PART ONE: OOMANS' INVASION OF THE EARTH.

It is assumed here that homo sapiens emerged in africa. Thereafter they gradually began invading the rest of the Earth. [1] As oomans learnt to plant crops, tribalism gave way to agricultural societies. Over time rural areas were able to support larger and larger towns. During the industrial revolution more and more people left rural areas to live in the cities. However, today, in the over-industrialized world, increasing numbers of people have started moving back into the countryside.

1.1. Oomans' Expropriation of the Earth.

Oomans emerged in africa some 30,000 years ago and thereafter began spreading around the Earth expropriating more and more land belonging to Wildlife. The expropriation of the Earth's land surface accelerated during the industrial revolution as a result of the increase in ooman numbers and the increasing power of technology. Since the second world war the scale of this expropriation has swamped virtually every terrestrial habitat. Oomans are taking over, and destroying, more and more Wildlife habitats whether this is for cars (new roads, car factories, oil exploration, etc), kids (urban sprawl), Cattle (agriculture and grazing land), capital (the manufacture of commodities) or carnage (the military-industrial complex and war zones). This expropriation process is now so close to completion that a couple of so-called 'greens' have declared, "There is no such thing as wilderness". This is no statement of regret or shame. On the contrary, the authors welcome such a deformation implying that since oomans have passed through virtually all areas on Earth they should now be allowed to settle down and exploit these areas, including what is left of Wildlife.

1.2. The Drift into the Cities.

Cities have existed almost as long as recorded history. They grow as a result of urbanites' birthrates but they are also swollen by those moving in from rural areas. As a result of the industrial revolution there has been a dramatic decline in the number of people living and working in the countryside - despite the huge expansion in the amount of land under the plough, "At the beginning of the industrial revolution, approximately in 1800, only 3% of the world's people were living in cities; fully 97% were rural, living on farms or in small towns." [2] Today, however, the proportions have reversed significantly. Some commentators believe that such vast numbers of people have moved into the cities that, for the first time in ooman history, there are now more people living in urban, than in rural, areas, "In 1950, 29% of the world's population was urban; in 1965 it was 36%; in 1990 50%; and by 2025 it is expected to be at least 60%." [3] ; "Almost half of the world population is in cities now, with a very high proportion of the people who are being added to the population also being city dwellers." [4] Some commentators believe this will happen in the very near future, "If current forecasts are to be believed, almost half of humanity will be living in cities by the year 2000." [5] Other commentators are more conservative and believe it won't happen for a while, "According to the World Bank: "In 1990 most people lived in rural areas. By 2030 the opposite will be true; urban populations will be twice the size of rural populations."" [6] ; "About 2400 million people live in cities today. This is four times as many as 45 years ago. City populations are growing particularly fast in developing countries. In these countries almost half the city population increase results from people moving in from the countryside - at a rate of 75,000 each day worldwide. By the end of the 20thC, for the first time, half the world's people will live in urban areas. The proportion will rise to 60% by 2020." [7]

Whatever the truth, all sides would agree that, "The world's population is urbanizing much faster than it is growing." [8] ; "In the 1990s, 83% of population growth is likely to be in cities. This is the equivalent of 10 cities the size of London every year. The world annual growth rate of urban population between 1965 and 1980 was 2.6% but between 1980 and 1990 it was 4.5%." [9]

1.3. The Decline in the numbers of People Living in Rural Areas.

1.3.1: The Causes of the Decline.

The decline in the number of people working on, or around, the land has been caused by a number of factors:-

* the global enclosure movement - the illegal, and often forcible, removal of farmers/peasants/pastoralists/tribalists from land claimed by large landowners on a land-grab exercise;

* the industrialization of agriculture - highly mechanized, capital intensive, prairie pharming has made small scale pharming unprofitable; [10]

* state expropriation of private property - the statutory removal of huge numbers of people from the land to make way for state-sponsored construction projects such as hydro-electric power, dams, irrigation schemes, motorways, logging, etc;

* state sponsored green revolutions which have benefitted the largest pharmers whilst driving out smaller pharmers, "But rather than feeding the hungry, the green revolution drove millions of poor people from farmlands in asia, latin america and africa as victims of the program that fosters large corporate farms." [11] ;

* positive feedback factors accelerating rural decline: The decline in the pharming population leads to a drop in the number of rural jobs providing rural services e.g. shops, post offices, etc. The greater the decline in the pharming population, the fewer the rural jobs, the more people are forced to leave rural areas for the cities in search of work. [12] ; and, finally,

* the monopolization of pharming by multi-national corporations, "By consciously driving down crop prices, agribusiness has driven 27 million farmers off the land (in the US) since 1940." [13] ; "According to the humane society of the united states in the last 12 years, 80% of u.s. egg producers have been driven out of business. The loss of farmers has paralleled the increase in the number of companies that each have a million birds or more in battery cages." [14] ; "Right across the u.s., the rural landscape is disappearing .. because increasing agricultural specialization means that farmers on poorer land cannot compete. An area larger than the entire state of iowa was abandoned as farming land during the 20thc, and most of the eatern u.s. will revert to woodland within 50 years or so." [15]

1.3.2: The Decline per Country.

The countries which triggered off the agricultural revolution have undergone the biggest decline in rural numbers.

Brutland.

In brutland the proportion of people in the countryside has dropped from 80% to 5%.

The United States.

In the united states, "Between 1910 and 1920, we had 32 million farmers living on farms - about one-third of our population. By 1950, the number had declined, but our farm population was still 23 million. By 1991, the number was only 4.6 million, less than 2% of the national population. In addition, by 1991, 32% of our farm managers and 86% of our farm workers did not live on the land they farmed." [16] ; "The US has lost nearly 30% of its farmers since 1980." [17] ; "Two hundred years ago, america was a rural nation. in 1790, only 1 in 20 americans lived in a town. In 1990, only 1 in 40 lived on a farm." [18]

1.4. The Drift back to the Countryside/Wilderness.

Whilst in the industrializing, and over-industrialized, countries there is a huge flow of people moving from the countryside to towns and cities, there is also a countervailing flow of people moving from urban areas back into the countryside in the disintegrating, the industrializing, and the over-industrialized, countries. [19] This section explores these trends.

1.4.1: The Disintegrating Countries: Political Disintegration driving people into the Countryside.

In the disintegrating countries, civil war or tribal conflicts are forcing millions of people to flee urban areas to seek refuge in the countryside but especially Forests - this is happening from albania to burma to central america.

1.4.2: The Industrializing Countries.

1.4.2.1: Spontaneous Invasions of the Countryside/Wilderness.

In the industrializing countries huge numbers of people are invading the countryside especially Forests. They are doing this for a number of reasons: to escape war or civil war; to survive after having been pushed off their land by the state or large landowners; to find fuelwood or additional resources; to exploit resources which can be sold on the global market. Some of the people invading Forests may be towndwellers who have given up trying to settle in towns and decided to take the risk of making a living from the Forests.

The amount of damage they are inflicting on Forests is colossal, "In the tropics, poor people, unable to get good land to feed their families, are driven to hack plots out from the rainforest. At least 150 million people worldwide are relentlessly pressing into the forests in this way, literally, to scratch a living. One million families are clearing about half a hectare of Indonesia's forests apiece every year; they have already turned some 16 million hectares of former forests into a useless wasteland." [20] ; "More recent estimates suggest that shifting cultivation activities destroy 50,000 km² and degrades a further 10km² of tropical rainforest a year." [21] ; "In Thailand .. there are 8 million landless people, a proportion of whom are attempting to establish usufructuary rights (rights to use the forest short of degradation or waste) within the government forest estate. The people have few resources for investment, and consequently the planting of sago is widespread, for it requires low capital. Yet, without adequate inputs, sago exhausts soils within four to five years, and the people are forced to move further into the Forest, leaving unproductive grassland behind." [22] It should not be surprising to learn that, "It is now estimated that about 100 million people in the world are unable to obtain enough fuel for even their minimum cooking and heating requirements and that well over one billion are depleting their locally available stocks of wood faster than the replanting rate. By the year 2000 about 3 billion people are likely to fall into this category." [23]

1.4.2.2: State Funded Invasions of the Countryside.

A number of industrializing governments are attempting to combat starvation, and avert social and political unrest, by moving millions of people from the cities into Forest areas to carve out a new life, "Planned land settlement in tropical forests has been promoted in countries such as Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and, to a minor extent, Venezuela. (Also) Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala .. Ethiopia, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Vietnam and the Philippines." [24]

1.4.3: The Over-Industrialized Countries.

1.4.3.1: The Middle Class Invasions of the Countryside.

Over the last century or so in the over-industrialized nations, the middle classes have been moving out of inner city areas to live in suburbs. The richest of these have pushed deeper into the countryside to avoid the problems occurring in suburban areas. Some of those in the service sector of the economy who can work from home, and who want better environmental surroundings than a suburban estate, have also moved deeper into the countryside. Finally, there are vast numbers of middle class people looking for a second/third homes in rural retreats, "Britain's population is dispersing away from the old inner cities into the countryside. Although increasing numbers are moving to the country they are not becoming traditional country dwellers. They remain functionally (sub)urban." [25] ; "Rural britain is now middle-class britain. Over the past few decades the social composition of rural communities has been dramatically altered." [26]