I’ve seriously tried to believe capitalism and the planet can coexist, but I’ve lost faith

Samuel Alexander, University of Melbourne

This article is the first in a three-part series on radical ideas to solve the environmental crisis.

As the Productivity Commission confirmed this week, Australia’s economy has enjoyed uninterrupted growth for 28 years straight. Specifically, our output of goods and services last financial year grew by 2%. Economists obviously see the growth of a national economy as good news – but what is it doing to the Earth?

Capitalism demands limitless economic growth, yet research shows that trajectory is incompatible with a finite planet.

If capitalism is still the dominant economic system in 2050, current trends suggest our planetary ecosystems will be, at best, on the brink of collapse. Bushfires will become more monstrous and wildlife will continue to be annihilated.

As my research has sought to demonstrate, an adequate response to climate change, and the broader environmental crisis, will require creating a post-capitalist society which operates within Earth’s ecological limits.

This won’t will be easy – it will be the hardest thing our species has tried to do. I’m not saying capitalism hasn’t produced benefits for society (although those benefits are distributed very unequally within and between nations).

And of course, some people will think even talking about the prospect is naive, or ludicrous. But it’s time to have the conversation.

What is growth?

Economic growth generally refers to gross domestic product (GDP) – the monetary value of goods and services produced in an economy. Historically, and across the globe, GDP and environmental impact has been closely linked.

Capitalism needs growth. Businesses must pursue profits to stay viable and governments want growth because a larger tax base means more capacity for funding public services. And if any government tried to slow or stop growth for environmental reasons, powerful economic forces under capitalism would offer fierce resistance – with some businesses perhaps threatening to leave the nation altogether.

What about ‘green growth’?

Most mainstream economists and politicians accept the science on the dire state of the planet, but not many people think capitalism is the problem. Instead, the dominant response to the ecological crisis is to call for ‘green growth’.

This theory involves producing ever more goods and services, but with fewer resources and impacts. So a business might design its products to have less environmental impact, or a product at the end of its life could be reused – sometimes called a ‘circular economy’.

If our entire economy produced and consumed goods and services like this, we mightn’t need to abandon the growth economics inherent to capitalism. Instead, we would just “decouple” economic growth from environmental impact.

Too good to be true

There are several big problems with green growth theory. First, it isn’t happening at the global scale – and where it is happening to a limited extent within nations, the change is not fast or deep enough to head off dangerous climate change.

Second, the extent of “decoupling” required is simply too great. Ecological footprint accounting shows we need 1.75 planets to support existing economic activity into the future – yet every nation seeks more growth and ever-rising material living standards.

Trying to reform capitalism – with a carbon tax here and some redistribution there – might go some way to reducing environmental harm and advancing social justice.

But the faith in the god of growth brings all this undone. The United Nations’ development agenda assumes “sustained economic growth” is the best way to alleviate global poverty – a noble and necessary goal. But our affluent living standards simply cannot be globalised while remaining within safe planetary limits. We need degrowth, which means planned contraction of energy and resource demands.

Taking a fair share

Let’s do the maths. If all humans lived like Australians, we’d need more than four planets to sustain us. Earth’s population is set to reach 9.7 billion by 2050. Our current levels of consumption do not add up.

Something resembling a fair share could involve developed nations reducing energy and resource demands by 50% or even 75% or more. This would mean transcending consumer lifestyles, embracing far more modest but sufficient material living standards, and creating new post-capitalist modes of production and distribution that aimed to meet the basic needs of all – not for limitless growth.

The “downshift” in material consumption can begin at the individual level where possible. But more broadly we must create local and sharing economies that don’t depend on globalised, fossil-fuelled distribution chains.

A range of social movements will be needed to persuade politicians to adopt systemic change.

Last year’s global student strikes and Extinction Rebellion protests were a good start. Over time, they could create widespread public momentum for an alternative, post-growth economy.

Ultimately, structural and policy inventions will be needed. This includes changes to land governance to make sustainable living easier. And we need to start having difficult but compassionate conversations about population growth.

Transcending capitalism

I’m certainly not suggesting we adopt a centralised, Soviet-style state socialism. After all, a socialist economy seeking growth without limit is just as unsustainable as growth capitalism. We must expand our imaginations and explore alternatives.

I don’t have all the answers – and I think post-capitalist movements, now and in the future, will probably fail. But if we do not recognise capitalism’s inherent growth fetish as the central problem, we cannot formulate a coherent response.

Samuel Alexander, Research fellow, Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Academia can help humans and large carnivores coexist

In Romania, wolves live in the same landscapes as shepherds.
Shutterstock

Euan Ritchie, Deakin University; Abi Vanak, University of KwaZulu-Natal; Benjamin Scheele, Australian National University; Laurentiu Rozylowicz, and Tibor Hartel

Bears, wolves, lions and other top predators have a long history of conflict with people – they can threaten our safety and kill livestock.

In our recent study, published in Conservation Biology, we outline how conventional conservation approaches are unlikely to lead to effective coexistence between humans and large carnivores in human-dominated landscapes.

This wicked problem encompasses public safety, agriculture, conservation, animal welfare, and more. Each facet is commonly managed by a different institution working in isolation – often failing to reflect the reality of our highly connected world.

Academia can help foster better institutional arrangements, especially in places like Romania, India and Brazil, where there are substantial populations of people and large carnivores in shared spaces.

In Romania, for instance, bears and wolves live in the same places used by shepherds and their livestock. Guardian dogs typically help protect livestock from being attacked.

Similarly, Australia’s own dingo occurs across agricultural and pastoral regions, with sentiments ranging from protected native species to disliked pest.

Why institutions fail carnivore-human relationships

From bears in Romania to dingoes in Australia, large carnivores are found in an array of places. This means they regularly affect the interests of a range of institutions, from agriculture to forestry.

But the current arrangements are poorly suited to facilitate a peaceful coexistence between humans and large carnivores.

Typically, institutions focus on a small subset of concerns. Forestry and agricultural sectors, for instance, may not feel responsible for large carnivore conservation because they are primarily interested in timber and agricultural production.

On the other hand, institutions for transport, energy and border security might be indifferent towards large carnivores. But they can negatively affect these animals if they put up barriers restricting predator movement and inappropriately handle roadkill.

These compartmentalised, and often conflicting, institutions are poorly suited to helping wildlife, especially when large carnivores, such as leopards, wolves and bears, live in human-dominated regions.

A role for academia

Academia has solutions to offer.

Most environment-related professionals, like foresters, wildlife managers and conservation biologists, are trained in a range of academic institutions. Unfortunately, they are often taught narrowly within their sector or discipline.

However, all these future professionals passing through the same institutions provides a great opportunity for a broad change in how we approach difficult conservation challenges and conflict with wildlife.

A leopard being rescued from a well in rural India, where the animals interact with locals regularly.
Photo credit: John Linnell

There are at least three ways in which academia could help address the challenges of human and large carnivore coexistence:

1. Break down the silos

Academic institutions need to create special centres to better support teaching and research across different disciplines.

Conservation – and, on a broader level, how humans should relate to the natural world – cannot be siloed away in wildlife management courses.

2. Broaden the view

We need to actively foster a broader perspective that does not see large carnivores as an “enemy”, while still safeguarding human life. This is a complex and multifaceted challenge.

By working across disciplines, universities have the chance to actively foster this broader perspective. This may seem like a nebulous point, but the collapse of species around the world has highlighted how ineffective our current approach to conservation is. We need to move beyond tinkering around the edges of our extinction crisis.

Conservation policy is already equipped to address individual targets such as regulating carnivore populations and legally protecting species. It is the larger aim of changing norms, challenging values and ensuring all these various institutions are pulling in the same direction that we need to tackle – a tactic called the “leverage points approach”.

3. Work outside the academy

Academia could support existing collaborations. When people with shared interests come together to pool knowledge and address a particular issue, we call it a community of practice. Academia can contribute to these communities by offering the skills and expertise of its graduates, but also broader social and industry connections (where required), knowledge sharing, collaborative research, education and technological innovation.

We need big carnivores and they need us

Large carnivores are critical for the health of ecosystems globally, and we need to provide them with enough space and tolerance to survive.

The ongoing controversy regarding the management of the dingo, Australia’s largest land-based predator (aside from humans), provides a perfect test case for this new approach to managing human-wildlife conflict.

If we can achieve more harmonious relations with the world’s top predators, many of the myriad other species that coexist with them are also likely to benefit from both better habitat management and conservation and the important ecological effects large carnivores can have, such as keeping herbivore and smaller predator numbers in check. This can be a positive step towards addressing Earth’s mass extinction crisis.

The authors would like to thank John Linnell, Senior Research Scientist at the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research, for his contribution to this article.

Euan Ritchie, Associate Professor in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, Centre for Integrative Ecology, School of Life & Environmental Sciences, Deakin University; Abi Vanak, , University of KwaZulu-Natal; Benjamin Scheele, Research Fellow in Ecology, Australian National University; Laurentiu Rozylowicz, Center for Environmental Research and Impact Studies, University of Bucharest, and Tibor Hartel, Invited user

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Oil, gas and marine parks really can coexist in our oceans – here’s how

Cordelia Moore, Curtin University; Ben Radford, Australian Institute of Marine Science; Clay Bryce; Hugh Possingham, The University of Queensland; Oliver Berry, CSIRO, and Romola Stewart

When it comes to conserving the world’s oceans, bigger isn’t necessarily better. Globally, there has been an increasing trend towards placing very large marine reserves in remote regions. While these reserves help to meet some conservation targets, we don’t know if they are achieving their ultimate goal of protecting the diversity of life.

In 2002, the Convention on Biological Diversity called for at least 10% of each of the world’s land and marine habitats to be effectively conserved by 2010. Protected areas currently cover 14% of the land, but less than 3.4% of the marine environment.

Australia’s marine reserve system covers more than a third of our oceans. This system was based on the best available information and a commitment to minimising the effects of the new protected areas on existing users. However, since its release the system has been strongly criticised for doing little to protect biodiversity, and it is currently under review.

In a new study published in Scientific Reports, we looked at the current and proposed marine reserves off northwest Australia – an area that is also home to significant oil and gas resources. Our findings show how conservation objectives could be met more efficiently. Using technical advances, including the latest spatial modelling software, we were able to fill major gaps in biodiversity representation, with minimal losses to industry.

A delicate balance

Australia’s northwest supports important habitats such as mangrove forests, seagrass beds, coral reefs and sponge gardens. These environments support exceptionally diverse marine communities and provide important habitat for many vulnerable and threatened species, including dugongs, turtles and whale sharks.

This region also supports valuable industrial resources, including the majority of Australia’s conventional gas reserves.

A 2013 global analysis found that regions featuring both high numbers of species and large fossil fuel reserves have the greatest need for industry regulation, monitoring and conservation.

Proposed and existing state and Commonwealth marine reserves in northwest Australia shown in relation to petroleum leases.
Cordelia Moore

Conservation opportunitites

Not all protected areas contribute equally to conserving species and habitats. The level of protection can range from no-take zones (which usually don’t allow any human exploitation), to areas allowing different types and levels of activities such tourism, fishing and petroleum and mineral extraction.

A recent review of 87 marine reserves across the globe revealed that no-take areas, when well enforced, old, large and isolated, provided the greatest benefits for species and habitats. It is estimated that no-take areas cover less than 0.3% of the world’s oceans.

In Australia’s northwest, no-take zones cover 10.2% of the area, which is excellent by world standards in terms of size. However, an analysis of gaps in the network reveal opportunities to better meet the Convention on Biological Diversity’s recommended minimum target level of representation across all species and features of conservation interest.

We provided the most comprehensive description of the species present across the region enabling us to examine how well local species are represented within the current marine reserves. Of the 674 species examined, 98.2% had less than 10% of their habitat included within the no-take areas, while more than a third of these (227 species) had less than 2% of their habitat included.

Into the abyss

Few industries in this region operate in depths greater than 200 metres. Therefore, the habitats and biodiversity most at risk are those exposed to human activity on the continental shelf, at these shallower depths.

However, the research also found that three-quarters of the no-take marine reserves are sited over a deep abyssal plain and continental rise within the Argo-Rowley Terrace (3,000-6,000m deep). These habitats are unnecessarily over-represented (85% of the abyss is protected), as their remoteness and extreme depth make them logistically and financially unattractive for petroleum or mineral extraction anyway.

The majority of the no-take marine reserves lie over a deep abyssal plain.
Cordelia Moore

Proposed multiple-use zones in Commonwealth waters provide some much-needed extra representation of the continental shelf (0-200m depth). However, all mining activities and most commercial fishing activities are permissible pending approval. This means that the management of these multiple-use zones will require some serious consideration to ensure they are effective.

A win for conservation and industry

An imbalance in marine reserve representation can be driven by governments wanting to minimise socio-economic costs. But it doesn’t have to be one or the other.

Our research has shown that better zoning options can maximise the number of species while still keeping losses to industry very low. Our results show that the 10% biodiversity conservation targets could be met with estimated losses of only 4.9% of area valuable to the petroleum industry and 7.2% loss to the fishing industry (in terms of total catch in kg).

Examples of how the no-take reserves could be extended or redesigned to represent the region’s unique species and habitats.
Cordelia Moore

Management plans for the Commonwealth marine reserves are under review and changes that deliver win-win outcomes, like the ones we have found, should be considered.

We have shown how no-take areas in northwest Australia could either be extended or redesigned to ensure the region’s biodiversity is adequately represented. The cost-benefit analysis used is flexible and provides several alternative reserve designs. This allows for open and transparent discussions to ensure we find the best balance between conservation and industry.

Cordelia Moore, Research Associate, Curtin University; Ben Radford, Research scientist, Australian Institute of Marine Science; Clay Bryce, Senior Project Manager; Hugh Possingham, Director ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions, The University of Queensland; Oliver Berry, Senior Research Scientist, CSIRO, and Romola Stewart, Adjunct Research Fellow, The University of Queensland

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
			1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28	29	30	31

Kevin's Walk on the Wild Side

Environment, Wildlife and Wilderness – Articles and News

Tag Archives for coexist