Sustainability is About More than Just Stabilizing the Climate
The clue to receive funding in science? Climate change.
The buzzword for conservation non-profits? Climate change.
The “sustainability” emphasis in the private sector? Climate change.
The new “charismatic megafuana”? Climate change.
Climate change is the overriding theme of current conservation and development work, and it dominates science and conservation media attention. While climate change and associated warming is one of the greatest challenges facing the planet, it is not the only challenge. If we continue to put all or most of our attention on combating climate change, will nature remain capable of supplying necessary ecosystem services ensuring human livelihoods as it does now?
Consumption patterns, water scarcity, starvation, food security, biodiversity loss, and increased spread of disease pose innumerable threats to human well-being. Climate change will increase the severity of these concerns, but stabilizing our climate won’t alleviate them. We must further our understanding of the relationships between nature and people - expand our knowledge of ecosystem services and how they relate to diseases and food security - and we need to curb our ever increasing consumption problems. Understanding and reducing the effects of climate change should be part of broader sustainability projects that address natural resources and human well-being concerns. Funding, media, and human capital must expand beyond a single sustainability component – mitigating global climate change won’t feed the growing human population, won’t alleviate poverty, and won’t make people eat lower on the food chain. If so much focus is on stabilizing climate, what will we have left to live on once it’s stabilized?
Comments
Rebecca, I think you’ve hit
Rebecca,
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. Obviously climate stabilization is hugely important, but we need to think beyond climate change and beyond carbon emissions, sequestration, etc. This is especially true in the United States where just the terms climate change and global warming are so politically charged. We may be missing an opportunity to reach a broad portion of the population by framing environmental issues only in terms of climate change. If we can convey the importance of ecosystem services to clean water, clean air, and human health in people’s own backyards, we may be more successful at confronting many of the global concerns you mention. Just learning to effectively communicate beyond our academic and professional communities is a much-needed skill. The more we focus solely on climate change, the more we may be failing to reach otherwise supportive audiences.
Thank you for the post. I do
Thank you for the post. I do find the prevalence of climate change concerns in the global environmental consciousness to be frustrating sometimes. I see this well reflected through the Green Economy discourse, which is being largely dominated by concerns over low-carbon growth/development and energy efficiency, and which often overlooks the more fundamental problem of the unsustainable relationship we have with of all of our natural resources. But I also see this as a major opportunity for highlighting the importance of the regulatory functions of ecosystems. In a strict definition of ecosystem services (ES = regulating services), it should also be acknowledged that climate regulation really is the only one which is globally enjoyed. As adaptation to climate change continues to become an increasingly prominent concern around the world, then it should also provide an increasingly strong incentive for investing more in preserving those ecosystem services that are enjoyed at a more local level and which contribute to building resilience.
In short, I don't think it's necessary to detract from the huge climate issue to secure greater funding for and interest in conservation. More and more, all conservation efforts will need to account for climate change. Most importantly, it's up to the conservation community to make sure that they are feeding the right messages into the climate change discussions so that the bigger picture (i.e. nature) is not being overlooked.
Thank you both for these
Thank you both for these comments. Drew, I agree with you that I think, particularly in the US, climate change has polarized discussions about the environment in general. It is so easy for people to let one thing define an entire field - i.e. climate change defines conservation and environment I also agree communication is a huge challenge and it will becoming increasingly important for scientists around the world to improve their communication skills.
I also agree with you, David, that climate change could provide an opportunity to bring the importance of ecosystem services to the fore. I don't see that happening - climate talks, for me, are too deeply enmeshed in the politics and the policy. I do think that is the responsibility of the conservation community, as you suggest, but its an uphill battle to fight once the media is engaged and focused mostly on just climate change. your points are well-taken, however.
Hi Rebecca, I largely agree
Hi Rebecca,
I largely agree with you...climate has indeed sucked the air out of the room so to speak diverting attention from solving the many other environmental and environmental ills that still plague us. As an example, I think soil loss is one of the unheralded crises of the 21st Century that we eventually will need to face...but when was the last time you heard that referred to as an impending crisis?
In some ways, the promise of climate change as a "new" environmental issue was that it would provide an overarching framing for addressing environmental problems in an integrated manner at a truly global scale. And in this regard, I think it has achieved much of its promise.
At worst, it was merely another repackaging of environmentalism, conservationism, or sustainability--that now has lead to even greater political polarization and gridlock to finding solutions to any related problems. I have heard asserted that climate is the worst possible vehicle to motivate environmental action given it's a problem with little immediate tangible, visible, or attributable evidence of it's existence! Much better to tackle malaria first as one example! I have also heard if we could give CO2 a color we would solve global warming overnight!
However, I do believe climate has become the latest surrogate for the ongoing debate about how we live on this planet and make a real transition from current population and consumption patterns to living that is truly sustainable for all life.
One can argue (as you do) if climate is the appropriate vehicle for this debate, and if climate is the most relevant problem to focus on, especially given the persistent uncertainties in timing and magnitude of impacts at scales relevant to decision making...But what climate has accomplished is to start a dialog that might not otherwise have started about how to solve global scale problems starting locally and cooperating internationally, and how we think more purposefully about planning for the future than perhaps we have done before.
Many climate communications specialists (and those who work on related cultural/social construction and contextual analysis) have concluded that we are not really discussing climate or climate science any longer in the broader political arena surrounding climate change but rather societal values. So relating climate to values that people care about...quality of life, quality of their children's lives, health, security...etc. as you mention above, is the way to reach people with the urgency of the climate (and other) problem(s) and the need to work toward solutions as soon as possible and practicable. I think real progress has been made in the climate debate moving the discussion from talking only about saving polar bears (the recent Coke campaign not-withstanding) to talking about the inconvenient sewer overflow down the street that will be the persistent future reality of climate change...
The IPCC has long advocated a risk management approach to climate change, variability, and extremes...and that's where I think most here do or are likely to agree our ecosystem services frame comes into play as a solution. If we are trying to plan, prepare for, and adapt to climate change...we want to find robust solutions that have multiple benefits, create societal resilience, and are no regrets to implement...particularly in the face of uncertain future scenarios...and at the same time help us manager extremes of weather and climate that are already occuring. Ecosystem services and green infrastructure fit the bill...
Last year I completed a paper on the application of green infrastructure as a strategy for climate adaptation in urban environments. None of the strategies in the paper are particularly new...but what we were trying to do is to draw clear link between the cost effective implemenation of green infrastructure and the subsidiary benefit of adapting to and becoming more resilient to climate change simply to get folks thinking that the two are related.
The Value of Green Infrastructure for Urban Climate Adaptation
http://www.ccap.org/index.php?component=programs&id=6
http://www.ccap.org/docs/resources/989/Green_Infrastructure_FINAL.pdf
I think the ecosystem commons is a great way to continue to finds ways to practically and pragmatically operationalize climate adaptation applying ecosystem services and green infrastructure.
Sincerely,
Josh Foster, Program Manager, Nortwest Climate Science Center, and PNW Climate Impacts Research Consortium
Oregon Climate Change Research Institute, Oregon State University
Hope I can add food for
Hope I can add food for thought. In a June keynote at UN conference on desertification and climate change in Bonn I made crucial points supported by following speakers. We have three separate issues dealt with in separate conferences & organizations - Biodiversity loss – Desertification - Climate change. But all are one and the same viewed through the emerging holistic world-view. Without biodiversity loss desertification does not occur. Without reversing desertification climate change cannot be addressed.
I went on to point out facts that no informed scientist would refute. First that agriculture is not crop production alone - it is the production of food and fibre from the world’s land and waters. Without agriculture there can be no government, no UN, universities, economy or city-based civilization. Agriculture is today producing more eroding soil than food. Agriculture has caused, and is accelerating, global desertification, massive annual burning of billions of acres of grasslands, periodic burning of forests, and causing climate change probably even more than fossil fuels. Despite this position we are being advised by mainstream institutional scientists and media that agriculture will have to adapt to climate change! I put up a picture of parents boiling their children in a large tub in the garden and telling them to adapt! Most importantly I pointed out that climate change will continue even in a post fossil fuel world unless the agricultural problem is addressed. For all these reasons we at SI promote a Brown Revolution to focus attention on soil the key along with the oceans. I believe most of you know this need and are also calling for attention to soils.
Because soils are vital we have to pay attention the greatest land areas of Earth – grasslands that are desertifying, being extensively burned annually and that can sequester the most legacy load carbon, as opposed to cycling the ambient atmospheric carbon as trees do more.
Many of today’s ailments are symptoms of desertification – increasing frequency and severity of droughts and floods, poverty, social breakdown, abuse of women and children, pastoral genocide, migration from rural livelihoods to urban centres, violence, recruitment to dissident organizations and more. None of these are caused by climate change. Desertification rather is contributing to climate change.
The Durban conference is seeing increasing North South conflict. As most African nations see it the corporately controlled nations striving to increase use of fossil fuels by treating carbon as a tradable commodity, and African nations resenting the new colonialism taking over vast tracts of land to store traded carbon displacing farmers. And of course African nations not understanding that because of sheer size, desertification and annual fires over billions of acres they are causing climate change as much as anyone
On the brighter side the internet is enabling people to communicate and knowledge is no longer controllable by ‘authorities’ be they governments, academic institutions or any other and people are coalescing. What we at SI can bring to the table is new scientific insights that enabled the development of the holistic framework proving encouragingly successful in both formulating complex policies as required, and in reversing desertification. Collaboration between concerned organizations is increasing thankfully and is vital because each has bits of the puzzle we can only solve together. The more knowledge sharing and synergy we can create the greater the hope because the one luxury we no longer enjoy is time.
There is a nexus between
There is a nexus between climate change, population growth and women's empowerment that needs to be considered if we are to be successful in helping developing countries cope with the problems caused by the highly industrialized countries. It is the global equivalent of the 1% and 99% wealth disparity and export of environmental problems from those with resources (people and $) to those that lack them, but suffer the most damage to their livelihoods. There is a human dimension to "Climate Disruption" which needs be akknowledged and addressed in the international climate agreements. Here in New England many of our less affluent residents will be impacted this Winter by reduced funding for home heating oil subsidies. We have to face that fact that many people throughout the world need to use more energy and not less in order to improve their standard of living (the 99%). Many well off residents in developing nations (1 %) can afford to alter their life styles to help reduce their ecological footprints, but the majority of the world's citizens don't have this option.
Thus we need to merge environmentalism and social justice to promote environmental justice components for our financial aid programs within the U.S. and internationally. I have attended two water justice conferences in the last year and feel that citizens have a human right to adequate/safe supplies of drinking water and options for wastewater that protect human health. We probably need to view liquid and solid wastes as resources out of place and move away from the current waste disposal/treatment philosophy. The Zero Waste concept focuses on recycling and conservation; source reduction; reuse; extended producer responsibility; etc. The developed world has the capacity to pursue the ZW concepts for wastewater and solid wastes. We utilize a tremendous amount of energy in supporting our consumer life styles and then getting rid of the resulting "waste" components. This makes no sense ecologically or economically. We should help developing countries further their traditional approaches that are compatible with the ZW philosophy, rather than encouraging them to follow the energy/technology based developed country models.
We are all in the same boat in adapting to climate disruption, but the developed countries should lead by example in addressing this issue and provide resources to developing countries to help them adapt to a situation for which they are not responsible. Hopefully the new climate change dialog in South Africa will move us in this direction.