Category Archives: Environment

Once in a lifetime

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Cyclone_Yasi_QueenslandIf you play sport then one day you will achieve your lifetime personal best.

You will catch a 3 kg bream, swim 400m in 5 minutes, make 122 not out on a green wicket or score 34 goals in the season. Every sporty person has their personal best, the one they talk about modestly to their grandkids and boast about after a few beers with mates.

It is also true that in your lifetime you will witness your hottest, wettest and coldest day, and your biggest storm.

Now that most of us go beyond the three score years and 10, there are upwards of 25,000 days for us to experience extremes.

Hurricane Sandy was devastating, as was Katrina, events that should only occur once in a lifetime and preferably not at all.

Sandy was a confluence of events, each one quite severe but devastating together, yet it happened. And we know that that equally perfect storm has happened before in previous lifetimes and will again in our children’s lifetime.

Even events that skip a generation or two and occur on average every 100 years are possible. The rank amateur can fluke a hole in one and have his day.

Given time Sandy will be followed by Samantha, Sybil and Susan. And she was preceded by literally thousands of equally severe storms in times past witnessed by settlers, indigenous peoples and before them, various species of now extinct megafauna.

The difference was there were no subways to flood, houses on wooden piers to collapse and substations to explode.

If we understood this fully then we would not blame Sandy or her sisters even if climate change means they happen more often that they did before.

We would realize what we have changed. We are present to witness and put flimsy things in the way of the storms.

We happen to be around for that meteorological PB.

After Katrina, and again after Sandy, there was much courageous talk of rebuilding clearing up and starting it over — inspiring stuff from leaders who know how to tap into the spirit humans have that makes them feel good even in hard times.

So the flooding will be drained and cleared up, the millions of dead rats ground up for fertilizer, the house rebuilt in readiness for Samantha and Shona. Although I suspect not built with too much more care than before.

This is what humans do. It is as innate as any cravings for salt and sugar. We will get to work, repeat what we did before and complain that it wasn’t our fault. So be it, it is our endless love affair with risk and opportunity

Some families will witness tragedy and have to mourn the loss of loved ones and of property, but society will shake off Sandy, even use her as a motivator and fiscal stimulus.

And later, remember her as that once in a lifetime storm.

Biodiversity | Google Trends #2

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Ever since the heady days of the first Rio Earth Summit in 1992 when we came up with the Convention on Biological Diversity I have had this feeling that we had invented a fad.

For a while though I could push that niggle aside as the new term biodiversity entered our lexicon and the sound bites of politicians.

Books on biodiversity were written for the populace and texts for students. I even got hired to develop an undergraduate course in this new subject. That it was just a logical amalgam of ecology, evolution and conservation biology was no matter — this was a great new hook to catch the awareness and maybe persuade people to do something about what was happening to the natural world under the increasing weight of human numbers.

Not too many politicians talk about it anymore, at least not to the press. There are a few stalwarts, notably in the conservation NGOs, who still hold a candle for it and a residual trickle of public funding goes toward environmental interventions with a biodiversity theme. Mostly though we seem to be back where we started talking about conservation and preservation of endangered species.

So am I correct in this hunch? Have we really forgotten about biodiversity?

Here is what Google Trends has to say about the popularity of the word in searches from 2004 to present relative to the peak search volume that happened in October 2004.

GTBiodiversityJan2013

Well it would appear I was at least partially right.

Peak search volume was at the start of the data run in 2004 to be followed by a steady and consistent decline through the rest of the noughties.

In the current decade we are running at an average of 47% of that 2004 peak.

It is a pity that we don’t know how much search activity the 1992 Rio Earth Summit might have generated [1998 was Google’s first official year]. In fact the steady increase in overall search volume makes that 47% more measly given that todays daily total search volume is more than 7x that of 2004.

Biodiversity may not have disappeared as a search term but it has waned.

As usual Google trends tells us that we can easily put aside any challenging or technical issues in order to enjoy Christmas and New Year celebrations and we are also not too worried about them when school is out for the northern summer.

The Rio+20 Earth Summit came and went without much fanfare last year. It prompted a bit of a spike in searches but not enough to catch up with those 2004 scores. It does not seem that biodiversity got a fillip from Rio+20 as any pickup was short-lived — maybe because they called it the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development.

Climate change | Google Trends #1

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You have to hand it to Google. They are just all over business development. They have found something that everyone needs, perfected it quickly and delivered it so effectively that nobody else can hope to compete.

Then whilst they continue to improve the core offering they find a great way to make money without most of their customers even realizing it.

Not resting on this success they invest in both the core offering and start to add bells and whistles. At some point along the way they get big enough and powerful enough from unprecedented popularity to start changing and then setting the rules [it used to be that a Panda was just an endangered species].

One of the many bells is Google Trends, a neat tool that spits out data on search behavior for a key word from 2004 to present.

Here is a graphic of what Google trends says about the keyword ‘climate change’

 

GTClimateChange

 

The numbers here are all proportional to the peak of search activity over the period — in this case the peak searching occurred in December 2009. So low numbers represent less interest in the term relative to the peak and trends in the data show if the term is growing or waning in popularity. It is also possible to pick seasonality or specific events that trigger a spike or trend in search activity.

What can we say about climate change?

On the graphic I have added a few select events, particularly the various UNFCCC Conference of the Parties (COP) that have been an end of year staple for a few years now

We didn’t really bother too much about it until An Inconvenient Truth tweaked our curiosity in 2006. Then we got really excited around the time of the COP in Copenhagen when then Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was calling climate change ‘the greatest moral challenge of our age’.

And what has happened since those heady days? Well, we have had three more COPs in Cancun, Durban and Doha with progressively more pathetic efforts at tackling the greatest moral challenge, accompanied by a downward trend towards pre-Al Gore levels of interest in the topic.

In a few more years we will have forgotten about it altogether.

Trends also suggests that regional interest in the topic now comes exclusively from the developing world with 8 of the top 10 countries by search volume from Africa. Only these are the places with the least resources to do anything about it.

Stats can also be a hoot. You’ll notice that after each COP there is a trough in search volume as everyone in the northern hemisphere tucks into their Christmas turkey and a regular annual dip in traffic in the northern hemisphere summer when its warmest!

No doubt that many equally critical challenges await and will trend upwards to their moment in the spotlight only to fall away again. Such is that nature of our attention span. It would just be nice if things went away because they were fixed.

On the upside, thanks Google for what will be endless hours of statistical fun.

Last rhinoceros

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This picture I have used before in an optimistic post on Rhinos.

It was taken in 1988 in the Mana Pools National Park, Zimbabwe — 24 years ago. The skulls are from black rhinos shot by poachers.

At the time the conventional wisdom was that the main market for rhino horn was in the Yemen where the many princes required the matted hair as raw material for artisans to carve ornate dagger handles.

This year a new wave of poaching has hit the species that since the losses in the 1980’s is now spread far and wide, mostly in smaller reserves that are heavily protected. This time the story is that the market is Asia where ‘medicinal’ use is setting high demand.

Maybe it was Asia back in the late 1980’s too as there can only be so many Yemeni princes, but whatever it was then there seems little doubt that today it is a large and powerful market that seeks rhino horn. And market forces are hard to stop. High demand and limited supply generates prices that make for good business and, for some, small fortunes.

But there is something more. Scarcity seems to trigger something primal in us.

As consumers we go to great lengths to sooth that feeling, paying whatever it takes to be in possession of that limited commodity.

The real worry for anyone with empathy for the rhinoceros is that these markets are newly flush with dollars thanks to two decades of double-digit economic growth in many parts of Asia. This economic growth has brought many benefits and it has also dramatically increased the proportion of people with disposable income. There is vastly more money in the system than there was in the 1980’s and as we know it matters little if you come from Chengdu, Chennai or Chicago consumers want to spend their surplus cash on themselves.

Chengdu at a tick over 14 million is the 4th largest city in China and is home to 5 times the number of people living in Chicago. Given there are currently 22 cities in China with more residents than the 2.7 million that live in Chicago, there is no shortage of potential customers for medicinal products.

Protecting the rhino is now a much harder problem than it was in the 1980’s. When you live far away from the rhino and have probably not even seen one, except maybe on television, you don’t even ask the fundamental question: rhino or me?

You just say, “me, thanks”, just like every consumer has done since commerce was invented. And, as the Lilly Allen lyric in her song ‘The Fear’ so profoundly puts it: “I am a weapon of massive consumption, it’s not my fault, it’s how I’m programmed to function.” We simply cannot help it.

So, if you are fond of a bet there would be very short odds on the only living rhino in 2036, another 24 years after the picture was taken, being in a zoo. And maybe this is necessary. Loss on a scale large enough and scary enough will probably be what it takes to change the knee-jerk “me, thanks” to…

“me, once I have thought carefully about the consequences of my choice”.

Here is an idea for the rhino problem.

Why not ban all false advertising across the entire globe.

Any claims made by an advertisement of any kind in any media must be falsifiable according to a strict set of international rules. And the onus of the proof falls on the advertiser, the company or individual who runs the ad.

So you cannot say that rhino horn powder cures any number of ailments and promotes everlasting life unless you have evidence — good, old-fashioned falsifiable evidence.

Failure to comply would result in an on-the-spot $1 million fine payable into a national environmental fund.

This edict need not just apply to wildlife products, but any product where the seller claims it to be what it is not.

Now there’s a thought.

Have we lost the plot?

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This week Colin Barnett, the premier of Western Australia, was quoted in the Australian from a speech at a business leaders forum in Perth as saying that “We’ve lost the plot as to what we are trying to do here” implying there were other ways to reduce emissions than imposing a carbon tax.

“Why would we have a carbon price of $23 when the only somewhat credible trading market in Europe has a market price of $10?” he said.

This is the sort of thing you might expect a premier from the contrary political code to the Federal government to say. More so when it is the colossal revenues from mining that has been the engine of the WA economy for decades. The last thing a Liberal government wants is to dampen that particular fire.

At the same forum and quoted in the same article, the head of Westfarmers, who own a big chunk of Australia’s retail sector, described the carbon tax as “unnecessarily complex” and that “you have to be a rocket scientist to understand this stuff.”

Oh well, you could say, it’s just a couple of browns in a brown newspaper having a go at what they see as a constraint on the golden goose of capitalism. It’s to be expected.

And that would be a big mistake.

What everyone has forgotten to explain is why such a cost is necessary.

A few years ago we knew it was the “biggest moral issue of our time” at least according to Kevin07. Unless we took action global warming would consume us. And the majority believed that action was necessary.

Then the government prevaricated, forgot whose behviour they needed to change and introduced complex legislation that was more about plugging leaks than achieving a result.

It is emission reduction. Remember?

We thought that if we reduced greenhouse gas emissions then there would be fewer of the molecules that can trap long wavelength back radiation in the atmosphere than under business as usual and, if we managed reasonable reductions, we might slow global warming.

And then there is the real and far more critical reason. In a relatively short time we will run out of oil. If we haven’t at least begun the transition away from our dependence on oil for transport and fertilizers then we risk economic collapse everywhere. This is a huge deal, easily as important to the global economy as spiraling sovereign debt. Emission reduction might seem a bit left field as a means to transition away from oil but it starts the process of introducing and incentivizing alternative fuels and it starts to set the price signal that will come in a hurry when supply cannot meet demand.

Australian politicians must know this. They are well-educated, can interpret a graph and have a day job that puts this sort of issue front and centre.

Only they come up with a clunky policy that they have chosen not to explain to any of the people who really matter.

Maybe they think that because we have seemingly endless coal reserves, and now natural gas too, all will be well.

Or they just cannot bring themselves to explain the details behind the necessary pain of a transition – even though we already know that transitions are painful.

Perhaps they can’t explain something that they do not understand themselves.

Whatever the reason no one in the government has stood up to calmly, and with clarity, tell us why.

Then again, perhaps they really have just “lost the plot.”

Environmental issues for real

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When historians sit to appraise the environmental actions of the baby-boomer generation they will say that they tried, did some good things, but failed to grasp the big picture.

They will also record that the most important consequence of this failure was that people did not see the solutions that were there for the taking.

Instead they focused on issues that they believed were real but turned out, with the benefit of hindsight, to be only partially relevant.

I have just published a short ebook at Smashwords that takes a sideways look at 10 environmental issues and puts them into context. It collates a few examples around one core idea that may be useful to the historians of the future.

And it can be yours for less that the price of  a skim latte.

Environmental issues for real

Last chance to see

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Stephen Fry is prolific, so much so that it is hard to avoid him. Fortunately this is entirely tolerable for the man is smart, erudite, witty, and has a passion for knowledge that is as important as it is infectious.

I did, however, find one occasion when he might have erred.

An episode of his wildlife series “Last chance to see” was filmed in Madagascar, where the unlikely adventurer went in search of the curious and elusive aye-aye, a type of lemur. The search criss-crossed the island to find the few remaining patches of forest where there might be a sighting, only to finally catch up with one in a coconut palm in a villagers back yard.

Along the way the film crew passed vast swathes of deforested land that clearly left an impression and brought forth laments on the loss of unique biodiversity once the trees are felled.

Much of the cleared land was planted to sisal that grows well in the Malagasy climate and produces a cash crop for farmers. Fibre from sisal is used in packaging in the west that is biodegradable and often labeled as green. The irony was not lost on Mr Fry.

Madagascar produces around 9 million tones of sisal, about 4% of global production, and a seemingly trivial mount in the grand scheme of things.

Surely the unique biodiversity was worth far more.

Not for the farmer, for cash is cash. And if there is, right now, a market for sisal and it is easy enough to grow then it is a profitable use of land. And if it is more profitable to the farmer than an aye-aye, then sisal it is. Not because it is the best use of the land but because, like the rest of us, the Malagasy farmer needs to make a living.

The same happened in Australia. Sheep are not the smartest use of the dry and dusty outback, but at the time there was a market for wool in Europe and wool was durable enough to travel. So like sisal, sheep production was profitable – handsomely so for some on the less marginal country.

The last chance to see is because we all want to make a living and because we make that living from the options available to us. It is hard to make a living from the sale of ecosystem services, or from forest protection or taking people to see an aye-aye; usually far too hard.

What we need to do is to be smart about the available options for making a living so that the one that is easiest does not become the default.

 

Can REDD projects address wildlife poaching?

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This question came in a forum on REDD, Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation, the somewhat controversial mechanism to tackle global warming. The idea is that because greenhouse gas emissions from clearing of land for agriculture makes up around a fifth of anthropogenic emissions, it makes sense to reduce clearing especially in tropical forests that are high on carbon and overall environmental value.

One typical pattern is that forests are first logged for commercial timber. This opens up the forest, makes access and further clearing easier. People move in to grow cash and subsistence crops.

REDD projects aim to substitute the financial returns from clearing with the sale of carbon credits that come about from the avoided emissions when forests are protected. In short local people receive payments for keeping their trees and their forest intact.

When it works there are less anthropogenic emissions, forests are protected, funds become available to help people create local economic development. Neat idea.

Since there are a few REDD projects that seem to be working pretty well in Africa, the question in the forum was about extending the concept to address wildlife poaching as well?

A successful REDD project would also protect wildlife because the financial incentive is to retain the integrity of the forest. Local communities are paid to be custodians of the resource.

A collective will would be enough to significantly reduce poaching so long as three key things happen:

local engagement is real

sufficient financial returns from the sale of carbon credits go to the local communities and

there is some long-term certainty in those financial returns

These are the key success criteria for any REDD project and, if met, then local protection of all the natural resources should follow. At least this is my experience talking to landholders in rainforests of Asia.

People everywhere prefer to live where the environment is healthy, the air is clean, the trees are green, and the wildlife free to roam. Only we need to live. Our priority is for a good life for ourselves and our families that is free from strain, risk and uncertainty. Meet this priority and any amount of environmental protection is possible.

What we have to remember is that throughout human history the forests have been cleared to meet these basic needs. So we are asking a lot to forego the route to development taken just about everywhere.

There has to be enough money in the system to meet the needs over the long haul.

The real challenge is that financial returns on REDD projects are neither certain nor comparable with the usual alternatives. Exactly why is another, long story. But I am sure you can guess the message. If we want to save trees or wildlife we have to pay a reasonable market price.

 

New eBook – Environmental Issues for Real

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Not satisfied with haranguing readers of this blog with environmental woes, I have branched out into the dynamic new world of ebook publishing.

Thanks to the amazing people at Smashwords my latest collection of essays on the environmental issues of the day is now available to download in all the usual formats.

Give it a whirl and maybe leave a review on the site. It would be great to hear what you think.