Interpretations of I Does Environmental Policy Have Any Foundations?
Jan 17, 2016
Interpretations of I
Does Environmental Policy Have Any Foundations?
Some candidates
• Vulnerability
• Utilitarianism and its derivatives
• Growth (next week)
• Resilience
• Adaptive management
• Sustainability
• Precaution
Some Common Problems
• Lack of a legitimating framework
• Built up from disciplines that are either without substantive ethical norms or orphaned because they are no longer connected to a legitimating narrative.
• Not really about the environment—a form of anthropocentrism.
Outline
• Vulnerability
• The Perfected Market (Nordhaus/Harris)
• Resilience
• Sustainability/Precaution/Adaptive Management
Johann Karl LothThe Good Samaritan (1697)
Some features of Jewish Cosmology
• Linearity of time; Idea that time had a beginning and is moving forward
• Humanity as the pinnacle of creation; created in the image of God
• Moral behavior through following God’s laws • Active, moral God who controls nature to reward
or punish humans for their behavior• Human behavior connected to an end; people
act morally with the view that their actions will be punished or rewarded by God
Some features of Christian Cosmology
• 2 commandments displace the 10.
• A special interest in humanity manifested through Jesus.
• The possibility of an afterlife-through a responsible life.
• Personal and knowable God: through reason and faith.
• The Great Chain of Being.
How Can I Secure Eternal Life?
• Answer: obey the law to love God with all your heart, soul and strength; and your neighbor as yourself.
• Who is my neighbor?
• Schweitzer’s answer………….
Good Samaritan
“Jesus replied, "A man was going down from
Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among
robbers, who stripped him and beat him,
and departed, leaving him half dead. Now
by chance a priest was going down that
road; and when he saw him he passed by
on the other side.”
Good Samaritan
“So likewise a Levite, when he came to the
place and saw him, passed by on the other
side. But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came
to where he was; and when he saw him, he
had compassion, and went to him and bound
up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine; then
he set him on his own beast
Good Samaritan
and brought him to an inn, and took care of him.
Which of these three, do you think, proved
neighbor to the man who fell among the
robbers? He said, "The one who showed mercy
on him." And Jesus said to him, "Go and do
likewise.”
(Luke 10:30-34:36)
Protecting the Vulnerable
A Foundation for Environmental Policy?
What is protecting the vulnerable?
• An injunction to prevent harms from befalling people. (p. 110)
• Vulnerability is a matter of being under threat from harms. Ibid.
Defeating the voluntarist model.
• Promises generate dependence and therefore vulnerability. Vulnerability helps me decide what promises to make.
• Businesses are more knowledgeable than their customers.
• Professionals must protect the client. Terms of the contract set. Duties to assist. Duties to persist.
• Family relations.• Friends.
Elements of the theory.
• Incidence. Who has the special obligation to whom?
• Content. What protection should be provided?
• Context. When the duties arise.
• Form. The duties cannot be altered even if the parties consent.
Characterizing Individual Duties
• Individual responsibilities. If A’s interests are vulnerable to B’s actions and choices, B has a special responsibility to protect A’s interests; the strength of this responsibility depends strictly upon the degree to which B can affect A’s interests. (p. 118)
• The role of causal histories, and the doctrine of last/best chance.
Duties as Part of a Collective
• If A’s interests are vulnerable to the actions or choices of a group of individuals, disjunctively or conjunctively, then that group has a special responsibility to (a) organize…and (b) implement a scheme for coordinated action by members such that A’s interests will be protected as well as they can be by that group, consistent with the groups other responsibilities.
Duties to Future generations
• Why the voluntarist/contract model does not work for future persons.
• How our unilateral power fits the vulnerability model.
Duties to the Environment
• The great chain of being raises its (ugly?) head.
• Duties to animals no problem—they have interests; but are they neighbors.
• Is protecting the environment just a subset of our general duties to future persons?
• Is the fact that the environment is vulnerable to our actions what grounds our responsibility? Has no moral standing.
The great chain of being
The Perfect Market
A Foundation for Environmental Policy?
What is “I”?
• The current dominant normative, corrected markets, framework is derived from economics/utilitarianism.
• I is impacted negatively when an act or omission causes a net decline in human well-being.
Outline
• The Corrected Domestic Market
• What to do when there is no market
• International Markets.
• Problems in Paradise
• Fellow travelers
1. The Corrected (Micro) Market
National and International Versions of getting more for less. (Difference between free markets
and corrected markets, and between macro and micro.)
Dominion Assumed
Presenting the theory/not the reality
• Globalization and its Discontents.
• The Blood Bankers
• Confessions of an Economic Hitman
• Correction important/regulation?-?
Transactions
Cobus Bodenstein, National Post, October 16, 2000
The best of all possible worlds
•Tariffs
•Subsidies
•Currency frictions
•Immigration
•Capital immobility
•Quotas
•Externalities
•Public Goods
•Monopolies
•Absence of markets
•Transaction costs
•Information asymmetries
Judging improvements from transactions
• Pareto-superior.
• Pareto-optimum.
Pareto superior
• At least one person is better-off
without the other one being worse-off.
Pareto-superior
Peter’s utility
Jeremy’s utility
P
A
B
Pareto-optimum
When it is impossible to make
somebody better-off without making
somebody else worse-off.
Pareto-optimal
Pareto frontier
Pareto-optimal
Pareto-superior
Obstacles to Pareto-improvementsthe nasty six• Externalities.
• Public goods.
• Monopoly.
• No market.
• Transaction costs.
• Information.
Externalities
: Francisco Olvera, La Jornada, March 30, 1999.
Public goods (non-rival)
http://www.nps.gov/goga/
Public goods (non-excludable)
http://exn.ca/FlightDeck/Aircraft/imagearchiveresult.cfm?Keyword=19980616-avroarrow5b.jpg
Monopoly
http://www.aircanada.ca/home.html
No market
Weather forecast for the Montreal Area
Monday, October 19, 3000.
Sunny with cloudy periods
High 9 ° C
Low 0 ° C
Transaction costs
http://www.kksm.com/
Lack of Information
Information
2. Cost/benefit analysis: finding the market solution without the
market
Prices already paid.
• Demand side, e.g. hedonic pricing—travel costs, equipment costs—e.g. fishing tackle, licenses.
• Supply side, engineers salaries, cement, farm land values for land flooded etc.
Computing the balance:non-market value: examples
• Value of human life and health
• Existence value.
• Consumer surplus.
• Contingent valuation.
• Bequest value.
• How much is nature worth? (Costanza)
3. Global markets
Extending the Model
Arguments for Free-Trade
• Comparative advantage.• Protection of some industries,
disadvantages others.• Competition leads to greater
efficiency.• All countries lose when protectionist.
•Tariffs
•Subsidies
•Currency frictions
•Immigration
•Capital immobility
•Quotas
•Externalities
•Public Goods
•Monopolies
•Absence of markets
•Transaction costs
•Information asymmetries
Comparative advantage
Trade
Produce
Protection of some disadvantages others
Www.dell.ca
Www.ebay.com
Competition leads to greater efficiency
Ian Waldie / Reuters http://www.olympics.com/eng/sports/AT/
All countries lose without trade
From the nation to the world: the nasty six become the dirty
dozen• Tariffs• Quotas• Capital immobility• Subsidies• 2 problems unresolved in making a perfect
world:• Currency frictions/manipulations• Labor immobility
Improving the whole world.
4. Problems in Paradise
• One person has everything
• Commodification
• Discounting
• Anthropocentric
• Sneaking cardinal measures back in.
• Economic efficiency doesn’t maximize utility
• Scale not considered.
The market $
Blocked & Penumbral exchanges
Prohibited
Unpriced
Penumbral
PresentValue of
$1Percent
Period 1% 2% 3% 4% 5% 6% 7% 8% 9% 10%1 0.99010 0.98039 0.97087 0.96154 0.95238 0.94340 0.93458 0.92593 0.91743 0.909092 0.98030 0.96117 0.94260 0.92456 0.90703 0.89000 0.87344 0.85734 0.84168 0.826453 0.97059 0.94232 0.91514 0.88900 0.86384 0.83962 0.81630 0.79383 0.77218 0.751314 0.96098 0.92385 0.88849 0.85480 0.82270 0.79209 0.76290 0.73503 0.70843 0.683015 0.95147 0.90573 0.86261 0.82193 0.78353 0.74726 0.71299 0.68058 0.64993 0.62092
36 0.69892 0.49022 0.34503 0.24367 0.17266 0.12274 0.08754 0.06262 0.04494 0.0323537 0.69200 0.48061 0.33498 0.23430 0.16444 0.11579 0.08181 0.05799 0.04123 0.0294138 0.68515 0.47119 0.32523 0.22529 0.15661 0.10924 0.07646 0.05369 0.03783 0.0267339 0.67837 0.46195 0.31575 0.21662 0.14915 0.10306 0.07146 0.04971 0.03470 0.0243040 0.67165 0.45289 0.30656 0.20829 0.14205 0.09722 0.06678 0.04603 0.03184 0.02209
Discounting
Anthropocentric
Photo: Ap
The comparison of utilities
Www.challengeBP.com
Cardinal
The comparison of utilities
http://www.tiemaster.com/
Ordinal
Soft Hard
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Economic efficiency doesn’t maximize utility
(unless you accept the income dist.)
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Sarah Vivian Rob Andrew Jennifer Dillon
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The problem of scale
• Overwhelming the biosphere.
The principle of Utility is incompatible with any
morality at all.
5. Law and Economics –a cognate framework:
Coase/Epstein/Calabresi
http://www.9thjudicialdistrict-ga.org/whitecthse.htm
The law should mimic the market
• Ronald Coase, “The Problem of Social Cost”
• Rights inhibit efficiency. Accidents.
• The case for individual resolution.
• Class actions and the problem of transaction costs.
Torts and nuisances
• Torts: a wrongful touching.
• Nuisances: state may prohibit and may authorize a nuisance.
• The common law defines a nuisance.
Some non-utilitarian candidates
• Growth/Stern
• Resilience
• Adaptive management
• Sustainability
• Precaution
Some Common Problems
• Lack of a legitimating framework of goals.
• Built up from disciplines that are either without substantive ethical norms or orphaned because they are no longer connected to a legitimating narrative.
• Not really about the environment—a form of anthropocentrism.
• All part of the failed emancipation project.
With thanks to Prof Brendan MackeyDirector, ANU Wild Country Research & Policy Hub
And Brooke Hecht Center for Humans and Nature
Resilience thinking: promise and questions
Promise
Redefining and Expanding a Leopold Framework
Adaptive Cycle
Some Key Concepts (from Walker et. al (2004)
1. Resilience: ability to absorb disturbance and reorganize while undergoing change and retain function, structure, identity and feedbacks.
2. Adaptability: Ability of actors in a system to influence resilience.
3. Transformability: Ability to create a fundamentally new system when ecological, social or economic structures make the existing system untenable.
4. Taking these three together makes a stability landscape.
Elements of “resilience.”
• Latitude—amount a system can be changed without losing its ability to recover.
• Resistance: ability to avoid change. • Precarious: how close a system is to a
threshold. • Panarchy: influence of states and
dynamics from states above and below the one in question.
Panarchy
From the website: http://www.resalliance.org/593.php
“The theory that we develop must of necessity transcend boundaries of scale and discipline. It must be capable of organizing our understanding of economic, ecological, and institutional systems. And it must explain situations where all three types of systems interact. The cross-scale, interdisciplinary, and dynamic nature of the theory has lead us to coin the term panarchy for it. Its essential focus is to rationalize the interplay between change and persistence, between the predictable and the unpredictable. Thus, we drew upon the Greek god Pan to capture an image of unpredictable change and upon notions of hierarchies across scales to represent structures that sustain experiments, test results, and allow adaptive evolution.”
Panarchy
From the website: http://www.resalliance.org/593.php
“The theory that we develop must of necessity transcend boundaries of scale and discipline. It must be capable of organizing our understanding of economic, ecological, and institutional systems. And it must explain situations where all three types of systems interact. The cross-scale, interdisciplinary, and dynamic nature of the theory has lead us to coin the term panarchy for it. Its essential focus is to rationalize the interplay between change and persistence, between the predictable and the unpredictable. Thus, we drew upon the Greek god Pan to capture an image of unpredictable change and upon notions of hierarchies across scales to represent structures that sustain experiments, test results, and allow adaptive evolution.”
Panarchy
From the website: http://www.resalliance.org/593.php
“The theory that we develop must of necessity transcend boundaries of scale and discipline. It must be capable of organizing our understanding of economic, ecological, and institutional systems. And it must explain situations where all three types of systems interact. The cross-scale, interdisciplinary, and dynamic nature of the theory has lead us to coin the term panarchy for it. Its essential focus is to rationalize the interplay between change and persistence, between the predictable and the unpredictable. Thus, we drew upon the Greek god Pan to capture an image of unpredictable change and upon notions of hierarchies across scales to represent structures that sustain experiments, test results, and allow adaptive evolution.”
Basin of attraction
Why Resilience Theory Falls Short of the Mark
Can it escape the orphanage?
Sources: www.epa.qld.gov.au www.bluemountains.net http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/images/exhibitions/month
Has Resilience Thinking taken a ‘Satin Bowerbird’ approach to formulating theory?
Key terms missing from Resilience theory
Evolution
Planetary Dynamics
Ethics
Evolution
http://pages.britishlibrary.net/charles.darwin3/mletters_images/darwin1.jpghttp://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v433/n7027/images/nature03435-i2.0.jpg
Sources:http://www.bible.ca/tracks/Earnst-Mayer.jpg
micro-evolution of species interactions
Source: http://ebd10.ebd.csic.es/Home.html
Evolution – a dynamic balance of stability & change
Changee.g. micro-evolutionary adaptations
Stabilitye.g. stabilizing selection
OCBIL vs YODFLMega species richness
& endemism:• Old (really old;140my)• Climatically-buffered• Infertile• Landscapes
Southwest Australia
Pantepui Highlands(mainly Venezuela)
South Africa’s Greater Cape
Source: Steve Hopper, Kew Gardens
Planetary Dynamics (Biosphere)
According to thermodynamic theory, systems far from equilibrium self-generate dissipative structures to redistribute energy and (re-)establish thermal equilibrium…
The system state of ‘equilibrium’
The Earth is an Optimizing System
• The earth and the life on it is a complex dissipative structure.
• Which grows through co-evolution.
Co-evolution of ‘chemo-life forms’ & environment
Source: http://ebd10.ebd.csic.es/Home.html
And what of ‘Nature Alive’?
Gaia and Lovelock
From the website: http://www.kheper.net/topics/Gaia/earth1.jpg
Gaia: “a self-regulating entity with the capacity to keep our planet healthy by controlling the physical and chemical environment”
What about ethics?
Rampant Anthropocentrism?
• “The combined and often synergistic effects ... can make ecosystems more vulnerable to changes that previously could be absorbed. …ecosystems may suddenly shift from desired to less desired states in their capacity to generate ecosystem services. …the challenge is to strengthen the capacity of ecosystems to support social and economic development.” Folke, et. al., “Regime Shifts, Resilience, and Biodiversity in Ecosystem Management.”
If we deny ecological optimization, and find camels useful, is this therefore an optimal state?
Camel plague near Alice Springs, Central Australia
A biospheric (ecospheric) ethic is essential…
From the website: http://www.news.wisc.edu/news/images/leopShackBW.jpg
Leopold walking outside the shack near Baraboo, Wisconsin
The need for a local land ethic
Welcome to the Anthropocene
Sustainability/Precaution/Adaptive Management
Peter G. Brown
McGill School of the Environment
Montreal, Canada
This power point is based in part on:
Disendorf, Mark. 1997. “Principles of ecological sustainability”, Diesendorf, Mark and Clive Hamilton, (eds.) Human Ecology, Human Economy, (St. Leonards, Allen & Unwin,1997),Chap. 3. pp. 64-97.
Outline:
I. Views on sustainability.
• Economic.
• Ecological.
II. Weak and Strong Sustainability.
I. Views on Sustainability
“Sustainable Development is the development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
(WCED, 1987)
Economic Sustainability
Maintain the level of consumption
indefinitely.
• The environment is seen as an externality.
• Precondition for environmental
sustainability.
Economic Approach
Ecological SustainabilityEconomic Growth
Economic Sustainability
Ecological Sustainability
Promotion of equity between and within
generations.
• Maintaining the earth’s life support
systems
• Improve individual and community well-
being.
Ecological Approach
Economic Sustainability Society
Ecological Sustainability
Principles
• Conservation of biodiversity and ecological
integrity.
• Individual and community well-being.
• Intergenerational equity.
• Precautionary principle.
Biodiversity and Ecological Integrity
• Life support system.
• Evolutionary potential.
• ‘Environmental’ services (i.e., raw
materials, food, maintain soil fertility,
breakdown of pollution).
Well-being
• Improve both individual and community well-being.
Intergenerational Equity
What is to be passed on to future generations?
• Biodiversity
• Ecological integrity.
• Well-being.
Intragenerational Equity
• Create a more socially just society in the present.
Precautionary Principle
• Where there are threats of serious or
irreversible environmental damage, lack of
full scientific certainty should not be used
as a reason for postponing measures to
prevent environmental degradation.
(emphasis added)
Precautionary Principle
When considering economic projects,
proponents must demonstrate that, to a
high degree of probability, the project will
not cause significant harm to the
environment. (emphasis added)
II.Weak and Strong Sustainability Principles
Intergenerational Equity
Weak
• allows the substitution of human-made capital for natural capital.
Strong
• involves substantial conservation of biodiversity, ecosystem integrity, cultural diversity, critical capital, and the enhancement of well-being.
Biodiversity Conservation
Weak
• limited to representative samples of species or ‘safe’ minimum population levels.
Strong
• involves considerably more than the conservation of samples of species.
Emphasis on
Weak• economic growth.
Strong
• well-being including ecological, social and economic indicators (but not committed to growth).
Economic Activity
Weak
• trade-offs between economic activity and environmental quality.
Strong
• Ecological limits are set on Economic activity to avoid damage of critical capital.
Precautionary Principle
Weak
• action is optional.
• Industry may define what ‘serious’ is.
Strong
• action is mandatory.
• ‘serious’ is defined by community concerns.
Substitution
Weak
• markets determine the substitutability of human-made capital for natural capital.
Strong
• biophysical laws and an ecocentric ethic determine the substitutability of human-made capital for natural capital.
Environmental Impact Assessment
Weak• cost-benefit analysis.
Strong
• constrained policy analysis.
Focus
Weak
• on maintaining existing industries.
Strong
• on achieving ecological sustainability, social equity and well-being.
Critique
• Remains a primarily anthropocentric view.
Norton’s adaptive management
• Bryan sees AM as a way to reach the goals of sustainability. Something is sustainable if it will not reduce the ratio of opportunities to constraints of future generations.
• For him there are three elements: 1) Reduce uncertainty by taking reversible actions; 2) multi-scalar modeling; and 3) problems addressed are embedded in local contexts.
What is needed?
• To construct a new morality based on the principle that other life forms and natural systems are valuable for their own sake and not only for human use.