Ecology - The privileges and obligations

In many isolated cultures that must survive on local resources alone, actions that would be detrimental to the future are perceived and avoided. Such local feedback in decision making is lost when isolated cultures are incorporated into large and complex societies. Economics must develop a coherent theory of decision making behaviour that is applicable at all levels of group organisation. This will necessitate defining self interest in terms of survival rather than consumption. Such a shift would bring economic behaviour under something akin to the rules of the nature, which has worked so well to insure the perpetuation of life on earth over the eons. One of the obstacles to avoiding overshoots in resource use is named the tragedy of the commons (Hardin, 1968). Commons means here the part of our environment that is open to use by anyone and everyone, with no one person responsible for its welfare.

If our present political and economic methods continue unchanged, severe boom and bust cycles will occur. Essentially, this is a modern systems approach to the older Warnings to Humankind classics. The Limits to Growth (Meadows et al. 1972) denounce society’s obsession with growth, in which at every level the goal is to get richer and bigger and more powerful, without considering basic human values and the ultimate cost of unrestricted, unplanned consumption of resources and stress on environmental life support goods and services.

The tragedy in these modern times is that local restrictions, as might be embodied in zoning ordinances, are so easily overturned by the pressure of big money - that is the capital that is available for the kind of development that yields large short term profits, often at the expense of local quality of life. In too many cities, citizens have to engage in constant battles to keep their neighbourhoods from being overbuilt.

In the early development of civilizations taking dominion over the environment and exploiting resources such as clearing the land for crops, mining the earth for materials and energy, etc. and high birth rates were both necessary for human survival. But as our society becomes ever more crowded, resource-demanding, and technologically complex, there is less need for large families and child labour, and more important, various limitations are reached that force us to turn to stewardship in order not to destroy our life supporting house.


Social trap

A situation in which a short term gain is followed in the long term by a costly or deleterious situation not in the best interest of either the individual or society has been called a social trap (Platt 1973, Cross and Guyer 1980). An analogy is a trap that entices an animal into it with an attractive bait. Cigarette smoking is an example of a behavioural social trap while hazardous waste dumping, destruction of wetlands (or other life support environments), and nuclear war are examples of environmental social traps.

We can turn social traps into trade offs by levying a tax or charge on the parties responsible for creating long term deleterious situations for example levying a pollution tax on a hazardous waste generator. Money collected in this manner could be put into a trust fund and used to monitor and ameliorate environmental impacts , if the impact was less deleterious than originally predicted, money could be returned to the generators or future taxes could be reduced (Cross and Guyer, 1980).


Economic Growth versus Economic Development

In 1991 UNESCO issued a report entitled environmentally sustainable economic Development, which made distinction between economic growth, which involves getting larger (quantitative growth), and economic development, which involves getting better (qualitative growth) without increasing the total consumption of energy an materials beyond a level that is reasonable sustainable. The report concludes that a five to tenfold expansion of anything remotely resembling the present economy , which some economists say is necessary to reduce poverty worldwide - world simply speed us from today’s long run unsustainability to imminent collapse. Therefore the economic growth required for poverty reduction (especially in the less development countries) ‘must be balanced by negative throughput growth for the rich.

In 1992 world leaders convened an Earth Summit, in search of international agreements that could help save the world from pollution, poverty and the waste of resources. Confrontation between the wealthy ‘north’ and the poor ‘south’ dominated the proceedings, and few meaningful agreements were reached; however, the concept of sustainable development did emerge as a means of combining economic and ecological needs. Many who attended the summit came away with the feeling that a pathway had been opened for future cooperation among nations. The human disposition being what it is - we wait until a problem gets really bad before taking action - it often takes a crisis or a disaster to bring about good environmental planning and a start on the transitions we have been discussing.


The Human Landscape: Setting priorities

Because human predicaments differ dramatically in different parts of the world, priorities for seeking solutions must differ accordingly. In terms of current economic conditions and population densities, William Clark 1989 divides the world into four regions. In low income countries the first priority is reducing poverty, which means promoting sustainable economic growth. In high density countries reducing birth rates by family planning or other means should be paramount. Reducing waste and over consumption of resources should be the first priority of high income countries, which means shifting from quantitative to qualitative growth. Most high income countries are already well into the demographic transition to reduce their population growth rates.


The paradox of technological development

Just about every technological advance that is intended to improve our well being and prosperity has its dark as well as its bright side. Example of this paradox such as the mixed blessings of plant, pest and disease control technology and Green Revolution technology. The bright side of these technologies is increased yield of food produced with less labour. The dark side is the heavy use of fertilizers, pesticides, and machinery, which results in widespread air, water, and soil pollution, the development of resistant strain of pests, and serious rural unemployment. Another example is the coal fired power plants that provide electricity but also make a major contribution to acid rain. The point to be made here is that as we seek new technologies, we must be aware that they will have dark sides that must not only be anticipated but also dealt with. Often what is needed is a counter technology that will at least ameliorate the detrimental effects.

Like the evolutionary arms race, action counter action is the way of life in the affairs of humans as in nature. In nature, natural rules takes care of the counter action but in human affairs we have to apply our own negative feedback. The danger is either in not anticipating the need for counter action or in waiting too long to act. The delay in implementing clean coal technology, for example, is due to the fact that there is a transition cost in making the change. Governments should assist utilities, and industry in general, in making the transition by providing tax relief, grants, or other incentives rather than promoting the status que - business as usual - as governments wont do unless we, the public, tell politicians you want changes that will improve health and the quality of life, even if there is a temporary economic cost. Anything that improves the quality of our environment and our lives benefit’s the economy in the long run.

Restoration

Because so much of the environment has been damaged beyond natures’ ability to repair it, restoring damaged ecosystems is becoming big business. Ways and means of restoring wetlands that were drained or destroyed before their value as life support buffers was recognized is an especially active area of research. A pioneer in developing the new field of restoration ecology is John Cairns. In reviewing such environmental engineering projects, it is evident that hey are most successful when four key groups work together in a coordinated manner - namely, citizen’s groups, governmental agencies (local, state, and federal), science and technology, and business interest. When any one of these groups is not strongly involved, restoration projects usually fail to achieve their long term goals.

The proper path for third world countries to take in developing their agriculture is to bypass the wasteful, high input stage and go directly from their traditional agriculture to new low input practices, using strategies such as genetic biotechnology, which can create plants that require less energy subsidy and environment damaging chemicals.

Maintaining and improving environmental quality requires an ethical underpinning. Not only must it be against the law to abuse nature’s life support systems, it must be understood to be unethical as well. Aldo Leopolod’s the Land Ethic, suggested that the extension of ethics over time is a sequence as follows: first, there is the development of religion as a human to human ethic. Then comes democracy as a human to society ethic. And finally there is a yet to be developed ethical relationship between humans and their environment; the land relation is still strictly economic entailing privileges but not obligations.



Youth to maturity parallels
Individual transition as adolescence
Biotic community transition as ecological succession
Society transition as demographic transition

Human societies go from pioneer to mature status in a manner parallel to the way that natural communities undergo ecological succession and individuals go from youth to adulthood. Continuing to act on a short term, one problem/one solution basis as society grows larger and more complex leads to what economist Khan(1966) call “the tyranny of small decisions”. increasing the heights of smokestacks - a quick fix for local smoke pollution- is an example in which many such “small decisions” lead to a larger problem of increased regional air pollution.

If human society can make these transitions then we can be optimistic about the future of humankind. To do this we must merge the study of the household (ecology) and the management of the household (economics) and our ethics must be extended to include environmental as well as human values. Accordingly bringing together these three Es is the ultimate holism and the great challenge for our future. To bring about the needed changes and reforms we need to add the two Cs, Consensus and Coalition. And finally if we can “dualize” our current capitalism - in other words an economics that gives equal consideration to market capital and natural capital - we can really be optimistic about our future.




Extracted from:

Brown , L.R. The State of the World. Worldwatch Institute, Washington, DC. Bratton, S. 1992, Six Billiion and More; Human population Regulation and Christian Ethics. Westminster/John Knox, Louisvill, KY

Costanza, R. 1987. Social traps and environmental policy. Bio science 37;407-412
Constanza, R., 1991 Ecological Economics: the science and management of sustainability. Columbia Univ Press, New York

Gray, P.E. 1989. The paradox of technological development.

Leopold, A. 1949. The Land Ethic. A Sand County Almanac. Oxford Univ Press

Kahn, A.E.. 1966. The Tyranny of Small Decisions; Market failures, imperfections and the limit of economics. Kyklos 19:23-47

Odum , E. P. 1977. Ecology - the common sense approach. The Ecologist 7:250-253

Goodland, R., H., Daly, S.E.Serafy, and B. von Droste, eds. 1991. Environmentally sustainable Economic Development: Building on Brundtland. UNESCO, Paris

Ecology, A Bridge Between Science and Society , Odum, Eugene P. , School of Geography, University of Oxford

Seligson, M.A. 1984. The Gap between Rich and Poor; Contending Perspectives on Political Economy and Development. West view Press, Boulder, CO. (Between 1950 and 1980, the per capita income gap between rich and poor nations grew from $ 3677 to $ 9648. The gap is also widening within rich nations)

The integration of Economy and Ecology, 1993, The book of essays edited by Daly and Townsend