Get worried with James Lovelock

Get very worried!

[Y]ou and especially civilisation are in grave danger. [...] [A]s the century progresses, the temperature will rise 8 degrees centigrade in temperate regions and 5 degrees in the tropics. [...] Much of the tropical land mass will become scrub and desert, and will no longer serve for regulation; this adds to the 40 per cent of the Earth's surface we have depleted to feed ourselves. [...] [B]efore this century is over billions of us will die [MF: Sure, before the end of the century most of us will be dead, and the remaining ones will be at least 94 years old] and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable. [...] The worst will happen and survivors will have to adapt to a hell of a climate.

Survivors will live in a hell of a climate, but still a tolerable one. Those are going to be tough girls and guys. What will they do during the torrid six-month long Arctic nights? A lot of breeding, no doubt.

The article by James Lovelock is published in The Independent of the UK. I have spared you the heavy Gaia rhetoric.

Sustainable business practices

If you are interested in socially responsible, sustainable lifestyles that include:

- Sustainable consumption of green, organic and fair-trade products;
- Robust conversations between companies and their consumers;
- Honoring the planet;
- Consumer awareness;
- Corporate accountability; and
- Sustainable business practices,

Then go read Muck and Mystery.

Who should protect mangroves?

An article in SciDevNet (found via Resilience Science) reports on the current attempt at restoring Asian mangroves, which seem to reduce the damage of tsunamis, cyclones and storms.

Shrimp farms, tourist resorts and urban expansion have devoured 35 to 50 per cent of these 'bioshields' over the entire region. Many of these deforested pockets of prosperity were hit hardest, the tsunami washing away years of economic growth.

Now, governments in India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Thailand all want to restore what nature once provided for free: they plan to spend millions of dollars replanting thousands of hectares of mangrove forest.

According to the report, the governments are managing the replanting in a characteristically inept way (messy planting and little post-planting care). Worse still, the factors that have led to the destruction of mangroves are still alive and well. These factors all ultimately derive from the absence of property rights of mangroves. People involved in the shrimp, tourism and fisheries industries, and dwellers of nearby lands, all have different incentives to protect or destroy mangroves. And none of them owns the mangroves. Governments act as owners, and very careless at that.

"Central governments have little interest in protecting mangroves," he [Edward Barbier, an environmental economist at the University of Wyoming] says. "Officials turn a blind eye to private developers or even provide them with 'certificates of ownership' for land that really belongs to the government. Meanwhile, traditional users lose out because they have no 'legal' rights."

If mangroves were private and people could buy and sell them, who would own the mangroves? In a free and efficient market, mangrove lands would end up in the hands of those who most value them. The owners would then use the mangroves in the most profitable way for themselves.

So, someone may think, this is the bad news: if mangroves were private their owners would destroy them and create something else, such as tourist resorts or shrimp farms, and tsunamis or cyclones would eventually destroy all those things as well as lives and property of people who are not owners. But there are alternatives.

The various people who would benefit from mangrove protection could buy mangroves. This raises the question of free-riders. People who benefit from mangrove protection enjoy that protection whether they buy it or not, so they may have insufficient incentive for buying. Perhaps tourist resorts would still have an incentive. They have at least three reasons to buy mangroves and incorporate them to their conventional property - to protect themselves and their clients from disasters, to attract eco-tourists, and to attract "environmentally and socially conscious" clients. If these benefits exceed the costs resorts should not worry about other people free-riding on them.

Another solution to the free-rider problem is to create communities with limited entry. In this case, mangrove property comes bundled with other property. A community, for example, owns mangroves, adjacent land and adjacent sea (or fishing rights). The community limits entry to people who buy a bundle of property that includes mangrove. Free-riders are simply not allowed. Or a community does not own mangrove but limits entry only to people who buy insurance against tsunamis and cyclones. The insurance company then buys mangrove to decrease risk and disaster compensations. Individual people are free to join any such communities or to join communities that do not own mangroves and do not require insurance, and thus face more risks but are cheaper at least in the short run.

The market would sort out the different possibilities. The amount of mangrove that would remain would depend on the value of present mangrove areas to those who benefit from having something other than mangroves, the value people attach to being protected against disasters, and the effectiveness of mangroves as protection.

Either we let markets sort out, or we hold to the current situation of government ownership and inept management. Well, actually two other possibilities come to my mind. We may get governments become responsible and efficient. We may stop tsunamis and cyclones by directly managing tectonics and the climate. Both look implausible to me.

Intentions and consequences

I have just found this in an old (2004) interview of Eugene Volokh by Norm Geras:

What philosophical thesis do you think it most important to disseminate? > Actual consequences of legislation are more important than intentions.

What philosophical thesis do you think it most important to combat? > If our hearts are pure, our policies are right.

Rural ecosystems in Europe

Elvira Pereira, Cibele Queiroz, Henrique Miguel Pereira and Luis Vicente tell the story of Sistelo in Ecology and Society (open access). Sistelo is a small town in northern Portugal, sitting just across the border from Galicia, where I live. Sistelo looks like many towns in Galicia:

Between 1960 and 2001, the population in Sistelo decreased by 57%. The current number of residents in the community is 341. There is a high proportion of women and elderly, and the illiteracy rate is very high. Pensions are the main means of living. Other major sources of income are emigrant remittances and agricultural subsidies. [...] 10.6% of the resident population does not have piped water in the household, 28.7% does not have a bath or shower, 21.7% does not have a toilet, and 78.9% uses fireplaces as the only heating system.

Still, when asked, people say that they are better off now than 30 yr ago.

[P]eople emphasized that they had more choices now than in the past, particularly with regard to having more cash income and improved access to goods and services. The expressions “land of slavery” and “slave work,” both of which were frequently repeated by the study participants, reflect the importance of the choices now available because of mobility and income sources unrelated to agriculture. [...] Interestingly, most people (36 out of 39 residents) preferred to live in Sistelo rather than in more urbanized areas. The criteria used to justify this choice were a healthy environment, tranquility, the ability to be self-sufficient, a sense of place, and freedom.

Sistelo is surrounded by a picturesque landscape of agricultural terraces. Visitors come to the place to enjoy the beauty of this landscape. However, residents are not enthusiastic about the terraces, and tend to associate them to misery and hard work. Due to depopulation and the abandonment of agriculture terraces are decaying. The authors of the study describe the situation in more convoluted terms:

For those ecosystem services most dependent on abundant human labor, the decrease in population and the subsequent abandonment of agricultural fields imply a decrease in the provision of those services. This is the case with the food provisioning services and the cultural services of the terraced landscape in Sistelo. The consequences of the downward trends in these services for human well-being are difficult to assess because of the increasing disconnect between human well-being and local ecosystem services. The causes for this are twofold. On the one hand, at the local level there has been a general improvement in those aspects of human well-being that are not strictly dependent on ecosystem services. On the other hand, there is a spatial disconnect between the location in which the ecosystem services are produced and the location of the people who benefit from those services. For instance, some of the services provided by Sistelo, such as the cultural landscape of socalcos [terraces] or the regulation of the water quality [which has increased with depopulation] in the Vez River, benefit people elsewhere.

The authors add that total depopulation of Sistelo would result in the encroachment of wild vegetation, but warn that this could lead to more and larger fires. However, fires in the region are intentionally caused by people. So, in my opinion, no people would result in no fires. Additionally, according to the study, the number of species in the area and the abundance of wild boars and other game would decrease because wild nature is more homogeneous than the humanized landscape of Sistelo.

The authors of the study envision two scenarios for the future:

The first scenario corresponds to the continuation of the current trends of depopulation and agricultural abandonment in Sistelo in a society that is not concerned with the environment. The second scenario corresponds to a reversal of the current trends in an environmentally friendly society.

The misconception that "society" has concerns, as if it were a human being, is quite common. Less common is the idea that letting wild nature replace a humanized rural landscape reflects a lack of concern with the environment. But let's take a look at the second scenario.

In the second scenario, the reversal of agricultural abandonment trends in an environmentally friendly society would have positive impacts both on local ecosystem services and on human well-being. Depopulation trends would change direction as young, resourceful, educated people immigrated to the area, although that would happen only if Sistelo became a better place to live, with, e.g., better access to services, improved working conditions in agriculture based on new technologies and solutions applied to the traditional management of the landscape, and new employment opportunities associated with diversified activities and those with an increased value. Improvements of this type would also encourage local young people to stay. In this scenario, traditional and innovative forms of land use would be developed to produce the goods and services needed to meet the growing demand for high-quality traditional and organic products and for the amenities associated with natural, sport, and cultural tourism. Traditional knowledge would be respected and enriched by the knowledge brought by those young educated people in an interactive process. In an environmentally friendly society, backed by increasing environmental education and awareness, this diversified use of the territory would be guided by concerns about sustainability, and the unsustainable use of resources would be avoided. In this scenario, biodiversity would be maintained or even enhanced because of the sustainable, diversified use of territory; water quality would be maintained or slightly decrease because of human activities; and food supply services would increase. Tourism and recreational services associated with hunting and fishing would be maximized to sustainable levels. Cultural services would be enhanced because the resulting landscape would reflect traditional knowledge, heritage values, and cultural identity. Material well-being, health, social well-being, security, and freedom of choice for local people would improve because of both the changes in the local ecosystems and improvements in well-being criteria not directly related to ecosystem services. These latter improvements are an important condition for the development of this scenario. Human well-being would also improve for people outside Sistelo who benefit from ecosystem services from Sistelo, because of improved food quality, recreation, and enjoyment of aesthetic values.

The authors are not explicit about how to attain this paradise, or why it hasn't already been attained. They put some blame on globalization:

With the globalization of markets, people have access to products from other countries and other regions of Portugal, and the high production costs of local products prevent them from obtaining a competitive position in the market. This also explains why most of the young people who still live in Sistelo work in outside structures such as factories or other companies in the nearest village. For those young people, agriculture is very hard work for which the return does not justify the effort.

Do you imagine how much would consumers have to pay for those products to make "slave work" profitable to young people, and allow them to install modern heating systems in their homes? Or should taxpayers pay the bill (the "incentives")?

Considering the consequences associated with current abandonment trends, the European Union and the national government implemented several measures to encourage agricultural practices and animal husbandry. Nevertheless, although there has been a recent increase in the number of bovines, these incentives do not seem to be enough to boost agricultural activities and keep people in mountainous rural areas.

A problem is that if we were to provide the "incentives" to revive all rural areas in Europe, there would not be enough taxpayers (productive urban workers) to sustain the recipients of the "incentives."

I settle for the first scenario. Too bad that my lack of concern for the environment may lead to more native forests and cleaner rivers.

Two counterintuitive ideas

Michael Shermer, editor of Skeptic, has written this in Edge (found via Cafe Hayek):

People have a hard time accepting free market economics for the same reason they have a hard time accepting evolution: it is counterintuitive. Life looks intelligently designed, so our natural inclination is to infer that there must be an intelligent designer — a God. Similarly, the economy looks designed, so our natural inclination is to infer that we need a designer — a Government.

Get worried with Lester Brown

Lester Brown is one of those who bother to say that if humanity keeps its present (narrowly defined) course it will soon collapse. I proclaim with the same level of assurance that if I keep typing letters at the present rate I will collapse before midnight.

Fortunately, "courses" look quite different when we define them less narrowly. I practice the good habit of changing tasks before collapsing. People tune their behavior to the circumstances. Society adapts to changing conditions.

Things change all the time. Except Lester Brown. For more than 30 years he has kept predicting worldwide food shortages and high food prices. Food has become more abundant and cheap because people have changed the way they grow food. Lester Brown hasn't changed his mind about the impending collapse. Marginal Revolution has more on a Bill McKibben article in The Washington Post reporting and endorsing the apocalyptic pronoucements of Lester Brown's latest book (if you click the link you will help Marginal Revolution) and points to an older post of The Daily Ablution about Brown's past statements and an appearance in The Independent (which has just co-won the Wooden Spoon prize for worst environmental reporting in the UK, awarded by EnviroSpin Watch).

International wheat prices adjusted for inflation (from the Government of Canada):