Editorial
It
is just a year since Donella Meadows died. Who was she? Better known as
Dana Meadows, she was the lead author of the 1972 report “The Limits
to Growth” to the Club of Rome. Dana had worked with Jay Forrester,
the researcher who modelled the continuous critical problems the Club
of Rome wanted to address. As they worked, the modelling team saw that
there was a primary cause for all these problems.
Forrester
reported to the Club members on what the modellers had found. “There
is a primary cause of the Continuous Critical Problems. It is growth -
exponential growth of the physical economy and population against the
earth’s physical limits. That which all the world sees as the solution
to its problems is in fact a cause of its problems. Complex systems are
often like that - counterintuitive.”
The
Club members listened politely, then went back to discuss each of the
world’s problems as though each was unrelated, and as though there
were no limits. In her memoirs Dana commented on “… the inability
of people to hear a message that questions one of their deepest assumptions.
Even the concerned, sophisticated members of the Club of Rome could not
accommodate in their conceptual framework the idea that growth might be
a problem as well as a solution.”
In
the intervening thirty years we have not become any better at understanding
messages that conflict with our preconceptions. Business and government
insist we must have growth, growth is good. Yet we can all see that as
population and GDP grow so too does inequality. Humanitarian crises are
on the rise and the number of refugees continues to escalate as a result
of environmental problems as well as war.
When New York suffered the terror of the destruction of the World Trade
Centre last September, what was the message that was heard? It was that
the terrorists were evil men who hated the United States because of its
democracy and way of life. And yes, the terrorists did hate the USA, but
that country itself should question its own role in the matter. Some Americans
wondered out loud why they should be hated when they were always doing
good in the world. It is true that they often do good, but the world trade
system over which they preside has done great harm to many countries.
The
optimism of the early post World War II years has given way to despair
as the poorer countries have watched the destruction of their own economies
while the western world has become ever more affluent. The one fifth of
the world’s population that live in the west now consume four fifths
of the world’s production. That statistic alone shows that there
is cause for ill will if not downright hatred. There are additional reasons
such as religious intolerance and cultural animosities, but the sheer
inequality goes a long way to explaining even these.
If
we could manage to seek the real cause of the problems, to make the connections,
to understand that growth itself can be good, bad or neutral, we could
examine the claims for different kinds of growth. We would understand
that growth that hurts other people, that harms the environment and destroys
other species is bad. Growth of alternative technologies that provide
a measure of comfort for everyone without destroying the environment is
good. Growth in kindness and social capital is good. A decrease (negative
growth) in inequality and in conflict would be very good indeed.
If
the money which was almost effortlessly found so quickly for the War on
Terrorism could be found to reform the world’s financial system to
the benefit of debtor nations then that would be excellent. It would also
ease the problems of the richer countries for it would reduce the stream
of refugees and minimise the risk of terrorism. In our own interest we
need to look for constructive ways to reduce inequality rather than go
to war to protect ourselves.
Back
to Top
Forthcoming
NSF meetings
20 February
- 7.45 pm, Heysen Street, Weston
What
Canberra needs to do to become sustainable
joint
presentation by Dr John Schooneveldt and Dr Janis Birkeland
John
and Janis will talk about the set of criteria for judging sustainability
of urban environments they have recently developed as part of a consultancy
with the ACT Government.
20 March
- 7.45 pm, Heysen Street, Weston
Commercialisation
of solar power and the Kyoto Protocol
Dr
Andrew Blakers
The Australian
National University has substantial R&D activities in the area
of photovoltaics and concentrating solar thermal systems. The photovoltaic
and solar thermal groups combine to form the Centre for Sustainable
Energy Systems (CSES). CSES has about 40 staff and research students
and derives most of its income from non-University sources. Our work
covers the spectrum from basic R&D through to commercial contract
research in the fields of photovoltaics and solar thermal. The talk
will describe our activities in the context of commercialisation of
solar energy and international negotiations over the Kyoto Protocol.
17 April
- 7.45 pm, Heysen Street, Weston
The
Australian Eco-labelling Program: a market trigger for sustainable
development
Petar
Johnson, President, Australian Environmental Labelling Association
(AELA)
The Australian
Ecolabel Program seeks to deliver to the Australian market a credible
indication of the environmental performance of a product or service.
By being able to recognise environmentally preferable products and
services, consumers can better choose their ecological footprint and
manufacturers can gain a competitive advantage on environmental performance.
Environmental labelling promises to be an important market-based instrument
for increasing design for environment and integrated product policy
on the Australian market. Petar will present an overview of how the
Ecolabelling Program works.
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Unfair
Trade
You may have
heard Professor George Mondeo talking on Background Briefing, Radio National
on 13 November last year or in one of its summer repeats. Mondeo, of the
UK University of East London, was speaking about the undemocratic nature
of most of the international bodies which increasingly affect our lives.
The World
Trade Organisation, for instance, represents corporations and presides
over a “race to the bottom”, to the lowest common denominator
in environmental standards. It penalises countries if they try to protect
their people or their environment. It ensures that no country can prohibit
imports on the basis of ethical, health or environmental concerns.
The almost
unheard of Trans-Atlantic Economic Partnership was proposed by Tony Blair
and Bill Clinton in 1997. Anything that is allowed on one side of the
Atlantic must be allowed on the other side. No barriers are admitted,
for example, to trade in milk produced by injecting hormones into dairy
cows in the USA, no matter what the cost to the cows or to human consumers.
This organisation is run and monitored by the Trans-Atlantic Business
Dialogue, consisting of the chief executives of the 100 biggest companies
on either side of the Atlantic.
Turning to the resentment, anger and helplessness felt in so many indebted
countries, Mondeo looked at the terrible legacy of debt inflicted by the
current world financial system. He pointed out that the British economist
John Maynard Keynes, dismayed by the results of debt between the two world
wars, devised a system that would prevent recurrence.
Keynes realised
that trading in national currencies would be a disaster as hard currencies
would effectively wage war on soft currencies. He proposed a special international
currency to be run by a bank he called The International Clearing Union.
It would charge creditor nations the same interest as debtors, so there
would be an incentive to maintain a zero balance. Any country with a credit
would either invest heavily in poorer countries or it would alter the
terms of trade to favour indebted ones. This would ensure indebted countries
received fair terms for their products, which is the reverse of what happens
now.
Arguing for
its proposal, Keynes predicted exactly what would happen if it lost. It
did, and we got the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund and
debt.
A World Trade
Organisation that reversed its present stand would be a good thing. It
would set minimum international standards in human rights, social and
environmental protection, and use sanctions to prevent any undercutting
of them.
We need to
discuss the politics of scale as well as economies of scale in economics.
It may be necessary to limit the size of corporations, some of which are
bigger than nation states. A global cap on executive pay, limiting it
to a certain multiple of the lowest wages paid in the corporation, could
effectively raise the living standards of lower paid workers.
Mondeo concluded
that governments do not give power away, but people can take it by non-violent
protest and by full participation (not just by voting) in the political
process.
He thinks
this is the point when the world could begin to change for the better.
Making the world better, more prosperous and much fairer would be a fitting
memorial to the people who died on 11th Sept. and those who have died
since in Afghanistan.
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Slow
Cities
The “slow
food” movement started as a protest in 1986 when McDonald’s
first opened in Rome. Now more than 70,000 people in over fifty countries
have joined the movement to celebrate meals prepared with love and consumed
at leisure.
Recently
Italy took a lead again in resisting the global speed-up. In 1999 Paolo
Saturnini, mayor of Greve-in-Chianti, a medieval hilltop town in Tuscany,
started thinking about applying the slow food philosophy to towns. He
got together with some other mayors, discussing the same principles of
cherishing local traditions, believing in diversity, and resisting the
globalisation of culture.
More than
thirty Italian towns have signed up. They are not anti-progress. They
are happy to use technology to control air, noise and light pollution.
They want modern waste-cycling and composting facilities. They are keen
to encourage local business. They value their own communities and traditions.
The movement
is spreading slowly (as is appropriate) with some towns outside Italy
interested. So far not one town in the English speaking world has shown
any interest.
(The Canberra Times 8 Jan 02)
Now there’s
a thought. Maybe Canberra could take the lead. Of course many Sydneysiders
and Melbournians would scoff and say that Canberra is already an unwitting
member, which we in Canberra know is not true. But it seems that the ideas
of the Slow Cities movement would sit nicely with conservation ethics.
They should also appeal to the land of the long weekend, where lazy days
at the beach or the cricket ground have traditionally been treasured.
Emboldened
by this article I am including in this issue an essay I wrote last year
for a competition run by Shell and The Economist on the topic “Going
faster - but where?” Unfortunately slowing down did not appeal to
the judges!
Jenny
Wanless
Back to Top
Going
Faster - But Where?
by Jenny
Wanless
The Aboriginal
people of the Uluru (Ayers Rock) region of Central Australia put out a
video for tourists some years ago. One of its aims was to gently dissuade
tourists from climbing the rock, which is sacred to their tribes. The
video showed a speeded-up view of the climbers, like a procession of ants
scuttling up the rock and down again. It made the activity look ridiculous
and raised the question, “what are these people doing?”
This is an
appropriate image and question for humans hurrying around the globe during
the 20th Century. The advent of the railways in the 19th Century enabled
many people to travel and the car and the aeroplane greatly expanded the
number of travellers over the next century. What will happen in the present
century? At the moment the trend is up, with exponential growth in numbers
of tourists, just as there has been in the total number of humans. A hundred
years ago it was fairly rare for a person to have been around the world.
Now a great many people have been around it several times and some circumnavigate
it every few weeks. And just as sheer numbers of people are harming the
earth so too is the ceaseless travel. It has been said that tourists destroy
the very things they go to see, and there is a good deal of truth in that.
There are
several ways in which mass transport of people and goods harm the world.
The most obvious is the use of fossil fuel in various forms to power planes,
trains and motor vehicles, with the concomitant exhaust gases contributing
mightily to the enhanced greenhouse effect. A second problem is increased
consumption and waste en route. At home a careful person can avoid small
packets of food and toiletries, cutting down on unnecessary packaging.
When travelling it seems inevitable that you become part of a vast chain
of rubbish, and that opportunities for recycling become less. Also sheets
and towels will be laundered more frequently for travellers than for stay-at-homes,
using more electricity, water and detergent.
A third problem
is that multitudes of people trampling over ancient sites or natural landscapes
cause erosion. Even the air the visitors breathe out can be damaging,
which is one of the reasons Lascaux Cave had to be closed to the general
public.
Another very
serious problem which is becoming apparent is the unwitting transport
of diseases and pests. Ships have always carried “passengers”
on their hulls or in their bilge water. Now ballast water is a major problem;
it has carried many pest species of marine life to new areas. In a time
of slower travel it was possible for quarantine services to prevent some
diseases and pests from travelling to new areas. Now, with faster travel
and huge numbers of movements, quarantine services are rendered largely
ineffectual. Planes are particularly bad as they can travel anywhere on
earth within the incubation period of any disease.
So although
many countries are basing their economies more and more on tourism the
costs of tourism may at times outweigh the benefits. When a country has
to destroy its sheep and cattle herds because of disease introduced from
another country then the profitability of mass transport and tourism must
be questioned.
Even the
more benign sounding eco-tourism has its down-side. It is simply not possible
for more than small numbers of people to visit an important or endangered
area without deleterious effects on it: the more people, the greater the
impact. Eco-tourists, too, unless they are prepared to walk everywhere
and do without many comforts, will have similar effects to other tourists
in their use of fossil fuels and other resources.
So there
are reasons why the great increase in travel of our own times may well
be a temporary feature. Just as the population has been growing exponentially
but now shows signs that it will peak and then decline, so too mass tourism
will decline as reality bites during the 21st Century.
It is not
only tourism that produces the untoward results. Even when we stay at
home our modern lifestyle leads to similar problems. In our rush to fit
more into our day we go everywhere by car. This not only leads to a great
increase in harmful emissions, but also to a huge expansion in road systems
which have their own serious consequences. Good agricultural land gets
consumed, wild life suffers as habitat is carved up, run-off from roads
can poison ground water.
The consequences
for humans are also serious. Drivers suffer tension and frustration, which
add to the tensions inherent in living in a rush. But while the nervous
system is abused by over-use, other bodily systems, such as the muscles,
including the heart, get too little healthy exercise. The result is a
great increase in obesity, diabetes and other diseases of modern life.
These effects on health were obvious before the end of the last century
and attempts have been made to counter them. But the cure is often as
bad as the disease, with people rushing (yet again) to the gym for a work-out,
or travelling considerable distances to sporting activities. Many of these
sports generate their own environmental problems.
Meanwhile
environmental consciousness has been rising and people have been increasingly
concerned about what is happening to wildlife and forests, water, air
and the climate. But for a long time there has been great resistance to
the realisation that modern lifestyles, as well as population numbers,
have been driving the changes.
Looking back
from the late 21st Century, it will be interesting to study the attitudes
of people at the time. Quite early the plight of the panda was used to
mobilise people to save wildlife, but the panda was seen as a victim of
forest clearing and over-population in China. The demise of wild tiger
populations early in the present century upset many people but it was
blamed on traditional medicine demands. Our great ape cousins were eliminated
from the wild, but this was caused by habitat loss and the bush meat trade.
In every case someone else was at fault. But when the last wild polar
bears died in the first quarter of this century the developed nations
were finally struck with their guilt. The bears had not been hunted, trapped,
tortured or used in any way. They had been left almost alone in the arctic
wilderness, the only intrusion being a few harmless oil fields but modern
living had deprived them of the snow and ice without which they could
not live.
What was
worse was that although it might have been possible to keep captive populations
of apes and tigers, breeding generation after generation while some portions
of the earth were reforested, there was nothing that could be done for
the polar bears. There was no way to make snow in sufficient quantities
to enable the bears to go back to the wild. As even skiers admitted reluctantly,
driving to the snow fields and making the snow artificially had helped
to cripple their sport and doom the bears.
This realisation
at last forced people to think about what they were doing. They realised
this ease of travel had been bought at great cost to the environment and
had already destroyed much of what made travel worthwhile. Cities everywhere
were very similar, the distinctive animals and plants of different regions
were disappearing and what was left was being swamped by introduced species.
Instead of
travelling, people started to look back to what had been lost. They visited
a virtual world by use of sophisticated technologies, not including real-time
travel. Participants ‘travelled’ back to the world of 50 or
100 years earlier, visiting the rainforests, the arctic tundra, the coral
reef that had been lost. They determined not to let any more species vanish
from the earth if it was possible to prevent their disappearance. About
the same time governments in developed countries started to take energy
conservation measures seriously for the first time. This was helped, of
course, by the realisation that natural gas and oil reserves were getting
low and prices were skyrocketing. Business and government stopped blaming
oil producers for profiteering and instead looked realistically at their
options. Businesses that had taken the matter seriously for some decades
were in the best position to keep operating. Oil companies that had moved
into renewable energy were able to cash in on their foresight. Others
found themselves out of business as governments decided they had to conserve
what reserves there were to fuel agriculture. To prevent famine, new ways
had to be found to feed a world population which had depended on petrochemical
inputs into agriculture for over 50 years.
As for looking
to mass tourism to keep economies afloat, that was completely out of the
question. By the middle of this century, the only vehicles on the road
were powered by hydrogen which had been produced by electricity from a
renewable resource such as solar, wind or water power. These sources were
still limited, so most of the hydrogen was reserved for public transport,
causing a change of pace for everyone.
The 21st
Century, which had started with airlines competing for more flights, more
passengers, was only half over when there was not a plane left in the
sky. There was also not a polar bear left alive on the planet.
Back to Top
Polar
Bears and Three-Year-Olds on Thin Ice
Donella
Meadows' The Global Citizen, February 2, 2002
(Donella Meadows' last newspaper column before her sudden illness)
The place
to watch for global warming — the sensitive point, the canary in
the coal mine — is the Arctic. If the planet as a whole warms by
one degree, the poles will warm by about three degrees. Which is just
what is happening.
Ice now cover
15 percent less of the Arctic Ocean than it did 20 years ago. In the 1950s
that ice averaged 10 feet thick; now it’s less than six feet thick.
At the current rate of melting, in 50 years the northern ocean could be
ice-free all summer long.
That, says
an article in Science of January 19, would be the end of polar bears.
In fact many creatures of the Arctic Ocean are already in trouble.
Until recently
no one knew that there were many creatures of the Arctic Ocean. In the
1970s a Russian biologist named Melnikov discovered 200 species of tiny
organisms, algae and zooplankton, hanging around ice floes in immense
numbers, forming slime jungles on the bottoms of bergs and plankton clouds
in every break of open water. Their carcasses fall to the bottom to nourish
clams, which are eaten by walruses. Arctic cod live on algae scraped off
the ice. The cod are eaten by seabirds, whales, and seals. The king of
the food chain, hunting mainly seals, is the great white bear.
That was
the system until the ice started to thin. In 1997 and 1998 Melnikov returned
to the Beaufort Sea and found most of the plankton species, many named
by him (and for him), were gone. The ice was nearly gone. Creatures dependent
on the plankton (like the cod), or on the ice for dens (seals) or for
travel (bears) were gone too.
Many had
just moved north, following the ice, but that means moving farther from
land, with widening stretches of open water between. Creatures like the
black guillemot, a bird that depends on land for shelter and the ice floe
for food, can no longer bridge the gap.
The Arctic
is changing faster than scientists can document. Inuit hunters report
that ivory gulls are disappearing; no one knows why. Mosquitoes are moving
north, attacking murres, which will not move from their nests, so they
are literally sucked and stung to death. Caribou can no longer count on
thick ice to support their island-hopping in search of the lichens that
sustain them. One biologist who spots caribou from the air says, “You
sometimes see a caribou trail heading across [the ice], then a little
wormhole at the end with a bunch of antlers sticking out.”
Hudson’s
Bay polar bears are thinner and are producing fewer cubs. With the ice
going out earlier, their seal-hunting season is shrinking. Hungry bears
retreat to land and ransack garbage dumps. The town of Churchill in Canada
has more jail cells for bears than for people. The bears are also weakened
by toxic chemicals that drift north from industrial society and accumulate
in the Arctic food chain.
Every five
years the world’s climatologists assess current knowledge about global
warming. Their latest report was just released. It erases any doubt about
where this warming is coming from and warns that we ain’t seen nothing
yet. If we keep spewing out greenhouse gases according to pattern, we
will see three to ten times more warming over the 21st century than we
saw over the 20th.
Some biologists
are saying the polar bear is doomed.
A friend
of mine, in response to this news, did the only appropriate thing. She
burst out weeping. “What am I going to tell my three-year-old?”
she sobbed. Any of us still in contact with our hearts and souls should
be sobbing with her, especially when we consider that the same toxins
that are in the bears are in the three-year-old. And that the three-year-old
over her lifetime may witness collapsing ecosystems, north to south, until
all creatures are threatened, especially top predators like polar bears
and people.
Is there
any way to end this column other than in gloom? Can I give my friend,
you, myself any honest hope that our world will not fall apart? Does our
only possible future consist of watching the disappearance of the polar
bear, the whale, the tiger, the elephant, the redwood tree, the coral
reef, while fearing for the three-year-old?
Heck, I don’t
know. There’s only one thing I do know. If we believe that it’s
effectively over, that we are fatally flawed, that the most greedy and
short-sighted among us will always be permitted to rule, that we can never
constrain our consumption and destruction, that each of us is too small
and helpless to do anything, that we should just give up and enjoy our
SUVs while they last, well, then yes, it’s over. That’s the
one way of believing and behaving that gives us a guaranteed outcome.
Personally
I don’t believe that stuff at all. I don’t see myself or the
people around me as fatally flawed. Everyone I know wants polar bears
and three-year-olds in our world. We are not helpless and there is nothing
wrong with us except the strange belief that we are helpless and there’s
something wrong with us. All we need to do, for the bear and ourselves,
is to stop letting that belief paralyze our minds, hearts, and souls.
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Cooperative
Success
The story
of desertification along the southern edge of the Sahara desert has been
told often, but Fred Pearce found a much more hopeful story in the region.
He visited an intensively farmed area in Nigeria and found that farmers
were doubling and tripling their yields. They were keeping livestock confined
but were spreading the manure on their fields. They were growing nitrogen
fixing crops such as cowpeas, in addition to grains. The legumes and manure
replaced what the grains removed from the soil and fertility was increasing.
The same
story was being repeated in other countries in the region. Crop yields
were up despite decreasing rainfall; good crops were growing on an annual
rainfall as low as 300 mm. Soil quality was not declining.
All the improvements
were the results of farmers applying traditional skills in soil and water
conservation more intensively. Most importantly, the people had intensified
their system of cooperation. They worked together in each others’
fields during busy times, weeding, building low walls to retain the occasional
heavy rain and to prevent erosion. They lent and borrowed land, livestock
and equipment. They saved and swapped seed varieties.
The result
has been improved yields, enough to feed a much increased population,
without land degradation. Indeed, in a formerly badly degenerated hill
district of Kenya, output per hectare is now ten times greater than in
the 1930s and five times what is was in the 1960s. There are more trees
than there have been for a century, and tens of thousands of kilometers
of terracing have cut erosion. Many hands, working together, have shown
that farming does not have to destroy soils, and traditional skills can
enable Africa to feed itself.
New Scientist
27 Oct 2001
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A
Locust Flapped its Wings ...
In 1852 a
locust somehow found its way to the west of England, well outside its
normal range. The unusual insect was given to 24 year old Eleanor Ormerod.
She was intrigued and sent it to an expert for identification. She also
bought a book on insects and started studying entomology. Her family were
not happy about this new interest, but she quietly kept on with it for
the next 16 years. Then an announcement in The Gardeners’ Chronicle
attracted her attention: The Royal Horticultural Society asked readers
to help in a study of garden insects, to find out which ones were helpful,
which ones pests.
Eleanor became
absorbed in the project. She got farm labourers and children to help her
collect insects. She experimented with ways to control pests using simple
but effective methods. She found that a few coils of hay rope around a
tree trunk stopped the caterpillars of codling moth climbing into fruit
trees. She would send a boy up a tree to nip out insect nests.
After her
father died in 1873 Eleanor became a public figure. She pursued her interests
and published her findings at her own expense. She printed “Notes
on injurious insects” and sent copies to anyone who asked; she had
to print 170,000 copies of her report on the warble fly. This pest burrowed
deeply into the skin of cattle, and Eleanor’s cure “a dab of
cart grease and sulphur applied to the infested area of the hide”
was reputed to have saved half the country’s cows.
In 1881 the
Royal Agricultural Society asked Eleanor to be their Consulting Entomologist,
unpaid, but effectively the country’s chief entomologist. She received
requests for advice from all over the world, from farmers. scientists
and government officials and she answered every one.
She understood
biological control. She examined the case of a watercress grower who could
not pay his rent because his crop was ruined by caddis fly larvae. She
found that the landlord’s wife had encouraged herons, which ate the
trout that formerly kept the caddis fly population in check. She suggested
that the landlord’s wife should make good the shortfall!
Later on
Eleanor started getting hate mail. Her crime was suggesting that house
sparrows should be culled, that the former ‘sparrow clubs’ should
be revived. The clubs had existed in every parish and used to offer rewards
for dead birds and eggs. Obviously in earlier times farmers had agreed
with Eleanor that sparrows were pests that ate a great deal of grain and
drove off the insect-eating swallows and martins. Without these birds
the insect pests flourished. As the “farmers’ friend” Eleanor
Ormerod was happy to take on the sentimental people who were appalled
by her suggestion.
abridged
from an article by Stephanie Pain
New Scientist 10 Nov 01
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Island
Life
The
ABC is to be congratulated on its television series, Island Life. Not
having seen any of the advance publicity I was expecting to see lots of
lovely scenery with people snorkelling and otherwise enjoying themselves,
or else a naturalist's view of the wildlife. What I had not expected was
some of all that, combined with more important information on preservation
of species, problems caused by introduced animals and the need for quarantine.
On Barrow
Island, home to an oil company that apparently takes conservation seriously,
naturalist Harry Butler has a continuing role in educating the oil company's
workers in the importance of protecting the habitat, and in observing
strict quarantine measures. Company policy forbids the introduction of
pets, and pests are strictly excluded too. Birds are the only species
that can avoid the quarantine measures.
Harry has trained several workers in the care of injured animals, a job
the men have embraced with enthusiasm, but he stresses that the care of
habitat is far more important in preserving the island's wildlife. He
considers the latter to be quite safe while the oil company is operating,
but is concerned about the future of the island after the company's work
comes to an end.
Quarantine
was also the focus of the episode on the Torres Strait Islands where the
Australian Quarantine Inspection Service (AQIS) maintains a vigil to keep
out screw worm fly and other pests. Sentinel pigs are used on some of
the islands and on Cape York itself, to monitor any advance by Japanese
encephalitis. Cattle herds on the Cape are also monitored on a monthly
basis, to test for disease. Few Australians can have any idea of the work
of AQIS and the dedication of its staff in what are beautiful but could
be very trying conditions.
Kangaroo
Island, on the other hand, is an object lesson of a different kind. In
the early 20th Century, well meaning members of a fauna society introduced
koalas, platypuses and Cape Barron Geese. All have thrived, koalas far
too well. Now unfortunately the koalas need to be culled but popular conceptions
refuse to permit this action. What to do is a big problem. Sterilisation
has been tried but is expensive and not very effective. Meanwhile, the
local black glossy cockatoo is in trouble, but here, at least, the local
(human) population is willing to learn and keen to help.
Islands
are wonderful places, romantic and exciting. They also show us in microcosm
the effects of our actions on nature. We can learn a lot from contemplating
them.
Jenny
Wanless
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The
Business of Biodiversity
The
Australian Conservation Foundation sponsors the Tela series of papers
that explore relationships between the environment, the economy and society.
Number 9, The Business of Biodiversity by Hugh Possingham, was issued
in September last year, with the Earthwatch Institute as co-sponsor.
The paper
stresses the importance of applying business-like thinking to the management
of biodiversity. To date our attempts to conserve biodiversity have been
well-intentioned but not very successful. To do better we need to think
through the issues clearly, decide on goals, pose problems explicitly,
have clearly stated objectives and use decision-making tools to decide
on appropriate actions. The work in progress must be monitored and revised
in light of fresh data and research.
Current practice
in biodiversity conservation is to try to save every critically endangered
species. This may be a waste of money and effort. A triage system could
be used to save vulnerable species which can actually be saved rather
than putting the money into a hopeless case.
If biodiversity
conservation is treated as a business with good decision making methods
and careful monitoring, then the national asset base of rich biodiversity
has a better chance of survival than can be achieved by current ad hoc
measures.
Tela papers
are available on
www.acfonline.org.au/publications/tela/intro.htm
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