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Putting a Value on Nature Could Set Scene for True Green Economy
Much environmental damage has been caused by the way we do business. Is there a way of changing our economic models from being part of the problem into part of the solution?
The living fabric of this planet - its ecosystems and biodiversity - are in rapid decline worldwide. This is visible and palpable and is variously due to commercial over-exploitation, or population pressures, or a raft of unhelpful policies, or some combination. At a very fundamental human level, however, it is due to the lack of awareness that there is a problem with human society being disconnected from nature.
We are not using the right economic models to measure the cost of natural losses. (Photograph: Marcus Lyon/Getty Images) Economics is
blamed for much of our woes these days and credited with little so two
questions need to be asked: is economics part of the problem of
ecosystem degradation and biodiversity loss? And is it part of the
solution?
The answer to the first question is a fairly obvious "yes". The economic invisibility of nature in our dominant economic model is both a symptom and a root cause of this problem. We value what we price, but nature's services - providing clean air, fresh water, soil fertility, flood prevention, drought control, climate stability, etc - are, mostly, not traded in any markets and not priced. These so-called "ecosystem services" are all "public goods" provided free. Our tendency to value private wealth creation over improving public wealth - creating a healthier natural world, for example - doesn't help.
We cannot manage what we do not measure and we are not measuring either the value of nature's benefits or the costs of their loss. We seem to be navigating the new and unfamiliar waters of ecological scarcities and climate risks with faulty instruments. Replacing our obsolete economic compass could help economics become part of the solution to reverse our declining ecosystems and biodiversity loss.
We need a new compass to set different policy directions, change incentive structures, reduce or phase out perverse subsidies, and engage business leaders in a vision for a new economy. Holistic economics - or economics that recognise the value of nature's services and the costs of their loss - is needed to set the stage for a new "green economy".
The crisis of biodiversity loss can only begin to be addressed in earnest if the values of biodiversity and ecosystem services are fully recognised and represented in decision-making. This may reveal the true nature of the trade-offs being made: between different ecosystem services (food provision or carbon storage), between different beneficiaries (private gain by some, public loss to many), at different scales (local costs, global benefits) and across different time horizons. When the value of ecosystem services are understood and included, what may have looked like an "acceptable" trade-off may appear quite unacceptable.
Conversely, benefits that were unrecognised become visible, and worth preserving. In Costa Rica, payments to farmers who conserve forests on their land rather than destroy them for low-earning pasture have become almost a national environment programme. Soil and water benefits flow to farmlands all around them. And this was funded by a small 3% tax on transport.
In India, ecological restoration and water harvesting is paid for by a national rural employment guarantee scheme, employing millions. In San Francisco and New York, ecological infrastructure is the reality: reservoirs and lake watersheds surrounded by well-managed forests provide cities with a freshwater supply. Meanwhile, biomimicry - using nature's methods to solve human problems, such as Velcro which was inspired by dog hair and burrs - is offering opportunities for innovative businesses across both developing and developed nations.
These are all examples of new economic models for government and business in which both private opportunity and "public goods" are being created and rewarded by a new partnership between business, citizens, and their government.
Teeb (The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity) has assembled a library of suggestions for policy-makers on how to use good economics to conserve wild nature (TEEB for Policy-Makers, November 2009). In June, TEEB will publish a parallel document on what role business can play in changing the rules of the game and herald a society that profits and progresses yet lives in harmony with nature.
Pavan Sukhdev is a special adviser to the United Nations environment programme's green economy initiative and study leader for Teeb. He is speaking at the annual Earthwatch Oxford lecture tonight, co-hosted by environmental charity Earthwatch and strategy consultancy and thinktank SustainAbility- Posted in
21 Comments so far
Show AllThis reflects the well-worn delusion that capitalism can be reformed to achieve environmental integrity. While reform is better than business-as-usual, it can't possibly achieve the rapid ecological contraction required to reverse our overshoot condition.
To achieve this, I believe we have to replace the logic of capitalism - the market-based interaction of corporate profits and manipulated consumer wants - with a new logic that aims explicitly at sustainable well-being. My proposal for such a replacement logic, plus a strategy for implementing it, are at needsandlimits.org. For an assessment of the approach adopted by Sukhdev (and numerous others), see the video, "A Critique of Green Reformism".
some of you are lawyers...does the average world citizen have any right regarding the sanctity of this planet's naturally existing features?
for example, we now have technologies available that can damage the ozone layer, among other things...do I, as a member of any interested class, have standing to sue for the protection of the ozone layer?
do I have the inherent right as an incarnated earthling to the protections that the ozone layer provides me?
why can we not sue for naturally sustainable conditions to be allowed to remain intact? do we need to be declared an endangered, or threatened, species? are we not?
Rights are derived philosophically through the Enlightenment philosophers, as in the Rights of Man by the English philosopher John Locke, answered by the Rights of Women. (In 1791, the French playwright and political activist Olympe de Gouges published the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen.) These rights are not defensible at law until enacted by a government, which was the genius of the Founders of the USA to write them into the Constitution and the Bill of Rights (Amendments 1-10) and the revolutionary government of France.
Some of the rights you claim can be pursued at law under the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, etc. in the US and any other countries with similar laws. We can, in theory, require any state or national government to give citizens or "taxpayers" the right to sue a company for despoiling the ozone layer. Of course, that requires serious and tenacious activism to force them to do it.
The bottom line is that the rights we can require adherence to at law are national not as "earthlings." Some rights have been made law through the UN, but rogue countries like ours often prefer to ignore them. Most people are not very keen on world government, so enforcement of UN and other treaties will depend on the good will of countries enforcing them.
thank you
Even if the PTB are shown that small changes in policy and planning, even if made at little or no cost to the corporatocracy, would benefit mankind and the entire earth, I doubt they would make them.
Good ideas, and the awareness of the environmental impacts of man that lead to them, have been available for decades. Neither the excellent ideas nor actual examples of these ideas already in practice in various corners of the world will lead to any positive changes.
We know what to do in this and many other big issue situations, but those with the power to effect change will not do so. Arguably, only we the people can and will force such needed reforms or many will perish.
Meanwhile, I almost hate to see air, water, etc. quantified in economic terms, as necessary as it is, because the obvious first outcomes will involve some kind of 'private ownership' whereby the earth's population will be assessed fees for their use by those in power.
It's not that far-fetched - We already buy domestic water and see our skies (and 'airwaves') controlled by governments. This is scary and very important stuff.
New York City is in danger of having oil/gas fracking done on the banks of its water supply.
Commodisizing natural resources often leads to corporate ownership.
Is there a way of changing our economic models from being part of the problem into part of the solution?
Sure, remove the forced growth virus called interest from the model. Described mathematically, compounding interest creates an exponential growth curve, which starts out level and eventually curves infinitely straight up. As long as the compounding period and interest rate are greater than zero, the resultant curve is always exponential in shape given enough time. Applying an exponential growth concept upon anything has the expectation that the anything will grow forever at an ever-increasing rate. Nothing physical can grow perpetually at an exponential rate. Collapse is inevitable.
http://theformofmoney.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2006/1/9/1633663.html
I agree to a point, but I'm sure there are examples where interest on money didn't exist and there was still ecological collapse from growth beyond the carrying capacity of a given area.
Easter Island, for one, I believe.
Yes it "could" in theory but I agree with franker29's assesment below. We are already far into the RED with a negative balance if we were using a sustainable economy model were natural services capital is scientifically valued in terms of energy flows. We are broke by that standard and will continue to accrue deeper debt because the current world runs on the Industrial-Capitalist system.
The current financial and industrial production system cannot do this. Yes, it may try but the "capitalist cannibal" would only be wearing "ecogreen" clothes while it continues to devour life on planet earth until it runs low on cheap energy, then things will change.
Somebody said that you cannot solve the problems created by a system with the same thinking that created it and this is a good example.
Assets: The life giving planet as it could be if we didn't already drain the life out of it.
=
Liability: What we have already depleted for a better human advantage over the rest of life on Earth.
+
Owner Equity: The temporary benefits of creating a civilization based on fossil fuels.
~~~~~~~~~~~
Once fossil fuels cannot support civilization, we will have depleted our "asset" so much that quality of life for humans will plummet!
We will never pay back our liability because we don't put a value on a healthy planet! So, we end up living with a garbage dump!
Yes. Yes. Yes.
I find it especially perturbing that we have about a dozen comments here, for an article that really points to what I believe to be the crux of the problem here on planet earth:
Man's disconnect with Nature.
The late post of Krugman's article has generated many comments, mainly arguing Brand Obama's savvy vs. clueless-ness. It makes my head hurt. As we argue over D's and R's, the Right Wing Corporatocracy wins.
The fascistic takeover of America began after WWII (if Chomsky is to be believed) and certainly became blatant to most liberals with the election of Reagan.
Brand Obama promised hope and change we can believe in. The apologists are still clinging to this "hope" because the only alternative is...well, there is no alternative beyond activism and civil disobedience. And most liberals I know don't want to get there hands dirty. The myth of American Exceptionalism runs too deep.
Watching "The Power of Nightmares" made me again aware that the corporate takeover of our government comes from an ideological divide. For those at the top, too much democracy is a bad thing. It minimizes their power and profit. For them, it is all about survival, and thus, justifiable. They are unconcerned over the welfare of 99% of the population, let alone Nature.
Their mistake is that they believe Nature is benign. But she will have the last laugh.
>>>Old Peculiar wrote: I find it especially perturbing that we have about a dozen comments here, for an article that really points to what I believe to be the crux of the problem here on planet earth: Man's disconnect with Nature.
Old Peculiar, I don't know about others. But the reason I didn't comment on this article until now is because I suddenly felt a bit tired. I don't want to say cynical, but feel as if there's just too much noise over trivial matters (I've been adding my own noise too), and when something important like this comes up, one tends to think, "What's the point, anyway?" The author is obviously sincere, even sounds hopeful. He seems to think - I'm saying this just from the tone of this article, nothing else - that, if only people were pointed to the right ideas, and if only they could see the logic of it all, then we could start turning things around. I agree, one HAS TO stay hopeful right till the end.
Yes, you're right. There *IS* this disconnect with Nature (I'll play along and capitalize the first letter, too :). But I think this disconnect started probably 2000 years ago, in the Old World. There were people living in the New World, who were obviously much more in tune with their environment. To them, Nature was not just about resources - it was much more. In fact, many cultures have this idea that human beings are a part of Nature, and not separate from it, let alone masters of it. Civilizations *evolve* within a natural environment. What happened in the New World was that an entire "culture" and "civilization" were transported across the ocean almost intact. And the movement of people across the ocean was not like the earlier migrations of human beings. This was conquest, pure and simple. Not much effort was made to learn from those who were here before. Nature was looked upon and treated as a repository of resources and a sink to absorb the waste. In the 'modern era', the atmosphere - which is a common resource for not only all of mankind, but all living beings - is used as one giant septic tank.
Ignorance is no more an excuse. Science shows that there is a limit to how much we can stress the environment. Reality shows us that actions in one part of the Earth can affect people and other living beings in a different part, thousands of miles away. The people there can only request, beg, plead, reason, bargain, etc. Beyond that, they are not in a position to force the western nations to change their ways. And now this western way of life is actively and aggressively being adopted by people in other countries, too, and it's not helping one bit.
This being the reality, it seems to me that what we lack most is not some new idea or a new way of calculating things (they have their value, no doubt). What we lack most is a basic sense of fairness - towards other human beings - those that live today and those of the future generations. Fairness towards other living beings. So, sometimes it seems to me that not saying anything may be best. Better than such a rambling post, anyway :)
I'm tired, too, Alcyon...
46, going on 47...if nothing changes, I have a future filled with continual labor to continually pay my monthly bills to have a piece of land upon which to exist...
until property is dealt with differently, I see no solution to mindless, destructive effort to generate income to pay the man holding the gun for the land...
that is why, above all else, I pray for a Day of Change...(capitalizing does inflate Importance!)...a day when the brainless pursuit of money at any cost, even killing foreigners for it, comes to an utter halt...a day when industrial machinery of all kinds are simply turned off, never to be started again...when infrastructure is dismantled and toxins dealt with as responsibly as possible...
a day when the natural order of things (I know) is once again seen to be of ultimate importance, and the individual activity of harmonious survival is raised to the highest art...
September 22, 2012, I picked, as it seemed not too distant, as time feels short, and not too close, as people need a bit of time to gestate upon the notion, and make actual preparation in the form of growing food, planning for water management, local governing and defence...
i know not many believe this a workable solution, and, given humanity's current mindset, I agree it looks challenging...that is why I believe we need to look at changing the mindset, and recommend we start with the areas of property, marijuana, sex and religion...
As you state, above, however, the problems are physical, and current, so change is required at that level...we cannot wait for everyone to get the idea, but we must get enough people on board to bring the others along...this, of course, could become messy...
Could all the world's citizens come together on a given day, say, September 22, 2012, to try living a new way? Could enough?
Peace to you, Alcyon...
Alcyon and dubet-
Of course I didn't mean to sound judgmental (concerning the number of comments to this article). I stopped myself from replying to several comments on the Krugman article. As usual, there are some insightful comments. I enjoyed reading them.
I also realize that western civilization --- do I capitalize that or not? now you've made me self-conscious with your flippant remark about 'playing along' (I know, you were tired) --- has been living within an expansionist (ultimately unsustainable) paradigm for thousands of years. Dubet, and many other contributors to this site understand this implicitly. We are now at a point where this big, expansionist bubble, this 'meta'-bubble if you will, is about to burst.
Many of us sense it. Capitalists and Naturalists alike. As always, what to do about it is where we diverge. One thing I do see is, if we are to survive as a human species, great suffering by all followed by a movement to "do it right this time" by choosing to live with respect for the natural infinitely re-generative spaceship we call Earth. The tragedy is that it can be accomplished now, but it is this paradigm that needs to be shifted before it can happen. This is the point of my lament.
Old Peculiar, my comment about capitalizing was flippant, but in good humor. (Note to self: avoid humor when tired :) I was recently involved in a brief back and forth about capitalizing acronyms. Not that I really care, one way or the other - but I had just commented on a CD story from The Guardian newspaper about the "Noaa Climate Service" (for "National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration"). I had commented, if it was an attempt to give it a friendlier "feel" - you know, sort of like Nato (I noticed that some British newspapers have been writing it as Nato, instead of NATO). My rules for capitalizing are simple: basically it depends on my mood and energy level :)
I like your idea, dubet - about a "Day of Change". Since you talk about natural order, I am sure there will be many people who might like that idea too - except the part where you say "never to be started again" - if, by that, you mean, you shut off everything *on that day*. I'll just point out what seems obvious: I'm not sure of the chances :). Not only because people may not be ready to give up their conditioned way of life, way of thinking, etc. (you are essentially asking for people to get enlightened before the deadline :), but cleaning up the mess is going to need some of this infrastructure. The most obvious example is the power plants - even coal fired power plants included. If not in the USA, other countries are going to use their coal power plants for some time.
The biggest problem in developing countries is going to be equitable distribution of wealth and resources (I know it's important everywhere) - because, in their rush to "develop", many countries have clearly adopted a capitalistic model. So, as the poor at the bottom become less poor, the rich become substantially more rich. And some in this rich class of people are unwittingly (or perhaps knowingly) becoming agents for western moneyed interests. And most in the middle class would one day like to be rich. Just at a time when westerners are looking to learn from eastern teachings, many in the east can't wait for the day when they are fully westernized - luxuries and all. Without realizing this basic flaw in their approach, many get offended if the subject of sustainability is brought up, and with good reason. The West has *never* been a good role model when it comes to sustainability.
Without belaboring the point about why it may not be practical to completely shut down in short order, I must say - I like the idea of an orderly contraction, based on voluntary simplicity and enlightened action. These things could catch on too, although it would seem that the only things that are catching on are the tea parties. A simple search on the internet shows that people are indeed worried about the current situation, and the current direction, and there are people working on all fronts - though their individual actions may be too small to have any major effect at this time.
I am saying all this without finding out your ideas for this "Day of Change". But if you're thinking of some kind of an orderly contraction, you can count me in :) There's obviously no reason to wait for a particular date to *start* living with a smaller footprint (except as an exercise in denial, as we put off change), but a date could have great symbolic value, sort of like New Year's day. And it could provide a momentum - of the good kind - when you know there are lots of others working on change. And, like you said, a date also gives you time to make certain preparations to simplify your life, to learn new ways, etc.
P.S. When I said other countries will have to use coal power, the main reason is their equating westernization and urbanization with development, plus the prevailing inequalities. In other words, I was talking about reality - NOT my own preference.
I am very curious if anyone can point me in the direction of site, person, other? that can help me make wise decisions on where to invest my money for the greater good? How can I reward companies that are trying to make a difference by being responsible and thinking about sustainable development. If I invest in a mutual fund it is distributed to a variety of businesses that may or may not have environmental standards. I am not a saavy investor and do not have the time to follow or study each company. If I am going to invest I would like to know if I am investing in a corporation with shareholders who care not only about the bottom line but also the consequences of their actions - locally, nationally, and globally. Until we start rewarding corporations concerned about the earth and community we will not have much change. I have heard of social funds but want to know what others in this community are doing with their hard earned money and savings. Many thanks in advance.
Invest in local cottage industries and craftsman guilds, and the infrastructure and culture of local, independent, small-scale production. Take like 10% of your funds to research a model community elsewhere. Then about 30% to create an effective publicity strategy/campaign for the locals so they know about this new local resource you're building. Another 30% for some land/buildings to provide a prototype example cottage industry or several. And 30% for starting up some production of your own.
Or you could publish something on the internet like journeytoforever which provides a lot of info on sustainable independent production. These approaches take munny out of the fascist munny churn instead of churning it back in. This takes the energy out of that and puts it into sustainable enterprises which inspire people to get themselves off the rat wheels, and join the movement.
A great video on the subject is "The Corporation".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pin8fbdGV9Y
There are people out there trying to do it right. I think they deserve support!
It's called "unfunded liability" and refers to off-balance-sheet liabilities, such as environmental destruction, caused by corporate operations. How much is the Hudson River worth before and after corporate PCB pollution makes it unfishable? How much for a mountain in Appalachia before and after corporate coal extraction makes it unfit for habitation? How much for the loss of rainforests in South America? The list goes on and on and on.