Tag Archives: sustainability

On Gravity Waves and the 1%

2 Replies

The news this week has been all about the discovery of gravity waves and the great triumphs of modern physics to understand the origin of the universe. There is rather less news on the critical ecological problems of the Earth – of agricultural sustainability, biodiversity collapse, pollution, climate change – not to mention the long recognized economic problems of poverty and inequality, globally and within our own countries. All of these issues converge to the questions of resource allocations by our governments that have failed to assess priorities on many fronts. Many see this but have little power to change the system that is continually moving to save and improve the fortunes of the 1% to the detriment of most people.

In scientific funding there has always been a large bias in favor of the physical sciences, as I have commented on previously, and the question is how this might be publicized to produce  a better world. I suggest a few rules for scientific funding decisions both by governments and by private investors.

Rule 1: For maximizing scientific utility for the biosphere including humans, we require a mix of basic and applied science in every field. Whether this mix should be 50:50, 30:70, or 70:30 should be an item for extended discussion with the implicit assumption that it could differ in different areas of science.

Rule 2: Each major area of science should articulate its most important issues that must be addressed in the short term and the long term (>50 years). For biodiversity, as an example, the most important short term problem is to minimize extinctions while the most important long term problem might be to maintain genetic variability in populations.

Rule 3: The next step is most critical and perhaps most controversial: What are the consequences for the Earth and its human population if the most important issue in any particular science is not solved or achieved? If the required experiments or observations can be delayed for 30 (or 50) years, what will it matter?

If we could begin to lay out this agenda for science, we could start a process of ranking the importance of each of the sciences for funding in the present and in the long term. At the present time this ranking process is partly historical and partly based on extreme promises of future scenarios or products that are of dubious validity. There is no need to assume that all will agree, and I am sure that several steps would have to be designated to involve not only young and older scientists but also members of the business community and the public at large.

If this agenda works, I doubt that we would spend quite so much money on nuclear physics and astronomy and we might spend more money on ocean science, carbon budgets, and sustainable agricultural research. This agenda would mean that powerful people could not push their point of view in science funding quite so freely without being asked for justification. And perhaps when budgets are tight for governments and businesses, the first people on the firing line for redundancy will not be environmental scientists trying their best to maintain the health of the Earth for future generations.

So I end with 2 simple questions: Could gravity waves have waited another 100 years for discovery? What is there that cannot wait?

(Finally, an apology. I failed to notice that on a number of recent blogs the LEAVE A REPLY option was not available to the reader. This was inadvertent and somehow got deleted with a new version of the software. I should have noticed it and it is now corrected on all blogs.)

On Philanthropic Investment in Biodiversity Conservation

Leave a reply

In the holiday season there is much talk and recommendations about donations to worthy causes, and this raises an interesting conundrum in biodiversity conservation. The question is relatively simple to answer if you have little money, but any reading of the business pages of our newspapers or a walk around the shopping centers of our large cities makes you realize that there are a great many people with more than a little money. What should you do with your excess cash?

Some people (but not all) will want to ‘make a difference’ with their accumulated wealth, at least until medical science can overcome the universal belief that “you can’t take it with you”. Peter Singer (2015) has addressed this question of how to spend your money most effectively when you donate. It comes down in the first instance of your time frame. If you wish to make a difference in the short term of a few years, your choices may differ fundamentally from those taken to make a difference in the long term of 100-500 years. The bulk of philanthropic donations now are in the short-term camp. We have poor people living on the street in most of our cities, people with curable diseases in less developed countries but no medical aid, and victims of wars, earthquakes and tsunamis who must rebuild their lives. So we must start with what I think is the biggest decision regarding philanthropy – do we worry only about people, or do we worry about the biological world as well? Most donations are directly related to improving the human condition, locally or globally.

But there is hope because more and more people are realizing that we cannot separate people from biodiversity because of ecosystem services. Without well-functioning ecosystems on Earth, all the medical advances of our time are for naught. This is an important message to convey to potential donors.

Conservation philanthropy is a curious mix of short term and long term goals. Many endangered species need action now to survive. But ecologists typically look at both the shorter and the longer term goals of conservation. The simplest goal is to set aside land for protection. Without habitat all is lost. But this goal must be paired with long term funding to hire rangers to protect the area from poachers and to monitor the status of the species within the protected zone. Relying on the government to do this by itself is not adequate and never has been. But beyond this primary goal of land protection, the conservation movement fractionates. There are arguments that without effective human population stabilization biodiversity loss must continue. So does this mean that effective donations should be earmarked for agencies that empower women and offer reproductive services? But this points out that we must not fall into the trap of thinking we can do only one thing at a time. Pandas or population – why not “both and”? Climate change is a similar ‘elephant in the room’ problem.

What are the long-term goals of conservation biology that would benefit from philanthropic investment? Start with pest control. Biological control of pests is a long-term issue par excellence (Goldson et al. 2015, Myers et al. 2009, Wyckhuys et al. 2013). But biological control programs are underfunded by governments and obtain little private philanthropy. Weed control, insect pest control, vertebrate pest control all fit in the same problem basket – long term problem supported only by short term funding. Invasive pest eradication on islands is one area of pest control in which both governments and private funding have been joining forces (http://www.islandconservation.org/ ) with good results.

Two other areas of conservation biology that are classically underfunded are taxonomy and monitoring. In many taxonomic groups the majority of the species on Earth are not yet identified and described with a scientific name. The nearest analogy would be having a bank with tons of coins of different sizes and shapes, but only a few of which had any engraving on them. Taxonomy which is so vital to biology suffers because physical scientists consider it “stamp collecting” and unworthy of scientific funding. Monitoring of ecological communities faces the same problem. Monitoring ecological communities is similar to monitoring weather, yet we support meteorological stations around the world but provide little support for ecological monitoring. At present ecological monitoring is done ad hoc by dedicated people but with little systematic organization. Monitoring of changes in the arctic is being coordinated globally (http://www.amap.no/ ) and specific programs have been outlined for example for northern Canada (https://www.ec.gc.ca/faunescience-wildlifescience/, but the funding levels are low considering the size of the areas under consideration. Tropical ecosystem monitoring is even less well funded, yet that is where much of global biodiversity is located (c.f. for example, Cardoso et al. 2011, Burton 2012).

So what can you do about this? Talk up the necessity and the advantages of conservation biodiversity. Imagine what would happen to any of these biodiversity problems if a foundation the size of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation devoted a large amount of its donations to conservation. Environmental stewardship is the key to the Earth’s survival, and a combination of problem solving of current biodiversity problems combined with a strong research component on how species interact and ecosystems operate to sustain themselves would be a legacy for future generations and a flagship for the next 100 years.

Burton, A.C. (2012) Critical evaluation of a long-term, locally-based wildlife monitoring program in West Africa. Biodiversity and Conservation, 21, 3079-3094. doi: 10.1007/s10531-012-0355-6

Cardoso, P., Erwin, T.L., Borges, P.A.V. & New, T.R. (2011) The seven impediments in invertebrate conservation and how to overcome them. Biological Conservation, 144, 2647-2655. doi: 10.1016/j.biocon.2011.07.024

Glen, A.S., Atkinson, R., Campbell, K.J., Hagen, E., Holmes, N.D., Keitt, B.S., Parkes, J.P., Saunders, A., Sawyer, J. & Torres, H. (2013) Eradicating multiple invasive species on inhabited islands: the next big step in island restoration? Biological Invasions, 15, 2589-2603. doi: 10.1007/s10530-013-0495-y

Goldson, S.L., Bourdôt, G.W., Brockerhoff, E.G., Byrom, A.E., Clout, M.N., McGlone, M.S., Nelson, W.A., Popay, A.J., Suckling, D.M. & Templeton, M.D. (2015) New Zealand pest management: current and future challenges. Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand, 45, 31-58. doi: 10.1080/03036758.2014.1000343

Myers, J.H., Jackson, C., Quinn, H., White, S.R. & Cory, J.S. (2009) Successful biological control of diffuse knapweed, Centaurea diffusa, in British Columbia, Canada. Biological Control, 50, 66-72. doi: 10.1016/j.biocontrol.2009.02.008

Singer, P. (2015) The Most Good You Can Do. Yale University Press, New Haven. ISBN: 978-0-300-18027-5

Wyckhuys, K.A.G., Lu, Y., Morales, H., Vazquez, L.L., Legaspi, J.C., Eliopoulos, P.A. & Hernandez, L.M. (2013) Current status and potential of conservation biological control for agriculture in the developing world. Biological Control, 65, 152-167. doi: 10.1016/j.biocontrol.2012.11.010 http://www.islandconservation.org/where-we-work/

 

On Funding for Agricultural Research

Leave a reply

One of the most important problems of our day is the interaction between human population growth and the maintenance of sustainable agriculture in the face of climate change. I am currently sitting at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) near Manila where I am told they are responding to a 15-20% reduction in funding for their work. I have found this funding situation to be so ridiculous that I have decided to write this blog. Please stop reading if you think agricultural research already has too much funding, or that climate change and sustainable agriculture are not very important issues in comparison to our need for economic growth and increased wealth.

The critical issues here in Southeast Asia are the increasing human population and the productivity of rice agriculture. IRRI has done and is doing outstanding research to raise production of rice with new varieties and to control pests of rice with clever techniques that minimize the spreading of poisons, which everyone agrees must be minimized to protect agricultural and natural ecosystems. Present research concentrates on the ‘yield gap’, the difference between the actual production from farmer’s fields and the maximum possible yield that can be achieved with the best farm practices. The yield gap can be closed with more research by both social and natural scientists, but that is what is under stress now. IRRI operates with funding from a variety of governments and from private donors. Research funds are now being reduced from many of these sources, and the usual explanation is the faltering global economy combined with the severe refugee problems in the Middle East.

Consequently we now do not have enough money to support the most important research on a crop – rice – that is the essential food of half of the Earth’s human population. And it is not just research on rice that is being reduced, but that on corn, wheat, and any other crop you wish to name. Governments of developed countries like Canada, Australia and the USA are reducing their funding of agricultural research. Anyone who likes to eat might think this is the most ridiculous decision of all because agricultural research is an essential part of poverty reduction in the world and overall human welfare. So I ask a simple question – Why? How is it that you can visit any city in a developed country and see obscene excesses of wealth defined in any way you wish? Yet our governments continue to tell us that we are taxed too much, and we cannot afford more foreign aid, and that if we raised the taxation rate to help the poor of the Earth, our countries would all collapse economically. Yet historically taxes have often been raised during World Wars with general agreement that we needed to do so to achieve society’s goals. The goal now must be poverty reduction and sustainability in agriculture as well as in population. Important efforts are being done on these fronts by many people, but we can and must do more if we wish to leave a suitable Earth for future generations.

At the same time this shortage of funding should not all be laid at the feet of governments. Private wealth continues to increase in the world, and private gifts to research agencies like IRRI and to universities are substantial. But if we believe Piketty (2014), the rich will only get richer in the present economic climate and perhaps the message needs to be sent that donations are long overdue from the wealthy to establish foundations devoted to the problems of sustainability in agriculture, population, and society, as well as the protection of biodiversity. The inactions of people and governments in the past are well documented in books like Diamond (2005). Many scientific papers are mapping and have mapped the way forward to achieve a sustainable society (e.g. Cunningham et al. 2013). To make effective progress we must begin reinvestment in agriculture while not neglecting the human tragedies of our time. It can be both-and rather than either-or.

Cunningham, S.A., et al. (2013) To close the yield-gap while saving biodiversity will require multiple locally relevant strategies. Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment, 173, 20-27. doi 10.1016/j.agee.2013.04.007

Diamond, J. (2005) Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. Viking, New York. 575 pp. ISBN: 0670033375

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

Demography Made Simple

2 Replies

I have grown weary of listening to radio and TV new announcers discuss the human population problem. I think a primer of a few principles of population arithmetic might be useful to remind us where we ecologists sit in these discussions. The problem centres on the issue of eternal growth and then the transition of any population from a growing one to a stable one. I concentrate here on human populations but the results apply to any long-lived species.

I list four empirical principles of demography.

  1. No population can continue growing without limit. This generalization is rock solid, so it would be good to keep mentioning it to sceptics of the following generalizations.
  2. Populations grow when births and immigration exceed deaths and emigration. If we consider the entire global human population, emigration and immigration disappear since we have not yet colonized space. Populations stabilize when births equal deaths.
  3. A population that moves from a growth phase to a stable phase must change in age structure. Every stable population must contain fewer young persons and more older persons.
  4. These changes in age structure have enormous implications for our requirements for hospitals, doctors, schools, teachers, and social support agencies. These changes are almost completely predicable for humans and should not come as a surprise to politicians.
  5. Pushing the panic button because a particular population like that of Japan is stabilizing and could even decline slightly may be useful for economists wishing for infinite growth but should be recognized as an expected event for every country in the future.

The bottom line is that we have the knowledge and the ability to plan for the cessation of human population growth. Many good books have been written to make these points and we need to keep repeating them. That many people do not understand the simple arithmetic of population change is a worry, and we should all try to communicate these 5 simple principles to all who will listen.

Cafaro, P., and Crist, E. 2012. Life on the Brink: Environmentalists Confront Overpopulation. University of Georgia Press, Athens, Georgia. 342 pp. ISBN: 978-0-8203-4385-3

Daly, H.E., and Farley, J. 2011. Ecological Economics: Principles and Applications. 2nd ed. Island Press, Washington, D.C. 509 pp. ISBN: 978-1-5972-6681-9

Washington, H. 2015. Demystifying Sustainability: Towards Real Solutions. Routledge, New York. 222 pp. ISBN: 978-1138812697

Ecosystem Science to the Rescue

1 Reply

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

 

Identifying the Most Critical Problems in Environmental Science

3 Replies

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?

Leave a reply

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

Leave a reply

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?

1 Reply

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

1 Reply

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