The New Nation - Internet Edition

Seven points to green reconomics

Thomas Prugh

A few years ago, a homeowner in Las Vegas-a place that gets maybe five inches of rainfall a year-was confronted by a water district inspector for running an illegal sprinkler in the middle of the day. The man became very angry. He said, "You people and all your stupid rules-you're trying to turn this place into a desert!"

Ideas about how the world works that don't accord with reality can be unhelpful. That's especially true about mainstream economics, which is based in part on ideas that made a lot of sense at some point in the last 250 years but that have outlived their time and usefulness. These ideas-such as the reliance on GDP as the key index of general wellbeing-still dominate assumptions and thinking about economic matters in the media, governments, businesses, and popular consciousness.

But in recent decades, economics theoreticians and researchers have suggested a variety of reforms that would make economics truer, greener, and more sustainable. My colleague Gary Gardner and I describe seven of these in Chapter 1 of the Worldwatch Institute's latest report, State of the World 2008: Innovations for a Sustainable Economy:

1) Scale. How big is the global economy relative to the global ecosystem? This is crucial, because the economy resides totally inside the global ecosystem-the ecosystem gives the economy a place to operate, supplies all of its raw materials, and supports it with many critical services. In physical terms, economic activity is basically converting bits and pieces of the ecosystem to human uses: trees and forests into lumber and houses, grasslands and other habitats into farms to feed the billions of humans, and so on.

We've gotten really good at economic growth. Since Adam Smith's time, the number of people in the world has exploded from about 1 billion to nearly 7 billion. And in the last 200 years, Gross World Product has risen by nearly a factor of 60. The ecosystem has suffered as a result, hence the headlines we see every day: climate change, species extinctions, dwindling rainforests, water shortages, and all the rest.

Piecemeal, we're starting to get the message about the economy's scale. For instance, we know that there's too much carbon floating around for the system to handle benignly. Last year, more than 90 major corporations, including General Electric, Volvo, and Air France, called on governments to set goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and the European Union has set up a carbon cap-and-trade system.

Waste minimization is another way to reduce scale. Every year we dig up and process more than half a trillion tons of raw materials-and six months later more than 99 percent of it is waste. That can be fixed too: Ray Anderson's Interface carpet company is a leader in this area, reducing manufacturing waste by 70 percent since the mid-1990s and saving over $300 million while doing it.

2) Stress development over growth. That is, make the economy better at satisfying human needs, not simply bigger.

This is partly about eco-efficiency. It's now cost-effective to boost resource efficiency by at least a factor of four-and possibly by a factor of 20. And given the need for billions of people to grow their way out of dire poverty, we have to pursue these gains.

But it's also about asking the question, what is an economy is really for? Not only can the global economy not keep growing forever, growth isn't even working for many of us in wealthy nations anymore: U.S. per-capita income has tripled since 1950, for instance, but the share of Americans who say they're very happy has dropped over the last 30 years. Studies in hedonic psychology reveal that higher incomes only improve life satisfaction up to a point. The research also says that the more materialistic people are, the lower levels of happiness they report. And it says that there appears to be a correlation between rising consumption and the erosion of the things that do make people happy, especially social relationships, family life, and a sense of community.

In response, a lot of people are rejecting the competition and get-ahead mentality of consumerism. They're downshifting and pursuing voluntary simplicity all over the globe, and they're taking collective action via campaigns for healthy eating, work leave for new parents, and shortened workweeks. The governments of Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom have made wellbeing a national policy goal, and there is a lot of interest in indicators that measure wellbeing more directly than GNP.

3) Make prices tell the ecological truth. Cheating a bit here-this isn't really a conceptual reform. Every economist knows that markets fail when prices don't reflect actual costs. The reform would be actually applying this rule to the ecosystem. For instance, climate change is arguably the result of failing to charge for dumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Another example is human-caused species extinction. We're basically dismantling our life-support machinery, and by and large until recently nobody paid for it. Fortunately, governments and business are beginning to experiment with carbon markets, water pricing mechanisms, and conservation banking. Carbon market trading was worth $59 billion in 2007, and there are now several hundred wetlands and species banks in the United States alone.

4) Account for nature's services.This is closely related to #3. In the United States, the pollination performed by honeybees is worth about $19 billion per year. There's also air and water purification, soil generation, pest control, seed dispersal, and nutrient recycling, among the many other services that nature provides.

Tearing up ecosystems undermines these services, so some countries have begun trying to value them properly. Costa Rica, for example, pays landowners to preserve forests and their biodiversity, with the money coming from fuel taxes and sale of environmental credits to businesses. Mexico and Victoria, Australia, have also set up systems to assign values to formerly free services.

5) The precautionary principle. This is just the age-old wisdom of "first, do no harm" and "look before you leap," but applied to public policy toward new products (like chemicals) and technologies that could pose serious risk.

Ordinary risk analysis asks, "How much environmental damage will be allowed?" But the precautionary principle asks, "How little damage is possible?" Today we're seeing the principle adopted more and more widely. The Maastricht Treaty that created the European Union in 1991 puts the principle at the center of its environmental policy, and San Francisco made precaution official policy in 2003.

6) Commons management. People generally believe that there are only two workable regimes for managing resources: private property or government control. But commons management regimes are a third way, one that taps the strong human impulse toward cooperation and the common good.

Commons management has proven itself over centuries of experience-there are collectively managed irrigation systems in Spain that were begun in the 15th century, for instance, and other commonly managed forests and pastures in Switzerland, Japan, the Philippines, and Indonesia that are centuries old. Commons management lives and thrives today in such things as Wikipedia, community gardens, and farmers markets everywhere. The writer and entrepreneur Peter Barnes has suggested that the atmosphere, which everyone ought to own, could be successfully managed and protected via a commons regime. Ocean fisheries might be as well.

7) Value women. Economic systems ought to be gender-blind but they're not. A UN report in the 1990s noted that "most poor people are women, and most women are poor." All over the world, women earn less than men for equivalent work, they lack access to land and credit, and they do more than their share of child- and elder care, volunteer work, and other unpaid labor. There is evidence that this gender bias actually suppresses economic activity. In response, a few governments in industrial countries are trying to develop policies that take unpaid work into account. Muhammad Yunus's Grameen Bank in Bangladesh is using the terms of its loans to help to ensure that wives are legally entitled to their share of a couple's assets. And the microfinance movement appears to have given millions of women a valuable economic boost.

These seven ideas are hardly the only changes brewing in economics, but the innovations described in State of the World 2008 can generally be traced to one or more of them. Hopefully, they are on the way to transforming economics from "the dismal science" into more of a delightful one-or, to paraphrase E.F. Schumacher, into an economics as if people and the planet mattered.

(Tom Prugh is editor of the Worldwatch Institute's bimonthly magazine, World Watch, and co-director, with Gary Gardner, of State of the World 2008.)

Protecting Tigers

Mohammad Shahidul Islam

The Wildlife Conservation Society and the Panthera Foundation announced plans to establish a 5,000 mile-long "genetic corridor" from Bhutan to Burma that would allow tiger populations to roam freely across landscapes. The corridor, first announced at the United Nations on January 30th, would span eight countries and represent the largest block of tiger habitat left on earth.

Genetic corridors, where tigers can travel with less risk of inbreeding, are crucial for their long-term survival in Asia. The proposed corridor includes extensive areas of Bhutan, northeast India, Myanmar, Thailand and Malaysia, along with potential connectivity to Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. It has already been endorsed by the new King of Bhutan, his Majesty Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, who requested other heads of state to support similar efforts.

While Asia's economic tigers are on the rise, wild tigers in Asia are in decline. Much like the call-out for global agreements on banning tiger parts in trade, a similar cross-border initiative for genetic corridors is key to the survival of the tiger. Neither tiger range states need to work together, as tigers do not observe political borders nor do they require a visa or passport to travel where habitat and prey remain.

Corridors did not have to be pristine parkland but could in fact include agricultural areas, ranches, and other multi-use landscapes-just as long as tigers could use them to travel between wilderness areas. The concerned countries may set aside new parks to make this corridor a success. This is more about changing regional zoning in tiger range states to allow tigers to move more freely between areas of good habitat.

Twelve of 13 tiger range states were represented by ambassadors and delegates at the UN meeting. Other organizations working to save the tiger came out in force, including representatives from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation's Save the Tiger Fund, Conservation International, Rare Conservation, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Actress Glenn Close was in attendance and spoke at the event.

Tigers Forever was launched in 2006 as a bold plan to grow tiger numbers by 50 percent at key sites over a ten year period. This increase is being achieved through collecting baseline data and long-term scientific monitoring of tigers, their prey, and their threats, to ensure that the goals can be met. Key threats are the direct killing of tigers, poaching of tiger prey, and habitat loss-all of which are being targeted and mitigated.

Researchers at the Wildlife Conservation Society and other institutions declare that improvements in management of existing protected areas in South Asia could double the number of tigers currently existing in the region.

Specifically, the study examined 157 reserves throughout the Indian subcontinent-comprising India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Nepal. It found that 21 of the protected areas meet the criteria needed for large healthy tiger populations. Further, the study noted that these protected areas have the potential to support between 58 percent and 95 percent of the subcontinent's potential tiger capacity, estimated to be between 3,500 to 6,500 tigers.

In the absence of reliable data to produce a reliable estimate, tiger conservationists say that the big cats may currently number between 1,500 to 4,000 animals in the four countries combined.

The small improvements to increase tiger populations cited in the study include better funding, increasing staff support, restoring tiger habitat, and stepping up enforcement activities that focus on preventing the poaching of tigers and their prey.

The tiger is endangered in all of its natural habitats, a range stretching from India down into Southeast Asia as far as the island of Sumatra, and in the Russian Far East, and is listed as endangered according to both international and U.S. law.

On a broader scale, WCS [Wildlife Conservation Society] is currently working with the Panthera Foundation on an ambitious new program that calls for a 50 percent increase in tiger numbers in key areas over the next decade. This new initiative, called "Tigers Forever," blends a business model with hard science, and has already attracted the attention of venture capitalists who have pledged an initial $10 million to go to specific projects to support the initiative.

Unlike earlier efforts to set tiger conservation targets that were mostly based on land cover maps, this study for the first time incorporated field data on tiger densities derived from the pioneering camera trapping work of WCS researcher Dr. Ullas Karanth and colleagues. One study assessed the impact of the landscape matrix surrounding the reserves using tiger population models based on measured and expected tiger densities.

The researchers found that landscapes surrounding protected areas play a significant role in the ability of those reserves to support tigers. The 21 areas most capable of supporting large numbers of tigers are concentrated in a few regions in central India, and the Indian borders with Nepal and Bhutan. Eighteen of the protected areas currently contain tiger populations.

The remaining 129 protected areas do not have the potential to sustain high numbers of tigers, but nonetheless these reserves could be capable of containing tigers over the long term if the landscape surrounding the reserves are better managed to reduce negative impacts.

A landmark study by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) says tigers living in one of India's best-run national parks lose nearly a quarter of their population each year from poaching and natural mortality, yet their numbers remain stable due to a combination of high reproductive rates and abundant prey. The study, which appears in the journal Ecology, underscores the need of maintaining protected areas with high prey densities in an overall tiger conservation strategy, along with anti-poaching efforts and eliminating trade in tiger body parts.

The nine-year study in India's Nagarahole National Park found that an average of 23 percent of the park's tigers either move away or die each year from either naturally or from poaching outside of the park, yet total numbers remained high.

Unfortunately, in other parts of the tiger's range, relentless poaching of the big cats and their prey has caused numbers to plummet. Another WCS study that appeared in a recent issue of the journal Animal Conservation revealed that tiger numbers in a protected area along the Laos-Vietnam border are severely depressed from commercial poaching, and prey depletion which may increase competition between large carnivores.

The good news is that given the chance, tigers can replenish their numbers; the bad news is that they are not being given that chance in many parts of their range. Though no truly accurate global numbers exist, conservationists guess that 5,000 tigers remain in the wild. About 150 years ago, 100,000 tigers may have roamed throughout much of Asia according to some guesses.

Tiger scene in Bangladesh chapter is also alarming. According to information available, tigers are being killed here [Sundarbans] and there [zoo], while very recently two Bengal tigers in Sundarban mangrove during research by anesthesia and radio-collaring have also been killed, which is extremely pathetic. The above unfortunate situation needs a permanent solution prior to the extinction of these majestic animals from our country, which only timely action would prevent.

Let us respect their right to live, and save these majestic animals that are beauties from the present untimely cruel deaths, for which an urgent protection and conservation scheme is essential.

Save climate for peace

Michael Renner

At the behest of its member governments, the United Nations keeps taking on new and increasingly complex peacekeeping challenges, including in conflict-ridden places like Darfur, Haiti, Lebanon, and East Timor. The projected budget for these efforts for the July 2007 to June 2008 period is running to $7 billion-the largest cost ever by far, and substantially higher than the record $5.6 billion spent in 2006-07. Yet U.N. peacekeeping operations remain a study in contradictions.

U.N. missions today don't just involve monitoring of ceasefire lines, as in olden times. They also cover such activities as providing assistance in elections, building or rebuilding institutions, reforming judicial systems, training law enforcement forces, disarming and reintegrating former combatants, and in some cases even acting as the transitional authority in the absence of a recognized or functioning government.

Yet peacekeeping suffers from major problems, starting with money. In theory, peacekeeping costs are covered by mandatory assessments, payable by the U.N.'s members according to the size of their economy (and thus their ability to pay). A handful of states accounts for the bulk of all payments: just 15 countries cover 90 percent of the budget. But when members pay late or withhold part of what they owe, peacekeeping finances are thrown into deep crisis.

The United States has repeatedly held peacekeeping hostage in this manner, and in recent years, Japan has also run up large arrears. As of late 2007, more than $3 billion of peacekeeping payments had not been made by national governments. Of this, 34 percent was owed by the United States alone.

Even though peacekeeping budgets have been on a welcome incline in recent years, they are still far too small relative to what the U.N. is asked to accomplish. A comparison with world military spending indicates where most governments are really prepared to put their money. In 2006, the world spent $1,232 billion on its militaries, or 228 times the U.N. peacekeeping budget.

While governments continue to rely on the military as a preferred tool of security policy, the nature of many of the world's intractable conflicts suggests severely misplaced priorities. Research suggests that among the underlying reasons for many tensions today are competition over lucrative resources and the repercussions from environmental degradation. With the rising specter of climate change, more frequent floods and droughts as well as sea-level rise will cause increased human displacement and food insecurity, and may trigger fresh disputes. Climate stability, along with reduced poverty and inequality, should be key goals of a far-sighted security policy.

The United States, deeply mired in its "war on terror," has other priorities. It now spends roughly as much on its military as the rest of the world combined. The war in Iraq has already cost about $632 billion.

Like peacekeeping budgets, the number of peacekeepers has risen to record levels. Currently running operations in 17 countries, the United Nations deployed 84,309 soldiers, military observers, and police in December 2007. Counting international and local civilian staff and volunteers, the total runs to about 106,000. And 11 smaller "political and peace-building" missions (typically follow-up efforts once a peacekeeping mission ends) deployed another 3,787 personnel as of late 2007.

But yet again, these numbers are dwarfed by conventional military priorities. National military (non-peacekeeping) forces deployed outside of the borders of their own countries totaled about 540,000 in 2005. U.S. troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other military bases around the globe alone accounted for 73 percent, or some 394,000 troops. With a combined 117,000 soldiers abroad, Turkey, the United Kingdom, France, and Russia represented another 22 percent.

Every time the United Nations dispatches a new mission, it literally has to beg member governments for personnel contributions. Typically, this leads to long delays that may imperil the success of the entire endeavor. Nowadays, most peacekeepers come from poor countries, mostly from South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Often, they lack proper equipment, and different national contingents may be unable to communicate with each other. The United Nations has to rely on the goodwill and cooperation of governments to provide transportation and other logistical support to get the peacekeepers to their deployment locations.

Peacekeeping, an improvisation that emerged shortly after the United Nations came into existence, has now been around for some six decades. Even though it has become a fairly large undertaking, there is still no way to ensure that these soldiers, policemen, and civilians dispatched to far-flung crises are trained to common standards. In some ways, U.N. peacekeeping very much remains an ad-hoc phenomenon.

This is no accident. Powerful governments have little interest in a global body that has truly autonomous capabilities and thus might act in ways detrimental to their own parochial interests. Washington, Moscow, London, Paris, and other capitals are all too happy to hand off responsibility for an intractable crisis to the U.N.'s "Blue Helmets," eager to claim credit when missions succeed, but quick to blame the organization when they struggle or fail.

On one hand, it's encouraging to see U.N. peacekeeping grow into a major factor in the world's conflict zones. But as long as the United Nations has to operate on a shoestring budget and in ad-hoc fashion, peacekeeping is like a game of roulette.

(Michael Renner is a senior researcher and director of the Global Security Project at the Worldwatch Institute, an environmental research organization based in Washington, DC)

90 gharials dead in two months in India

Kirtiman Awasthi, Etawah

The mystery of gharial deaths in the Chambal waters continues to elude scientists. More than 90 of the critically endangered species have died since early December, all within a stretch of about 25 km of the river flowing along the Uttar Pradesh-Madhya Pradesh border. Nobody seems to know the reason. In a January 28 meeting of the Crisis Management Group, set up by the union government to look into possible causes and draw an action plan, veterinarians and conservationists could not pinpoint the causes of deaths.

Etawah-based NGO Society for Conservation of Nature reported the first death in the first week of December 2007. By the end of the month, 40 gharials had died. Alarmed, the forest department sent samples of viscera and water to the Indian Veterinary Research Institute (IVRI) in Bareilly for testing toxins and disease.

Though most of the gharial carcasses found were partially decomposed, on-the-spot post-mortems revealed liver cirrhosis, as indicated by scarred and damaged liver. "After death, the carcass first sinks and then surfaces after a few days; by then it is partially decomposed," says Dhruva J Basu, gharial conservation coordinator at WWF India. IVRI scientists suspect a protozoan parasite found in viscera analysis damaged the liver and kidney in gharials. But crocodile experts rule out this possibility. "Protozoan and other parasites are common in crocodiles and other aquatic reptiles, and do not cause mortalities," says F W Huchzermeyer, a veterinary consultant and co-chair of veterinary science with the World Conservation Union's Crocodile Specialist Group. R J Rao, gharial researcher at Jiwaji University in Gwalior, echoed his views.

The IVRI report also showed high levels of lead in gharials. It can't be said for certain if these levels (0.7-1.4 ppm) are fatal. "At this level, lead can act as immunosuppressant but cannot cause mortality," says D Swarup, scientist at IVRI. There is another problem: absence of baseline data for comparison, even after 30 years of conservation. Gharials are found only in India and Nepal. The only comparison for lead levels right now is with Chinese alligators. Conservationists say high levels of lead in gharials could be from eating contaminated fish. Water and fish samples from the Chambal showed high levels of lead for the first time recently; it has no known source of lead. But it meets the Yamuna 40 km downstream of the affected area. Forest officials say contaminated fish and water could come upstream from the confluence. The lead and protozoan hypotheses debunked, Brian Stacy, veterinary pathologist at University of Florida, USA, who carried out an on-the-spot postmortem of a gharial, says there are indications of gout in gharials, possibly due to kidney failure. Huchzermeyer says if this is so, it is shocking because kidney infection, and hence gout, is very rare in gharials. Lala A K Singh, gharial expert of the Orissa forest department, says though gout is uncommon in natural crocodilian populations, it is common in captive-bred animals. He recalls a 1977 incident when most of the 400 gharial hatchlings brought from Nepal died. The symptoms were similar. Even then, the cause of deaths remained inconclusive.

Again lack of baseline data comes in the way. Huchzermeyer says he wants to study a live, healthy gharial for having baseline data but the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, does not allow this because gharial is a Schedule I species. On February 2, vets were allowed to collect urine and blood samples, which won't provide much useful data.

For the time being the scientists are focusing their investigation on diseases. Members of the Crisis Management Group have ruled out human interference and are not looking at the possibilities of poaching and reduced prey base. The dead gharials had no signs of external injury and post-mortem results indicated that deaths were not due to drowning in fishing nets, a common causes of death. Scientists also rule out poisoning of the river because the fish and other aquatic animals had not died.

Huchzermeyer has another hypothesis: "The deaths may have been caused by pansteatitis, a condition caused by consumption of rotten fish." It has killed South African crocodiles in the past. Pansteatitis causes hardening of the animal's fat, leading to reduced mobility and death by starvation in six-eight weeks of consuming dead fish. "The degeneration of the liver tissue caused by this condition can appear similar to the signs of cirrhosis, which may account for preliminary diagnosis of cirrhosis," says Huchzermeyer.

While scientists are busy explaining the disease, villagers have a different explanation. "They are dying of starvation. Extensive illegal fishing has reduced fish in the river to such an extent that big gharials are not getting enough food," says a resident of Sahnso village in Etawah. The forest department has confiscated fishing nets in the region. "I have reports of people blasting under water to kill and catch fish in large numbers," says Rajeev Chauhan, secretary general of the Society for Conservation of Nature: "Gharials might have eaten leftover dead and rotten fish," he explained. This dovetails with Huchzermeyer's hypothesis.

IVRI scientists also found that in most cases the gharial's stomach was empty. But conservationists rule out starvation, saying there is enough prey base in the river for gharials. Filmmaker Naresh Bedi, who made the first documentary on gharials, says this claim is not based on studies of the prey base.

CSE/Down To Earth Feature Service