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Bird Flu: The End of the Nature vs. Social Dichotomies, and More, in "Risk Society"

Post by Sunday at midnight.

Where was everybody at class Friday? Many were absent on an important day: the start of our discussions of Beck/ecological modernization. Read Bronner and Goldblatt articles (and the short one entitled 'Ecological Modernization' after them; read Mythen; read bits from Beck himself) to prepare for next session.

At this point in the course, as we move from the second theory discussed into the third theory discussed, below is an appropriate news article bridging eco-Marxist ideas ('second contradition of capital' comes to mind) and growing political and economic awareness of the massive levels of environmental damage. This damage is increasingly causing both the economic unrest mentioned by the eco-Marxists (the 'second contradiction of capital') and the environmental-political unrest heralded by Ulrich Beck's ideas of the world's states moving into a 'risk society' situation.

There was an attempt in China in the 1990s to do some ecological modernization--to introduce a kind of environmental costs as listed as deductions from profits of the Chinese economic expansion. However, because it showed that the Chinese economy was growing backwards and destroying itself instead of really developing when the costs were tallied, the idea was left unimplemented. This 'ecological economics' accounting was politically rejected for continuing blindly more 'treadmill' expansion types of alliances....and the endless short term developmentalism goals that lead to further environmental destruction.

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Nature loss 'dwarfs bank crisis'
By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News website, Barcelona

* The global economy is losing more money from the disappearance of forests
than through the current banking crisis, according to an EU-commissioned
study. *

It puts the annual cost of forest loss at between $2 trillion and $5
trillion. [That's annual lost--the U.S. has bailed out banks 'only' around 1.2 trillion dollars so far.]

The figure comes from adding the value of the various services that forests
perform, such as providing clean water and absorbing carbon dioxide.


The study, headed by a Deutsche Bank economist, parallels the Stern Review
into the economics of climate change.

It has been discussed during many sessions here at the World Conservation
Congress.

Some conservationists see it as a new way of persuading policymakers to fund
nature protection rather than allowing the decline in ecosystems and
species, highlighted in the release on Monday of the Red List of Threatened
Species, to continue.

* Capital losses *

Speaking to BBC News on the fringes of the congress, study leader Pavan
Sukhdev emphasized that the cost of natural decline dwarfs losses on the
financial markets.

"It's not only greater but it's also continuous, it's been happening every
year, year after year," he told BBC News.

* Teeb will... show the risks we run by not valuing [nature] adequately." *
Andrew Mitchell
Global Canopy Programme

"So whereas Wall Street by various calculations has to date lost, within the
financial sector, $1-$1.5 trillion, the reality is that at today's rate we
are losing natural capital at least between $2-$5 trillion every year."

The review that Mr Sukhdev leads, The Economics of Ecosystems and
Biodiversity (Teeb [that's an abbreviation]), was initiated by Germany under its recent EU
presidency, with the European Commission providing funding.

The first phase concluded in May when the team released its finding that
forest decline could be costing about 7% of global GDP. The second phase
will expand the scope to other natural systems.

* Stern message *

Key to understanding his conclusions is that as forests decline, nature
stops providing services which it used to provide essentially for free.

So the human economy either has to provide them instead, perhaps through
building reservoirs, building facilities to sequester carbon dioxide, or
farming foods that were once naturally available.

Or we have to do without them; either way, there is a financial cost.

The Teeb calculations show that the cost falls disproportionately on the
poor, because a greater part of their livelihood depends directly on the
forest, especially in tropical regions.

The greatest cost to western nations would initially come through losing a
natural absorber of the most important greenhouse gas.

Just as the Stern Review brought the economics of climate change into the
political arena and helped politicians see the consequences of their policy
choices, many in the conservation community believe the Teeb review will lay
open the economic consequences of halting or not halting the slide in
biodiversity.

"The numbers in the Stern Review enabled politicians to wake up to reality,"
said Andrew Mitchell, director of the Global Canopy Programme, an
organisation concerned with directing financial resources into forest
preservation.

"Teeb will do the same for the value of nature, and show the risks we run by
not valuing it adequately."

A number of nations, businesses and global organisations are beginning to
direct funds into forest conservation, and there are signs of a trade in
natural ecosystems developing, analogous to the carbon trade, although it is
clearly very early days.

Some have ethical concerns over the valuing of nature purely in terms of the
services it provides humanity; but the counter-argument is that decades of
trying to halt biodiversity decline by arguing for the intrinsic worth of
nature have not worked, so something different must be tried.

Whether Mr Sukhdev's arguments will find political traction in an era of
financial constraint is an open question, even though many of the
governments that would presumably be called on to fund forest protection are
the ones directly or indirectly paying for the review. [if you just removed subsidies, it would cost nothing...]

But, he said, governments and businesses are getting the point.

"Times have changed. Almost three years ago, even two years ago, their eyes
would glaze over.

"Today, when I say this, they listen. In fact I get questions asked - so how
do you calculate this, how can we monetize it, what can we do about it, why
don't you speak with so and so politician or such and such business." [that the 'ecological modernization' turn we are talking about]

The aim is to complete the Teeb review by the middle of 2010, the date by
which governments are committed under the Convention of Biological Diversity
to have begun slowing the rate of biodiversity loss.

* Richard.Black-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk *

Published: 2008/10/10 00:23:07 GMT

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/7662565.stm