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The Future of Sustainability: Have Your Say! Week Three - “The New Economy and Biodiversity”
---- I particularly identified with the comments of Dr Sohail Mahmood. I am sceptical about the ability of the market to deliver biodiversity outcomes without some potent global accord - that might act in the same way as a UN peace-keeping force taking action against genocidal states. At the moment most nations are committing ecocide and biodiversity is continuing to decline at an alarming rate. It is inconceivable that this trend will be halted so long as everyone aspires to the same material wealth as North Americans. This is especially so when it is being suggested by some that we can get even wealthier by being environmentally sustainable. We may well have a better quality of life that is more equitably shared but this will not happen if it is merely translated into more 'stuff' for everyone (or more likely the few).
It was recently concluded that we would need the resources of six or seven planets to support the current world population at the North American standard. While elimination of poverty and misery must be a number one priority across the world, endless economic growth is by definition unsustainable and that is the flaw in the capitalist model - which depends on indefinite growth and can only operate more or less equitably when this is occurring. In the end a steady state economy will have to be developed, and one hopes that this will evolve through progressive leadership and consensus rather than being forced on the world by catastrophe. The problem is that biodiversity extinction does not send out market signals in advance and so, as with global warming, the market is powerless to avert the impending calamity. We are a crisis species - we only act when the crisis is upon us.
It needs to be pointed out that 'clean and green' does not necessarily mean that biodiversity will prevail (if by this term we mean the unique species of each nation - or that part of global biological variation that each state is responsible for and which provides its unique identity). Especially in New Zealand, we could have perfectly clean land and water but no indigenous plants and animals in sight. We can not expect to clean up the physical environment and build the economy first and only then restore our biodiversity - because extinction is forever. Biodiversity is always the last in line despite the hopes for triple bottom line accounting. How many corporate boards and governments have ecologists? A true measure of a TBL economy would be for our decision-making boards to have equal proportions of business managers/economists, social scientists and ecologists.
Ultimately we have to ask what is the purpose or value of biodiversity? There are plenty of estimates of the monetary and other values of biodiversity for ecological services - we can only guess at the intricacies and interdependencies of food webs and ecosystem processes (including our own role), but the ultimate value is intrinsic and spiritual as Dr Mahmood implied. Depending on ones beliefs, nature and all its component species are the product of a miraculous evolutionary or creative event in this minute corner of the universe. Each creature is a unique 'creation'. How likely is it that each of these creatures will be created again if we exterminate them and what right do we have to do this anyway? There is a recently published thought-provoking book by Louv (2006) called 'The Last Child in the Woods ...' which is about the importance of early childhood experience of nature in the formation of healthy adults with a grip on reality and understanding of the natural processes we are all dependent on. Louv has coined the concept of ‘Nature Deficit Disorder’ to describe the absence of such experience. The vast tree planting and greening of Beijing for the Olympics is a great start to enhancing nature and making natural processes visible and accessible to urban dwellers - young and old - in the world’s most populous country. |