Environmental Ethics and Land Management ENVR E-120 - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Environmental Ethics and Land Management ENVR E-120 - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Environmental Ethics and Land Management ENVR E-120 http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre120 Principles of Ecosystem Management and Global Sustainability Timothy C. Weiskel Research Director Cambridge Climate Research Associates, (CCRA)

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Environmental Ethics and Land Management ENVR E-120

http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre120

Timothy C. Weiskel

Research Director Cambridge Climate Research Associates, (CCRA)

Harvard University Extension School Fall Semester 2008

Principles of Ecosystem Management and Global Sustainability

Session 12 9 December 2008

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Writing Issues...

Three things you need to remember: 1) Use primary sources. Not news articles, Wikopedia or YouTube 2) Cite sources correctly – using conventions outlined in “Writing With Internet Sources.” 3) Focus on differences in stated or implicit ethical principles at the base of debates or policy choices.

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Writing Issues...

Finally, don’t become

  • distracted. That is, don’t

allow the important be crowded out by the merely urgent…

…you may find that everything specific is part of a larger pattern, -- perhaps even a harmony – the principles of which you should be able to discern and share with us.

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Consider Earth from outside its atmosphere. Watch it in silence and in wonder. Then, think for a moment about how we might answer the question: "How should its participant-inhabitants behave?"

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Is any received tradition of ethics adequate to answer this question?

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If so, which one(s) will work to establish stable and enduring systems of self-imposed, self-restraint required for human survival in a complex ecosystem?

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If no received tradition of ethics is currently adequate to inspire self- imposed, self-restraint, how should (we as) humans proceed if they (we) expect to survive?

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But How Much is Enough in an Ecosystem ..? (the nature and pace of changes immediately ahead -1)

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But How Much is Enough in an Ecosystem ….?

(the nature and pace of changes immediately ahead -2)

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But How Much is Enough in an Ecosystem….?

(the nature and pace of changes immediately ahead -3)

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Genetic materials of the world's major cultigens are being collected and stored in "gene banks" -- both private and public.

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Agribusiness corporations and many governments argue that this is necessary to assure the world's future food supplies.

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Others from the Third World regard the "privatization" of global plant genetic material as a form of "biopiracy" and fear that this form of private control over public resources is both socially unjust and ecologically destructive.

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Local land management decisions around the world in the agricultural sector are increasingly made in reference to these larger global market considerations.

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All decisions in this realm have embedded ethical implications. Yet, we are still working on age-old (antiquated) moral precepts derived, for the most part, from the late-bronze- early iron-age in the Palestinian hill country.

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Our long term survival will depend upon

  • ur moral imagination and beliefs
  • In effect our collective ‘choice’

about the future will come down to a question of the way we live “unconsciously.”

  • The metaphors we live by will

determine our fate.

  • What are our metaphors? What

are our beliefs? Can they change in the time frame we have left?

  • Some people have been thinking

about this for a while….

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In 1949, Aldo Leopold wrote an essay entitled "The Land Ethic" which appeared as the last chapter in his famous work, A Sand County Almanac. In this essay he expressed the thought that ethical systems evolve as human communities extend their sense of

  • responsibility. As he put it:

"The extension of ethics, ...is actually a process in ecological

  • evolution. Its sequences may be

described in ecological as well as in philosophical terms....

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“The first ethics dealt with the relations between individuals....Later accretions dealt with the relation between the individual and society.... “There is as yet no ethic dealing with man's relation to land and to the animals and plants which grow upon it. “Land...is still property. The land-relation is still strictly economic, entailing privileges but not

  • bligations.
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“The extension of ethics to this third element in human environment is, if I read the evidence correctly an evolutionary possibility and an ecological necessity. It is the third step in a sequence. The first two have already been taken. Individual thinkers since the days

  • f Ezekiel and Isaiah have

asserted that the despoliation of the land is not only inexpedient but wrong. Society, however, has not yet affirmed their belief. I regard the present conservation movement as the embryo of such an affirmation."

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Fifty-nine years after these words were written, we would do well to reflect upon them with an eye to discerning whether or not we have made significant progress in developing "the land ethic" of which Leopold wrote so passionately. Is it still true in 2008, as Leopold asserted in 1949, that: "There is as yet no ethic dealing with man's relation to land...."?

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Implicit theories Financial "Investor's" Worldview

Community

The moral community is made up of those who share in capital to undertake investments in industrial capacity and trading ventures

System

The system consists of investors engaged in differential strategies of investment throughout the world. The world as a whole is available as a theater for profitable investment. Financial resources knit the system as a whole together.

Authority

Authority is vested in trans-national and multinational alliances and agreements that work to facilitate the unimpeded movement of capital

Change

Change occurs through the identification and investment in new ideas.. Change is good and has become essential for competitive survival of rival financial groups. Growth is both good and necessary.

Agency

The investor is the agent of change in the system. The state should act to facilitate and “free up” the potential for the global movement of financial resources.

Time

The focus is upon the next “quarter” or a shortened time horizon determined by a calculation of the annual average rate of profit. Rapid “turnover” of capital is necessary for maximum profit generation. “Time is money.”

For the time being, these assumptions are likely to predominate...

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Africa is said to need GM crops because that most closely fits our worldview of what agriculture should be in the “modern” world...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4397762.stm

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Machinery and fertilizers will be sold or “donated” through self-serving foreign aid programs to the “needy” African countries to modify existing ecosystems on a large scale.

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In the process it is highly probable that fragile soils will be abused with inappropriate plowing techniques, in some cases accelerating soil erosion and the permanent destruction of productive capacity.

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A Public Policy for Plant Genetic Resources

Timothy C. Weiskel

Worldview, 23, 10 (Oct. 1980), pp. 11-13.

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A Public Policy for Plant Genetic Resources

Timothy C. Weiskel

Worldview, 23, 10 (Oct. 1980), pp. 11-13.

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A Public Policy for Plant Genetic Resources

Timothy C. Weiskel

Worldview, 23, 10 (Oct. 1980), pp. 11-13. Further, it is likely that in the name of the application of “science” to age-old agricultural systems, local crops will be appropriated by foreign institutions and stored in global gene banks while local farmers are left to scrape and starve with depleted soil and water resources.

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Food, Famine and the Frontier Mentality

Timothy C. Weiskel

Worldview, 24, 12, (Dec. 1981), pp. 14-16.

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Food, Famine and the Frontier Mentality

Timothy C. Weiskel

Worldview, 24, 12, (Dec. 1981), pp. 14-16.

This may be called “progress” by some who are steeped in the frontier mentality, but it is hard to conceive of impending famines around the world as a form of “progress” without totally distorting the sense of the word.

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Meanwhile, in Europe and Canada, a major debate is underway. Farmers, consumers and scientists challenge the advisability and ecological sustainability of GM technology.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/2333155.stm

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http://www.gmwatch.eu/

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But is Supply-Side Thinking Enough?

Scientists started asking: “Aren’t there inevitably going to have to be: “Limits to Growth?” (Published, 1972, in time for the Stockholm Conference of Ministers of the Environment)

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Scientists begin to ask about possible “limits to growth.”

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Stockholm Conference of 1972

International concern about the environment has been expressed for more than thirty years. In 1972 the first World Conference on the Environment was held in Stockholm, Sweden, chaired by Maurice Strong. It brought together Ministers of the Environment from many of the world’s countries, and concluded by emphasizing that there was a large difference between the industrialized countries and the developing world.

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“Sustainable” Development

World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) established with leadership of Gro Harlem Brundtland in 1980s -- issued report urging a global “summit,” Our Common Future (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987) * UNCED - United Nations Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio de Janeiro, 3-14 June 1992 - First “Earth Summit” and first global meeting on environment since 1972. President George H.W. Bush warmly endorsed the FCCC and Congress approved it. Further, Bush boasted that the U.S. would take the lead.

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“Sustainable” Development

After UNCED Rio meetings “sustainable development” became the new phrase to bless all international aid and investment activities. The phrase built itself into the titles of various groups hoping to gain legitimacy by using it, especially those organizations within the UN system like the: Commission on Sustainable Development

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NGOs focus on “Sustainability”

In addition to the UN official circles, non-governmental

  • rganizations -- many with international affiliations

began to emphasize sustainability and coordinate information about strategies to meet the sustainability goals of the Rio document known as “Agenda 21.” Primary among these was the Canadian organization International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD)

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Businesses & “Sustainability”

Even the international business community has come out in favor of the principle of sustainability and built it in to their new definitions of what they are about. With the publication of a major study, called Changing Course the World Business Council for Sustainable Development was launched.

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So, what has been accomplished?

On the “development front” the official story is “mixed”... In reality “development” has been a disaster during the 1990s – the most sustained period of American economic growth in history.

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On The Environmental Front...?

Assessments over the course of the 1990s -- since the UNCED “Earth Summit” -- are not encouraging despite affirmations of all the heads

  • f state in the 1992 meetings.

The regular “year end” assessments by Lester Brown, the founder of the Worldwatch Institute make the discouraging trends clear

See one of his latest, for example:

Lester Brown, Cambridge Forum “Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization ”

http://forum.wgbh.org/wgbh/ram.php?id=4023&size=hi

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*

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Sad ending ... a major

  • pportunity

missed.

http://news.bbc.co. uk/media/video/382 35000/rm/_382358 92_summit22_brow n_vi.ram

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“Free Trade” and the Farming Issue

Farming issues proved to be explosive at the Summit

  • n Sustainable Development. Colin Powell was

shouted down because of his characterization of the farming problems. Small Farmers in Mexico Feel Effects of NAFTA As the terms of NAFTA gradually reduce protective tariffs on agricultural goods sent to Mexico, small farmers south of the border feel the

  • effects. Many say NAFTA is destroying their

livelihood.

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Former US

  • Sec. Of

Agriculture, Esty. Wolfenson of the World Bank also indicates irrationality.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/1966047.stm

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The Bush administration, nevertheless feels it can get away with farm subsidies.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/

  • lmedia/1985000/vide
  • /_1985944_usfarms0

1_kingstone_vi.ram

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Paul O’Neill, on expanding world

  • trade. “...The

whole world will be better for it.”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/au dio/38513000/rm/_38513031_w br48082paul.ram

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/2513531.stm

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This US-EU trade war will have large and far-reaching implications for the viability of Third World agriculture and global sustainability.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/2534179.stm

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Pollutants and animal habitat are minor issues, compared with the thrust of the administration’s resource and energy policies.

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Beyond America, there is a pervasive and growing sense

  • f outrage in the

wider world....

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Global disgust with American energy and resource gluttony is growing.

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Even within America the public is beginning to question the ravage of resources.

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*

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*

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Beyond that, he seen as “bought and paid for” -- the

  • bedient political spokesman for large corporations.
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http://www.campaigncc.org/ resources.shtml http://www.campaigncc.org/

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The administration stance has destroyed U.S. credibility

  • n global environmental issues by rejecting Kyoto

* * *

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"Climate change pressure on Obama," BBC News Online, (8 December 2008).

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7772451.stm

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New Definitions are needed...

It is clear from the large scale public debate emerging on around the world, that whatever else it means, “sustainable development” needs to be ecologically and socially sustainable as well as economically beneficial. In fact, our entire concept of economics needs to move away from the circumscribed thinking of market-driven economics towards an economics of sustainability – in short, a “steady-state economics.”

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New Definitions are needed...

For this reason, environmentalists are beginning to articulate new sets of principles of environmental ethics based on an understanding of steady-state economics and social justice. Environmentalists are essentially ethical “consequentialists” in search of a deontology.

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Valuing the Earth

In search of the new deontology, environmentalists are asserting that we need to devise new methods to “value” the earth. The economist, Herman Daly, has been in the forefront of efforts to devise new ways

  • f valuing the earth’
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“Costing” is not enough...

While the business community has always been good at “costing” the natural resources

  • f the earth, environmentalists

are arguing that that is not

  • enough. Costs do not (and

some argue -- cannot) capture the true value of natural assets because they only represent use- values.

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Moving beyond the growth phase...

Economists like Herman Daly are arguing that we need to move beyond the immature growth stage in our economies to a more mature stage of steady state. One of his first books was entitled Steady State Economics, and one of his most recent is called, Beyond Growth.

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In fact, beyond neo=classical economics to a socially sustainable future...

In a recent book which he co-authored with theologian, John B. Cobb, Jr., Herman Daly argues that we must reorganize the economy: For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy Toward Community, The Environment and a Sustainable Future.

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A collection of his essays makes it clear that he thinks conventional economics will lead inevitably to ecological destruction if we pursue “business as usual” operating

  • procedures. (Members of the MIT

Department of Economics opposed the publication of this book by the MIT Press). In short, there are limits to usefulness of market metaphors in an ecosystem. Others have emphasized this as well…see, for example:

http://ecoethics.net/OPS/OPS-008.HTM

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Advocates of redefining economic activity as a subset of viable ecosystems are pointing to economic processes which are “inspired by nature.” Leaning through biomimicry how nature expends energy, processes materials, and “produces” goods is the new inspiration for modeling human economic activity.

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Economists attentive to this new approach to ecologically grounded economic activity are paying particular attention to local social and political conditions necessary to assure

  • sustainability. Global

sustainability, they argue, can

  • nly be achieved through local

legitimacy and socially sustainable policies.

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Beyond the professional economists, businessmen, like Paul Hawken, have begun to recognize that their practices have to be rethought and reorganized. His book, The Ecology of Commerce, develops what he calls: A Declaration of Sustainability.

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In addition, he has joined forces with Amory and Hunter Lovins (long standing critics of US energy policy) to elaborate what this new approach to economic

  • rganization would entail in an important

new volume entitled: Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution. See also his recent lecture: "Natural Capitalism: The Next Industrial Revolution," (4 December 2008). See:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zfO3HW6xCw

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“Precautionary Principle”

A strong impulse for redirecting economic activity has come from a recognition that you cannot maintain a healthy human population on a “sick” planet. A public health focus upon environmental problems has led environmentalists to recognize the need for applying the precautionary principle in developing environmental policy.

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Restoring balance to functioning ecosystems is a key step in restoring their underlying health and integrity. Laura Westra and others are beginning to argue that environmental ethics need to be based on a fundamental respect for the integrity of natural systems.

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Overarching Principles of the Environmental Ethics of Sustainability…1

Responsible ecocitizens should always and everywhere seek to tax, spend, legislate, litigate, advocate and agitate so as to….

  • 1. substitute the consumption of non-renewable

resources with renewable ones;

  • 2. reduce the consumption of renewables to at or below

their rate of renewal;

  • 3. introduce nothing into the waste/nutrient stream that

cannot be "eaten" safely by another non-threatening

  • rganism;
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Overarching Principles of the Environmental Ethics of Sustainability…2

  • 4. introduce nothing into the waste/nutrient stream that will

destabilize system-wide balances in nutrient or energy flow;

  • 5. allocate the fruits of production in a more, rather than a

less, just and equitable fashion;

  • 6. measure and monitor environmental conditions affecting

the safety, health and welfare of all species -- not just human beings; by definition, a sustainable ecosystem cannot be species-centric, so anthropocentrism is not survivable and consequently human welfare alone is not a sufficient metric for an ethic of sustainability.

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Overarching Principles of the Environmental Ethics of Sustainability…3

  • 7. educate and inform the public at large about

the circumstances it must confront and the "footprint" it generates in the global environment;

  • 8. entitle and empower local communities to

manage their resources sustainably;

  • 9. cajole, exhort and convince those who do not

follow these precepts to mend the error of their ways;

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Overarching Principles of the Environmental Ethics of Sustainability…4

And

  • 10. expose, denounce, condemn and seek to punish

those who consistently and intentionally violate these precepts of responsible ecocitizenry -- including those who otherwise wish to present themselves as perfectly "respectable" public leaders. Why? “…that thy days may be long upon the earth.” [ If not you, who? If not now, when? ]

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and remember…

Don’t Let the Urgent Crowd

  • ut the Important!

“Terrorism is certainly a matter of concern, but if it diverts us from the environmental trends that are undermining our future until it is too late to reverse them, Osama Bin Laden and his followers will have achieved their goal of bringing down western civilization in a way they could not have imagined.”

Lester Brown, Plan B (2003)

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David Attenborough

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http://www.climate-talks.net/2006-ENVRE130/Video/20060422-Inconvenient-Truth.htm

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Gordon Brown – Chancellor of the Exchequer

  • ie. before becoming Prime Minister
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Mary Robinson & Climate Change and Human Rights

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Implicit theories Financial "Investor's" Worldview

Community

The moral community is made up of those who share in capital to undertake investments in industrial capacity and trading ventures

System

The system consists of investors engaged in differential strategies of investment throughout the world. The world as a whole is available as a theater for profitable investment. Financial resources knit the system as a whole together.

Authority

Authority is vested in trans-national and multinational alliances and agreements that work to facilitate the unimpeded movement of capital

Change

Change occurs through the identification and investment in new ideas.. Change is good and has become essential for competitive survival of rival financial groups. Growth is both good and necessary.

Agency

The investor is the agent of change in the system. The state should act to facilitate and “free up” the potential for the global movement of financial resources.

Time

The focus is upon the next “quarter” or a shortened time horizon determined by a calculation of the annual average rate of profit. Rapid “turnover” of capital is necessary for maximum profit generation. “Time is money.”

For the time being, these assumptions seem to dominate our culture of ‘late capitalism’

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Implicit theories Financial "Investor's" Worldview

Community

The moral community is made up of those who share in capital to undertake investments in industrial capacity and trading ventures

System

The system consists of investors engaged in differential strategies of investment throughout the world. The world as a whole is available as a theater for profitable investment. Financial resources knit the system as a whole together.

Authority

Authority is vested in trans-national and multinational alliances and agreements that work to facilitate the unimpeded movement of capital

Change

Change occurs through the identification and investment in new ideas.. Change is good and has become essential for competitive survival of rival financial groups. Growth is both good and necessary.

Agency

The investor is the agent of change in the system. The state should act to facilitate and “free up” the potential for the global movement of financial resources.

Time

The focus is upon the next “quarter” or a shortened time horizon determined by a calculation of the annual average rate of profit. Rapid “turnover” of capital is necessary for maximum profit generation. “Time is money.”

BUT in the very near future this will need to change….

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Implicit theories Scientifically Informed Environmental Ethics Worldview

Community The moral community is made up of those who share participation in

the earth’s ecosystem and are accountable for their actions.

System

The system consists of a global ecosystem which has evolved in cosmic, geological, biological and historical time with varying trajectories amongst its different biological and abiological components

Authority

Authority is vested ultimately in ecosystemic functionality. Those species, groups, populations or communities who cannot perceive or refuse to adapt to the system rules are dismissed by authority of the larger system.

Change

Change occurs through the continuous interaction of the biogeochemical dynamics within the global ecosystem and cosmic events from outside the global system

Agency

Natural process, including innumerable other species as well as humans are agents of change. Humans are almost invariably unconscious of and perhaps structurally incapable of understanding or foreseeing the full impact of their own actions – both individually and collectively

Time

Time is irreversible and both short and long. The relevant time frame is simultaneously both shorter and longer than we are normally accustomed to as human beings. “Extinction is forever” – so, sustainability questions likewise need to be judged not in terms of short time frames but in terms of what will last forever.

If we are to survive, we will need to change our worldview and the underlying implicit theories upon which it rests.

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New evidence

  • f a “tipping

point” in arctic ice dynamics.

http://www.climate-talks.net/2006-ENVRE130/Audio/20061212-BBC-Arctic-Sea-Ice.htm

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What’s Going on “up top?” – Freak event? Or Trend?

http://www.climate-talks.net/2008-ENVRE130/Video/20080926-YouTube-NOAA-Arctic-Ice-Index.htm

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Environmental Ethics and Land Management ENVR E-120

http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre120

Timothy C. Weiskel

Research Director Cambridge Climate Research Associates, (CCRA)

Harvard University Extension School Fall Semester 2008

Principles of Ecosystem Management and Global Sustainability

Session 12 9 December 2008