2001

Nature & Society - April 2001

roba — Thu, 24 May 2012 16:17:37 +1000

Editorial

In August 1999 Nature & Society reported on the revolutionary business approach taken by Interface, one of the world’s leading carpet manufacturers. Rather than aiming to sell ever more of its product, the company decided to sell a floor covering service. In its view customers did not want to own a carpet as much as to possess the feel, the comfort, the colour, the ambience of a good floor covering. To this end the company started a leasing service, with a guarantee that it would replace worn carpet tiles as needed. This could be done overnight, with no need for the major office disruptions caused by complete replacement; areas of heavy traffic wear are not under the furniture, and only about a fifth of the total would need replacement. The company also investigated new materials to replace its petroleum-based feedstock, and can now produce carpets from maize and other renewable resources. The new carpet is a better product - it can even be hosed down - and it is completely recyclable, so Interface has broken its connections to the oil well and the rubbish tip.

Amory Lovins recounted Interface’s story in a talk on Natural Capital on ABC’s Background Briefing (28 Jan 01). Old style capitalism has been based on abundant free goods and services being available from nature, but nature is in difficulty, our profligate ways and huge numbers make too many demands on it. Ecosystem services, the natural processes that clean the air and water, cycle nutrients, maintain a balance in the atmosphere, pollinate crops and generally keep the earth habitable, are worth considerably more than the gross (economic) world product, but are in crisis now, as we mine the soil, pollute the air and water and destroy biodiversity. A new Natural Capitalism will see these natural resources as precious and limited. It will treat nature with respect and care, husband it and factor it into production costs.

People are now the abundant resource, and business will recognise, just as Interface has, that using less from nature while employing more people is efficient. At present there is so much waste in the American and Australian economies that we extract twenty times our own body weight in material per person per day and waste 99 per cent of that. Power plants in the United States throw away as heat roughly the same amount of energy as Japan uses in total.

In Natural Capitalism waste of any kind will be seen as unsaleable production and no business will want to produce it. Carrier, a major air-conditioning company is now leasing ‘comfort services’. It has teamed up with other companies which make buildings comfortable, recognising that if they do not do so the company could be rendered obsolete.

Technologies available now to improve efficiencies are quite amazing. Retrofitting existing buildings can improve energy and water use efficiencies three or four fold. New buildings can be constructed to provide comfort while using only a tenth of the energy formerly needed.

Companies such as Interface and Carrier are leading the way to the new economy. Their competitors are going to have to learn to reduce their inputs to as little as three per cent of their current raw materials. Governments and the commercial world will find that business-as-usual is no longer desirable or sensible.

The drive for efficiency has been a catch phrase for a long time, and is often used as a justification for the globalisation of trade. It has been a key factor in the restructuring of business and government services. But too often efficiency has been seen only in terms of reducing the number of employees and the wisdom of that has to be questioned.

Businesses, government departments and agencies have been urged, or forced, to reduce staff and reorganise in the quest for efficiency. Parts of their functions have been outsourced, apparently because this cuts the number of people on the pay roll. How efficient is this? If the work is still being done, then someone else is being contracted to do it, so it is quite possible the saving is illusory; the cost has simply been moved from one part of the balance sheet to another. Or the work is not being done. If it was not essential that is all right, but too often it was essential and lack of inspection and maintenance, lack of technical skill, and loss of corporate memory may have to be paid for several times over in the future. A reduction in the number of teachers, nurses, maintenance workers and other essential services is actually a public cost, leading to a run down in services and a shortage in skilled personnel. The push for outsourcing computing divisions in scientific research centres failed to take into account that the computing skills were actually an integral part of their research capacity, and their removal would result in higher costs combined with poorer outcomes.

Whatever the resulting bottom line looked like in any of these cases they also ignored the cost to the public purse of fewer people employed and therefore paying taxes, and an increase in numbers of people needing social security services of various kind. None of this seems very efficient when looked at as a whole. And it is certainly not efficient to have numbers of people depressed, suicidal or ill. Making people miserable has high financial costs as well as social ones. If Lovins’ ideas on Natural Capital come to fruition then it seems we shall all benefit socially, economically and environmentally.

Forthcoming NSF meetings

18 April- 7.45 pm, Heysen Street, Weston, ACT

Sustainability and Petroleum Supply - Brian Fleay

Brian Fleay will give a brief up-date on world oil supply and the current peaking of non-Persian Gulf Oil, but with an emphasis on post-peak issues. He will focus on petroleum's connection with population, food supply and associated land degradation issues such as dryland salinity. An outline of imminent peaking of the North American natural gas supply and its connection with the Californian electric power crisis will be given. If time permits, he will comment of the relative importance of Greenhouse in this context.

16 May - 7.45 pm, Heysen Street, Weston, ACT

Mother's Milk and Markets - Julie Smith, Senior Research Fellow with The Australia Institute, Breastfeeding Councillor and mother of three.

Biosphere 2

Report by Derek Wrigley

Professor Barry Osmond, recent Director of the ANU Research School of Biological Sciences has been accorded a great honour in being appointed the new Director of Biosphere 2 in Arizona. Readers may recall that the original Biosphere 2 was opened in 1991 and in 1996 it began to be operated as a Division of the Columbia Earth Institute of Columbia University.

Around A$500,000,000 was spent on a huge glass building of varying configurations to house a viable rainforest 40m high x 1600m2 in area, an ‘ocean’ with waves and corals, savannah, organic vegetable gardens, grain crops and small livestock. This housed and fed four women and four men for four years in a ‘sustainable’ closed environment, the only input being electricity, daylight and sunshine. Imagine a Crystal Palace and Kew Gardens magically biomorphed into the middle of the Arizona desert and you get some idea of the scale & architectural texture of this experiment in natural inter-relationships.

In essence it was a controlled experiment in biological systems research to study large scale interactions in a closed environment. The closed system engineering was, however, too successful. Biosphere 2 exchanged only 10% of its atmosphere in two years, but the oxygen declined to 14% in 15 months. This undoing was ascribed to the tonnes of rich organic soil which were imported for the biological systems, but it proved to be too rich; the bacteria degraded the soil carbon and consumed oxygen, to the detriment of all other living matter—humans included. Oxygen deprivation sapped energy & mental agility. The unsealed concrete also competed with the plants for carbon dioxide from the soil and oxygen levels could not be maintained.

The glass structure absorbed almost all the ultra-violet light to the detriment of the health of all living systems; the air handling system was perhaps too gentle in not mimicking the perturbations of nature — strong winds and lashing rain which help to create resistive strengths in biological structures.

From a social point of view a crew of eight balanced humans developed weaknesses and like all committees seemed to need the odd casting vote.

In view of the energy supply problems currently being faced by the US west coast it seems strange that the excellent slides revealed an absence of renewable energy systems such as photovoltaic panels and wind turbines, as wind and sun are abundant in that part of the world. With a shortage of electricity there could be no water, no control systems, no computers — a Biosphere’s Achilles heel? The developing energy problems in the US are a very important lesson for us to learn and one of the energy policies of our Biocentre is that we aim to generate all our own power on site and export our surplus to the grid.

Biosphere 2 is a thriving educational centre, attracting enthusiastic students of varying disciplines with US$15,000 to spend on a 16-week ecology course, not to mention around 200,000 visitors every year, each paying US$10-25 entry fees.

For those who wish to know more there is a book called Life under glass - the inside story of Biosphere 2 by Alling & Nelson, Biosphere Press.

This is a unique and wonderful opportunity for Barry and Cornelia (whose research on viruses will continue there). We wish them well and look forward to more detailed updates on their return visits to Canberra. Our Biocentre could learn a great deal from the Biosphere.

Their house in Canberra is being retained — wise move!

On meaning

John Schooneveldt

At the October forum I talked about some of the ideas developed in my recent PhD thesis. No one it seems took any notes so the editor asked me to report on my own talk.

I explained that the thesis wrestles with some of the ideas that have long puzzled me. I realised as a teacher in PNG in the 1960s that the stuff in the syllabus was not very useful to my students and, on top of that, I had no idea how the teaching process worked any way. I turned to psychology and after a four-year degree I knew something about rats and pigeons and paper and pencil psychometrics, but nothing about what goes on in human minds. In the 1980s I thought that language might be a key to understanding mental processes and after an MA in linguistics, I knew something about language structure, but very little about meaning and nothing at all about the role of language in human thinking. So I turned to biology in the 1990s and this thesis. Now all this searching may sound like some deep mysterious quest after truth, but it wasn’t like that at all. I enjoy thinking about these things. It’s a kind of hobby really, like stamp collecting. I collect ideas.

I began my talk by pointing to a common assumption underlying Western thought, and arguably most human cultures: the idea that the universe is made up of ‘things’: bits and pieces of matter that can be given names. The way these things are categorised and named might differ from culture to culture, but their essential 'thinginess' is unquestioned. The fact that all the languages of the world include a large number of words that can be described as nouns offers evidence of the universality of this cultural assumption.

In my talk I presented some of the evidence that cause me to question this assumption. The talk speculated that it might be more realistic and useful to think of the universe and the world around us, not in terms of 'things' but rather 'processes' and, more specifically, the constant interaction or juxtaposition of events or processes and the organisms that experience them. Naming or labelling certain combinations of processes or events as an entity or object may be a useful shorthand, but, if this view is correct, the universal human experience of a fundamental 'thinginess' may be illusory.

At an abstract level there is nothing new here. The Greek philosopher, Hereclitus thought of reality as a 'constant state of becoming' and more recently, the English philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead, expounded similar ideas. These have been developing quietly as a minority philosophical position known as 'Process Philosophy'. What I argued in the talk was that there is a growing body of hard empirical evidence that supports this way of thinking, not just on the cutting edge of physics, where everything is in a ferment and flux at present, but even in the biological sciences and psychology where, I argue, perception, memory/learning and cognition can be best explained in process terms.

Much of the work with animals involves testing animals to see if they can memorize, respond to and even reproduce words and signs of things. The great apes, dolphins and parrots have been studied in this way, and this has made us realise that these creatures are far more intelligent than many people once believed. But this top down approach does not give us any insight as to how an animal sees and thinks in its natural state. In my thesis I proposed a bottom up approach that looks at how simpler organisms internalise their experience of the world. I argued that starting at the bottom better enables us to identify the stages in the evolution of perception, cognition and consciousness than top down approaches. Now it so happens that a 'process' approach works much better than a 'nominal' approach. Naming things perhaps came much later in the evolution of mind. Deep down as Buckminster Fuller has pointed out we are verbs!

Process thinking is difficult. Many can accept that the universe is in a constant state of flux or process through time as current physical theories suggest, but only if we conceive that there are some sort of entities, items, particles, objects or things which are experiencing the process. I argued against his view and suggested that it is all process all the way down to the very small, sub-atomic levels, and even smaller, if one can think in such terms. Conversely, going in the other direction, it is process all the way, to the very large cosmological processes and beyond.

Space does not allow the evidence to be summarized here. The key argument rests on the way organisms subjectively experience the world in which they live, and the way this subjective experience must have evolved into more and more complex experiential patterns. This complexity is inside us and to varying degrees in every motile organism that exercises choice in its interaction with its environment. It is the subjective experience of external events (not things) corresponding to physiological processes involved in perception and memory that is the key. Rather than look at these from the outside as neurological processes, I suggest that they should be looked at from the inside as subjective experience of those neurological processes.

The Western tradition has had a lot of problems with subjectivity and its related ideas of mind, meaning and purpose. Increasingly over the last few hundred years the West has avoided the problem through reductionism. I say ‘avoided’ the problem advisedly, for the problem is not solved, nor does it go away. In essence it has been ignored by science and while the humanities have dealt with these important aspects of the human experience through literature and the arts, they lack the rigor and verifiability that is central to science. Reductionism involves progressively reducing the context of a phenomenon until only one or two aspects are left to be manipulated or observed. This has been a highly productive process, generating enormous amounts of knowledge, but it has come at a price. It has reduced our understanding of the world to machine-like simplification that is systematically destroying the natural world of which we are a part and on which we depend.

A process approach promises to give us a better set of tools for understanding the richness of human and animal experience. The experience of listening to Bach is rather richer than we might ever imagine by watching a pattern of neurons firing in some organism’s brain.

Electricity from biomass

Some thoughts from Frank Fisher, Associate Professor and Director, Graduate School of Environmental Science, School of Geography and Environmental Science, Monash University

The following submission was sent to ALP parliamentarians, on request from various green groups seeking to stop woodchipping for power generation.

I am concerned that you do all in your power to find life-affirming energy sources which are the essence of what is meant by renewable energy. In the current matter, this means opposing the use of biomass, especially from old growth forests, as an energy source and especially as a source of electricity.

The reasons for this stance are:

1) until we commercialise direct conversion of biofuels such as alcohol, methane etc., to electricity in relatively benign technologies such as fuel cells, the use of presently available conversion techniques are a wasteful, dirty obscenity:

wasteful, because some 70% of the energy available in fuels has to be discarded in the old-fashioned thermo-dynamic transfers current electricity generation techniques require,
dirty, because wood is in principle a difficult fuel to burn cleanly and
obscene, because the land used to generate the biomass could be used¹ directly to generate:

a) commercial crops that humans could feed from directly as in cereals or livestock crops or, where this is not possible,
b) indigenous crops of the native flora and fauna that originally stocked that land (i.e. national parks), thereby contributing to the maintenance of what remains of our indigenous wildlife. This applies especially to so-called old growth forests.

2) the concept renewable is demeaned or trivialised by turning forest into biomass. This applies especially to indigenous trees when transformed to a resource rather than retaining them as parts of living ecosystems that are integral parts of wider habitats.

In this connection note that dead trees and litter give the illusion of being waste or being redundant to life’s processes. This is not so. They are habitat for other organisms that form parts of the living trees’ (and our!) habitats.

3) once a dedicated technological system, with all its investments, is created upon the new resource (biomass), supply of the resource has to be maintained to supply the requirements of investment. Thus the imperative becomes cast into the (local and wider) community’s continuing economic priorities even though the resource may have run out or/and the insights that identified it and generated the industry, may be obsolete.

4) while the transition to renewable energy forms is to be encouraged, we should do all in our power to ensure that the renewables only replace and do not just add to our energy production capacity generating a new set of earth consuming demands. Note that renewables themselves do have environmental consequences!

An enlightened (twenty first century) strategy would recognise that the first energy priority must be to reduce per capita energy use across the board and that the potential to do this by social institutional change and technical efficiency improve-ments represent better investment-dollar efficiencies than any renewables. This has already been well-demonstrated. It is most notably the case in the Scandinavian countries where lifestyle improvements (in all dimensions) persist while per-capita energy use steadily declines.

The implication is that energy conserving institutional changes actually constitute an energy resource!

¹ Note these italicised words. Each one carries an interpretive punch. In this case it is that of nature being seen as a resource to be “used”; in the next, “feed” we are again speaking of nature as a “feedstock” and “renewable” does the same again. In each case nature is de-natured or rendered down to an essentially discardable tool for the political economic machine. Which is not to say that we ought not live from/in nature, only that our terminology might retain respect for living as nature while we seek to satisfy ourselves through it – where it or nature is recognised to be our extended selves.

And then there was ...

Jenny Wanless

In the beginning, Bryan Furnass suggested NSF should run a conference on food — all aspects of food and nutrition — and the environment — what are the impacts of agriculture, fisheries and the rest on the world's systems? Bryan put a lot of effort and thought into organising such a conference, to bring together all manner of aspects that are usually not thought of. Most conferences focus on nutrition and human health, or what are humans doing to the environment or how can we have sustainable agriculture. The conference proposed by Bryan sounded really interesting.

Next there was the hard slog of seeking sponsors and speakers, and wondering whether anyone would come. Which led to the thought — do people need to come? Why not hold an internet conference? After all, we should be trying to reduce greenhouse gases from transport, so we should not encourage people to travel. Let us use the Internet and see how that works. Thus, Food — for healthy people and a healthy planet was born.

How will it work?
Registered participants will be able to contribute to a bulletin-board style discussion and exchange of information with experts on the issues of nutritional health and the environment. Keynote contributors will be experts in the fields of medicine, nutrition, public health, and the environmental, agricultural and horticultural sciences. Their papers will be put on a special NSFconference website and grouped according to themes. The six themes are: Biological background of nutrition, Nutrition, health and disease, Food and animals, Choices in food consumption, Food, population and resources, and Sustainable food production.

So that is the conference. It provides the opportunity for all our members, wherever they live, to participate (at a very low cost in carbon dioxide emissions and money). So please get involved. Email your interest, provide us with suitable contacts and help make this pioneering effort a great success.

The right amount

Alan AtKisson

Alan AtKisson is the author of Believing Cassandra: An Optimist Looks at a Pessimist's World. He is president of AtKisson and Associates Inc., a consulting firm focused on accelerating sustainable development. He is also a Senior Fellow with the independent policy institute, Redefining Progress, and formerly its program and executive director. Mr AtKisson is a member of the board of directors of the Centre for a New American Dream.

My friend in Sweden has two towels. Actually she has three, but the third she uses for travel. When the bathroom towels are dirty she washes them. When they wear out she buys two more — and very good ones, so they'll last a long time.

"Why do I need more than two?" she says. "Dar ar lagom."

What she says in Swedish does not quite translate to "This is enough". The word "lagom" — pronounced melodically, the "la" in a falling tone, the "gom" (rhymes with home) a shorter syllable that's right back up where the "la" started — means something like, "exactly the right amount."

What a delight to learn this word! When it comes to thinking about responses to over-consumption and consumerism, we are stuck, in English, with far less pleasing words. "Enough" sounds to most American ears as though it had the word "barely" just in front of it. For some reason, "enough" never sounds like ... enough. "Balance" sounds difficult; I'm always losing mine. "Sufficiency" carries the whiff of technical economic jargon. Even "simplicity", the current fad-word-of-the-moment in some marketing circles, tends to appeal only to those folk with either a moral commitment or a serious case of overwhelm.

We need a concept for thinking about how much, in terms of stuff, is the right amount — and the Swedes have given us a word for it.

The concept of "lagom" can be applied to everything from cake to carbon dioxide emissions. What is "lagom" for chocolate cake? For me, it is usually a little bit more than "enough". But what's "lagom" for CO2? Only as much as the ecosystems of the earth can reabsorb, and no more. "Lagom" allows for more than enough — but it still sets limits.

What if our society were organised around the concept of "lagom"? Not that Sweden is organised that way; although my friend is hardly an extremist, she is a more enthusiastic lagom-ist than many of her fellow Swedes (imagine the Vikings taking only "lagom" when they plundered!). And most Americans have trouble just pronouncing it. But I have developed a small fascination with this word, because it has an attractive quality that "enough", "sufficient" or even "simple" often lack.

Most people in the world do not want enough. They want more. They certainly want more than the bare minimum, and research suggests they want more than those around them. This desire for more seems to be deeply wired in the human organism. We developed over a millennia in hostile environments, both natural and social. To have more than we need has always been our first defence against the vagaries of an uncertain future. Hoarding is the first act of those who believe themselves to be in the path of a storm (or a marauding army of plundering Vikings for that matter).

So while there will always be those of us who love the idea of "enough-ness" and "voluntary simplicity", it seems likely that such concepts will never quite be ... well ... enough to transform the masses of humanity (or the marauding army of corporations vying to fill their houses with stuff, in a kind of reverse-plunder operation).

But it does seem possible to promote a sensible Swedish sense of "lagom" worldwide — if we can find other good words for it — because it speaks more to what people actually want. Let's admit that it's very nice to have good shoes. No one can be faulted for wanting them. But does a person really need fifteen pairs? No. But is one pair enough? Perhaps not. "Lagom" acknowledges that people have varying needs at different times.

They want nice things, and comfort, and security. They want more than the bare minimum and they might even need it. If their desire for more than enough is accepted, even supported, perhaps they might be willing to consider how much is too much.

Clearly, here in America, we are far beyond the limits of "lagom". Once in a while I make a point of wandering into a Costco or a Sam's Club — huge retail warehouses full of consumer goods, on sale cheap. The spaces are large enough to house a submarine assembly plant. You can buy everything from taco shells to trampolines to model wooden boats, by the crate. The shopping carts are as big as a small car. Walking around the aisles of one of these stores allows me to indulge in several radically different feelings: raw consumer lust, great moral outrage, and aching environmental angst.

But when I took my same Swedish friend to see one of these places, her response was more practical. "I suppose people can save quite a lot of money here," she noted. "And it's much better to buy some things in large quantities" (not towels). "But perhaps it's just very tempting to take too much in such a place." Nobody really needs too much, and in fact, most people don't really want it. But nobody wants too little. Perhaps our vision for a sustainable world should include not just enough for all but "lagom" for all, with fewer temptations to take too much.

And while I could write a great deal more about this lovely new addition to my vocabulary, perhaps this page, too, is "lagom".

Money talks

Earthbeat, Radio National 24 Feb 2001

One of the features of the investment scene of the last few years has been the growth of ethical investment. It started with people who did not want to invest in the gambling, alcohol, armaments or tobacco industries. Latterly it has grown from screening out companies such as these, or environmentally damaging ones like native forest logging to support positive initiatives such as renewable energy, sustainable forestry, small businesses and unlisted companies. Such socially responsible investment (SRI) is articulating the concerns of people who do not want any part in socially or environmentally destructive activities, and who want the power of money to be harnessed for change for the better.

Australian Ethical Investment (AEI) started over a dozen years ago and now manages $(A)120,000,000 of shareholders’ funds. AEI uses both negative and positive screens. It is also just beginning to extend its scope into socially responsible venture capital, to support enterprises in a way not generally available to the public.

Two years ago AEI entered the superannuation field, so contributors can choose a fund that uses their contributions to create a better future. Because most workers have superannuation, even if they have no other investment, superfunds can play a big role in SRI. By law now, big pension funds in Britain and Germany have to state their policies on SRI.

The first big financial institution in Australia to get involved in ethical investment is Westpac, with its recently launched Ecofund. This uses criteria based on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, which operates on a ‘best of sector’ approach. This does not screen out any sector of the market, but looks for the best environmental performer in each sector. The expectation is that other companies will improve their performance to try to get on the index.

Next month AMP expects to launch three SRI products. They have employed a consultant from the UK business Henderson Global Investment, well known in the SRI field. They will screen out sectors such as armaments and tobacco, considering that businesses that cause death are not really sustainable.

SRI funds are growing in many countries. In the USA SRI funds are worth trillions of dollars and are growing twice as fast as the general market. In Japan the emphasis is on the environment, not social issues, but the new ecofunds are growing spectacularly. They seem to have inspired many first time investors, especially women.

The public can now even choose to put their money in the bank to work for SRI. Last year Bendigo Bank (Victoria) teamed up with Community Aid Abroad to launch an ethical fund. It raised forty million dollars (Australian) in just eight months. Profits are being used to support Australian community groups which have had difficulty getting finance.

Yet another way in which investors can influence social and environmental outcomes is by shareholder activism. Green shareholders successfully pressured Boral to get out of its Tasmanian forestry business.

Information on ethical investment can be found on the on-line Ethical Investment Magazine. Its editor, Paddy Manning is launching a bigger magazine in the newsagents in May.

Working with Nature

New Scientist 3 Feb 2001

The biggest movement in Third World farming today is low-tech not high-tech, and it is yielding rich rewards.

In a dramatic turn-around farmers in Africa are finding that planting weeds amongst their crops can lead to increased yields with less work. Stem borer insects often destroy a third of the region’s maize, and the weed Striga wrecks about ten billion dollars worth of maize per year, threatening the livelihood of a hundred million Africans. Ziadin Khan, working at the Mbita Point research station, Lake Victoria, Kenya, found that planting napier grass, a local weed, among the maize, worked wonders. The stemborers prefer the napier grass, but it produces a sweet sticky substance which traps and kills them. Where Striga is a problem it can be kept out by planting another weed Desmodium between the rows. It is not known why Striga will not grow near Desmodium, but the latter’s presence saves women from one of their most time consuming jobs.

Jules Pretty from the University of Essex analysed more than 200 such projects on four million farms in fifty two countries and found average crop increases of 73 per cent. For example in Mexico when one hectare is planted with maize, squash and beans it produces as much food as 1.73 hectares planted with maize alone.

On Madagascar a local Catholic priest found that he could raise rice yields from three to ten tonnes per hectare. His method involves transplanting the seedlings at an earlier stage and in smaller numbers so more survive, and keeping the paddies unflooded for much of the growing season. On Madagascar 20,000 farmers have followed his lead and the method has shown increased yields in tests in China, Indonesia and Cambodia.

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990 cut off supplies of grain, tractors and agrochemicals to Cuba, resulting in a halving of the calorie intake of Cubans. Now they are well fed again, with teams of oxen instead of tractors, and farmers using organic methods to grow mixed crops of maize, beans and cassava.

Actually one of the most widely adopted techniques around the words has been to stop ploughing. Although ploughing aerates the soil, and helps to rot weeds and crop residues, it also can damage soil fertility and cause erosion. A third of Argentinian farmers have stopped ploughing and now plant winter crops to stop weeds, or they spray with a biodegradable herbicide. This has reduced costs and produced richer soils, higher grain yields and increased income.

A side benefit is that unploughed land absorbs up to a tonne of carbon per hectare each year, whereas ploughing releases carbon dioxide as plants rot. The major benefit of all these initiatives though, is to farming communities, where people are becoming better fed. Most of the increased produce is eaten by those who grow it.

Nature & Society - June 2001

roba — Thu, 24 May 2012 16:17:37 +1000

Editorial

Predicting the future has always been a tricky business; the famous oracle at Delphi couched her predictions in ambiguous terms open to various interpretations. The unlucky prophetess Cassandra was doomed to disbelief despite her predictions being quite clear and specific. As far as legend goes, no one ever turned around after the event and apologised for not believing her. Even more unfairly, her name came down to us as a prophet of doom, still with the connotation that the speaker is taking an unnecessarily gloomy view of the situation, never mind that Cassandra was always proved correct. It’s just that there was a lot to be gloomy about, especially if you were a Trojan during that famous war.

Prediction is still a risky business, as meteorologists know full well, although many other people don’t quite seem to have grasped that fact. But at least these days we have rather more tools at our disposal than the Delphic oracle had. Thus analysists of the petroleum industry can study what happened to oil fields at various stages of exploitation, and they can estimate the possibilities of new discoveries. Demographers can study population trends, business people can study consumption patterns and so on. But in the end the predictions depend to a certain extent on the predictor’s character and predilections. So anyone with a knowledge of geology must know that fossil fuels are finite and that although there are vast reserves of coal left, the end of oil and fossil gas must be coming fairly soon. If you are an incurable optimist like Mr Micawber, you will just believe that something will turn up. If you are a technological optimist you will believe that technology will provide an answer.

Some technological optimists, such as Amory Lovins, certainly have grounds for their optimism. Lovins may well be right to think that the hypercar will enable us all to keep driving for almost ever. But he does not think that we can go on using oil and gas in the way we do now. He is certain that we can and must learn to do more with less, that energy efficiency is of overwhelming importance, and that buildings need to be built so that they require very little heating or cooling to make them comfortable.

An opposite view of the future is that expressed by Robert Waldrop in ‘Life during the great decline’ on his energyresources website. Yes, buildings are weather proofed and insulated, but there are blackouts for eight hours per day. Petrol costs $ (US) 50 per gallon, on top of paying someone else $20 for their ration coupon, so people walk everywhere. If they travel much of a distance to visit they stay a week. (Remember the months long visits in Jane Austen’s books.) They produce most of their own food; transnational agricultural corporations along with other big businesses have ‘gone belly up’. War has ceased because it requires too much fuel, air travel likewise and crime has ceased because it is pointless. The former Northern countries have ceased to attract migrants because people realise it is more comfortable in warmer climes, so what migration there is, is in the reverse direction.

Whichever view of the future you take, energy efficiency measures are the undoubted win-win situation for everyone. It seems so strange that they are resisted by …, by whom? They would benefit industry, they would benefit the environment, they would provide meaningful employment, and they would make us all more comfortable, whatever happens.

There are other examples of such win-win situations which have been resisted, indeed fought bitterly, and which unfortunately seem to have to be learnt over again in every new case.
The establishment of marine reserves has been opposed by fishermen in many areas, yet when reserves are established fisherfolk find that in areas near reserves their catch goes up, the reserve has allowed recruitment of the stock. Declining fisheries can be saved by appropriate reserve systems and restrictions that permit fish populations to recover, as long as measures are put in place early enough. Leave it too long and recovery may be impossible.

Restoring tree cover on farmland can actually increase productivity as it provides shelter, reduces erosion and helps to combat salinity. Yet the push for land clearing goes on in other areas, despite the certainty of land degradation.

Studies by David Lindenmayer, assisted by Earthwatch teams, in the Eucalyptus regnans (Mountain Ash) forests of the central highlands of Victoria have shown that there too, it is possible to have a win-win situation that will produce timber while protecting the forest and wildlife, by not clearfelling. The old forests are sequestering unexpectedly large amounts of carbon in the fallen logs on the forest floor, and they are providing homes for many species. Timber can be harvested but clear felling would be out.

Even in viticulture Australian researchers have shown that by halving the amount of water applied, the vines produce less foliage, the grapes get more sun, the wine is better and the possibility of salinisation is reduced.

So win-win solutions are possible. We can help to protect the environment, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and get desirable outcomes for humans at the same time. Maybe you do not have to believe Cassandra, but you do have to accept that her predictions could come true. You have to accept that leaving the wooden horse outside the city walls is a safer option.

As the late and sadly-missed Douglas Adams said, “The best way of predicting the future is to invent it.” Our task is to invent a future which helps to keep our beautiful world beautiful, and populated by the myriad of species which should be able to share it with us.

Forthcoming NSF meetings

18 July - 7.45 pm, Heysen Street, Weston, ACT

Communicating environmental issues through exhibits in New Zealand - Robin Garnett

Robin recently returned to Questacon after three years working at The Science Centre and Manawatu Museum, Palmerston North, New Zealand, where she specialised in biological exhibits.

15 August - 7.45 pm - Manning Clark Lecture Theatre 3, ANU

People, Planet and Debt: New Economics - Challenging Globalisation

Michael Rowbotham

Michael Rowbotham has had a varied career as a teacher, an editor and the manager of a wine bar. He is a lecturer and writer on economic and monetary reform, on globalisation and international debt. He has given lecture tours in Canada and South Africa and will be touring Australia and New Zealand in August. Michael's tour has been arranged by Economic Reform Australia.

Winds of change

John Schooneveldt

The Australian National Biocentre (ANB) started life as a project of NSF a few years ago and is now beginning to develop a momentum of its own.

At a joint meeting of the NSF Management Committee and the ANB Board on 1 June, it was agreed to set up a working group to look at the possibility of using the Weston site as a temporary home for the ANB and look for ways the ANB and NSF might work more closely together. It was felt that if we could make a start to implementing the ANB on a leased, temporary site, it might help in our negotiations for a permanent home and improve the quality of the ANB’s eventual design and its displays.
The two organisations need to remain separate legal entities because NSF has a large (and potentially very large) member-ship base and tax deductibility status, neither of which are options for the ANB. The ANB’s links with the commercial sector and its need to earn some of its income through charging for services preclude these options.

One possibility the working group has been asked to consider is to change the name of this Journal to the “Journal of the ANB and NSF”. Another is to change the name of NSF to “Friends of the ANB”. The working group will also look at projects that can best remain in NSF or might be better transferred to ANB or vice versa.

Ultimately, any substantial changes are matters for the NSF and ANB membership to decide at a special or annual general meeting, but in the meantime there might be other ideas or suggestions out there that could be put to the working group. If you have views on these matters you could contact either John Harris or myself through the NSF office.

The task of the working group is to develop a plan for closer working relations between the two organisations and make recommendations to members. There are currently 12 members of the ANB and around 150 members of NSF.

Comments and suggestions welcome.

The Earth Charter

Introduction
The Earth Charter is a new international document articulating an ethical framework for a more sustainable way of living. The Earth Charter contains values and principles that can be used to guide the behaviour of individuals, organisations and governments in ways that promote a more environmentally sustainable, equitable and peaceful world. But why is this document necessary, where did it come from, and of what practical use is it?

Why an Earth Charter?
Over the last 30 years, there has been growing recognition that environmental integrity is a prerequisite for both national and global security. It is increasingly apparent that our environmental, social and economic concerns and problems are interdependent and can no longer be considered in isolation. Rather, they require integrated solutions based on co-operative action. This in turn demands a shared values system and ethical framework on which to base a common agenda.

There are at least two main factors that influence our value systems in relation to the environment. First, there are values that derive from acceptance of scientifically-based knowledge about the extent to which human well-being is dependent on maintaining a healthy Biosphere with its clean air, fresh water, productive terrestrial and oceanic ecosystems, and fertile soils. Thus we can value a healthy Biosphere out of self-interest, based on the knowledge we possess about how it functions and is being perturbed by human activity.

The second influential factor is a sense of universal responsibility for the global consequences of one’s actions. The meaning of ‘universal responsibility’ is best understood by asking the following question: which is the community for which you feel morally responsible? If we accept the broadest and most inclusive definition of the community for which we are morally responsible, then we have accepted a sense of responsibility for the well-being of those who exist outside our immediate surrounds, extending even to other life forms and future generations.

The origins of the Earth Charter
The origin of the Earth Charter can be traced to the 1972 UN Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment. Until then, the UN agenda for world security emphasized human rights, peace and equitable socioeconomic development. The Stockholm conference identified ecological security as the foundation of global security. In the mid-1980’s the UN World Commission on Environment and Development introduced the term sustainable development, calling for development that is environmentally and socially responsible. Their report (Our Common Future, 1987, Oxford University Press) argued for the creation of a ‘universal declaration’ in the form of a ‘new Charter’ that would ‘consolidate and extend relevant legal principles’ creating ‘new norms…needed to maintain livelihoods and life on our shared planet’ and to ‘guide state behavior in the transition to sustainable development’. An attempt was made by certain national governments at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 to draft and have the UN General Assembly endorse what by then had become known as an Earth Charter. However the time was not right.

In the wake of Rio, a new Earth Charter initiative was launched by a group of international leaders who had been instrumental in the 1972 Summit, the Brundtland Commision and Rio: Rudd Lubbers (Prime Minister of Netherlands and now UN High Commissioner for Refugess); Maurice Strong; Mikhail Gorbachev; Jim McNeil (Sec. Gen. for WCED) and others. A decision was made to draft a charter as a non-government document, a peoples’ Charter, that would serve as an ethical framework that could be used by individuals, communities, organisations and governments. In addition, the document would be taken back for UN endorsement at the Rio+10 world summit in 2002.

The following process was established. An Earth Charter Commission was established chaired by Strong and Gorbachev. A Secretariat was formed based at the Earth Council, Costa Rica, now co-located with the UN University for Peace. A drafting committee was created headed by Prof Steven Rockefeller of Middlebury College, USA (the drafting committee consisted of a small core group and a larger circle of around 50 people). National committees were established in around 45 countries.

A unique drafting process was established whereby the document evolved over a period of time through drafts being circulated around the world for comment and critique by national committees, regional fora, and various expert groups. For example, a national Earth Charter forum was held in Canberra in February 1999 (see http://incres.anu.edu.au/publications/res19.pdf). A final version was agreed to at a meeting of the EC Commission in Paris during March 2000, and the document publicly released at an event hosted by Queen Beatrice at The Hague Peace Palace.

A number of key sources influenced the document including: international law instruments and declarations; proclamations of the seven UN summits held during the 1990s on environment, development, population, habitat, children, and human rights; community concerns and sustainability ‘best practice’ uncovered in the consultation process; universal principles from the major faith traditions; and scientific understanding of the requirements of environmental protection and biological conservation.

The Earth Charter has a major but not exclusive focus on humanity’s relations with the environment. It has been constructed with the understanding that humanity’s environmental, economic, social political and cultural challenges are interrelated and can only be effectively addressed with integrated global solutions.

Structure of the Earth Charter
The Charter is structured as a layered document with:

a preamble that presents the global situation we face, together with the challenges and the opportunities
16 major principles and 61 supporting principles organised around four main themes, (1) Care for the community of life, (2) Ecological integrity, (3) Social and economic justice, and (4) Democracy, non-violence and peace. The supporting principles ‘unpack’ the meaning of the main principles, and indicate strategies for their implementation
a concluding section entitled ‘The Way Forward’ which stresses the need for new partnerships between civil society, business and government.

How is an Earth Charter useful?
The Earth Charter has important roles to play in (1) motivating commitment to action, (2) education, (3) the development of environment and sustainable development law, and (4) accountability and governance. Individuals and organisations are being asked to formally endorse the Earth Charter. This can be done on-line at www.earthcharter.org. In terms of education, the Earth Charter can be used as a framework to help students clarify, evaluate and express their values systems in relation to environmental and social concerns and responsibilities. It functions as a map for curriculum development that explores issues of globalisation and sustainable development. The Earth Charter is an ethical framework that can be used to promote the sustainability agenda across all sectors of Australian society. For example, the Earth Charter is being used in Australia to help establish a National Council for Sustainable Development – an initiative recommended by the Rio Earth Summit’s Agenda 21. Recently, we hosted at the ANU a meeting of a multi-stakeholder steering committee that has formed to establish an Australian NCSD.

The full text of the Earth Charter can be found at http://www.earthcharter.org/.

Sustainability and petroleum supply

Report by Jenny Wanless

Brian Fleay, a former water engineer from Western Australia, has spent his retirement studying petroleum supplies. He has visited Canberra and spoken to NSF meetings on three earlier occasions; at our April meeting he brought us up to date information, especially with regard to the current energy crises in the United States.

In his first lecture years ago, Brian introduced us to the concept of energy profit ratio. This describes the amount of energy obtained from a resource per unit of energy needed to extract it. Petroleum has been by far the best source of energy on this ratio; apart from natural (fossil) gas nothing else comes close to it. For ease of extraction and versatility of use petroleum stands alone. But as oil fields pass their peak of production the remaining oil costs ever more energy and money to extract. In those earlier talks Brian showed us the graphs which illustrate the growth and then decline of oil fields; all known fields fit these curves. This time Brian Fleay concentrated on the problems facing the USA, which is suffering a triple whammy of declining oil production, problems in the electricity industry and insufficient supply of natural gas, giving a taste of an energy poor future.

George Bush has no alternative but to oversee a reduction in natural gas and electric power consumption in the USA. The oil fields of the lower 48 states peaked in 1970. The only hope for increased domestic extraction in the USA is to open up the Alaskan fields, including the ones that have been off limits as they are under wildlife reserves. It is Bush’s policy to open these fields.

Natural gas consumption in the US has been growing at three per cent per annum, largely driven by massive expansion of gas turbines to meet the growing summer peak electricity demand. Other major uses for natural gas are winter heating and the needs of industry and commerce. Natural gas is also feedstock for the manufacture of ammonia for use in nitrogenous fertilisers.

The North American gas fields are peaking now. the first natural gas province to do so, and will be unable to meet the expected consumption in 2005. Again there is the possibility of developing Alaskan and Canadian Arctic discoveries, but these will be hugely expensive and take nearly a decade to bring into production. In the meantime there is competition between the demand for ever more electricity in summer, and possibly life saving heating in winter.

Deregulation in the electricity industry has exacerbated the problems. Uncertainty about deregulation resulted in cut-backs in investment in power stations and transmission lines. Deregulation was supposed to bring lower prices and the price of electricity was capped at 6.5c/kWh during the transition yet the spot market in California reached $1.50/kWh, with an average of 30c/kWh last year. The price of natural gas quadrupled. As a result utilities have accumulated losses in the billions of dollars and have no credit left with which to buy power. Unexpected outcomes have included Kaiser Aluminium shutting down a smelter because they can make more money on-selling electricity (purchased under a long term contract) than they can by selling aluminium.

In California energy efficiency measures are on the agenda: Governor Gray has proposed reducing electricity consumption by seven per cent through energy efficiency.

Deregulation of publicly owned electric power utilities in Australia has followed similar lines to that in California. Here too, the deregulated industry is losing its generation reserve margin, so that supply shortages are likely at times of peak load. The occasional blackout or brownout may only be a very annoying inconvenience for some customers, but much of our modern living demands absolute certainty of supply. A millisecond interruption shuts computer systems and life support machines down.

In both the USA and Australia there is a possibility of opening up new fields, but these tend to be smaller fields further away, and deeper either under the Rockies, or further out to sea in Australia’s case. There will be technical difficulties in developing them, and the retrieval and distribution of the gas will cost a great deal more than in the existing fields. Construction of the infrastructure will take years. And they will only put off the day of reckoning for a short time.

Listening to Brian Fleay’s analysis it is blindingly obvious that we cannot go on using oil and gas willy-nilly, but it appears that governments and many people in the industry and the general community are blind to the obvious.

For anyone wanting more information on the current and future situation, Brian Fleay provided a list of web sites (see below).

PETROLEUM DEPLETION WEBSITES

Climaxing Oil: How Will Transport Adapt?
By Brian J Fleay approx 60pp.

http://wwwistp.murdoch.edu.au

Theme paper to Chartered Institute of Transport National Symposium 1998

Hubbert Center Newsletter
School of Mines, University of Colorado

http://hubbert.mines.edu

A quarterly lobbying Newsletter since 1996
3/00 Issue has an article by Brian J. Fleay on Australia

Matthew Simmons & Co, Houston Texas USA
Merchant Banker and Financial Consultant
to upstream oil industry

http.-//www.simmonsco-intl.com
Click Research

Good picture of the triple energy crisis emerging in the USA in oil, natural gas and electric power

http://hubbertpeak.com

Based in California
Articles by BJ Fleay and others

A good start

Jenny Wanless

Why would an audience of geriatrics want to attend a talk on the importance of breast feeding infants? Because it is an important topic, with ramifications for the physical and mental health of mother and baby, with long lasting implications for the health status and costs of health services for the entire community. It is also a study in the marketing of products to vulnerable sectors of the community both within developed and developing countries, with surprising parallels to the tobacco industry. Yes, really!

Julie Smith, the speaker at our May meeting, is a persuasive advocate for the importance of breast feeding. She pointed out that a woman’s decision to breast feed is not made in isolation. It depends on the attitudes of society, including family, friends, work mates, health professionals and politicians too. So it is a social decision.

There is growing evidence to support the intuitive knowledge that breast milk is indeed the ideal food for infants. It confers immunity against many childhood illnesses, it promotes brain development and the act of suckling helps to form good facial structure. Its effects last into later life with decreased susceptibility to many adult disorders. By its strong influence on bonding between mother and child it can promote the mental health of both. It is also good for the physical health of the mother.

Julie’s talk was entitled Mothers’ Milk and Markets and it focused in part on the research conducted by formula manufacturers and on their complete understanding and manipulation of their market; with detrimental effects which have been particularly obvious in developing countries.

Unfortunately breast milk does not feature in the GDP, whereas baby formulas do. Attempts to value breast milk have various flaws. However, did you know it is estimated that around 33 million litres of breast milk are produced in Australia each year? How do you value this? In countries where there are breast milk banks, they pay $50 per litre. The Norwegians have a policy that every baby should have breast milk for the first three months, and milk banks ensure this is possible. Milk banks also provide breast milk for feeding the very sick and very elderly who need this excellent source of nourishment.

Julie Smith is one of the contributors to our September internet conference. Log on and you may be surprised at what you learn.

Back to Top

The right amount

Alan AtKisson

"Why do I need more than two?" she says. "Dar ar lagom."

We need a concept for thinking about how much, in terms of stuff, is the right amount — and the Swedes have given us a word for it.

And while I could write a great deal more about this lovely new addition to my vocabulary, perhaps this page, too, is "lagom".

Global Greens meet in Canberra

report by G�sta Lyng�

They came from 70 countries from all over the world, to Canberra at Easter 2001: Greens in government, Greens in parliament, Greens in the middle of political life and many others who aspired to help create a better society, but who in the countries they lived in could not work politically or had not yet started to do so. There were 700 participants in this first-ever conference of the Global Greens.

Some extraordinary experiences were related. Ingrid Betancourt, a member of the Colombian parliament has to have ten body guards while in her country, two Chinese delegates have to keep a very low profile at home, while the big New Zealand parliamentary team has the influence that balance of power can give. Many European Green parties are in a similar situation and some of those parties have opted for taking part in coalition governments. This necessarily means some compromises which may not be well understood by the grassroots in the party. All these experiences and problems were shared and discussed in some 20 parallel working groups and in the huge plenary hall of the National Convention Centre.

The acceptance of a common Global Greens Charter was a great achievement by excellent facilitators aided by everybody’s positive desire to resolve differences of opinions and to transcend different cultural boundaries. I had the challenging task of being one of the three Australian delegates on the charter issues, which involved first getting consensus opinions from the Australian group and then presenting these at the plenary session.

An example of a controversial issue was the view of most western countries that respect for sexual diversity is fundamental to social equity; however, in many countries of the world homo-sexuality is a crime and it was difficult for the Greens from those countries to accept tolerance in that case.
Another instance where the attempt to achieve consensus failed was regarding pacifism. Strict adherence to the ideology of nonviolence would not condone the use of weapons in UN directed activities. However, the European Greens were not willing to agree to such a degree of non-violence and the final version of the Charter has a modified formulation.

Agreement was easier to reach on environ-mental issues and strong policies could be accepted on climate change issues, biodiversity, water conservation and forest preservation.
The final wording of the Global Greens Charter is on the web site: www.global.greens.au
After a long day of debate the Saturday dinner was hosted by Senator Bob Brown in the big hall of Parliament House. There might never before have been such a joyous event in that solemn place. Certainly, a dinner for 750 people wearing non-formal clothing followed by line dancing among the tables to a youth band would be a rare sight.

Most of the future cooperation between Green parties in different countries will be through a network structure where the Internet will be used to exchange experiences, ideas and plans. The Australian Greens are part of the Asia-Pacific network, one of the four major networks. For efficient, frequent and energy saving communication e-mail is the way to go. Even so, there is a particular value in face-to-face meetings and the Africans have invited the Global Greens for the next Global Greens Conference.

Nature & Society - August 2001

roba — Thu, 24 May 2012 16:17:37 +1000

Editorial

Of all the things we think we need in our daily living not many are true necessities, but no one could live without food, water and air. One of the great success stories of the 20th century must be the production of food, for despite the unprecedented leap in human numbers, food supply per person actually increased in all continents except Africa. One of the big questions for the 21st century is whether we can keep up the food supply, especially as population is still growing.

Why could this be a problem? There are many reasons. We have taken a lot out of the soil in extracting our food over the last century. We have mined the trace elements and in many cases ruined the soil structure with heavy machinery. We have depleted many ground water reserves. We have lost beneficial species of insects, plants and microorganisms.

Desertification and salination threaten large areas which were major food producers in Africa, Asia and Australia. In the latter we have been producing food surpluses and exporting them, enough to feed 80 million people. Some use this as an argument to say that Australia could feed a much larger population than the present one. So it could, in the short term, but we would have to cut our exports markedly, so would suffer in terms of trade. Much worse, it is probable that within this century we will have lost half of the Western Australian wheat belt and half of the Murray-Darling basin to salinity. What food surplus would we have then? We would be hard put to feed our own expanded population.
Fisheries have been an important source of protein but all around the world they are in trouble. Many have collapsed, many are heading the same way, from overfishing. Inshore areas have been damaged by nutrient run-off and other pollutants. The destruction of mangroves and other coastal developments have destroyed fish nurseries. Aquaculture, often touted as a way of increasing protein supplies, is usually inefficient, requiring many more tonnes of fish meal to feed the penned fish, than will be harvested from those pens. Aquaculture also pollutes estuaries and encourages disease in the crowded conditions.

There are other threats to food supply, too. With climate change, some of the current food producing areas will become less productive. One of the counter-intuitive results of global warming could be the freezing of north-western Europe. If the North Atlantic circulation shuts down - and there are indications that it is doing just that - the present temperate areas will experience severe winters like those of Newfoundland, an area not noted as a food producer now the cod have gone.

Rising sea levels will exacerbate all the problems currently faced in Bangladesh and other low-lying areas. The Pacific Islanders will nearly all have to migrate and be fed elsewhere.

Add to all this the fact that for the last fifty years modern agriculture has specialised in turning fossil petrochemicals into food. Oil has powered the agricultural machinery without which we could not have had great increases in food production. Oil and coal have powered chemical plants to produce fertilisers. Gas has been used as a feed stock to make fertilisers. Oil is used to transport produce to the market, and electricity powers the factories that process so much of our food. Oil distributes food all around the globe, but if there is one thing more certain than most, it is that oil will run out. Some people pin their faith in producing ethanol from plant material to fuel our agricultural machines and transport, but think of the equation. We would probably need more ethanol to produce the crops and process them than we would get out at the end of the procedure.

Over the last few decades we have seen a drive to globalise food production as well as other trade. Yet this is beset with problems such as the increasing risk of globalisation of animal pathogens. It is in no country’s interest to import contaminated food for stock or people. It is in no country’s interest to have to destroy millions of animals. If world food shortages occur it could be considered criminally negligent to have to destroy any potential food stocks.

Australia has the purest air in the world, at Cape Grim in north-western Tasmania. Now Cape Grim rainwater is being bottled and sells at a premium price in America. Wouldn’t it be better to clean up America’s water and air? Sending bottled water around the world seems to be about as silly as you can get in satisfying those basic needs for food and water.
The sustainability of food supplies is certainly not assured, and that is without any consideration of nutrient values and ecological and ethical concerns. All this and more will be addressed in our forthcoming internet conference on food. Do remember it is interactive. You can ask questions, raise issues that may have escaped attention and put your point of view. Do register and log on.

Forthcoming NSF meetings

Tuesday 28 August- 7.30 pm, Heysen Street, Weston, ACT

Visits to the main environment centres in the UK with particular emphasis on the Eden Project in Cornwall- Derek Wrigley

9-15 September at www.natsoc.org.au

Internet conference - Food for Healthy People and a Healthy Planet

19 September - 7.45 pm, Heysen Street, Weston

Nature and Society Forum Annual General Meeting

What wetland?

Landsat remote-sensing satellites have shown that about 90 per cent of the Mesopotamian marshlands, home of Iraq’s Marsh Arabs, has dried up to a salt-encrusted desert.

The Marsh Arabs rebelled against Saddam Hussein in 1992. Soon afterwards dams and drainage projects in the area diverted water from the marshes. Human rights groups claimed Saddam was repaying the Marsh Arabs for their rebellion, but Iraq countered that the works were to drain salt from agricultural soils so they could be farmed.

Hydrologists studying the area now say that the destruction was caused at least as much by dams built on the upper Tigris and Euphrates by Turkey in the late 1980s and early 1990s. By cutting off the spring flush of floodwaters, thereby drying out up to three-quarters of the marshlands, the dams made it possible for the Iraqi engineers to build their drainage systems. The storage capacity of the dams on the Euphrates is six times the annual flow of the river. That flow has been reduced by a fifth and could be halved in the near future.
The draining of the marshes has affected the Gulf shrimp catch, as the marshes were a spawning ground for shrimp. Kuwait’s catch has dropped 40 per cent.

The combined effect of Turkish dams and Iraqi drainage is that the wetlands are no more. A unique human culture, with at least a 5000 year history, has been destroyed along with an important ecological system. The director of the UN Environment Programme described the loss as “a major ecological disaster, comparable to the drying of the Aral sea and the deforestation of Amazonia.”

New Scientist 19 May 2001

Camping in the Naltar Valley, Northern Pakistan

John Harris

Last month, I had the good fortune to be camping in the upper Naltar Valley in the Karakoram Mountains of northern Pakistan. It is camping with a difference. I was camping with Jane, Akbar, a local Gujjar, and Dr Kashif Sheikh, who had invited us to his PhD field research site. Our camp was on the shores of one of the three Naltar lakes at 3,200 m. These small lakes are crystal clear and freezing cold as they are spring fed. The abundant aquatic plants in our lake coloured it vivid emerald green. The setting was the steep-sided partly forested Naltar River valley hemmed in with snow capped peaks set against a predominantly blue sky.

Akbar, who was Kashif's former field assistant, was our interpreter so we could talk with the local Gujjar people and learn something of their semi-nomadic life. Our camp turned out to be on the main track leading further up the valley where there were good grazing lands for domestic sheep, goats, cattle and yaks.


Kashif cooking the evening meal with lots of encouragement	Lake Osprey, a glacial lake in the Karakorams

There were dozens of people passing our camp each day on foot or on their tiny donkeys herding their animals. Families carried their cooking gear and musical instruments as well as the occasional rifle. Some of these travellers called in to talk to us or ask for 'medicine' for fever, cuts and burns. One morning we were fortunate to see a dozen yaks on their way to high pasture. They find their own way and are rounded up later in summer to be taken back down the valley for their rich milk.

Over the next few days we came to see the rhythm of the movements of Gujjars up and down the valley. There were those going up to small villages higher up the valley where there was good summer grazing near Naltar Pass (4,700m). They would stay for the summer months. Those going down were usually on their way to gather tools or groceries such as flour from Altar village, 3-4 hours away by foot from our camp. Other movements were daily ones for collecting firewood and the daily 'comings and goings' of children tending their mixed flocks of sheep and goats. Once, we were woken at dawn by the rumble of 30 goats and sheep streaming past our tent as two boys drove them on their way up the adjacent steep hillslopes for the day. And then there were the children of the local families who came to visit each day - boys and girls maybe around 7 or 8 years old. They lived in rough homes of rock with timber and mud roofs that were hidden nearby amongst the rocky landscape. They would bring us hot chapatti and fresh chicken eggs for our meals, which had been bartered for by Akbar. We treated these children's cuts and scratches. They would also sit near our flat rock table at breakfast and tea no doubt fascinated by these strangers with our tents and other camping gear and strange eating habits, all the while hoping for some leftovers and sweets.

On three days Kashif, Jane and I ventured out for the day. When we left, Akbar would look after our camp. We spent one day exploring the Naltar lakes identifying common native plants and animals. The trees around the lake and campsite were pine, spruce and willow. We saw all three species of wagtails (white, grey, yellow), large-billed bush warbler, leaf warbler (an endangered species), hoopoe and several other bird species, which are a feature of the valley. We also found the native toad (Bufo latesstti) along the shoreline. The outlet of the lake flows into the Naltar river, which originates much higher up the valley and was in full flood following the spring snow thaw. Osprey lake, a glacier lake at around 3700m, was our destination another day. We took lunch and set out early as it was slow walking at this altitude and by mid-day it was around 35C. On the way we visited the other two Naltar lakes (Sapphire lakes) which were smaller and surrounded by coniferous forest of pine and spruce. Walking is not easy owing to the dry rocky terrain so we were pleased to be able to follow the paths of the local people. We occasionally met travellers on these paths but mostly they were on the steep hillslopes tending their animals or cutting trees for firewood in the forest. Many of the hillslopes were too steep and dry for vegetation, especially, the very steep rocky talus slopes. Always there were the beautiful snow-capped peaks towering above us.

The day before the weather broke, we followed the Naltar River up-stream to the highest summer village set in sparse forest just before the steep ascent to Naltar Pass. Scattered birch trees were clearly visible forming the tree line at 3,800m before the clouds and rain descended. The glacial valley has several turbulent streams or nullahs roaring down the steep rocky slopes. Stone summerhouses dot the valley. During winter, these are deserted as the inhabitants have moved further down the valley to Konodas (place of nomads), and Gujjardas - closer to Gilgit, the central administrative town of this region.


Local transport for two tired brothers	Growing potatoes in the Lower Naltar

Most of the people of the Naltar valley are poorly educated and many are illiterate. They rely on their traditional skills as animal herders, shepherds and agriculturists. Potatoes have become the main cash crop in the valley after their introduction 10-15 years ago. They are grown in the lower valley, especially around the permanent village of Naltar. Potato cropping is steadily increasing in the valley, which requires the clearing of forested areas. This is on top of firewood cutting. There is also increasing evidence of overgrazing and trampling by the thousands of animals living in the valley. There were few summer flowers when we visited and Kashif told of increased incidence of soil erosion and landslides, which brings down more trees.

Kashif's pioneering research focused on the ecology, habitat use and conservation of bird populations in the Naltar Valley but his research also noted the all too common human syndrome - environmental overuse. Kashif observed 100 species of birds in the valley. Of these, he chose 14 for an in-depth analysis of their distribution, breeding and habitat use. A vegetation map of the valley was completed employing GIS techniques together with an analysis of the habitats of these 14 species. During his research, Kashif became concerned for the conservation of the bird populations and this mountain environment owing to the loss of habitats so he lived and consulted with the local people, incorporating their perspectives into his thesis. He is now seeking funding through IUCN and other external funding agencies to develop a Naltar valley biodiversity conservation plan, which would further involve the local Gujjar people.

Down under and up there: a brief glimpse of the European environment

Derek Wrigley

A visit to Denmark, Norway and the UK in May and June gave me an opportunity to compare (somewhat superficially, I must admit) the Down Under environmental awareness and action with Up There — and in particular to see how effective the mega-million £ environment centres in the UK were in putting their messages over to the community.

The countrysides (except for that part of Norway above the Arctic Circle) looked wonderful and full of moist spring greenery to Australian eyes. Evidence of underlying environmental problems had to be searched for — even the foot and mouth problem in England was only obvious because it prevented walking in some areas. On the surface everything was business as usual.

Certainly, commercial and government bodies in Scandinavia and the UK seem to be very aware of the need for new sources of renewable energy and are way ahead of Australia in the practical application of some technologies. This is evidenced to some extent by the number of wind turbines in Denmark which supply some 14% of their electrical energy, none in Norway because 99% of their electricity is from hydro sources and they seem to export most of their natural gas. UK has about 15 wind farms around the country, particularly in Cornwall, with several more offshore windfarms planned around the coast — and I must say to the critics how beautiful they look in the landscape.

These wind turbines are elegant pieces of technology and I was able to have a conducted tour around the Nordex plant at Give in Denmark.
The nascelles are amazing, cramming gearbox, brake, generator and yawing mechanisms into a shell some 10m long x 3m across with ample room for service staff to move around inside. This is industrial design at its best and a good example of how, given government encouragement, a small country with a similar population to Australia can lead the world with innovative design. The noise problem of the very early turbines has been overcome (by government insistence) and we had no problem conversing at the base of one of the largest in Denmark.

While the turbines were busy producing green electricity I found that internal house and hotel temperatures, particularly in Denmark and Norway, were too hot for me — they could have been 5º lower and still have been comfortable. The conservation of energy message at the grass roots level still has to penetrate into action and if practised on a national scale could obviate a significant amount of new generative capacity.

Northern Europe’s weather is not as kind to photovoltaic and hot water absorbers as it is in Australia, nevertheless there are several applications on rooftops, mainly hot water absorbers — roughly the same distribution as in Australia and, so I am told, without any financial incentive to install. There are one or two exciting pioneer projects — one in North London has fitted 241 new private houses with solar tiles, the next logical generation of integrated photovoltaics which act as the roof itself. When will our developers learn?

These new PV panels can even be semi-transparent, allowing light to penetrate below — but how will these panels suit the Australian summer ?

The word ‘sustainable’ seems to be the latest promotional catch-cry in England, but it seems apparent that few people really know what it means. It is applied to many new buildings which use high embodied energy materials and construction, make no use of renewable energy solar collecting techniques nor use of passive building design. Who are they kidding ?

One of England’s biggest problems is the huge mass of old, existing buildings which do not readily lend themselves to economic remodelling to take advantage of solar gain. In addition, in some visually sensitive areas like the Cotswolds, Lake District, etc, the heritage value (as a tourist attraction) is incompatible with the addition of applied, external solar technology. This is a real dilemma.

In some of the inner suburbs in cities like Bristol, London etc, there are countless rows of Victorian terrace houses, often with extremely small front gardens — or none at all — with no access to their back garden. Consequently, their wheelie bins (or, more commonly, black plastic garbage bags) are kept in the front ‘garden’ which is most unsightly. Urban aesthetics are the first casualty.

A compounding problem for the inner city areas is the dominance of the private motor car.Often, the suburban terraced streets are narrow and perpetually lined with occupants’ cars, bumper to bumper with their nearside wheels on the pavement, leaving one lane free for moving vehicles. Leave your spot and you are never sure that it will be there when you return. Street cleaning vehicles must have an impossible job and rubbish just accumulates in the gutters. I was unable to find out how the garbage collection was done, but it would have been ‘with great difficulty’.

Those houses with larger front gardens have often been paved over to accommodate the occupants’ cars, increasing the speed of stormwater runoff. The softening effect of greenery has been greatly diminished.

The car has now become an embarrassment to city dwellers, being neither convenient, nor cheap and theft from cars seems to be growing. As we left the UK the government was proposing a tax of £5 (approx A$15) per day for cars to enter the London metropolitan area. It will be interesting to see how successful this proves to be.

Prices of some Victorian terrace houses — from a friend’s experience in Bristol — would be of the order of A$700,000 with a poor quality ambience, no solar access, traffic noise, ancient plumbing and sewerage systems and no garage. Lack of choice and an equal lack of knowledge among the buying public about solar benefits and sustainable living techniques would seem to be facing UK city dwellers with very difficult decisions. Canberrans should count their blessings.

There is, nevertheless, a growing groundswell of green living. A nationwide ‘Sun day’ was held in June to demonstrate solar technology — similar to our ‘Green Living Fair’, and I picked up a free copy of ‘Positive News’ which has been started in a tiny village in Wales giving us all the good news about a more sustainable lifestyle. Try www.positivenews.org.uk for more information.

The Guardian newspaper has a regular environmental supplement devoted to schoolchildren and is referenced to the national curriculum on environmental topics and to important websites for follow up material. Australian papers should take note if they are serious about the environment.

One encouraging item in 'Positive News' is the long awaited production of the compressed air car in Nice, France. The car will roll off the production line early in 2002. Price will be around £6250 +VAT (~A$ 15,600) +GST. Try www.mdi.lu for more information.

But despite all these encouraging indicators the average person still behaves as if there is no problem, or that it will be fixed by somebody else. Beyond some sporadic paper recycling most people I observed seemed to take no responsibility for changing their behaviour, which must come about if we are to achieve the environment we need. The message is not getting across to the person in the street and I suspect it is not very different here. We have a long way to go to achieve total environmental awareness.

On Tuesday 28 August I will be giving an illustrated talk at the NSF in Weston at 7.30pm on my visits to the main environment centres in the UK with particular emphasis on the very exciting Eden Project in Cornwall — and what we can learn from them in regard to our own Australian National Biocentre. Come and make your comments — they could be valuable feedback for us.

Reports of meetings

Jenny Wanless

Manna Relief

Terry Baker was to be the speaker at our June meeting, but as he knew he would be delayed he got Barbara Eckersley to open the meeting. Barbara spoke of the fairly recently discovered role of phytochemicals and glyconutrients in human health and of her personal experience with them in improving the health of her family. Her interest had been triggered by the diagnosis of her daughter’s chronic fatigue syndrome and the lack of any satisfactory treatment.

When Terry arrived he showed a video about Manna Relief, an American based charity which is supplying these micro nutrient supplements to orphanages in Rumania, with significant improvement in the children’s health. Similarly good results have been experienced with the supply of such supplements to children with AIDS in Africa.

Manna Relief was started by some families who had witnessed remarkable improvement in the health of family members who took the supplements because they were suffering from various major untreatable conditions. The video detailed some of these cases, including muscular dystrophy and tumours.

Barbara Eckersley is presenting a paper on phytochemicals and glyconutrients in our internet conference on food.

Biological Exhibits

Robin Garnett, our speaker in July, presented a most interesting and stimulating discussion on a group of biological exhibits she developed while working at the Science Centre and Manawatu Museum, Palmerston North, New Zealand. The town is a centre for agricultural research and the scientists there were very keen to help develop biological exhibits and communicate their work to the public.
Exhibits Robin worked on included ones on feral pests such as possums and rabbits. In the case of rabbits the exhibits showed that whereas shooting and warren ripping each have a short term effect on rabbit numbers, and the rabbit haemorrhagic virus has a longer term effect on the population, the best control is achieved by a combination of all three measures.

New Zealand fish are unusual in that a great many species are dependent on both a marine and a fresh water stage in their development. This means that they are particularly threatened by the annual activities of the white bait-fishermen, who collect schools of small fish which include the juveniles of many different species, some of which would live up to forty years. One of Robin’s exhibits was designed to raise awareness of the perils caused to native fish by such fishing activities, and also by changes to habitat and stream flow by construction of weirs and other alterations.

Such exhibits managed to interest and involve many different age groups, but their message also needed to be backed up in other ways such as text and video. The presence of real human explainers was invaluable. The scientists concerned had a wonderful day when they were able to be present for an open day!

Robin also showed part of a video of a workshop on genetic engineering which had been held to try to increase public understanding of this controversial and little understood topic. The video of the proceedings had been widely distributed so that it could reach as big an audience as possible.

Encouraging developments in the Third World

Bryan Furnass

Developing countries are usually seen as lands of poverty and oppression where the drinking water is poisonous, stomachs are empty, and most adults are illiterate. In fact, there have been vast improvements in life expectancy, nutrition, adult literacy, poverty and human rights over the past 30 years.

The 2001 Human Development Report, published by the UN Development Program, says that, far from being a cause for pessimism, the developing world is a source of optimism, despite some local disasters. Across the world, life expectancy has risen from 59.9years in 1970 to 66.4, including a rise of 12 years in South Asia and 14 years in Arab countries. Improved nutrition and better medical services have combined to halve infant mortality.

Many of the health advances have been the result of extraordinary economic progress, which has seen incomes in East Asia quadruple, with the Chinese economy growing four times as fast as Europe’s, and even the Indian economy outpacing those of rich nations. The UN report attributes the progress to the spread of democracy and human rights, with a general reduction in poverty despite increasing inequality. On the dark side of the equation, life expectancy has fallen in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

Here are two examples of grass roots developments in the Third World:

The Simputer, a hand held computer developed by Indian scientists, and run on three AAA batteries, will become commercially available in India for $200. Its revolutionary message is the Illiterate Markup Language — the software which allows the Simputor to translate English into a variety of Indian languages, then read the information aloud to the user. The need is overwhelming in a country where 50% of the population is illiterate. Swami Manohar, a leading member of the development team states: "It is not access to technology, but access to information, that is critical in relation to poverty elimination schemes, women's welfare schemes and health education."
Fred Kajubi, an engineer in Uganda has developed a low-tech solar panel which can run anything from a radio to a mobile phone or cooking stove. The wafer-thin silicon photovoltaic cells are ten times cheaper than the more common crystalline solar panels, selling at $8.50 (US). They seem more appropriate and accessible for a country, only 3% of whose citizens have access to electricity than do the grandiose schemes for a dam and centralised hydroelectric power, favoured by the World Bank.

Thirty years ago, the wealthy members of the UN General Assembly committed themselves to giving 0.7% of their national wealth to poor countries, but only five of the 22 countries capable of achieving this have hit the target. Shamefully, the powerful G7 leading industrial countries currently give an average of 0.19%, being more concerned with collecting interest on their loans than giving genuine help to the poor nations. Despite this parsimony, it is encouraging how much innovative technology is springing from the Third World which would also be of value to industrialised nations on this planet of shrinking resources and increasing pollution.

from The Guardian Weekly, July 26

Nature & Society - October 2001

roba — Thu, 24 May 2012 16:17:37 +1000

Editorial

Some ten years ago Stephen Boyden gave a lecture at Questacon - The National Science and Technology Centre, for World Environment Day. His message was that society is facing an overwhelming ecological crisis but there is a lack of understanding on the cultural level of how humans fit into nature and the consequences of this for the wellbeing of humans and the ecosystems of the biosphere.

In Stephen’s opinion a new type of organisation was needed, one that enabled concerned, interested people to learn about the problems, their causes and what could be done to solve them. Armed with that knowledge these people could help to educate the rest of the community and get society to take effective measures to solve the problems. The lecture resulted in a group of people getting together to form such an organisation and thus the Nature and Society Forum began.

Among the many important things Stephen said in that lecture was a list of what humans need to enable them to live a happy and healthy life. As well as the absolute essentials of clean air, water and food, he said we need shelter from extremes of weather, and clothing to protect us from the same. Apart from those material goods we need a number of social goods: a feeling of belonging and appreciation (usually conferred by membership of a group) and something worthwhile to do.

It was interesting to find, in Alain de Botton’s “The Consolations of Philosophy” that Epicurus had prepared a similar list in the fourth century BC. His list of essentials consisted of friends, freedom, thought (about the main sources of anxiety, such as death, illness, poverty and suspicion), food, shelter and clothes. The things he thought it was natural to want, but which were not necessary for happiness, included a grand house, private baths, banquets, servants, fish and meat. But fame and power, in his opinion, were neither natural nor necessary for happiness.

In a truly classic case of misunderstanding Epicurus’s name has come down to us as the adjective Epicurean, meaning “devoted to the pursuit of pleasure, hence luxurious, sensual, gluttonous.” It is sometimes used to persuade people that they need to purchase yachts or eat in expensive restaurants. The misunderstanding started with his contemporaries. Epicurus did indeed talk of pleasure and happiness and founded schools of pleasure that admitted both men and women. This resulted in lurid tales being bandied about.

The truth was that when the philosopher moved to Athens and set up a group house with friends, they lived a simple life. In order to be free of employers they grew their own vegetables and were happy with meals of bread, vegetables and olives. A pot of cheese provided Epicurus with a feast. Their great pleasure was to be with friends and to talk about what interested them.

Epicurus was concerned with discovering what would make us truly happy and healthy. He considered that humans were woefully bad at analysing what really contributed to their own wellbeing. For well over 2000 years his message has been misunderstood.

In NSF we, too, are interested in what is necessary for wellbeing, but our main sources of anxiety have shifted somewhat and include a great concern for the environment, both in its own right and as necessary for human welfare. We also talk, and at our monthly discussion meetings over the years we have had a wide range of speakers all concerned with various aspects of this broad problem.

Some of the speakers whose talks have had the greatest impact on me include: John Burton several years ago, talking about conflict resolution; Michael Rowbotham, only last month, on third world debt and the inbuilt defects in the current financial system; Brian Fleay, several times over the years, on petroleum depletion. These concerns all seem to have come to a head in recent weeks. John Burton pointed to the impossibility of solving problems by war, the need for quiet negotiation out of the public arena, away from television cameras and reporters, so that disputants have a chance to recognise their common humanity. Somehow, peaceful solutions need to be found, but that necessitates a lack of grandstanding for public viewing.

It was a revelation to find out that John Maynard Keynes, having seen how the world suffered for the disastrous debts between the two World Wars, devised a financial system that would not consist of debtor and creditor nations. If only the USA, at the end of World War II, has accepted his plan that country may not have suffered the recent tragic terrorism. The whole world would certainly have been less troubled. We do need to achieve a much fairer system if peace is to stand a chance.

As to the decline of the age of oil, we have only to look at the crisis in the airline system at present to realise that we are nowhere near ready to live without oil, yet we will have to do so in a few decades. If the economy cannot function without aeroplanes then we need a new economy.
It is amazing and tragic that people and governments cannot see the connections, that they think each problem is a separate one, that they think each problem is just here and now, rather than part of an ongoing one. We seem to be as far away as ever from understanding what is needed for the wellbeing of society and of the planet.

Forthcoming NSF meetings

17 October - 7.45 pm, Heysen Street, Weston

Smallpox: from eradication to bioterrorism
Frank Fenner, NSF's patron, whose own role in the eradication of smallpox is famous, will speak on the past and possible future of this disease.

21 November - 7.45 pm, Heysen Street, Weston

Jerra-bomb-bera
How well does the new GreenSmart Display Village score against it own aims? The Biocentre's Buildings Team has been taking a close look at what they hope will be their neighbour. Derek Wrigley reports on their findings.

No meetings in December and January

People, Planet and Debt

report by Jenny Wanless

In the course of this lecture Michael Rowbotham, the speaker at NSF’s August public meeting, debunked the myth that it is the corruption and incompetence of third world governments and administrators that have caused the current debt crisis. Governments, officials and individuals in the developed world display the same sins and weaknesses. No, it is the very structure of the financial system and of its leading players, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organisation, that have caused the dept. Furthermore, all countries are in debt. The USA has a total debt of three and a half trillion dollars, one and a half times the total debt of the ‘developing’ countries. What message do the international money managers have for the less fortunate countries? Maybe it is ‘work hard, sell off your assets, tighten your belt and you can aspire to the same level of debt as the USA’.

The consequences for the third world have been disastrous and continue to grow. Because the system is weighted against them their commodities fetch rock bottom prices. Their land and their labour are undervalued so corporations move in to make a killing. This is one of the main drivers of globalisation.

Although Rowbotham did not spell it out, implicit throughout was the environmental degradation caused by the situation. Countries where the population is always undernourished have to devote much of their land to growing crops for export. This puts pressure on land and water resources, causes chronic ill health, increases the likelihood of infectious disease and creates misery.

The export of food increases the amount of transport with all its attendant pollution. India exports three million tonnes of wheat each year and imports the same quantity. There is something ludicrous in such a situation. In a sane world local self sufficiency would be recognised as a good way to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

In the developed countries globalisation and the debt-based economy have made the production of junk goods and the demand for ever more consumption and ‘growth’ inevitable. In turn this leads to over consumption of resources and to mountains of waste.

What can be done about third world debt? There are various ways of accounting it out of existence - after all, it was never real money that was lent, just numbers on a piece of paper or a screen. Anyway the poorer countries have exported more that enough to pay off their debt; they owe no one anything. It would be a good thing, in Michael Rowbotham’s view, if they just repudiated the debts. Bankers would quickly find a way to cover their paper loss and not let it impinge on their business.

Incidentally, Michael studied economics because he is an environmentalist. He saw that environmentalists were ignored, but economists were heeded, so he decided to take them on at their own game.

A copy of Michael Rowbotham’s most recent book Goodbye America! Globalisation, debt and the dollar empire and an audiotape of the lecture 'People, planet and debt' are available for members to borrow from our office.

Comment— by Colin Samundsett

Congratulations to Nature and Society for initiating another excellent forum topic, “People, Planet and Debt', as presented by Michael Rowbotham. The people attending got good value for their time.

An hour was all too short a time for Rowbotham to outline his subject. And the post-address question time was frustratingly short; a full-blown conference could have been devoted to the issues raised.

As a man of compassion his concentration on third-world debt was understandable, above globalisation and other problems, to which he said the debt was inextricably linked. And as his theme developed, the quote he attributed to Father Brian Gore: “The current third-world debt is a crime against humanity” became readily believeable.

While his introductory remark on the nature of money, that only about 4 percent is held in hard currency, seemed reasonable I did have some difficulty with his statement on the creation of it: The devolution of money creation (or the bulk of it) from governments to private enterprise in the guise of banks was straight forward, but do those institutions create money in the process of making loans? It had been my understanding that money was created by the charging of interest on such loans. Perhaps I did not hear him properly.
A key point, for me, of the talk was his discourse on the setting-up of the world trading framework for post-world war two at Bretton Woods in the U.S.A.. It was a revelation to find that John Maynard Keynes had already developed a trading structure in which there would be a balance of trade, not debtors and creditors; and that this structure found no favour with the U.S.A., which decreed the setting up of a quite different one. This created the inevitability of the current humanitarian disaster which is the shackles of third-world debt.

It was uncomfortable to listen to the details, the litany, of impositions placed upon developing nations by the developed ones, via the two institutions - the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund: The imposition of impossible conditions on loans given; the inappropriate schemes decreed by the lenders; the wrong advice for development enterprises; the fixed dollar value of loans against the declining value of products exported to attempt repayment; the decree of lowering all trade barriers by the loan recipients while allowing such barriers to remain in place against them. And many more, all readily verifiable. The World Bank and the IMF came to be viewed in all of this as vehicles for the destructive aspects of the loans which gave rise to the present debt, which will never be repayable, and which can be argued from a more realistic economic viewpoint to not be a genuine debt.

Although it might have been outside the scope of the topic advertised, I consider it unfortunate that time did not permit development of the part played by environmental degradation in ensuring deeper entrapment of desperately poor societies. Rowbotham's initial tertiary qualifications were in science — as a zoologist, and he was aware of it. I was surprised at this year’s Crawford Conference, when keynote speaker Johnson of the World Bank recognised the deficiency of accounting systems which valued environmental assets at zero; and that World Trade protestors should not be ignored, for they had valid points to express.

A fundamental matter impinging upon the third world is the gross deficiency of assistance from the developed nations towards minimising unwanted pregnancies in desperately poor nations such as sub-saharan Africa. Africa was mentioned by Rowbotham as being of special concern to himself, with its woeful poverty. It happens to be also the part of the world which is under the most pressure from increasing numbers of people. The desperate poverty, the environmental decline, and the population numbers and rate of increase are not just coincidence. It is a pity that the developed nations are not contributing adequate assistance regarding reproductive health rather than further exacerbating the matters of debt.

Nature and Society Forum Annual Report (September 19, 2001)

The present year has been a busy one for the Nature and Society Forum (NSF). As last year, a great deal of time and effort has been given up to the Australian National Biocentre proposal. However, other important projects, including the Metabolism project and the People and Nature (PAN) Program have made good progress, and many interesting discussion meetings have been held.

Publications

This year has seen the usual five issues of the Forum’s Journal Nature and Society. Jenny Wanless has continued as editor, with invaluable help from Gösta Lyngå. Sue Gilbert took over the task, formerly carried out by Peter Farrelly, of laying out the Journal and preparing it for the printer.

Two Occasional Papers have been published:

Inequality, sustainability and revolution by Colin Butler
Salt and vinegar: education for sustainability in the Murray Darling Basin, 1983-1998 by David Eastburn.

The first booklet in the Panperspectives series has been published:

Bad Bugs – People and Infectious Diseases - edited by Bryan Furnass and Stephanie Haygarth (see PAN Program below).

The Australian National Biocentre

A great deal of time and effort has been devoted during the year to the ANB proposal. The Kingston Foreshore is still the preferred site for the Biocentre. A meeting was held with the Chief Minister in February on this issue, but a written response from him is still awaited.

The ANB Interim Planning Board appointed the following committees: Buildings and Technology (Derek Wrigley, Convenor), the LINK Group (Alice Thompson, Convenor), Displays and Exhibitions (Bryan Furnass, Convenor), Education (Val Brown/John Harris, Convenors). The Landscape Committee (Eugene Herbert, Convenor) is dormant until the ANB site is finalized.

The ANB Board is still seeking funding from the Commonwealth Government for a comprehensive feasibility study, which would include a Business Plan and Prospectus.

The People and Nature (PAN) Program (Convener: Stephen Boyden)

This Program involves bringing together essential information on important ecological and health themes, and making this information available in plain English to interested members of the public, in Panperspectives booklets, and information sheets. During this year work on the Program has included the following activities

Bad Bugs–People and Infectious Diseases (edited by Bryan Furnass and Stephanie Haygarth)
In 1998, as part of the PAN program, Stephen Boyden convened a multidisciplinary conference on infectious disease in humans. The proceedings of this conference have been condensed into a 68 page booklet, written in plain English to make it accessible to non-professionals, including students. In keeping with the Panperspectives guidelines, the publication summarises the evolution of microbial infection and the body’s defence mechanisms, their impact on human societies from our hunter-gatherer ancestors onwards and the cultural adaptive changes made to combat them.

Food for Healthy People and a Healthy Planet (Convener: Bryan Furnass)
Another PAN initiative has been an internet conference on this theme held on the NSF website from 9-15 September. The conference has provided a perspective on the impact of food consumption on the health of humans and the impact of food production on the health of the environment. While lacking the benefits of personal interaction, the idea of an internet conference makes information available to a wide audience at a lower cost and with little intervention of fossil fuel combustion. It is planned to make the edited proceedings available on our website and in hard copy as a Panperspectives booklet early next year.

NSF acknowledges the key role played by our Office Manager, Sue Gilbert, in the organisation of this project and the coordination of the website design and various documents.

Ecological issues in a nutshell
Alice Thompson has continued her work in bringing together information on key ecological issues and preparing summaries on each issue for a Panperspectives booklet. This material is also being used in the PAN Workshops (see below).

People and nature papersStephen Boyden has prepared a series of information papers on ecological and health themes for use in the PAN Workshops. It is hoped that one of these, People and nature – the big picture, will be published as a Panperspectives booklet.

People and nature workshops
The first series of PAN Workshops commenced in August 2001. They are organised jointly by the Centre for Continuing Education at the ANU and NSF, and involve 8 or more two-hourly meetings. They are attended by interested members of the public, and facilitated by members of NSF. The workshops involve three phases: (1) a Learning phase (2) a Practical evaluation phase - appraisal of the practical meaning of information learned for individuals, families, or society (3) a Follow-up phase in which participants are encouraged to follow up their course with one of various forms of action.

It is planned to organise a series of PAN workshops annually in the future.

The Earth Charter (Australian Convener: Brendan Mackey)

After the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, an Earth Charter Commission was established, chaired by Maurice Strong and Mikhail Gorbachev. This Commission has led to the creation of a new international document, the Earth Charter, which articulates an ethical framework for a more sustainable way of living. It contains values and principles that can be used to guide the behaviour of individuals, organisations and governments in ways that promote a more environmentally sustainable, equitable and peaceful world.

NSF has become the host organisation for the Australian National Committee for the Earth Charter.

Scientists and engineers network for a sustainable environment (SENSE) (Convener: Moss Cass)

Two papers have been written and are currently being circulated for members of the network for comment: one dealing with Salinity and the other with the concept of Eco-effectiveness. The Convener of SENSE has been overseas recently and a strategy for launching these papers is being developed.

The Metabolism Project (Conveners: Janis Birkeland and John Schoonenvelt)

NSF has been trying to interest funding bodies in a proposal for a study on the metabolism of Canberra for many years, but it seems both the concept and the terminology did not work for them. This year we have used alternative descriptors such as “materials flow analysis” and “sustainability auditing” and we immediately attracted two small grants, one with the University of Canberra and the other with Land and Water Australia. We were also awarded a consultancy with the ACT Government’s “Planning and Land Management” unit (PALM). All three projects are linked insofar as they use the same methodology, but they apply to different areas and involve the mapping of stocks and flows of different materials.

Staff for the project are being drawn from different areas: post graduate students who are able to link their own research with our work and some of our members.

Sustainability Science

Encouraged by these developments, a proposal has been put forward for a new NSF project. This project would bring these activities together to provide a research capability that reflects our members’ interests, and that would link with existing research establishments that do not have our flexibility and low overheads.

We have decided to call this Sustainability Science, which is seen as a process of using science to bring about reconciliation between human activities and the natural world.

Website

The Office Manager, Sue Gilbert, has been responsible for major improvements in NSF’s Website (www.natsoc.org.au) in recent weeks.

Administration and finance highlights

There are 97 current financial members. This figure was around 120 this time last year. In the meantime we report that, during the last financial year, our turnover exceeded $70,000 the highest on record.

As a result of a generous donation from one of our members, we have been able to employ an Office Manager for the first time and this has made an enormous difference to our operations, particularly in the area of marketing activities (see new web site and food program) and publishing generally.

During the year we moved offices from one end of the Weston Laboratories to the other. We lost our air conditioning but gained more space and after a bit of furniture juggling, we now have a very comfortable office arrangement. We have also purchased two new computers and, with the assistance of a new volunteer, Paul Wallace, we have been able to network all our computers and configure them in a more ‘user-friendly’ way.

Stephen Boyden
Co-ordinator

Ape Man: the story of human evolution

Author: Robin McKie
Publisher: BBC 2000

Reviewed by Keith Thomas

I have been reading Ape Man: the story of human evolution published in the UK last year by the BBC. The author is Robin McKie, science editor of the Observer, so it should be good. And it is.

In this review I will share with you some of McKie’s information because he brings out some useful evidence relevant to current debates, including the perennial ones of whether our “natural” diet is vegetarian or omnivorous, whether the same physical fitness criteria apply to women as to men and what sort of physical exercise we can do which captures the essence of our evolutionary heritage. McKie also touches on the sort of mental and emotional qualities which led to survival through the rigours of the evolutionary period. (Devise your own mental exercises to complement your physical exercises!)

The page references below are to McKie’s book which I urge you to read if you are at all interested in human evolution but not already a graduate in this area. Needless to say, I take full responsibility for the following interpretation. I am not a scientist and a more expert reader of McKie’s book and the numerous sources he cites might lead to a different, more sophisticated interpretation than that which follows. I add the caution that I have ignored the usual conventions concerning quotations and ellipses where they would impede the flow of my text. Please check McKie’s book for the precise words and the context.

In terms of diet, the story is that our pre-Homo ancestors were herbivorous and our digestive system is basically unchanged since that time. However, there were immense advantages in our ancestors also consuming meat - indeed, without consuming meat we might still be the australopithecine species which preceded Homo and flourished up to 2m years ago.

The jumping-off point is that climate change gave our ancestors the stark alternative: adapt or perish. Some of our ancestors adapted, becoming tool makers and omnivores rather than herbivores. They also survived.

McKie quotes Richard Potts: “About 2.5m years ago, hominids encountered great fluctuations in the climate. At the same time we see the appearance of stone tools. That is no coincidence. They indicate that at least one species of hominid was responding to these changes by becoming even more adaptable, rather than becoming specialized in the way that robustus and bosei did. By making tools, dietary choices became even greater. Not only could people skin the large dead and doubtless smelly carcasses they occasionally found, they could crack open their bones for marrow. In addition tools would have helped pound and break down vegetables and nuts that could otherwise only have been eaten by animals with specialized dentures, and also helped dig up tubers which are rich in protein and calories. Just as australopithecines responded to oscillating climates by walking, by becoming more versatile movers, so did the first members of the Homo line 2 million years later. They made tools and became more versatile eaters” [66f]. The richer diet led to bigger brains, bigger brains led to intellectual growth and intellectual growth led to: (1) improved memory (including mental resource maps of the terrain and the seasons), (2) the ability to co-operate and take advantage of social complexity, (3) the ability to solve problems which led to the ability to create and use tools. These benefits in turn led to a more reliable diet which was also richer [114]. “We became less tethered to our habitats... Our ancestors’ behaviour was becoming increasingly diverse, our menus more adventurous. Mankind was on the move.” [67] Meat eaters were more free to migrate so they could flourish and survive, herbivores being more limited to the spread of their familiar staple plants [96]. The complexity of societies, the importance of memory and skills led to adults having a benefit beyond their reproductive age - they had knowledge and culture (wisdom) to pass on, not just physical genes[115].

The second point concerns the evolution of human society and the biological basis of differentiation of male and female roles.

Humans had a small pelvic gap for the birth canal, yet a more intelligent species would have a large head to accommodate the large brain. A larger head could not fit through the small pelvic gap. The evolutionary response was twofold: (a) for humans to be born while their brain was still relatively small. This means that mothers need to provide intensive care (suckling, comfort, nurturing, warmth) while the brain develops. If mothers are devoting themselves to this nurturing, they need the reliable and sustained support of others - the “family” or “tribe” [88]. The second response was (b) for women to evolve wider hips. This development survives today: women are less efficient bipedalists than men. Men were, therefore, comparatively better shaped than women for many of the activities of being the provider [89]. Because human brains take years to develop, there is a need for sustained social bonds to support the maturing human for the duration of its immaturity (i.e., its childhood).

The third point concerns the physical activities of our ancestors. “As well as the caring nature of Neanderthal society, the numerous injuries on their skeletons pointed to a dangerous, perhaps violent, side to their lives. Trinkaus ... analyzed the bones of 17 Neanderthals - individuals who had a staggering total of 27 traumatic wounds. They were mostly injured to the head and upper body, almost no lower limb injuries. I got a statistical fit with rodeo riders; they get thrown off their animals a lot. In other words, it looked like Neanderthals were being flung around and badly hurt by the creatures that they hunted. Not for them the low- risk, careful business of stalking and spearing. They went in for the kill and paid the consequences... These were people who had evolved a robust response to the rigours of survival, creatures with physical prowess beyond the aspirations of even the best Olympic athletes [157f].”

The fourth point concerns the use of fire. This is important for us as the historical timing of its regular use can guide us to decide whether our paleo diet can - for scientific rather than aesthetic reasons - validly include cooked meat. Although there is some evidence of the use of fire as a defence against predators 1.3 - 1.4m years ago, this is contentious. Some hearths and the remains of burnt bones have been found in China from 300,000 to 400,000 years ago. Other sites 500,000 years old have no signs of fire. Fireplaces do not appear regularly until about 40,000 years ago [160], just 1700 generations, not long in evolutionary terms.

The fifth point concerns mental and emotional skills, apart from the animal-like quick reactions and coordination. McKie’s account indicates that people who were tenacious and innovative were survivors. More than that, it was those who had social skills - who trusted others and were trusted in return, who showed compassion [90, 154, 156-7], who sustained long-term relationships of trust [80f] (and love?), who contributed to the group who survived best of all. People with good memories and who organized their thoughts in a way that could be communicated effectively (a) for immediate practical purposes [124] and (b) down the generations, were also at a premium. Remember, the oral tradition was the only tradition. One could, on the evidence of McKie’s book, make an argument for monogamy. I won’t do that but will go so far as to say that the qualities I have just listed appear to be those that both sustained people in periods of negligible change and enabled them to adapt and survive when change was forced upon them.

There is much more in McKie’s book to fascinate and inform. For me the underlying message is that our modern pre-occupations with weight loss and body sculpting trivialize the most wonderful story in the world. We can get far more out of this story than a reduction in cellulite. Our challenge is to apply evolutionary theory to the scientific evidence and so map out the essential features of paleo life. We can then decide whether our 21st century, Western prejudices, predilections and constraints rule out for us certain features of the full paleo repertoire and how we apply to our lives those features that we do not rule out.