable of irreversibly disrupting global life support and undermining global ecological stability. This ongoing trend permanently changes the relationship between humankind and the ecosphere. Society must now be prepared to contemplate the possibility that additional net material growth may be both uneconomic and ecologically unsustainable. In an economically full world, cumulative effects assessment should therefore assume a global perspective, adopting no net loss of essential natural capital and zero-impact growth as routine development objectives.