GEOGRAPHY 454

Cowichan Watershed Project & Environment vs. Economy

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Housekeeping Items

Anyone here for the first time? Introductions, get syllabus/ handout, give me your e-mail address, fill out goal sheet, and pick a reading to present on.

Get e-mail addresses clarified. Announcement re textbook and lecture notes. Announcement re GIS meeting: will try to incorporate

ARCInfo into our Cowichan project. Divide into teams; also how many of the topics can we

realistically cover? Field trip – when can we go, and what do we want to

cover? Preparations for Kathleen Johnnie’s visit next Tuesday.

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ENVIRONMENT VS. ECONOMY: THE TWIN IMPERATIVES

A new paradigm is struggling to be born in resource management. The context for that is, as David Rapport, points out, the fact that 1/3 to 1/2 of the earth’s surface has been degraded by human activities, 66% of marine fisheries are fully or over-exploited, the water of many major rivers has been largely diverted, and 11% of world’s birds, 18% of mammals, 5% of fish, and 8% of plants are threatened with extinction.

Rapport says that “The impacts of overharvesting, physical restructuring (e.g., building of dams, roads, utility corridors), discharge of waste residuals (including toxic substance and nutrients), and introducing exotic species have singly and interactively rendered large parts of the Canadian landscape dysfunctional.”

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ENVIRONMENT VS. ECONOMY: THE TWIN IMPERATIVES [cont’d]

He goes on to say that “our landscape has been rendered dysfunctional largely because of of the inadequacy and short-sightedness of the guiding principles upon which resource and environmental management have been based. These principles have been primarily production-oriented – to maximize exploitation for commercial profit to sustain maximum yields, insofar as that is possible – while social, ecological, and cultural requirements for maintaining healthy ecosystems have largely been neglected.”DO YOU AGREE?

Human impacts can be divided into a)depletion of resources, renewable and non-renewable; b)overtaxing of waste sinks (air, water, and soil), and c)damage to life support systems (ozone shield, stable climate, biodiversity as a factor for ecological stability). As these impacts intensify, so do conflicts amongst human groups and stakeholders.

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ENVIRONMENT VS. ECONOMY: THE TWIN IMPERATIVES [cont’d]

On pp. 25-26, he lays out principles for a new resource management paradigm.

The old resource management paradigm was based on traditional economics which operated on a number of assumptions: 1)Negative ecological and social impacts were the “price of progress,” of economic growth. As such they were treated as “externalities.” 2)The economy was seen as circular: every investment yielded an increment, and capital (physical and financial) continued to grow ad infinitum. 3)Nature was largely substitutable – if a particular resource was depleted, human ingenuity and technology could find a substitute. In essence, the economy and the biosphere (and its ecosystems) and the economy were seen as separate, but parallel systems.

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ENVIRONMENT VS. ECONOMY: THE TWIN IMPERATIVES [cont’d]

A contrary view to a cyclical economy is that of linearity…

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ENVIRONMENT VS. ECONOMY: THE TWIN IMPERATIVES [cont’d]

Based on the relatively new discipline of ecological economics, the new resource management paradigm is based on different assumptions: 1)Rather than seeing nature as an externality, it is seen as a finite host for the economy which is embedded within it. The latter cannot grow beyond the constraints of the host. 2)The economy involves a linear flow (as in the preceding diagram) and is thus limited by the depletion of resources and the production of wastes [second law of thermo-dynamics], and 3)Nature is not infinitely substitutable. There are no replacements for an ozone shield, stable weather, and clean water and air, amongst other things. Ecology and economy are not parallel systems; they are interwoven.

The Brundtland Commission recognized that environmental degradation could be the result of both affluence and poverty, and advocated a reduction in throughput in the wealthy countries, and an increase in growth in the poor countries. However, the Commission did not fully acknowledge or address the ecological “limits to growth.”

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ENVIRONMENT VS. ECONOMY: THE TWIN IMPERATIVES [cont’d]

As the Brundtland Commission noted, “The objective of sustainable development and the integrated nature of global environment/ development challenges pose problems for institutions which were established on the basis of narrow preoccupations and compartmentalized concerns…..The real world of interlocked economic and ecological systems is not going to change; the policies and institutions must.”

Sustainable development was defined as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.” While useful, this is what we described last week as an anthropocentric definition – one focused exclusively on human needs and concerns. Another way of looking at it is that for both nature and human society to prosper, we need to maintain relatively constant stocks of natural, physical and financial, human, and cultural capital. If we allow these to become depleted, then by definition our activities are not sustainable. The analogy here is to a business that maintains its capital to generate an income, rather than selling it off every time there’s a cash crunch. We have to maintain the health and integrity of the capital. As a result, genuine wealth indicators have been proposed as an alternative to GNP/ GDP as measures of success.

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ECOLOGICAL HEALTH AND INTEGRITY

Rapport distinguishes between ecological health and integrity. Health involves three interrelated attributes: the ability of ecosystems

to retain their organization (distinct identity); their vitality (their productivity in both ecological and economic terms), and resilience (their ability to cope with disturbances and restore their functions).

Integrity refers to the ability of ecosystems to remain relatively pristine – for ecosystem structures and functions to be remain relatively unimpaired by human-caused stresses, with native species at viable population levels, such as one might find in remote wilderness areas.

However, since the majority of the earth’s lands and waters have been impacted in a major way by human activities, health is the more relevant concept. While natural resource disasters are not a new phenomenon, there are many examples of human-created ecosystems and landscapes that have exhibited ecological health over long periods of time. Can you think of examples?

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ECOLOGICAL HEALTH AND INTEGRITY [cont’d]

These ideas have been making their way into various resource sectors, and Rapport gives examples. In forestry, for instance, instead of viewing the desired state as maximum harvestable timber, such as might be obtained in a “tree farm” (wood on the hoof), the Canadian Forest Service has adopted the definition of a healthy forest as being “one that maintains and sustains desirable ecosystems and processes… a forest ecosystem may be considered healthy when inherent ecological processes are operational within a narrow range of variability.”

In this definition, timber production as seen as a side benefit of a healthy forest ecosystem that also supports efficient nutrient cycling, sequestering of CO2 and other pollutants, and maintenance of biodiversity (through diversity of tree species and habitats, a healthy forest floor, retention of snags and nurse logs, and healthy riparian zones). It recognizes that, for humans, forests are also an important resource as recharge areas, a source of harvestable plants, mushrooms, animal species, and for their recreational and spiritual value.

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ECOLOGICAL HEALTH AND INTEGRITY [cont’d]

One way of seeking to maintain healthy forest ecosystems is to implement a pressure-state-response model, where you look at threats or stressors (and their sources in human activities), how ecosystems are being affected by them, and then develop appropriate responses. More specifically, one can conduct a risk analysis, study system resilience, and monitor for signs of ecosystem distress.

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Application to Other Sectors Similar ideas can be applied to agro-ecosystems. Operational

principles for healthy agro-ecosystems might include: •maintaining production without depleting soil and nutrients, and constantly having to add fertilizers; •avoid off-site ecological damage through run-off of excess nutrients and toxic chemicals that can bio-accumulate, and •minimize risks to human health resulting from introduction of antibiotics and toxins.

Although the author doesn’t mention it, one could also add • finding ways of having farmland serve other ecological goals (for instance, as habitat), and •finding ways of controlling pests and competing species without use of herbicides and pesticides.

One can also consider social goals, such as maintaining the viability of family farms, farm communities, and maintaining the value of farmland as green space.

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Application to Other Sectors Similar ideas can also be applied to marine ecosystems [see

textbook]. The characteristics of the new resource management paradigm

involve: •acknowledging the dependence of the economy and human well-being on healthy ecosystems and a healthy biosphere; • acknowledging that ecosystems are “open” and that “everything is connected”; •recognizing that ecosystems cross political and administrative boundaries and that their management has to reflect this, and •recognizing that successful management requires a transdisciplinary approach, as well as managing ourselves.

In general, we need to move from a “fix it” mentality to a precautionary or preventative mentality.