Ecosystem services

Satoyama – a Japanese cultural landscape

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Many parents of small children will have seen Miyazaki’s classic animated film My Neighbour Totoro about Totoro, a forest spirit, who befriends two young girls.  Totoro inhabits a beautiful agricultural landscape known as Satyoyama.  Satoyama is a Japanese agricultural landscape that combines small scale agriculture and forest – if well managed it can be a multi-functional agriculture landscape that provides provisioning, regulating, and cultural ecosystem services.  Satoyama is an iconic Japanese cultural landscape that has been destroyed in Japan by development and rural out-migration, however is now being promoted in Japan and by the Japanese government for the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) meeting in Nagoya.

In honour of the CBD meeting in Japan, The Kyoto Journal (issue 75) has a special issue on Biodiversity that includes a large section on the ideals and reality of satoyama.  The table of contents for the section on the Worlds of Satoyama is:

UN university is conducting research on satoyama, and has a number of online resources (1, 2, and 3).

Via Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

Scenarios

William Gibson on the future

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Novelist William Gibson interviewed by BBC News:

The rapid rate of technological and social change means the future comes crashing towards us faster than ever before, says visionary science fiction author William Gibson.

“In the 1960s I think that in some sense the present was actually about three or four years long,” he said, “because in three or four years relatively little would change.”

That stood in sharp contrast to late 2010, he said, when big changes had become a daily occurrence.

“Now the present is the length of a news cycle some days,” he said in an interview with BBC News.

That ferocious rate of change made writing about the present day exciting, he said, and explained why his current novel, Zero History, is set around about now.

“The present is really of no width whatever,” he said.

…

Realising how things were speeding up made Mr Gibson take a conscious decision to recalibrate what he described as his sense of “contemporary weirdness” that fuels his writing.

“By the time I had finished my sixth novel I had this nagging sense that my yardstick of contemporary weirdness was really an 80s yardstick,” he said.

“There’s a sense in which I need the formal official metric unit of contemporary weirdness in order to know how much I can successfully expand that and induce science fiction’s characteristic cognitive dissonance in the reader.

“What I actually found was that this contemporary weirdness was incredibly expansive and the deeper I looked into it the weirder it got,” he said.

Cities, Design, Ecosystem services, General, Networks, Visualization

Resilience meets architecture and urban planning

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by Matteo Giusti [contact: matteo.giusti [at] gmail.com]
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Does resilience thinking and architecture really mix? The answer is a clear “yes” if you ask urban planner Marco Miglioranzi, and Matteo Giusti, Master student at the Stockholm Resilience Centre. Together with the German based firm of architects N2M, they have developed two projects led by resilience concepts. Their first work, based on social-ecological systems, was preselected in the EuroPan10 competition. The second one, “A Resilient Social-Ecological Urbanity: A Case Study of Henna, Finland” with an emphasis on urban resilience, has been published by the German Academy for Urban and Regional Spatial Planning (DASL) and also featured by HOK –  a renowned global architectural firm.
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The project proposes a wide range of theoretical solutions based on urban resilience which find practical application in Henna’s (Finland) urban area. Governance networks, social dynamics, metabolic flows and built environment are separately analyzed to ultimately restore, and maintain over time, the equilibrium between human demands and ecological lifecycles.
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But the project also challenges current urban planning practices as it states the city’s  future requirements to be unknown. As a result, it identifies “the development-process as a dynamic flow instead of a static state”. Time scale for urban planning is therefore included within an evolving spatial design.
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Diagram of the parametric cell structure: reversible space layer (upper left) and reversible building layer (right)The project description elaborates: “As a result, the planning is not static anymore. It is not a blueprint, not a collection of architectural elements to create an hypothetic Henna out of the current mindsets and needs, but a multitude of tools, methods, opportunities, options, to define a sustainable developing strategy to meet future’s demands. We keep an eye on time, its complexity and we humbly admit we cannot foresee future; we can only provide guiding principles from current scientific understanding to define a social ecological urbanity capable of sustainably moving on with unique identity.”
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All these theoretical premises ends up in Henna’s planning. This includes an energetic smart grid based primarily on Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS); community-managed greenhouse areas to enhance food local self- reliance; low-diluted sewage system to reduce water consumption; efficient reuse of municipal solid waste to reach the Zero waste goal; and a problem solving centre to analyze ever-changing social ecological demands. Time is included in space, people in their natural environment, urban services in ecological processes. An harmonious cycle of growth and decays.
Ecological Economics, Ecosystem services

Environmental externalities and institutional investors

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The UN Environment Programme Finance Initiative is a collaboration of between UNEP and the financial sector that aims to improve the understanding of the connections between environmental and financial performance.

A new report Environmental externalities for institutional investors from UNEPFI and the UN endorsed Principles for Responsible Investing group estimates the costs to the global economy from environmental damage, in terms of consequences for investors and company profits, by synthesizing current estimates of the consequences of climate change, resource depletion, biodiversity loss and water use.

The report proposes that:

Large institutional investors are, in effect, “Universal Owners”, as they often have highly-diversified and long-term portfolios that are representative of global capital markets. Their portfolios are inevitably exposed to growing and widespread costs from environmental damage caused by companies. They can positively influence the way business is conducted in order to reduce externalities and minimise their overall exposure to these costs. Long-term economic wellbeing and the interests of beneficiaries are at stake. Institutional investors can, and should, act collectively to reduce financial risk from environmental impacts.

And concludes that:

  • US$ 6.6 trillion was the estimated annual environmental costs from global human activity equating to 11% of global GDP in 2008.
  • The most environmentally damaging business sectors are: utilities; oil and gas producers; and industrial metals and mining. Those three accounted for almost a trillion dollars worth of environmental harm in 2008. The top 3,000 companies by market capitalisation, which represent a large proportion of global equity markets, were responsible for $ 2.15 trillion worth of environmental damage in 2008.
  • 50% of company earnings that could be at risk from environmental costs in an equity portfolio weighted according to the MSCI All Country World Index.
  • Environmental damage costs are generally higher than the cost of preventing or limiting pollution and resource depletion. The costs of addressing environmental damage after it has occurred are usually higher than the costs of preventing pollution or using natural resources in a more sustainable way.
Ecosystem services

Positive and negative externatilities of Bt corn

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Evolution of resistance to Bt pesticides is a negative externality of Bt crops, but a recent paper in Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.1190242) has found that immediate pest control on non-Bt crops is a large positive externality.  The Bt corn growers also benefit from having non-Bt corn around to slow the evolution of resistance.

The New York Times reports Modified Corn Benefits Nearby Farmers, and Vice Versa:

A long-term study of corn production in the Midwest has found that the widespread use of varieties engineered with a bacterial gene that kills insect pests has had big benefits in adjacent fields of conventional corn — cutting infestations there and boosting farmers’ income by billions of dollars. The paper, “Areawide Suppression of European Corn Borer with Bt Maize Reaps Savings to Non-Bt Maize Growers,” is being published in the Oct. 8 edition of the journal Science.

…

According to the paper, maintaining “refuges” of conventional corn varieties helps prevent the corn borer from developing resistance to the engineered variety, and the yields in such areas — because of a combination of reduced insect damage and lower costs of the non-engineered seed — ensure that such plantings are profitable.

Last year, Andrew Pollack reported in The Times that a growing number of corn farmers were violating federal requirements to maintain 20 percent of fields in conventional corn varieties. The new study says that any shift to wall-to-wall Bt corn is bound to backfire and makes little economic sense, Hutchison said.

A separate analysis of the new research in Science, written by Bruce E. Tabashnik, an entomologist at the University of Arizona, describes another approach to fighting insect resistance, in which farmers — instead of setting aside certain areas as refuges — buy a seed mix blending both engineered and conventional corn varieties. He said this could be the ideal way to maximize corn production in developing countries where small farm plots still predominate.

Reorganization, Vulnerability

Twenty two countries in protracted crisis

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FAO reports that:

Twenty-two countries are … are in what is termed a protracted crisis, FAO said in its “State of Food Insecurity in the World 2010” hunger report, jointly published today with the World Food Programme (WFP).

Chronic hunger and food insecurity are the most common characteristics of a protracted crisis. On average, the proportion of people who are undernourished in countries facing these complex problems is almost three times as high as in other developing countries.

More than 166 million undernourished people live in countries in protracted crises, roughly 20 percent of the world’s undernourished people, or more than a third of the total if large countries like China and India are excluded from the calculation.

… Faced with so many obstacles, it is little wonder that protracted crises can become a self-perpetuating vicious cycle,” said the preface to the SOFI report, signed jointly by FAO Director General Jacques Diouf and World Food Programme Executive Director Josette Sheeran.

…For the first time, FAO and WFP offer a clear definition of a protracted crisis that will help improve aid interventions. Countries considered as being in a protracted crisis are those reporting a food crisis for eight years or more, receive more than 10 percent of foreign assistance as humanitarian relief, and be on the list of Low-Income Food-Deficit Countries.

Ecological Economics, Regime Shifts

Food security and financial markets

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FAO says that Food price volatility a major threat to food security:

Concluding a day-long special meeting in Rome the experts recognized that unexpected price hikes “are a major threat to food security” and recommended further work to address their root causes.

The recommendations, put forward by the Inter-Governmental Groups (IGGs) on Grains and on Rice, came as FAO issued a report showing that international wheat prices have soared 60-80 percent since July while maize spiked about 40 percent.

The meeting said that “Global cereal supply and demand still appears sufficiently in balance”, adding, “unexpected crop failure in some major exporting countries followed by national policy responses and speculative behaviour rather than global market fundamentals have been the main factors behind the recent escalation of world prices and the prevailing high price volatility.”

Among the root causes of volatility, the meeting identified “Growing linkage with outside markets, in particular the impact of ‘financialization’ on futures markets”. Other causes were listed as insufficient information on crop supply and demand, poor market transparency, unexpected changes triggered by national food security situations, panic buying and hoarding.

The Groups therefore recommended exploring “alternative approaches to mitigating food price volatility” and “new mechanisms to enhance transparency and manage the risks associated with new sources of market volatility”.

In a recent IFPRI discussion paper, Recent Food Prices Movements: A Time Series Analysis, Bryce Cooke and Miguel Robles analyze the food price spike of 2008.  They asses multiple proposed explanations (from biofuels, oil prices, weather, trade barriers, and speculative markets) using econometric time series analysis.  They conclude that financial activity in futures markets and proxies for speculation can best explain crisis.  They write:

Results of our rolling windows Granger causality tests show the following:

(1) In the case of rice prices we find weak evidence that for few 30-month intervals between 2004 and 2007, the U.S. dollar depreciation rate has marginally Granger-caused the growth rate of rice price; and also the growth rate of real world money holdings seems to be more important in explaining the growth rate of rice prices after 2004, but this evidence is not really statistically significant.

(2) When we analyze the price of soybeans we find that, starting in mid-2005 (which implies a 30-month period ending December 2007), the growth rate in the world exports of soybeans shows evidence of Granger causing the growth rate of soybean prices.

(3) In the case of corn we find that starting in the second half of 2004 the growth rate of oil prices shows evidence of Granger causing the growth rate of corn prices, but with a negative relationship.

(4) When analyzing our speculation proxies we observe that the ratio of monthly volume to open interest in futures contracts indicates that for the case of wheat and rice, starting in 2005, it has influence in forecasting price movements.

Also we find that for the case of rice, the ratio of noncommercial long positions to total long (reportable) positions has an effect on prices, starting in 2004. When we analyze the same ratio for short positions we find additional evidence for speculation affecting the growth rate of corn and soybean prices. In the case of corn there are signs of causality between March 2004 and September 2006, and during the 30-month span from May 2005 to November 2007. In the case of soybeans we find weak evidence, in particular for the 30-month period ending February 2008.

Interestingly as the rolling samples include 2008 and 2009 data, picking the decrease of grain prices since mid 2008 and the adverse effects of the global financial crisis, the evidence of speculation activity affecting spot prices vanishes in all cases. This supports the view that during the food crisis agricultural grain markets were operating under a different regime in which speculation activity played a role in spot prices formation. The overall evidence points to the following interpretation: before and after the food crisis speculation activity had no effect on spot prices formation while during the crisis it did. This is not to say that before and after the crisis speculation was not present, it was (probably to a less extent) but didn’t granger cause spot prices.

Overall, we conclude from our time series analysis that when taking the four commodities analyzed here there is evidence that financial activity in futures markets and/or speculation in these markets can help explain the behavior of these prices in recent years. Other explanations are only partially supported for the particular case of one agricultural commodity or not supported at all. We do not claim, however, that these other explanations should be disregarded; all that we can say is that in using the variables considered in this study and the particular time series models herein, we do not find such evidence.

Frederick Kaufman wrote a Harper’s magazine in July 2010 The food bubble:
How Wall Street starved millions and got away with it that reports on finance and the food crisis. The Harper’s version is behind a paywall, but Kaufman was interviewed on Democracy Now.

More academic takes on the food crisis and the possible future of food price volatility are in:

C. Gilbert and C. Morgan’s article Food price volatility in Proc Royal Soc (DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2010.0139 ). They conclude:

We have highlighted the extensive evidence demonstrating interconnection of financial and food commodity markets as the result of speculative activity. Nevertheless, this contention remains controversial and, until the mechanisms are better understood, the policy debate will remain confused.

and

C. Gilbert’s How to Understand High Food Prices in Journal of Agricultural Economics (DOI: 10.1111/j.1477-9552.2010.00248.x) whose abstract states:

Agricultural price booms are better explained by common factors than by market-specific factors such as supply shocks. A capital asset pricing model-type model shows why one should expect this and Granger causality analysis establishes the role of demand growth, monetary expansion and exchange rate movements in explaining price movements over the period since 1971. The demand for grains and oilseeds as biofuel feedstocks has been cited as the main cause of the price rise, but there is little direct evidence for this contention. Instead, index-based investment in agricultural futures markets is seen as the major channel through which macroeconomic and monetary factors generated the 2007–2008 food price rises.

General

Faculty position in sustainability at MIT’s Sloan School

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It seems to be job season. John Sterman writes about a faculty position in sustainability at the Sloan School of Management at MIT. He writes:

The MIT Sloan School of Management invites applications for a tenure-track faculty position in sustainability, to begin July 2011. The successful candidate will play a central role in MIT Sloan’s Sustainability Initiative, teach courses in sustainability, and carry out research in sustainability (see http://mitsloan.mit.edu/sustainabilit).

Sustainability at MIT Sloan is defined broadly to include environmental, economic, political, social and personal issues, and we stress the interdependency and complex dynamics of these dimensions. We encourage applications from individuals engaged in research involving any aspect of sustainability, including the design, implementation, and evaluation of practices and policies promoting sustainability in business and other organizations, in government and international policy, in communities, and in interactions of these organizations. We encourage candidates whose research examines how organizations, markets and communities can become more sustainable, including the dynamics of implementation and diffusion of sustainable practices, organizational learning and adaptation, and the interactions of markets, firms, government, the public and other organizations.

Candidates can have disciplinary training in any area, including the social and behavioral sciences, management sciences, economics and finance, or other field. Applicants whose substantive research interests are interdisciplinary are particularly invited to apply. The successful candidate can be affiliated with any of the faculty groups at MIT Sloan. We especially want to identify qualified female and minority candidates for consideration in this position.

Applicants should possess or be close to the completion of a Ph.D. in a relevant field by the date of appointment. Applicants must submit their 1) up-to-date curriculum vitae, 2) relevant information about teaching as well as research experience and performance, and 3) three letters of recommendation by November 1, 2010. If papers are available, please provide electronic copies.

General

Institutional Dynamics and Emergent Patterns in Global Governance

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Can environmental regimes really be viewed as complex dynamic systems? Oran Young makes a nice effort in his latest book “Institutional Dynamics – Emergent Patterns in International Environmental Governance” (MIT Press, 2010). While the study of environmental and resource regimes certainly has a strong track record in political science and international relations, Young makes a novel and detailed analysis of what he calls “emergent patterns” – patterns of institutional change that arise over time from the dynamics of complex systems (pp. 8). Young observes, and unpacks five patterns:

Progressive development: this patterns starts with a framework convention followed shortly by one or more substantive protocols that are amended and extended to accommodate new information. Example: stratospheric ozone, and the Montreal Protocol.

Punctuated equilibrium: this pattern occur in cases where regimes encounter periodic stresses which trigger episodes of regime building and change. Example: The Antarctic Treaty System.

Arrested development: here, regimes get off to a promising start but then run into barriers or obstacles that block further development. Example: climate change and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Diversion: this pattern includes regimes that are created for one purpose, but later are redirected in a manner that runs counter to the original purpose. Example: International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling.

Collapse: this pattern includes cases where regimes have been in operation for some time, but then encounters external or internal stresses and transforms into a “dead letter”. Example: North Pacific Sealing Convention.

Young recently published an article [PDF] for Global Environmental Change on this topic. You can also listen to an interview with him here.

General

Fire and the Anishinaabe

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Andrew Miller and Iain Davidson-Hunt from the University of Manitoba, write about Fire, Agency and Scale in the Creation of Aboriginal Cultural Landscapes in Human Ecology (doi: 10.1007/s10745-010-9325-3).

The authors worked with the Pikangikum First Nation to understand and analyze how fire co-produces a cultural landscape over large spatial areas.

Their paper has two really interesting figures showing alternative perspectives on fire.  The first is a Stommel diagram of the Anishinaabe fire related cultural landscape in Manitoba, and the second an Anishinaabe image of a specific way fire was used in specific places and time in the boreal forest landscape to enhance the supply of desired ecosystem services.

Fig. 4 Spatial and temporal dimensions of knowledge related to fire use and its impacts held by Anishinaabe elders, and the areas of expertise they require

Fig. 5 Pishashkooseewuhseekaag—Spring burning of the marshes. Fires were lit in marshes in the Spring when ice on the lakes was beginning to break up but the ground was still frozen. Burning created luxuriant regrowth of grass, habitat for ducks and muskrats that could also be harvested for insulation.