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Page added on June 11, 2015
Pragmatic Conservation
The last few years have seen a big debate among leading conservationists over the future of parks and protected areas. On one side are groups like The Nature Conservancy that work with foreign countries to site hydroelectric dams so they are less destructive of river systems and with big corporations to protect wetlands and reduce pollution. These groups have tended to argue that all of nature is a kind of “rambunctious garden,” a mix of human and nonhuman influences.
On the other side are groups like the Center for Biological Diversity that sue US government agencies to protect more endangered species and try to stop dams in poor countries. These groups criticize the view of nature as a garden and defend older views of wilderness as devoid of human activity. The fighting has been so intense that a group of scientists last year urged both groups to calm down and seek common ground.
What has been missing from the debates is a discussion of the biggest challenge facing conservationists everywhere: how to meet the food, energy, and other resource needs of poor nations while protecting parks, biodiversity, and threatened animal populations. While conservation has succeeded in protecting 13 percent of the ice-free surface of the Earth, many protected areas in poor countries are threatened by societal demands for food, energy, and resources.
Although the situation looks grim in poor nations, in rich nations protected areas are growing in number and size, and animal populations are growing so much that communities from Bangor, Maine, to Brisbane, Australia, are struggling to control their respective bear and kangaroo populations.
Understanding the reasons for this difference between rich and poor nations is crucial to protecting more nature in the 21st century. In rich nations, demand for food, energy, and natural resources has largely saturated and is increasingly decoupled from economic growth. This has allowed for what conservationists call “rewilding.” In the United States and Europe, marginal farmland has been abandoned and returned to grasslands and forests, and animal populations have surged.
For ecomodernists, the implications are clear: if we want to protect more nature in the 21st century, then poor and developed nations must also decouple their food, energy, and resource demands from economic growth. Such a reality can be achieved more quickly through urbanization, agricultural intensification, electrification, and other modernization processes.
Decoupling efforts are not enough, however, and still require a strategy for managing rewilding. On this question, argues Stanford geographer Martin Lewis in a new piece for Breakthrough Journal, rich countries have something important to learn from poor ones. In “Rewilding Pragmatism,” Lewis draws on the messy successes of Kruger National Park in South Africa. Kruger is crisscrossed by roads and cluttered with middlebrow accommodations. But its populism, its growing size, and its rebounding animal populations, including elephants and apex predators, have led many scientists to conclude that Kruger’s pragmatic model — characterized by positive relations with park neighbors — is superior to fussier rewilding efforts in the United States and Europe.
“We don’t have to choose between the ‘wilderness’ of the traditional green imagination and the ‘domesticated garden’ that is the supposed desideratum of the new school,” Lewis concludes.
Conservationists will, to be sure, continue to disagree about the best path forward for protecting more nature in the 21st century. Such debates are inevitable to democratic societies and resource management questions that require trade-offs and tough decisions.
What decoupling for conservation offers is a strategy for reducing the number of trade-offs and accelerating the arrival of peak human impact. What pragmatic rewilding offers is a framework for managing trade-offs and minimizing conflicts with local communities negatively affected by land use restrictions and burgeoning animal populations.
Decoupling and pragmatic rewilding won’t end the nature wars, but together they provide a path to meet the rising global demand not only for food, energy, and resources, but also for biodiversity and nature protection.
As always, responses are welcome.
12 Comments on "Pragmatic Conservation"
Plantagenet on Thu, 11th Jun 2015 2:25 pm
Decoupling energy and resource demands from economic growth is a good idea in theory, but for most countries economic growth requires more energy consumption. The amount of energy needed for a given amount of GDP growth can be reduced, but increases in energy use is needed to fuel some kinds of economic growth.
GregT on Thu, 11th Jun 2015 3:20 pm
The first law of thermodynamics (the conservation law) implies the mass-balance principle. In order to obtain a given material output, greater or equal quantities of matter must enter the production process as inputs, with the residual as a pollutant or waste product. Therefore, there are minimum material input requirements for any production process producing material outputs.
The second law of thermodynamics (the efficiency law) implies that a minimum quantity of energy is required to carry out the transformation of matter. All production involves the transformation or movement of matter in some way, and all such transformations require energy. Therefore, there must be limits to the substitution of other factors of production for energy. Energy is also an essential factor of production. Though all economic processes require energy, some service activities may not require the direct processing of materials. However, this is only true at the micro level. At the macro level (economy-wide level), all economic processes require the indirect use of materials, either in the maintenance of labor or in the production of capital goods.
http://sterndavidi.com/Publications/Growth.pdf
GregT on Thu, 11th Jun 2015 3:22 pm
GDP is not an Accurate Indicator of Economic growth
Economists are up in arms regarding the U.S. government’s insistence on using the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as the measure of economic growth for the country. The argument is that the number is an accounting illusion performed by allowing government spending, even if it ends up being a losing investment, adding to the GDP, thereby creating a situation wherein more government spending always increases GDP. By extension, government spending always increases economic growth and this is untrue, considering such examples as scrapped defense projects, “bridges to nowhere” and stimulus spending. Critics say a better measure would be Gross Private Product (GPP), which is derived from subtracting the GDP from government consumption expenditures and gross investment.
http://www.nuwireinvestor.com/articles/gdp-not-real-indicator-of-economic-growth-57693.aspx
Makati1 on Thu, 11th Jun 2015 8:53 pm
If world energy consumption were to be evenly distributed, all 7+ billion of us could live a Brazilian lifestyle. Unfortunately, the Western countries use many multiples of that and many countries, many divisions of that. Why? Plunder over the last 200+ years by the West, which is continuing today.
Conservation is for the time when there was plenty. Now it is every man, woman and child for themselves. When famine hits the shores of every continent, and it will, anything edible will become extinct. Even cannibalism became the norm in historical times during famine. Was Soylent Green a sign of the future?
Davy on Thu, 11th Jun 2015 9:03 pm
Hell, Mak, try putting the other shoe on. If Asia would procreate responsibly we would have the resources and ecosystem to maybe transition to a a post industrial world.
As it stands now Asia has spoiled the party with a crowd. Overpopulation is the biggest issue today more so than consumption. Consumption can be dialed down quickly but not irresponsible Asian baby factories.
Makati1 on Thu, 11th Jun 2015 11:05 pm
Davy, I don’t give a damned about your family or it’s survival. How’s that for arrogance? I am waiting for the crash that takes down the Empire, and hope it is soon. I am ashamed to be an American these days as more and more murder in my name is committed by our rogue government.
Don’t preach the ‘overpopulation’ bullshit until you have cut your personal and family consumption about 80% to the level of the rest of the world. I doubt that you can do that with an American consuming family without a divorce. I am already half way there and next year, I hope to be closer in consumption to that of my farm neighbors, when we build and relocate.
They don’t even have electric or running water at the moment, but we are bringing a road in to our property that will help them and us in the future. And also an electric service they can connect to. What are you doing for your neighbors to promote friendship and mutual assistance?
Makati1 on Thu, 11th Jun 2015 11:10 pm
Davy. You need to take off the Asian blinders. You have to go down the list of population increase by country to number 72, Cambodia, before you get to the first Asian country.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population_growth_rate
GregT on Fri, 12th Jun 2015 12:09 am
Mak and Davy,
Two Americans, that have both opted out of the system, arguing over who’s opt out is better. Come on guys, give it a rest already.
Davy on Fri, 12th Jun 2015 2:44 am
Greg, you know I have tried to make friends with Mak and make the occasional overtures. He is ok for a time then he gets excessive with his agenda. It is the constant anti-American comments that require a response for balance. It is a big world out there with lots of bad stuff going on. I am not going to listen to Mak’s unbalanced anti-American agenda without an eventual response.
What amazes me is how he can’t take his own medicine. I am also amused that he gives away his poker hand when something hints at the truth. I like Mak when he moderates but he is so annoying when he is an extremist. Mak and I have much in common being doomers and preppers yet he has to hammer an agenda into this board like a stake in the heart of a vampire.
Revi on Fri, 12th Jun 2015 7:07 am
The concept of ecotourism is that things like charismatic megafauna are and economic engine for an area. It’s working in places like Costa Rica which was really poor when I lived there in the early 80’s, but now is relatively prosperous thanks to ecotourism. I don’t have a problem with it. Conserving land and having some kind of a draw keeps the animals and a lot of humans alive.
Apneaman on Fri, 12th Jun 2015 1:37 pm
May rainfall most ever in United States
http://www.wfmz.com/news/may-rainfall-most-ever-in-united-states/33516140
Kenz300 on Sat, 13th Jun 2015 8:44 am
Over population is the worlds greatest environmental problem…….