Category Archives: Political Ecology

On Improving Canada’s Scientific Footprint – Breakthroughs versus insights

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In Maclean’s Magazine on November 25, 2015 Professor Lee Smolin of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, an adjunct professor of physics at the University of Waterloo, and a member of the Royal Society of Canada, wrote an article “Ten Steps to Make Canada a Leader in Science” (http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/ten-steps-to-make-canada-a-leader-in-science/ ). Some of the general points in this article are very good but some seem to support the view of science as big business and that leaves ecology and environmental science in the dust. We comment here on a few points of disagreement with Professor Smolin. The quotations are from the Maclean’s article.

  1. Choose carefully.

“Mainly invest in areas of pure science where there is a path to world leadership. This year’s Nobel prize shows that when we do this, we succeed big.” We suggest that the Nobel Prizes are possibly the worst example of scientific achievement that is currently available because of their disregard for the environment. This recommendation is at complete variance to how environmental sciences advance.

  1. Aim for breakthroughs.

“No “me-too” or catch-up science. Don’t hire the student of famous Prof. X at an elite American university just because of the proximity to greatness. Find our own path to great science by recruiting scientists who are forging their own paths to breakthroughs.” But the essence of science has always been replication. Long-term monitoring is a critical part of good ecology, as Henson (2014) points out for oceanographic research. But indeed we agree to the need to recruit excellent young scientists in all areas.

  1. Embrace risk.

“Learn from business that it takes high risk to get high payoff. Don’t waste money doing low-risk, low-payoff science. Treat science like venture capital.” That advice would remove most of the ecologists who obtain NSERC funding. It is one more economic view of science. Besides, most successful businesses are based on hard work, sound financial practices, and insights into the needs of their customers.

  1. Recruit and invest in young leaders-to-be.

“Be savvy and proactive about choosing them…. Resist supporting legacies and entitlements. Don’t waste money on people whose best work is behind them.” We agree. Spending money to fund a limited number of middle aged, white males in the Canadian Excellence in Research Chairs was the antithesis of this recommendation. See the “Folly of Big Science” by Vinay Prasad (2015). Predicting in advance who will be leaders will surely depend on diverse insights and is best evaluated by giving opportunities for success to many from which leaders will arise.

  1. Recruit internationally.

“Use graduate fellowships and postdoctoral positions as recruitment tools to bring the most ambitious and best-educated young scientists to Canada to begin their research here, and then target the most promising of these by creating mechanisms to ensure that their best opportunities to build their careers going forward are here.” This seems attractive but means Canadian scientists have little hope of obtaining jobs here, since we are < 0.1% of the world’s scientists. A better idea – how about Canada producing the “best-educated” young scientists?

  1. Resist incrementalism.

“If you spread new money around widely, little new science gets done. Instead, double-down on strategic fields of research where the progress is clear and Canada can have an impact.“ Fortin and Currie (2013) show that spreading the money around is exactly the way to go since less gets wasted and no one can predict where the “breakthroughs” will happen.  This point also rests on one’s view of the world of the future and what “breakthroughs” will contribute to the sustainability of the earth.

  1. Empower ambitious, risk-taking young scientists.

“Give them independence and the resources they need to develop their own ideas and directions. Postdocs are young leaders with their own ideas and research programs”. This is an excellent recommendation, but it does conflict with the recommendation of many universities around the world of bringing in old scientists to establish institutes and giving incentives for established senior scientists.

  1. Embrace diversity.

“Target women and visible minorities. Let us build a Canadian scientific community that looks like Canada.” All agreed on this one.

  1. Speak the truth.

“Allow no proxies for success, no partial credit for “progress” that leaves unsolved problems unsolved. Don’t count publications or citations, count discoveries that have increased our knowledge about nature. We do research because we don’t know the answer; don’t force us to write grant proposals in which we have to pretend we do.” This confounds the scientists’ code of ethics with the requirements of bureaucracies like NSERC for accounting for the taxpayers’ dollars. Surely publications record the increased knowledge about nature recommended by Professor Smolin.

  1. Consider the way funding agencies do business.

“We scientists know that panels can discourage risk-taking, encourage me-too and catch-up science, and reinforce longstanding entitlements and legacies. Such a system may incentivize low-risk, incremental work and limit the kind of out-of-the-box ideas that….leads to real breakthroughs. So create ambitious programs, empower the program officers to pick out and incubate the brightest and most ambitious risk-takers, and reward them when the scientists they invest in make real discoveries.” What is the evidence that program officers in NSERC or NSF have the vision to pick winners? This is difficult advice for ecologists who are asked for opinions on support for research projects in fields that require long-term studies to produce increases in ecological understanding or better management of biodiversity. It does seem like a recipe for scientific charlatans.

The bottom line: We think that the good ideas in this article are overwhelmed by poor suggestions with regards to ecological research. We come from an ecological world faced with three critical problems that will determine the fate of the Earth – food security, biodiversity loss, and overpopulation. While we all like ‘breakthroughs’ that give us an IPhone 6S or an electric car, few of the discoveries that have increased our knowledge about nature would be considered a breakthrough. So do we say goodbye to taxonomic research, biodiversity monitoring, investigating climate change impacts on Canadian ecosystems, or investing in biological control of pests? Perhaps we can add the provocative word “breakthrough” to our ecological papers and media reports more frequently but our real goal is to acquire greater insights into achieving a sustainable world.

As a footnote to this discussion, Dev (2015) raises the issue of the unsolved major problems in biology. None of them involve environmental or ecological issues.

Dev, S.B. (2015) Unsolved problems in biology—The state of current thinking. Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology, 117, 232-239.

Fortin, J.-M. & Currie, D.J. (2013) Big science vs. little science: How scientific impact scales with funding. PLoS ONE, 8, e65263.

Prasad, V. (2015) The folly of big science. New York Times. October 2, 2015 (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/03/opinion/the-folly-of-big-science-awards.html?_r=0 )

Henson, S.A. (2014) Slow science: the value of long ocean biogeochemistry records. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 372 (2025). doi: 10.1098/rsta.2013.0334.

 

Ecosystem Science to the Rescue

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What can ecologists do to become useful in the mess that is currently the 21st Century? In Australia we have a set of guidelines now available as “Foundations for the Future: A Long Term Plan for Australian Ecosystem Science” (http://www.ecosystemscienceplan.org.au ) It is a useful overall plan in many respects and the only question I wish to discuss here is how we ecologists come to such plans and whether or not they are realistic.

We should begin by treating this plan as an excellent example of political ecology – a well presented, glossy brochure, with punch lines carved out and highlighted so that newspaper reporters and sympathetic politicians can present sound bites on air or in Parliament. One example: “Healthy ecosystems are the cornerstone of our social and economic wellbeing”. No arguments there.

Six key directions are indicated:

  1. Delivering maximum impact for Australia: Enhancing relationships between scientists and end-users
  2. Supporting long-term research
  3. Enabling ecosystem surveillance
  4. Making the most of data resources
  5. Inspiring a generation: Empowering the public with knowledge and opportunities
  6. Facilitating coordination, collaboration and leadership

Most ecologists would agree with all 6 key directions, but perhaps only 2 and 3 are scientific goals that are key to research planning. Everyone supports 2, but how do we achieve this without adequate funding? Similarly 3 is an admirable direction but how is it to be accomplished? Could we argue that most ecologists have been trying to achieve these 6 goals for 75 years, and particularly goals 2 and 3 for at least 35 years?

As a snapshot of the importance of ecosystem science, the example of the Great Barrier Reef is presented, and in particular understanding reef condition and its changes over time.

“Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is one of the seven wonders of the natural world, an Australian icon that makes an economic contribution of over $5 billion annually. Ongoing monitoring of the reef and its condition by ecosystem scientists plays a vital role in understanding pressures and informing the development of management strategies. Annual surveys to measure coral cover across the Great Barrier Reef since 1985 have built the world’s most extensive time series data on reef condition across 214 reefs. Researchers have used this long-term data to assess patterns of change and to determine the causes of change.”

The paper they cite (De’ath et al. 2012) shows a coral cover decline on the Great Barrier Reef of 50% over 27 years, with three main causes: cyclones (48% of total), crown-of-thorns starfish (43%) and coral bleaching (10%). From a management perspective, controlling the starfish would help recovery but only on the assumption that the climate is held stable lest cyclones and bleaching increase in future. It is not clear at all to me how ecosystem science can assist reef recovery, and we have in this case another good example of excellent ecological understanding with near-zero ability to rectify the main causes of reef degradation – climate change and water pollution.

The long-term plan presented in this report suggests many useful activities by which ecosystem studies could be more integrated. Exactly which ecosystem studies should be considered high priority are left for future considerations, as is the critical question of who will do these studies. Given that many of the originators of this ecosystem plan are from universities, one worries whether universities have the resources or the time frame or the mandate to accomplish all these goals which are essentially government services. With many governments backing out of serious ecosystem research because of budget cuts, the immediate future does not look good. Nearly 10 years ago Sutherland et al. (2006) gathered together a list of 100 ecological questions of high policy relevance for the United Kingdom. We should now go back to see if these became a blueprint for success or not.

De’ath, G., Fabricius, K.E., Sweatman, H., and Puotinen, M. (2012). The 27–year decline of coral cover on the Great Barrier Reef and its causes. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109(44): 17995-17999. doi:10.1073/pnas.1208909109.

Sutherland, W.J., et al. (2006). The identification of 100 ecological questions of high policy relevance in the UK. Journal of Applied Ecology 43(4): 617-627. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2664.2006.01188.x

 

On Political Ecology

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When I give a general lecture now, I typically have to inform the audience that I am talking about scientific ecology not political ecology. What is the difference? Scientific ecology is classical boring science, stating hypotheses, doing experiments or observations to gather the data, testing the idea, and accepting or rejecting it, outlined clearly in many papers (Platt 1963, Wolff and Krebs (2008), and illustrated in this diagram:

Scientific ecology is clearly out-of-date, and no longer ‘cool’ when compared to the new political ecology.

Political ecology is a curious mix of traditional ecology added to the advocacy issue of protecting biodiversity. Political ecology is aimed at convincing society in general and politicians in particular to protect the Earth’s biodiversity. This is a noble cause, and my complaint is only that when we advocate and use scientific ecology in pursuit of a political agenda we should be scientifically rigorous. Yet much of biodiversity science is a mix of belief and evidence, with unsuitable evidence used in support of what is a noble belief. If we believe that the end justifies the means, we would be happy with this. But I am not.

One example will illustrate my frustration with political ecology. Dirzo et al. (2014) in a recent Science paper give an illustration of the effects of removing large animals from an ecosystem. In their Figure 4, page 404, a set of 4 graphs purport to show experimentally what happens when you remove large wildlife species in Kenya, the Kenya Long-term Exclosure Experiment (Young et al. 1997). But this experiment is hopelessly flawed in being carried out on a set of plots of 4 ha, a postage stamp of habitat relative to large mammal movements and ecosystem processes. But the fact that this particular experiment was not properly designed for the questions it is now being used to address is not a problem if this is political ecology rather than scientific ecology. The overall goal of the Dirzo et al. (2014) paper is admirable, but it is achieved by quoting a whole series of questionable extrapolations given in other papers. The counter-argument in conservation biology has always been that we do not have time to do proper research and we must act now. The consequence is the elevation of expert opinion in conservation science to the realm of truth without going through the proper scientific process.

We are left with this prediction from Dirzo et al. (2014):

“Cumulatively, systematic defaunation clearly threatens to fundamentally alter basic ecological functions and is contributing to push us toward global-scale “tipping points” from which we may not be able to return ……. If unchecked, Anthropocene defaunation will become not only a characteristic of the planet’s sixth mass extinction, but also a driver of fundamental global transformations in ecosystem functioning.”

I fear that statements like this are more akin to something like a religion of conservation fundamentalism, while we proclaim to be scientists.

Dirzo, R., Young, H.S., Galetti, M., Ceballos, G., Isaac, N.J.B. & Collen, B. (2014) Defaunation in the Anthropocene. Science, 345, 401-406.

Platt, J.R. (1964) Strong inference. Science, 146, 347-353.

Wolff, J.O. & Krebs, C.J. (2008) Hypothesis testing and the scientific method revisited. Acta Zoologica Sinica, 54, 383-386.

Young, T.P., Okello, B.D., Kinyua, D. & Palmer, T.M. (1997) KLEE: A long‐term multi‐species herbivore exclusion experiment in Laikipia, Kenya. African Journal of Range & Forage Science, 14, 94-102.

Citation Analysis Gone Crazy

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Perhaps we should stop and look at the evils of citation analysis in science. Citation analysis began some 15 or 20 years ago with a useful thought that it might be nice to know if one’s scientific papers were being read and used by others working in the same area. But now it has morphed into a Godzilla that has the potential to run our lives. I think the current situation rests on three principles:

  1. Your scientific ability can be measured by the number of citations you receive. This is patent nonsense.
  2. The importance of your research is determined by which journals accept your papers. More nonsense.
  3. Your long-term contribution to ecological science can be measured precisely by your h–score or some variant.

These principles appeal greatly to the administrators of science and to many people who dish out the money for scientific research. You can justify your decisions with numbers. Excellent job to make the research enterprise quantitative. The contrary view which I might hope is held by many scientists rests on three different principles:

  1. Your scientific ability is difficult to measure and can only be approximately evaluated by another scientist working in your field. Science is a human enterprise not unlike music.
  2. The importance of your research is impossible to determine in the short term of a few years, and in a subject like ecology probably will not be recognized for decades after it is published.
  3. Your long-term contribution to ecological science will have little to do with how many citations you accumulate.

It will take a good historian to evaluate these alternative views of our science.

This whole issue would not matter except for the fact that it is eroding science hiring and science funding. The latest I have heard is that Norwegian universities are now given a large amount of money by the government if they publish a paper in SCIENCE or NATURE, and a very small amount of money if they publish the same results in the CANADIAN JOURNAL OF ZOOLOGY or – God forbid – the CANADIAN FIELD NATURALIST (or equivalent ‘lower class’ journals). I am not sure how many other universities will fall under this kind of reward-based publication scores. All of this is done I think because we do not wish to involve the human judgment factor in decision making. I suppose you could argue that this is a grand experiment like climate change (with no controls) – use these scores for 30 years and then see if they worked better than the old system based on human judgment. How does one evaluate such experiments?

NSERC (Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council) in Canada has been trending in that direction in the last several years. In the eternal good old days scientists read research proposals and made judgments about the problem, the approach, and the likelihood of success of a research program. They took time to discuss at least some of the issues. But we move now into quantitative scores that replace human judgment, which I believe to be a very large mistake.

I view ecological research and practice much like I think medical research and medical practice operate. We do not know how well certain studies and experiment will work, any more than a surgeon knows exactly whether a particular technique or treatment will work or a particular young doctor will be a good surgeon, and we gain by experience in a mostly non-quantitative manner. Meanwhile we should encourage young scientists to try new ideas and studies, to give them opportunities based on judgments rather than on counts of papers or citations. Currently we want to rank everyone and every university like sporting teams and find out the winner. This is a destructive paradigm for science. It works for tennis but not for ecology.

Bornmann, L. & Marx, W. (2014) How to evaluate individual researchers working in the natural and life sciences meaningfully? A proposal of methods based on percentiles of citations. Scientometrics, 98, 487-509.

Leimu, R. & Koricheva, J. (2005) What determines the citation frequency of ecological papers? Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 20, 28-32.

Parker, J., Lortie, C. & Allesina, S. (2010) Characterizing a scientific elite: the social characteristics of the most highly cited scientists in environmental science and ecology. Scientometrics, 85, 129-143.

Todd, P.A., Yeo, D.C.J., Li, D. & Ladle, R.J. (2007) Citing practices in ecology: can we believe our own words? Oikos, 116, 1599-1601.

What is Policy?

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One seemingly popular way of muzzling scientists is to declare that they may not comment on issues that impact on government policy. In Canada and in Australia at the present time this kind of general rule seems to be enforced. It raises the serious issue of what is ‘policy’. In practice it appears that some scientific papers that discuss policy can pass the bar because they support the dominant economic paradigm of eternal growth or at least do not challenge it. But the science done by ecologists and environmental scientists often conflicts with current practices and thus confronts the economic paradigm.

There are several dictionary definitions of policy but the one most relevant to this discussion is:

“a high-level overall plan embracing the general goals and acceptable procedures especially of a governmental body”

The problem an ecologist faces is that in many countries this “high overall plan for the country” involves continuous economic growth, no limitations on the human population, the minimization of regulations regarding environmental pollution, and no long-term plan about climate change. But probably the largest area of conflict is over economic growth, and any ecological data that might restrict economic growth should be muzzled or at least severely edited.

This approach of governments is only partially effective because in general the government does not have the power to muzzle university scientists who can speak out on any topic, and this has been a comfort to ecologists and environmental scientists. But there are several indirect ways to muzzle these non-government scientists because the government controls some of the radio and TV media that must obtain funding from the federal budget, and the pressure of budget cuts unless ‘you toe the line’ works well. And the government also has indirect controls over research funding so that research that might uncover critical issues can be deemed less important than research that might increase the GNP. All of this serves the current economic paradigm of most of the developed countries.

Virtually all conservation biology research contains clear messages about policy issues, but these are typically so far removed from the day to day decisions made by governments that they can be safely ignored. A national park here or there seems to satisfy many voters who think these biodiversity problems are under control. But I would argue that all of conservation biology and indeed all of ecology is subversive to the dominant economic paradigm of our day so that everything we do has policy implications. If this is correct, telling scientists they may not comment on policy issues is effectively telling them not to do ecological or environmental science.

So we ecologists get along by keeping a minimal profile, a clear mistake at a time when more emphasis should be given to emerging environmental problems, especially long term issues that do not immediately affect voters. There is no major political party in power in North America or Australia that embraces in a serious way what might be called a green agenda for the future of the Earth.

The solution seems to be to convince the voters at large that the ecological world view is better than the economic world view and there are some signs of a slow move in this direction. The recent complete failure of economics as a reliable guide to government policy should start to move us in the right direction, and the recognition that inequality is destroying the social fabric is helpful. But movement is very slow.

Meanwhile ecologists must continue to question policies that are destroying the Earth. We can begin with fracking for oil and gas, and continue to highlight biodiversity losses driven by the growth of population and economic developments that continue the era of oil and natural gas. And keep asking when will we have a green President or Prime Minister?

Let me boil down my point of view. Everything scientists do has policy implications, so if scientists are muzzled by their government, it is a serious violation of democratic freedom of speech. And if a government pays no attention to the findings of science, it is condemning itself to oblivion in the future.

Davis, C., and Fisk, J.M. 2014. Energy abundance or environmental worries? Analyzing public support for fracking in the United States. Review of Policy Research 31(1): 1-16. doi: 10.1111/ropr.12048.

Mash, R., Minnaar, J., and Mash, B. 2014. Health and fracking: Should the medical profession be concerned? South African Medical Journal 104(5): 332-335. doi: 10.7196/SAMJ.7860.

Piketty, T. 2014. Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Belknap Press, Harvard University, Boston. 696 pp. ISBN 9780674430006

Stiglitz, J.E. 2012. The Price of Inequality. W.W. Norton and Company, New York.

 

Identifying the Most Critical Problems in Environmental Science

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A common perception of government policy makers is that ecologists fritter around doing interesting tidbits that produce nice 7 second sound-bites for radio or TV, but they never address the most serious environmental problems that the government faces in environmental science. So the question we need to address for any developed nation is this – what are the most critical environmental problems that ecologists could help to address? Since most critical environmental problems are long-term, one constraint would be that goals have to be achieved in the short term so that people could see progress. There would be funding constraints but let us assume that if we hit the right buttons, funding would be plentiful (think military).

There is no question that not all countries would have the same detailed list of critical environmental problems. But there ought to be communalities so we ought to cast a wide, general net to define problems. Start with some clear ecological principles: there is only one Earth and we ought to take care of it with a time frame that follows the First Nations principle of ‘seven generations’, about 300 years, as our time horizon. We know the solution to some environmental problems but new ones are continually a challenge. We need in every country the equivalent of an Environmental Army monitoring environmental problems.

1. Food security. All populations need food yet modern agriculture violates many simple ecological rules. Is the system sustainable in the long term? Probably not so the first major problem is how might we move modern agriculture toward sustainability. Subheadings here abound – pest control and alternatives to poisons, biological control of insect pests, cultural pest control, soil fertility decline, quarantine control, the list goes on. Implicit in all this is a regulatory framework that prevents the introduction of new miracle agricultural practices without adequate ecological background checks. The neonicotinoids-and-bees problem immediately comes to mind. We must get away from the attitude of ‘do it now’ and ‘clean up the mess later’ when we find problems.

2. Pollution effects. This is the hard one because it is climate change in the long term which must be emphasized. But in the shorter term detailed measurements of air quality and harmful effects of smoke and diesel fumes among other things on human and animal health could give an immediacy to such a detailed research program. The same principle applies here – do not put something new out in the environment and ask questions later. Fracking for natural gas and oil comes to mind, as well as the whole recycling system. Electricity generation is a key driver and mining for carbon-based energy ought to be eliminated gradually.

3. Conservation. Could our country be the first on Earth to have a complete inventory of species in all the taxonomic groups? It is a scandal that we do not have a list of life on Earth, and we need to get this message across with clever advertising. Taxonomists ought to be more important than bankers and be paid accordingly. Again many subheadings here – endangered species problems, pest management interactions with agriculture, disease ecology (always a hot button), monitoring, monitoring interacting with citizen science where possible.

4. The Oceans. We ought to be responsible for the health of at least our near-shore ecosystems, and monitoring protocols should be established so that we have ecosystem health scores presented as frequently as stock market reports. As global citizens we should be contributing to studying global problems of the high seas, the Antarctic Continent, and acting together with other nations to solve global issues.

The advantage of all these 4 topics with respect to convincing a politician to fund them is that they are interdisciplinary and consequently can be addressed only by carefully selected teams of ecologists, physicians, molecular biologists, geologists, chemists, and social scientists. A call for research proposals in these areas would soon build teams of scientists to address the major issues of our time. Money can help glue together scientific teams.

All of this will cost a lot of money and our current political philosophy seems to be that environmental costs are the lowest priority, and taxes for protecting the environment should be as near zero as possible. This must change soon lest the Earth become a garbage can unfit for human habitation.

Dicks, L. et al. (2013). What do we need to know to enhance the environmental sustainability of agricultural production? A prioritisation of knowledge needs for the UK food system. Sustainability 5, 3095-3115.

Sutherland, W.J.,et al. (2010) The identification of priority policy options for UK nature conservation. Journal of Applied Ecology 47(5): 955-965.

Are We Destroying the Planet?

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My question for everyone to ask themselves today is this: are we humans destroying Planet Earth? This is perhaps a strange question to ask and one would expect most people to say, ‘no, of course not’. So perhaps we should put a constraint on this question that this pertains to the next 100-200 years. So it is not an immediate question, something that will happen in the coming six months, but a long-term question about what will happen in the next centuries.

So the immediate response is, ‘how could we be destroying the whole of planet Earth?’ The answer might be to look at the newspaper this week, and ask yourself what will possibly happen when we run out of resources. Like food and water. As a simple paradigm of our problems we might use the sewage disposal problem of Victoria, BC. Victoria for years has simply dumped its untreated sewage out into the ocean in the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The ocean, as we seem to believe, is a very large garbage dump. But might we think that a useful assumption of a civilized society is that you should not dump your garbage across the fence into your neighbour’s back yard? So then we say, we need to spend the money to construct a proper treatment plant. But the Victoria-area municipalities cannot even agree on a location for the sewage plant, and there are loud protests that we cannot possibly afford a modern treatment plant. What can we say about humans who think it is acceptable to dump their garbage over the fence into the ocean? One interpretation is that they have made the correct decision, and this will not affect them during their lifetime since it has been going on now for more than 100 years, so carry on. Yet this is a perfect mimic of the problems of the world today.

Climate change is all about what we dump into the atmosphere, in particular greenhouse gases and perhaps most obviously CO2. But we take no responsibility for this because it will not affect us in our lifetime and surely some clever engineer will solve this problem in the next century. Preferably at no cost to the taxpayers.

So yes, you might argue that we are indeed destroying the planet. But since Victoria, BC, and indeed all of Canada are only a small part of the global problem because of a low population base, why should we have to do anything? Well, many people think we should be doing something, but yet the majority continue to elect politicians who ignore the three major problems of the world today – climate change, population growth, and food security or at best say they will do something about it by 2020 or 2050. Most of the political parties of the developed world today subscribe to three propositions – growth is good and more growth is better, climate change is a minor problem, and implicitly we do not care one bit about what kind of a world we leave to our children and grandchildren. Spend now, they can pay later.

Now you will be hard pressed to find any business person or politician of any stripe saying any of these things, and all will protest loudly that they are doing all the right things. In their minds the main problems of our day are that taxes are too high and must be reduced, and that the 1% must be let free to improve the world as they choose.

None of this of course is ecological science or even sustainability science. The argument rests on only one simple principle – that the environment is not a garbage can. And what we do now impinges on what kind of Earth we wish to leave to the coming generations. So it might help to ask your favourite politician if he or she thinks we are destroying the Earth, and if not, why they do not read the newspapers. And why they do nothing about the major problems of our day?

Ehrlich, Paul R. and Ehrlich, Anne H. (2013). Can a collapse of global civilization be avoided? Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 280, 20122845. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2012.2845.

Ehrlich, Paul R. and Ehrlich, Anne H. (2013). Future collapse: how optimistic should we be? Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 280, 20131373. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2013.1373.

Kelly, Michael J. (2013). Why a collapse of global civilization will be avoided: a comment on Ehrlich & Ehrlich. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 280. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2013.1193.

The Common Good

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Human society appears to thrive best when the governments of the day are guided by the common good. But what is the common good and how can we determine what actions are consistent with it? These are most difficult questions and the most controversial issues of the day involve human rights and obligations over issues like abortion rights. But the common good also describes many problems that are environmental, and ecologists have a right to assert the common good from their collective knowledge of how biodiversity operates to sustain life.

The common good is any action that benefits society as a whole, in contrast to benefiting the private good of individuals, sections of society, and corporations. It is a worthwhile exercise to look at the controversies and decisions made by governments in our time and judge whether they pass the litmus test of the common good. Just this week for example, the Canadian government has promoted regulations restricting the use of antibiotics in meat and poultry production because current indiscriminate use invites antibiotic resistance in bacteria that cause human diseases. Such a decision is a cost to livestock producers but a benefit to society. Since microbial ecologists have been suggesting such a restriction for more than 25 years, the only question left is why the common good was set aside of all these years.

The common good looks to the future while many of our governments do not. Climate change is an issue that ecologists have been discussing for more than 20 years with virtually no action from our governments, much talk, little action. In British Columbia at the moment there is a discussion about damming the Peace River at Site C for hydroelectricity. The justification for this is the common good that a growing population in BC will need more electricity, and this is pollution free electricity, what many ecologists have been requesting. But the price of this is a loss of good farmland and the disruption of river food chains. Is this plan to build a dam at Site C consistent with the common good? It might be if there is no alternative to the dam, and if indeed the power generated is for the people of BC rather than for mining companies that taxpayers subsidise. Would not the common good be better served by conservation of electricity use, the development of solar power, geothermal power, or wind power?

Conservation of biodiversity is a clear public issue where the common good is obvious. Implicit in the concept of the common good is the assumption that we will not take actions that imperil the future for our children and grandchildren. In conservation decision making ecologists play only a small role at present, but this was not always the case. Someone had the foresight to set aside parks and reserves long before ecology was taught in the schools, and governments at least appeared to operate for the common good. But now we see tendencies to define the common good as more export dollars for coal and gas and oil, so that pipelines can be permitted in national parks and reserves with few questions asked.

Money talks but people vote, and consequently it would be useful for ecologists as well as ordinary citizens to demand that our society define and follow the common good rather than the generation of wealth for the few and nothing for future generations.

Everard, M., B. Pontin, T. Appleby, C. Staddon, E. T. Hayes, J. H. Barnes, and J. W. S. Longhurst. 2013. Air as a common good. Environmental Science & Policy 33:354-368.

Sandel, M. J. 2012. What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York. 244 pp.

Sargent, R.-M. 2012. From Bacon to Banks: The vision and the realities of pursuing science for the common good. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 43:82-90.

Vineis, P. 2014. Public health and the common good. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 68:97-100.

Does Forestry in British Columbia Make Money?

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While driving around British Columbia, one cannot help but notice the forestry industry – bare clear-cuts on the hills, logging trucks on the road. This simple observation leads me to this question: is the forest industry that now exists in BC profitable when one does a full-scale life-cycle analysis of its environmental impacts?

The answer to this question is obvious to most people – forestry is a good renewable-resource industry that provides many jobs and promotes economic growth. There is much literature from the government and the forest industry about how BC utilizes sustainable forestry. Most people accept this positive view of the forest industry. But I am concerned that we might find a different answer if we look behind the smoke screen of advertising and the government’s rosy view that all resource extraction industries are valuable for BC. Why might this be? I cannot analyse the economics of the forestry industry because I am not an economist, so in some sense all I would like to do here is ask some questions that others who are more qualified might help to answer.

The first question is what to include in such an analysis. If forestry is considered only trees, rather than the whole ecosystem with all its biodiversity, you would get one answer. If you worry about biodiversity you might get another answer (e.g. Drever 2000). If you worry about climate change and carbon dioxide dynamics, you can view forests as carbon stores that might be valuable if there is a price on carbon in the future. If you value the forests of BC as ecosystems that ought to be left as a legacy to our grandchildren, you might again take a different perspective. Do you include in your balance sheet the costs of fire-fighting and the government departments that manage the industry? What external costs are left out of a broad overview of forestry in BC?

At present it would appear to me that forest harvesting is not sustainable in BC, even if you take the narrow view that only trees matter in the calculations. If it were a sustainable industry, there would be no need to harvest old growth forests. But you could be certain that if any government actually said ‘no more cutting of old growth’, there would be an outcry. But if we continue as we are, we will cut our way to the North Pole, as long as we can find trees. The Yukon is next, if not now then for our grandchildren. But trees grow back again, so all will be well. Restoration ecology to the rescue. If you take a biodiversity perspective, you might find that what grows back is a pale imitation of what was there before. And if the ecosystem does restore, the time frame may be very long, looping back to the question of what sustainability means. If the forest ecosystem restores itself in 300 years, is that sustainable? How about 500 years?

If we treat forestry like any other agricultural enterprise, we might allocate some fraction of land to this activity and use the rest for recreation, tourism, and truly sustainable activities like berry picking. Suppose we planned that by 2020 forest companies could not cut anymore on crown land, and by that date land would be allocated to companies to purchase like any farmer would buy a farm. I can hear the howls of protest to such a suggestion. Is it correct that forestry then is really a mining industry operating on non-renewable resources – crown land that has old growth that belongs in theory to the people of BC in perpetuity? There are reports of how some forest companies are short-changing the government in their cutting practices because of the failure of inspection of the amount of wood taken off an area (e.g. see Parfitt, 2007) Short-changing the government is short-changing the people of the province and the people of the future who would live here.

But it seems to me that a much larger issue is that much of the planning for forestry in BC ignores the biodiversity issue. To be sure an iconic bird or plant might have some small areas saved for it, if it is included on the threatened species list. But as any ecologist might suggest, these protected areas are postage stamps that are in the long-term insufficient for the conservation of the species of concern. The major conservation issues of our day are those where economic growth produced by harvesting trees, natural gas, oil or coal collides directly with protecting our ecosystems for future generations. By any measure, the economic agenda wins the day, and the biodiversity agenda is peppered with good advertising telling us that all will be well.

It is fortunate that the First Nations of BC are rapidly awakening to these issues, and progress has been made in giving them more authority over their traditional lands. This is a bright side of the global issue of conservation in Canada.

The political issue that flows from this discussion is to ask how much subsidy our BC government provides to aid the exploitation of our natural resources, resources that ought to be managed for the future of the people of BC. Are we subsidizing environmental destruction with our tax dollars and all the while being told that even more economic growth is necessary? There must be another way, and for an ecologist concerned with biodiversity and the protection of the natural resources of our province, the current policies look like a Ponzi scheme.

Drever, R. 2000. A Cut Above: Ecological principles for sustainable forestry on BC’s coast. David Suzuki Foundation, Vancouver, B.C. ISBN 1-55054-689-9, Available at http://www.davidsuzuki.org/publications/reports/2000/a-cut-above-ecological-principles-for-sustainable-forestry-on-bcs-coast/

Parfitt, B. 2007. Over-cutting and Waste in B.C.’s Interior: A Call to Rethink B.C.’s Pine Beetle Logging Strategy. Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, Vancouver, BC. ISBN: 978-0-88627-533-4, available at www.policyalternatives.ca/BC f

The Conservative Agenda for Ecology

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Many politicians that are conservative are true conservatives in the traditional meaning of the term. Many business people are conservative in the same way, and that is a good thing. But there exist in the world a set of conservatives that have a particularly destructive agenda based on a general belief that evidence, particularly scientific evidence, is not any more important as a basis for action than personal beliefs. Climate change is the example of the day, but there are many others from the utility of vaccinations for children, to items more to an ecologist’s interest like the value of biodiversity. In a sense this is a philosophical divide that is currently producing problems for ecologists in the countries I know most about, Canada and Australia, but possibly also in the USA and Britain.

The conservative political textbook says cut taxes and all will be well, especially for the rich and those in business, and then say ‘we have no money for ‘<fill in the blank here> ‘so we must cut funding to hospitals, schools, universities, and scientists’. The latest example I want to discuss is from the dismemberment of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) in Australia by the current conservative government.

CSIRO was sent up in the 1950s to do research for the betterment of the people of Australia. Throughout the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s it was one of the world premier research organizations. If you do not believe this you can look at how many important papers, awards, and the occasional Nobel Prize came out of this organization. It had at this time perhaps 8500 employees in more than 25 Divisions. Divisions varied in size but in general they would have about 200-300 scientists and technicians. Divisions were run by a Chief who was a scientist and who decided the important directions for research in his or her area, whether it be horticulture, wildlife, energy technology, animal science, or mathematics and statistics. CSIRO itself was led by eminent scientists who provided some guidance to the Divisions but left the directions of science to the Chiefs and their scientists. It was a golden development for Australian science and a model for science that was appreciated all around the world.

This of course is dreamland in today’s world. So by the late 1980s the Australian federal government began determining scientific priorities for CSIRO. We know what science is important, the new leaders said, so do this. This would work well if it was not guided by politicians and MBAs who had no scientific training and knew nothing about science past or present. Piled on this were two neo-conservative philosophies. First, science is important only if it generates money for the economy. Coal mining triumphs wildlife research. Second, science in the public interest is not to be encouraged but cut. The public interest does not generate money. Why this change happened can be declared a mystery but it seemed to happen all around the western world in the same time frame. Perhaps it had something to do with scientific research that had the obvious message that one ought to do something about climate change or protecting biodiversity, things that would cost money and might curtail business practices.

Now with the current 2014 budget in Australia we have a clear statement of this approach to ecological science. The word from on high has come down within CSIRO that, because of cuts to their budget, one goal is as follows: “Reduce terrestrial biodiversity research (“reduced investment in terrestrial biodiversity with a particular focus on rationalising work currently conducted across the “Managing Species and Natural Ecosystems in a Changing Climate” theme and the “Building Resilient Australian Biodiversity Assets” theme in these Divisions”).Translated, this means about 20% of the staff involved in biodiversity research will be retrenched and work will continue in some areas at a reduced level. At a time when rapid climate change is starting, it boggles the mind that some people at some high levels think that supporting the coal and iron ore industry with government-funded research is more important than studies on biodiversity. (If you appreciate irony, this decision comes in a week when it is discovered that the largest coal company in Australia, mining coal on crown land, had profits of $16 billion last year and paid not one cent of tax.)

So perhaps all this illustrates that ecological research and all public interest research is rather low on the radar of importance in the political arena in comparison with subsidizing business. I should note that at the same time as these cuts are being implemented, CSIRO is also cutting agricultural research in Australia so biodiversity is not the only target. One could obtain similar statistics for the Canadian scene.

There is little any ecologist can do about this philosophy. If the public in general is getting more concerned about climate change, the simplest way to deal with this concern for a politician is to cut research in climate change so that no data are reported on the topic. The same can be said about biodiversity issues. There is too much bad news that the environmental sciences report, and the less information that is available to the public the better. This approach to the biosphere is not very encouraging for our grandchildren.

Perhaps our best approach is to infiltrate at the grass roots level in teaching, tweeting, voting, writing letters, and attending political meetings that permit some discussion of issues. Someday our political masters will realize that the quality of life is more important than the GDP, and we can being to worry more about the future of biodiversity in particular and science in general.

 

Krebs, C.J. 2013. “What good is a CSIRO division of wildlife research anyway?” In Science under Siege: Zoology under Threat, edited by Peter Banks, Daniel Lunney and Chris Dickman, pp. 5-8. Mosman, N.S.W.: Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales.

Oreskes, Naomi, and Erik M.M. Conway. 2010. Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming. New York: Bloomsbury Press. 355 pp. ISBN 978-1-59691-610-4

Shaw, Christopher. 2013. “Choosing a dangerous limit for climate change: Public representations of the decision making process.” Global Environmental Change 23 (2):563-571. doi: 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2012.12.012.

Wilkinson, Todd. 1998. Science Under Siege: The Politicians’ War on Nature and Truth. Boulder, Colorado: Johnson Books. 364 pp. ISBN 1-55566-211-0