Category Archives: Ideas

General, Regime Shifts, Visualization, Vulnerability

Leverage Points in the Earth System: Soil Moisture

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The 2004 Science paper – Regions of Strong Coupling Between Soil Moisture and Precipitation – by Koster et al. used a dozen independent climate models to estimate ‘hot spots’ on Earth’s surface where precipitation is affected by soil moisture anomalies during Northern Hemisphere summer. They propose that these hot spots are, in a sense, land-surface analogs to the ocean’s “El Niño hot spot” in the eastern tropical Pacific.

Soil moisture is a slowly vary aspect of the Earth system (relative to weather). Soil moisture can persist for months. Soil moisture, influences evaporation and other surface energy fluxes can influence weather.

Soil moisture atmospheric coupling

Figure: Hot spots of soil moisture – local precipitation coupling appear in the central Great Plains of North America, the Sahel, equatorial Africa, and India. Less intense hot spots appear in South America, central Asia, and China.

The hot spots are located in regions that in areas that are at intermediate moisture levels. The authors argue that this is because in wet climates, soil water is plentiful and evaporation is controlled not by soil moisture but by net radiative energy. In dry climates evaporation rates are sensitive to soil moisture but they are small. Consquently the biggest impact of soil moisture on evaporation is in the transition areas between dry and wet climates.

What this analysis suggests is that these hotspots are areas in which changes in land use – especially those that alter soil moisture – such as irrigation or land clearing, will have a larger impact of regional climate.

Greenlash, Regime Shifts, Visualization

Anoxic zones – mapping ecosystem tradeoffs (a start)

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Current industrial agricultural practices, particularly the overuse of fertilizer and its sloppy management, frequently create a tradeoff between agricultural production and coastal eutrophication. That is increases in agricultural yields have produced low oxygen zones around the world. The UNEP Global Environmental Outlook 2003 maps the location of coastal anoxic zones world wide (somewhat confusingly the worst cases – the persistent ones are coloured yellow, next worst red and orange, and least worst blue).
Global distribution of oxygen-depleted coastal zones.

Global distribution of oxygen-depleted coastal zones. The 146 zones shown are associated with either majorpopulation concentrations or with watersheds that deliver large quantities of nutrients to coastal waters.

Legend:

  • Annual – yearly events related to summer or autumnal stratification
  • Episodic – events occurring at irregularintervals greater than one year
  • Periodic – events occurring at regular intervals shorter than one year
  • Persistent –all-year-round hypoxia

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Ideas, Regime Shifts, Vulnerability

Poverty traps at multiple scales

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Welfare dynamics under the poverty trap hypothesis. From Barrett and Swallow 2006

Christopher Barrett and Brent Swallow recently published an interesting paper in World Development on what the authors term ‘Fractal poverty traps’. These are the sort of poverty traps that develops where multiple dynamic equilibria exist simultaneously at multiple scales of analysis. The figure to right shows welfare dynamics under the poverty traps hypothesis.

The authors argue that the strategies that people choose depends on their assets as well as on the risks that they have to deal with, and they give the following example (from Lybbert et al. 1004):

Lybbert, Barrett, Desta, and Coppock (2004) demonstrate that southern Ethiopian pastoralists face two strategies— migratory or sedentarized pastoralism—reflecting two different dynamic wealth equilibria. The dynamic wealth equilibrium associated with migration is relatively high, while that associated with sedentarization is low. Pastoralists prefer not to sedentarize, but if they start off with too small a herd or lose too many animals to drought, disease or (human or wildlife) predators, the superior strategy of transhumant grazing is not accessible to them, for reasons Lybbert et al. (2004) explain. Poorer pastoralists therefore adopt a sedentarization strategy and predictably settle into a low-level wealth equilibrium. The key to understanding the genesis of poverty traps therefore lies in understanding the nature of transitions—or, more importantly, the absence of transitions—between strategies. Why do some pastoralists remain mobile while others do not? Why do some farmers adopt improved production technologies or enter high value-added marketing channels while others do not? What are the barriers that effectively preclude adoption of superior strategies?

According to the authors this is a reason why the UN Millennium Project final report emphasises the need for large initial investments – to push poor individuals, communities, and nations over thresholds so that different strategies become available and feasible. This is particularly important in situations of ‘fractal’ poverty traps:

Small adjustments at any one of these levels are unlikely to move the system away from its dominant, stable dynamic equilibrium. Governments, markets and communities are simultaneously weak in places characterized by fractal poverty traps. No unit operates at a high-level equilibrium in such a system. All seem simultaneously trapped in low-level equilibria.

They suggest four interrelated poverty reduction strategies:

First, it is possible that significant but shortlived transfers to individuals, households, communities, and nations caught in low-level equilibria can enable them to cross crucial thresholds presently inaccessible to them and thereby make it feasible for them to switch to positive growth trajectories that can carry them out of persistent poverty. …

Second, public agencies need to assess the possibilities for eliminating or moving thresholds through interventions at aggregate scales that make previously inaccessible strategies feasible at more disaggregated scales. …
Third, there is a critical need for effective safety nets set above critical thresholds so as to prevent people from falling unexpectedly into chronic poverty. Safety nets that can prevent the non-poor from falling into poverty in response to uninsured shocks should be included in poverty reduction strategies. …

Finally, fractal poverty traps carry important implications for decentralization. … Prioritization exercises must take place at multiple scales and there must be serious attempts to integrate these, not just cursory exercises as has too often been the case.

Design, Ideas, Scenarios, Visualization

Bruce Mau @ McGill

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Bruce Mau, a Canadian designer, recently gave the McGill School of the Environment‘s annual Environment Public Lecture at McGill University, on the ‘Future of Environmental Design,’ based upon the Massive Change exhibit developed for the Vancouver Art Gallery. The show was at the Art Gallery on Ontario in 2005, and will be at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, in the fall of 2006.

The Massive Change project takes an optimistic, design oriented look at global social and environmental problems and suggests there are many existing resources and abilities that can be mobilized to improve the global human well-being, in areas such as transportation, cities, and manufacturing. My favourite part of the Massive Change exhibit was the visualization room – which filled the walls and floor of a room:

Visual Room VAG

The room is set up like a three-dimensional electromagnetic spectrum. The images made from low frequency waves (radio waves) are near the entrance, images made with visible light (red, orange, yellow…) are in the middle of the room, and images made using high frequency waves (gamma waves) are near the exit of the room.

Massive Change is oriented towards market based technological solutions to environmental problems and therefore in the language of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, it fits withthe TechnoGarden scenario, and indeed addresses many of the same issues, such as bus-rapid transit systems.

The exhbit/book/radio show/website were developed by Bruce Mau and a group of design students.

After hearing from Bruce Mau about the what the students did in these project I was inspired to try and build on our project courses in the McGill School of the Environment.
I think it would be great if we could run a similar type of workshop course here at McGill. That is a course that would encourage a team of students (somewhere between 7-25) to imagine what a sustainable McGill or Montreal could look like, and how we could get there over the next (5 – 25 years) and make there visions/proposal/syntheses into a series of public products such as an exhibit (ideally on the streets of Montreal), lecture series, a book, and website. I think they could build upon lots of work in synthesis and communication done by Massive Change, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, WorldChanging, and many others, to develop practical proposals for McGill and Montreal.

It is also interesting to think about what type of resilience oriented course with a larger international vision could be developed as a Resilience Alliance project. In either case, there are many details of time, money, and credit to work. But I think, there is a lot of potential for learning and innovation in real world, positive, synthetic courses.
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Some other articles on Bruce Mau and Massive Change:
From architecture/design magazine MetropolisMag.com – At the Parsons Table with Bruce Mau, and from the business magazine Fast Company, Making a Map to a New World.

Ecological Economics, Ideas

Ecosystem Tradeoffs and Synergisms in Agriculture

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How can we feed ourselves without degrading other ecosystem services? This critical question has often been couched as a debate between maximizing production through high input/high efficiency agricultural systems versus minimizing impact by practicing less intensive but more extensive farming. (See Balmford et al. 2005 “Sparing land for nature: exploring the potential impact of changes in agricultural yield on the area needed for crop production” in Global Change Biology 11:1594-1605. or RE Green et al. “Farming and the fate of wild nature” in Science 28:550-555.)

However, a new paper by Pretty and colleagues in Environmental Science and Technology indicates that this debate may miss important opportunities for achieving win-win solution in developing countries. (J.N. Pretty, A.D. Noble, D. Bossio, J. Dixon, R.E. Hine, F.W.T. Penning De Vries, and J.I.L. Morrison. 2006. Resource-conserving agriculture increases yields in developing countries.)

Focusing on the use of seven different resource-conserving technologies (Pest control management, integrated nutrient management, conservation tillage, agroforestry, aquaculture, water harvesting, and livestock integration) in developing countries, Pretty it is found that farmers could both improve their sustainability and increase production. The mean relative increase in crop yield was 79% across a wide variety of crop types and farming systems. In only 3 cases did yields decrease as a result of implementing sustainable farming practices, all in rice farming systems.

Approaches that allow increases in multiple ecosystem services provided by farmland – increased food production as well as improved environmental services, for example – solves a critical problem for farmers as well as the world at large.

Poor farmers need low-cost and readily available technologies and practices to increase local food production and raise their income. At the same time, land and water degradation is increasingly posing a threat to food security and the livelihoods of rural people who often live on degradation-prone lands.

The authors think that 3 types of technical improvement were key players in the increased food production:

more efficient water use …; improvements in organic matter accumulation in soils and carbon sequestration; and pest, weed, and disease control emphasizing in-field biodiversity and reduced pesticide … use.

It would be interesting to find out if “green” farming practices would have similar impacts on production in developed countries, too.

Big Back Loop, General

A failsafe solution for world food supply?

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New Scientist of January 12, report on an initiative of the Norwegian government to create a large concrete room, hewn out of a mountain on a freezing-cold island just 1000 kilometres from the North Pole, to hold around 2 million seeds, representing all known varieties of the world’s crops.

It is being built to safeguard the world’s food supply against nuclear war, climate change, terrorism, rising sea levels, earthquakes and the ensuing collapse of electricity supplies. “If the worst came to the worst, this would allow the world to reconstruct agriculture on this planet,” says Cary Fowler, director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, an independent international organisation promoting the project.

This initiative shows a practical implementation of principles to enhance resilience: redundancy and diversity.

Ecological Economics, Ideas, Vulnerability

What Drives Humanity’s Footprint on the Earth?

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I recently read a good paper by Richard York, Eugene A Rosa & Thomas Dietz 2003 Footprints on the Earth: The environmental consequences of modernity. American Sociological Review 68(2) 279-300.

The paper uses the statistical analysis of several competing models of what shapes human impact on the earth. The test models of ecological modernization (that democratic capitalist development is developing solutions to environmental problems – i.e. the environmental kuznets curve), political economic (the neo-Marxian treadmill of production), and ecological models (Impact=Population X Affluence X Technology). They found that population and economy size are the best predictors – by far – of a country’s ecological footprint. There is no evidence of ecological modernization, and a little support for political economic models, such as urbanization increases ecological footprint.

They note

Basic material conditions, such as population, economic production, urbanization, and geographical factors, all contribute to environmental impacts and explain the vast majority of cross-national variation in impacts. Factors derived from neo-liberal modernization theory, such as political freedom, civil liberties, and state environmentalism have no effect on impacts.

and conclude

The sobering note from this analysis is our failure to detect the ameliorating processes postulated by neoclassical economics and ecological modernization theorists. This suggess we cannot be sanguine about ecological sustainability via emergent institutional change.
…
A key consquence is that because of high levels of consumption in affluent nations, even a slow rate of population growth in these nations is at least as great a threat to the environment as is rapid rate of population growth in less developed nations. After all, the footprint of the typical American is nearly 25 times greater than that of the typical Bangladeshi.

ISI selected Footprints on the Earth as a fast breaking paper in Sociology last year.

A bibliography of their related research is avaiable in the STIRPAT Bibliography.

Regime Shifts, Visualization, Vulnerability

Mapping Possibility of Alternative States in African savannas

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At the end of last year M. Sankaran et al had a paper Determinants of woody cover in African savannas (Nature 2005 438(8) 846-849) that maps the possibility of savannas that can exist in alternative states based on rainfall.  This is the first map I have seen that maps the possibility of alternative states at a large  scale.

Map of alt savanna states in africa

Figure: The distributions of MAP-determined (‘stable’) and disturbance determined (‘unstable’) savannas in Africa. Grey areas represent the existing distribution of savannas in Africa. Vertically hatched areas show the unstable savannas (>784mm MAP); cross-hatched areas show the transition between stable and unstable savannas (516–784mm MAP); grey areas that are not hatched show the stable savannas (<516mm MAP).

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