30 March 2012 | Ecosystem markets aim to preserve nature in part by recognizing the value of ecosystem services – such as water filtration, flood control, and carbon sequestration.  But does the market metaphor create the illusion of simple solutions?  UC Berkley Professor of Energy and Resources Richard Norgaard argues this week on the Ecosystem Commons that it does just that in a post entitled Ecosystem Services: From Eye-Opening Metaphor to Complexity Blinder, which is based on his 2010 paper of the same name.

“The metaphor of nature as a stock that provides a flow of services is insufficient for the task ahead. Indeed, the simplicity of the stock-flow framework blinds us to the complexity of the human predicament,” he writes. “The complex practice of understanding ecosystems is being skewed and simplified to inform markets.”

This, he says, distorts our understanding of complex ecosystems and creates the illusion that we can keep burning through resources if we just save a few patches of wetland.

He then poses three questions to readers:

• First:  Should we be concerned about long-term effects of this shift?
• Second:  Don’t we need to shift our focus to national and global politics and institutions to address the broader issues?
• Third:  How do we design ethical reasoning into environmental governance?

The Answers Thus Far

So far, he’s received two answers: one from Restoration Systems President George Howard and one from Ag Resource Strategies President Tim Gieseke.

Both men are mitigation bankers, and both concede Norgaard’s point – but then argue that the markets metaphor is as good a beginning as we are going to get, and that global solutions are unworkable at this time.

“It is awkward, and as you say, simplified, but that simplification is occurring for each of these oikos dimensions,” writes Gieseke.  “Ecological economics is more than interdisciplinary; it is the integration of the earth’s life support system and the means by which humans will value it.  And since we just began this journey during our lifetimes, we are children in understanding how to go about it.”

“National and global institutions are notoriously insensitive to local conditions, inevitably provide one size fits all – or nothing – politicized solutions in the name of ‘equity’,” writes Howard.  “These tend to be costly, ineffective and too frequently counter-productive. Action locally will not be directed globally.”

Join the Discussion

It’s a fascinating discussion that’s just begun to roll – and we suspect it will attract many more comments before wrapping up.  You can follow the discussion here, and feel free to drop your own two cents in.

written by Ecosystem and Ecography

WASHINGTON: Global warming increases the risk for species extinction, especially in bio diverse ecosystems, because extreme weather conditions like hurricanes, draughts and torrential downpours become more frequent.

Human impact means that flora and fauna become extinct at a rate 100-1000 times higher than normal. Climate change has been deemed as one of the main causes of species depletion.

A research team in theoretical biology at Linkoping University has, with the help of mathematical modelling and simulation, studied how the dynamics of different types of ecosystems may be affected by significant environment fluctuations.

Linda Kaneryd, doctoral student and lead author of the study says the results were surprising.

“Several previous studies of food web structures have suggested that species-rich ecosystems are often more robust than species-poor ecosystems,” she said.

“However at the onset of increased environmental fluctuations, such as extreme weather, we see that extreme species-rich ecosystems are the most vulnerable and this entails a greater risk for a so-called cascading extinction,” she added.

In a rainforest or on coral reef there are a wide variety of species of primary producers such as green plants and algae. Since they are competitors, relatively few individuals of the same species exist, subjecting them to a greater risk of extinction should external conditions change. This could result in a depletion of food sources for a species of herbivores that, in turn, affects a predator at the top of the food chain. Biologists call this transformation a cascading extinction.

The opposite would apply to an ecosystem whereby few species exist in large numbers and animal species are adaptable generalists.

The researchers create their model food webs following on from their experiences with real ecosystems; what eats what, the composition of the species’ life cycles, and how they interact with others. In this study, external conditions are represented as an increasing and unpredictable variation.

“The model we worked with is quite typical. The next step is to introduce actual, detailed climatic data,” says Bo Ebenman, Professor of Theoretical Biology who supervised Kaneryd’s thesis.

written by Ecosystem and Ecography

Aggregate litigation and the court system can not only restore the protection of victims and the production of deterrence, but also play a pivotal role in stimulating regulatory innovation. This is accomplished through a reward system that seems largely to mimic the institutional devices used in other domains, such as intellectual property rights, by defining a proper set of incentives. Precisely the described solution relies on creating a specific economic framework able to foster economies of scale and grant a valuable property right over a specific litigation to an entrepreneurial individual, who in exchange provides the venture capital needed for the legal action, and produces inputs and focal points for amending regulations. In this light, aggregate litigation thus can be equally seen as an incubator for regulation.

written by Journal of Civil and Legal Sciences