Comunidad del pacífico en perspectiva - Volumen 2

OCEA...'I llESOURCES AND OCEAN TECHNOLOGIFS IN THE PACIFIC 2. PROPOSITIONS RELATING TO ENERGY, FOOD, AND RAw MATERIAL REsOURCES AND TECHNOLOGIES The prOpOsltlOnS are: (1) The energy per capita required for reasonably affluent living in the tropics is significantly less (perhaps an order of magnitude less) than the energy required for a comparable standard of living in the north or south temperate zones. In developing this proposition, we touch upon tropical housing and on transportation. As we do so, we note developments in shipping and in the building of ocean platforms, potential1y making ocean areas available for resource technologies and eventually, perhaps, for habitation. We also touch on communication; though the discussion of it is not directly ocean oriented, it supports arguments for the development of an ocean-oriented civilizatíon. We also touch upon the oceans as suitable to accept the wastes of human settlements and índustries with little or no alteratíon of the ocean environment, províded practices of dísposal are based on an understanding of ocean currents, chemistry, phisics, biology, and the like. (2) Energy sources and energy pipelines available to the world at present and in the near future are increasingly tropical or under the control of the tropical nations (Siddayao, 1978), and solar energy is likely to increase in importance in the immediate and long-range future. Hence, tropical and oceanic energy sources (which are ultimately sun-driven) will also assume an ever greateI importance. (3) Protein components of human nutritíon will in the future be supplied increasingly by more balanced plant protein ratiom and by animal protein taken from or reared in the water (MilneJ et al., 1978). The polar, temperate, and tropical fish resources oi the Pacific are only partly exploited and await the invention oi social technologies, that is, conservation-oriented management pa– radigms, and sound mariculture practices to assume the importance they could assume. Similarly, mineral resources and their develop. ment are perhaps at present more beset with problems of creatihg the social rather than physical and engineering technologies that will help us manage them (Allen and Craven, 1979). 135