Category Archives: Ideas

Ecological Economics

Greening of Cost-Benefit Analysis

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The use of economic discounting for environmental decision analysis is often criticized. Discounting refers to the method of weighing present versus future benefits. Customarily, discounting has been calculated at a constant exponential rate, analogous to the interest rate on a loan. This can lead to absurd results. For example, living resources that grow more slowly than the discount rate (such as redwoods and whales) should be harvested to extinction, according to cost-benefit analyses using constant exponential discounting. Such outcomes have led some scientists and environmentalists to reject cost-benefit analysis for environmental decisions.

However, recent research shows that constant economic discounting is not supported by data for decisions with long time horizons. Proper approaches to discounting yield much greener decisions . Diverse economic models show that future interest rates are highly uncertain. Therefore environmental cost-benefit analyses must consider outcomes over a plausible range of models for future discount rates. When outcomes are averaged, models with relatively severe discounting (such as the constant exponential model) have negligible impact after a long period of time has elapsed. Instead, models that lightly discount the future have greatest impact on decisions. Thus optimal decisions are far greener than previously thought.

The greening effect is especially notable for decisions that involve environmental tipping points, such as species extinctions, freshwater quality, and climate change. Proper economic discounting leads to conservation-friendly decisions in these cases.

Constant exponential discounting has been a powerful obstacle to adaptive ecosystem management, because it downgrades the present value of future information. However, when discounting is done properly then learning has greater weight in decisions, favoring adaptive ecosystem management.

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment has shown that properly computed cost-benefit analyses would often lead to conservation (rather than conversion) of ecosystems, even using constant exponential discounting. Proper discounting would favor conservation in an even wider variety of cases.

Ecological Economics, Ecological Management

Wetland Mitigation Banking Shortchanges Urban Areas

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In a study highlighted in the National Wetlands Newsletter, J.B. Ruhl and James Salzman show that wetland mitigation banking redistributes wetlands from urban areas to rural ones, leaving urban residents with less access to important ecological services provided by wetlands, such as water filtration, erosion protection, and flood control.

Ruhl, J.B. and Salzman, James E., “The Effects of Wetland Mitigation Banking on People” (January 2006). FSU College of Law, Public Law Research Paper No. 179 Available at SSRN).

Wetland mitigation banking is used to ensure no net loss of wetland area under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act. Basically, mitigation banking allows developers who damage or destroy wetlands to buy off-site wetlands as compensation. Many studies have examined whether the new wetlands adequately replace wetland values and functions, but few have examined the social impacts of wetland mitigation banking.

Ruhl and Salzman studied 24 wetland mitigation banks in Florida (accounting for 95% of bank activity, and representing over 900 development projects). They show that in 19 of 24 banks, wetlands “migrated” from urban to rural areas.

“The whole point of wetland mitigation banking – what makes its economic incentives work – is that developers get to wipe out wetland patches in the higher priced land markets and bankers get to establish wetlands banks in the less pricey land markets,” Ruhl said. “It’s not surprising then that development projects using wetland mitigation banking often are located in urban areas and the banks they use are located in rural areas.”

The populations of winners and losers in wetland mitigation banking are quite different, as you might expect. The banks (where wetlands are restored) are, on average 10 miles from the projects (where wetlands are damanged). The average income was nearly $12,000 lower in projects compared to banks, and the average minority population was 13% higher projects.

The researchers suggest that further examination of wetlands mitigation banking is needed. ” … wetland mitigation banking has been touted as a “win-win” program, but unless someone keeps score we really can’t know whether it truly fits that billing.” For now, it seems that not actively including the value of ecosystem services means inadequately assessing the true costs and benefits of the program.

Ruhl is the Matthew and Hawkins Professor of Property at the FSU College of Law, and Salzman is a professor at the Duke University School of Law and the Nicholas School of the Environment.

Ideas, Regime Shifts, Reorganization, Vulnerability

Exploring Resilience in Social-Ecological Systems – E&S special feature

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Ecology & Society has just published a special feature Exploring Resilience in Social-Ecological Systems: Comparative Studies and Theory Development based upon the comparisons of 15 Resilience Alliance case studies.

The current table of contents of the issue is:

Exploring Resilience in Social-Ecological Systems Through Comparative Studies and Theory Development: Introduction to the Special Issue
by Brian H. Walker, John M. Anderies, Ann P. Kinzig, and Paul Ryan

A Handful of Heuristics and Some Propositions for Understanding Resilience in Social-Ecological Systems
by Brian Walker, Lance Gunderson, Ann Kinzig, Carl Folke, Steve Carpenter, and Lisen Schultz

Scale Mismatches in Social-Ecological Systems: Causes, Consequences, and Solutions
by Graeme S. Cumming, David H. M. Cumming, and Charles L. Redman

Resilience and Regime Shifts: Assessing Cascading Effects
by Ann P. Kinzig, Paul Ryan, Michel Etienne, Helen Allyson, Thomas Elmqvist, and Brian H. Walker

Fifteen Weddings and a Funeral: Case Studies and Resilience-based Management
by John M. Anderies, Brian H. Walker, and Ann P. Kinzig

Toward a Network Perspective of the Study of Resilience in Social-Ecological Systems
by Marco A. Janssen, Örjan Bodin, John M. Anderies, Thomas Elmqvist, Henrik Ernstson, Ryan R. J. McAllister, Per Olsson, and Paul Ryan

Collapse and Reorganization in Social-Ecological Systems: Questions, Some Ideas, and Policy Implications
by Nick Abel, David H. M. Cumming, and John M. Anderies

Governance and the Capacity to Manage Resilience in Regional Social-Ecological Systems
by Louis Lebel, John M. Anderies, Bruce Campbell, Carl Folke, Steve Hatfield-Dodds, Terry P. Hughes, and James Wilson

Water RATs (Resilience, Adaptability, and Transformability) in Lake and Wetland Social-Ecological Systems
by Lance H. Gunderson, Steve R. Carpenter, Carl Folke, Per Olsson, and Garry Peterson

Shooting the Rapids: Navigating Transitions to Adaptive Governance of Social-Ecological Systems
by Per Olsson, Lance H. Gunderson, Steve R. Carpenter, Paul Ryan, Louis Lebel, Carl Folke, and C. S. Holling

Greenlash, Ideas, New Orleans, Tools, Visualization, Vulnerability

Mapping Sea Level Rise

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Sea Level Rise Jonathan Overpeck and others have a paper Paleoclimatic Evidence for Future Ice-Sheet Instability and Rapid Sea-Level Rise in Science (24 March 2006) that suggests that sea level rise due to anthropogenic climate change could occur much faster than people have previously expected. Possibly an increase of 5 to 10 m of several centuries. (For news articles see BBC, NYTimes, & Toronto G&M).

To visualize the consquences of sea level rise:

WorldChanging points to Flood Maps. A site that mashes up NASA elevation data with Google Maps, and offers a visualization of the effects of a single meter increase all the way to a 14 meter rise. Some examples are: Vancouver with 6m sea rise, New Orleans, and the Netherlands.

Also, Jonathan Overpeck‘s lab also has a visualization of the consquences of sea level rise for the US and the world.

Richard Kerr writes in a news article in Science, A Worrying Trend of Less Ice, Higher Seas:

The ice sheet problem today very much resembles the ozone problem of the early 1980s, before researchers recognized the Antarctic ozone hole, Oppenheimer and Alley have written. The stakes are high in both cases, and the uncertainties are large. Chemists had shown that chlorine gas would, in theory, destroy ozone, but no ozone destruction had yet been seen in the atmosphere. While the magnitude of the problem remained uncertain, only a few countries restricted the use of chlorofluorocarbons, mainly by banning their use in aerosol sprays.

But then the ozone hole showed up, and scientists soon realized a second, far more powerful loss mechanism was operating in the stratosphere; the solid surfaces of ice cloud particles were accelerating the destruction of ozone by chlorine. Far more drastic measures than banning aerosols would be required to handle the problem.

Now glaciologists have a second mechanism for the loss of ice: accelerated flow of the ice itself, not just its meltwater, to the sea. “In the end, ice dynamics is going to win out” over simple, slower melting, says Bindschadler. Is glacier acceleration the ozone hole of sea level rise? No one knows. No one knows whether the exceptionally strong warmings around the ice will continue apace, whether the ice accelerations of recent years will slow as the ice sheets adjust to the new warmth, or whether more glaciers will fall prey to the warmth. No one knows, yet.

Greenlash, Ideas, Regime Shifts, Visualization

Mapping anoxic zones – pt 2

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Global International Waters Assessment is a systematic assessment of the environmental conditions and problems in large transboundary waters, comprising marine, coastal and freshwater areas, and surface waters as well as ground waters. Involving over 1,500 expert it has assessed 66 of the world’s major river basins and recently published a synthesis report. These publications are freely available online. The synthesis report‘s section on pollution provides a map of eutrophication impact.

Fig 14 GIWA

As mentioned in a earlier post on mapping dead zones, eutrophication can produce large coastal hypoxic zones. The GIWA regional assessments reported that dead zones:

… have become increasingly common in the world’s lakes, estuaries and coastal zones, with serious impacts on local fisheries, biodiversity and ecosystem functions. Extensive dead zones have been observed for many years in the Baltic Sea, Black Sea and Gulf of Mexico. The GIWA assessment has compiled information on dead zones in the Southern Hemisphere, including several lagoons in the Brazil Current region, coastal locations in the Humboldt Current region, and in the Yangtze River estuary located in the East China Sea region.

Ideas, Reorganization

African ReOrientation II

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Following the earlier post on Africa’s reOrientation, Nature has a news article, Tide of censure for African dams (Nature 440, 393-394 2006), Jim Giles writes that Chinese-built dams in Africa are expected to have devastating consequences for local communities.

…The billion-dollar Merowe project will more than double the amount of electricity that Sudan can produce, and is just one of a dozen new dam projects being built across Africa using Chinese money and expertise.

But scientists and environmentalists who have studied the dam say that poor local people will suffer because necessary precautions are not being taken. According to the first independent review of the dam plans, a copy of which has been seen by Nature, inadequate thought has been given to the environmental and social consequences of flooding hundreds of square kilometres of land. That is far from unusual when it comes to Chinese investment in Africa, environmental groups allege. They say that China, which has a dire domestic environmental record, is repeating the mistakes of previous big dam projects, and that rural African communities will pay the price.

“Chinese companies will ignore social and environmental impacts to the extent that local governments are willing to ignore them,” says Thayer Scudder, an anthropologist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, who has spent decades studying hydropower projects. “If governments don’t care, or are corrupt, why will the Chinese engineers worry?”

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Ideas

Future of Scientific Methods

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The website Edge, has Kevin Kelly‘s Speculations on the future of science based on a talk he gave to the Long Now Foundation. Stewart Brand, of the Foundation, introduces Kelly’s article:

Recursion is the essence of science. For example, science papers cite other science papers, and that process of research pointing at itself invokes a whole higher level, the emergent shape of citation space. Recursion always does that. It is the engine of scientific progress and thus of the progress of society.

A particularly fruitful way to look at the history of science is to study how science itself has changed over time, with an eye to what that trajectory might suggest about the future. Kelly chronicled a sequence of new recursive devices in science.
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General, Reorganization

Africa ReOrienting?

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The world economy is ReOrientating towards Asia. The Jan 2006 issue of the British literary magazine Granta is focussed on Africa. In an article We Love China the British journalist Lindsey Hilsum writes about what Chinese investment may mean to Africa (and China).

I arrived in Sierra Leone in June 2005, at the height of the rainy season. Mud washed down the pot-holed streets of the capital, Freetown, and knots of beggars, some without arms or legs, huddled under trees and against battered shop-fronts. It was a fortnight before the G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, where Bob Geldof and Bono were to celebrate a huge increase in aid to Africa, but in the Bintumani Hotel no-one spoke of this. Gusts of rain-filled wind blew through the hotel’s porch to set the large red lanterns swinging. Cardboard cut-outs of Chinese children in traditional dress had been stuck on the windows. The management had just celebrated Chinese New Year

…

Most European companies abandoned Sierra Leone long ago, but where Africa’s traditional business partners see only difficulty, the Chinese see opportunity. They are the new pioneers in Africa, and—seemingly unnoticed by aid planners and foreign ministries in Europe—they are changing the face of the continent. Forty years ago, Chinese interests in Africa were ideological. They built the TanZam railway as a way of linking Tanzania to Zambia while bypassing apartheid South Africa. Black and white footage shows Chinese workers in wide-brimmed straw hats laying sleepers, and a youthful President Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia waving his white handkerchief as he mounted the first train. As an emblem of solidarity, China built stadiums for football matches and political rallies in most African countries which declared themselves socialist. In the 1980s and 1990s, the Middle Kingdom withdrew to concentrate on its own development, but in 2000 the first China–Africa Forum, held in Beijing, signalled renewed interest in Africa. Now, the Chinese are the most voracious capitalists on the continent and trade between China and Africa is doubling every year.

… Continue reading →

Ideas, New Orleans, Reorganization, Vulnerability

Ruin and Recovery

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Ruin & Recovery is a special series of newspaper articles in the New Orleans Times-Picayune on how other cities responded to disasters:

  • Galveston, TX – Galveston almost went under in the hurricane of 1900, but city leaders saved it, and a new economy reshaped it.
  • Charleston, SC – Historic Charleston survived Hurricane Hugo and rebuilt, keeping its charm
  • Grand Forks, ND – Lessons learned after devastating floods in 1997
  • Homestead, FL – Hurricane Andrew nearly wiped Homestead off the map. But after early stumbles, and a lot of help from private enterprise, the town is stronger than ever
  • Kobe, Japan – In seconds, buildings collapsed, bridges toppled and thousands died when an earthquake hit Kobe, Japan, 10 years ago. Despair was rampant. But with dogged determination, the city rebuilt, repopulated and rebounded
  • The Netherlands – After a North Sea flood killed nearly 2,000 peole in the Netherlands in 1953, building a state-of-the-art flood defense became a national priority.
Big Back Loop, Ideas, Scenarios, Vulnerability

Planet of Slums

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The prolific and controversial urban critic, Mike Davis, has a new book Planet of Slums. It is based upon his article Planet of Slums in New Left Review (March-April 2004). In Planet of Slums he writes:

There may be more than quarter of a million slums on earth. The five great metropolises of South Asia (Karachi, Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata and Dhaka) alone contain about 15,000 distinct slum communities with a total population of more than 20 million. An even larger slum population crowds the urbanizing littoral of West Africa, while other huge conurbations of poverty sprawl across Anatolia and the Ethiopian highlands; hug the base of the Andes and the Himalayas; explode outward from the skyscraper cores of Mexico, Jo-burg, Manila and São Paulo; and, of course, line the banks of the rivers Amazon, Niger, Congo, Nile, Tigris, Ganges, Irrawaddy and Mekong. The building blocks of this slum planet, paradoxically, are both utterly interchangeable and spontaneously unique: including the bustees of Kolkata, the chawls and zopadpattis of Mumbai, the katchi abadis of Karachi, the kampungs of Jakarta, the iskwaters of Manila, the shammasas of Khartoum, the umjondolos of Durban, the intra-murios of Rabat, the bidonvilles of Abidjan, the baladis of Cairo, the gecekondus of Ankara, the conventillos of Quito, the favelas of Brazil, the villas miseria of Buenos Aires and the colonias populares of Mexico City. They are the gritty antipodes to the generic fantasy-scapes and residential themeparks—Philip K. Dick’s bourgeois ‘Offworlds’—in which the global middle classes increasingly prefer to cloister themselves.

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