To respect nature is to respect ourselves

Spider web at Torfolk Gård 2007

Nothing human beings do can compete with a piece of nature in complexity. A square metre of land contains so many organisms with so complicated and complex relationships that one can’t understand them. A gramme of forest soil may contain over a million bacteria colonies. It is estimated that several million individual animals and over a thousand different species may reside beneath a square metre of soil surface (Perry 1994); all of them are constituted by many, many cells and there is interaction between them, an exchange of energy and nutrients. Most likely, a square metre of nature is more complex and contains more information than the whole Internet.

Apart from the direct and indirect services obtained from nature, nature also has great aesthetical and cultural value. It gives another perspective, many reference points; it is an unprecedented piece of art. Natural environments have, for centuries, been known for their healing properties for people in spiritual need or mental stress. It is good to have respect for nature. The respect should be based on what it is; for its beauty and for its value, both apparent values and those not discovered. This respect should of course also include ourselves. A level of development has been reached where we are already managing most of the terrestrial ecosystems. This gives human beings unique powers among the creatures on the planet and unique responsibility too. We can’t pretend that we don’t have that power or that responsibility; both have to be exercised with due diligence, humbly realizing that there are so many things we don’t know.

Whose nature?
It should be kept in mind that exploitation of nature is also a question of whose nature. Different groups are affected by destruction of nature in different ways, and normally the nature of the weaker group is destroyed while the nature of the rich is preserved. This leads some to believe that the rich ‘care more’ for the environment or that only when there is a certain wealth that human beings ‘can afford’ to care about nature, but this mixes up cause and effect to a large extent. The rich can exploit the nature of the poor and even export their waste to the nature of the poor, whereas the poor has no other option than the exploitation of nature, be it in the form or natural resources or in the form of their own labour. To some extent, the whole trick of modern civilization is about exploitation of nature; exploitation of historical production, of which fossil fuel is the primary example; exploitation of the future nature, by dumping waste. But it is also the history of a few people exploiting many other people. At the centre, apart from nature and energy, are technology and society.

Society has four big challenges regarding the use of natural resources; well perhaps using the term ‘challenges’ is an understatement, ‘system errors’ is perhaps a more suitable term. First, humankind uses already too much of the planet’s resources; the capital is being consumed and it is not a question of whether society will go bankrupt[1] but when it will do so. Second, the distribution of these resources is extremely inequitable, between countries and within countries; rich countries and rich people use a totally disproportionate share of the resources (and rich people in rich countries are apparently the worst). Third, economic growth is continuing and seems to be hard-wired into society, which means that resource use will also continue to grow. Fourth, the world’s population is primed to grow for at least 40 more years, perhaps longer. We can’t negotiate with nature and no less can we expect that the poor will, or should, accept that common assets are wasted.

[1] The term is a bit unfortunate, the repercussions of an exhaustion of the natural capital is a lot more dramatic than a financial bankruptcy, which in essence only means a redistribution of money. The terms for bankruptcy with nature can’t be negotiated. There is no bailout.

The text is an extract from Garden Earth

We are part of nature

Sweden yesterday inaugurated its first truly marine national park, the Koster sea.

Greenpeace protests against that local fishermen will be allowed to fish in the national park and they threaten to dump boulders to prevent trawling. We are speaking about a fishery of shrimp, crayfish, crab and lobster mainly. The local fishermen have been trained in how to fish in a sustainable way and they have had to amend their gear to suit the conditions. Greenpeace says that despite training once, in 2004, some fishermen had damaged a precious corral. I have not studied the details of the arrangement – and I am quite convinced that Greenpeace can be right in that observation but I don’t agree with their conclusions: There is no wilderness on this planet, there are no truly wild landscapes. From the African Savannahs and the Amazon rainforest to the archipelago in Sweden, the human being has been part of the landscape for millennia.

Similarly as for the fishery the county administration states that farming will continue. The continued use of the land is a prerequisite for the maintenance of the cultural and esthetic values. Continued grazing is essential and it is desirable to increase the number of animals grazing.

It is a lot more important that we promote a connectedness and an active use of “the wild” than that we try to exclude all humans from interaction with it. Those against often claim that the economic value of “the wild” can be bigger if used for tourism than if used for production. That is perhaps often true, but there are many nuances here. And who says that economic value should be the yardstick in the first place.

- one is that the tourism itself, even if it is based on just observing can be very intrusive and probably disturb wildlife even more than commercial use. I have had the benefit of whale-watching in New Zealand and seeing the incredible wild life on the African Savannah. And in most cases it is like a crazy zoo, of cars or boats rushing from one site to the other, with drivers in constant radio contact to ensure “value for money”. The cars and the tourists seem to upset the wildlife more than the Massai herding their cattle.
- the other is that the wildlife tourism represent a consumption culture, a way of interaction with nature where we consume the experiences, but don’t interact. I enjoy this activity myself, but we should realize that it is not the same (true) nature experience where we live in/with the wild, where we get our livelihoods in the wild. And that part of human culture is essential and as endangered as the landscapes that go with them. The Innuit hunting seals are a lot better ecologically adapted than the city-dwellers that protest against it. The Massai herdsmen are a lot better ecologically adapted than the city vegan eating a global mix of a scientifically composed diet – and of course a lot better ecologically adapted than the city-dweller eating hamburgers at McDonalds.

Others claim that the wild has its own rights and that regardless of what we want and the economic values we have a moral obligation to let it be. Yes, but……

- As I explained above almost all landscapes have been influences by humans today, so whatever we considered to be “wild” is actually something that is the result of a long term interaction between a number of species and their environment, and in most cases the human has been a main actor to shape the environment. The Koster Sea would not be what it is without the humans. To throw us out is not the recipe to keep what is valuable today. To throw us out is to create a new “unhuman” landscape that never existed.
- Already some 5000 years ago we had expanded into almost all parts of the globe. And 200 years ago we farmed allover the place. As a matter of fact, humans have pulled back a bit lately in rich countries, that is why rural areas are depopulated and the number of deer and foxes are exploding and meadows are (re)converted to forests. Other wildlife invades our cities, e.g. seagulls are now abundant not only in coastal cities.
- Farming has been the biggest blow to wildlife since humans appeared. In the end it means that we shouldn’t have domesticated plants and animals, that we would still be 10 million hunters and gatherers on this planet. The expansion of farm land and pasture to 35-40 percent of the surface of the globe is without comparison the biggest habitat destruction. Many times worse then the logging in the Amazon (which is also driven by farming) or shrimp trawling in the Koster sea. Another story is that farming, and even more grazing, has created its own new precious landscapes, landscapes that we hold in very high esteem.

I strongly object to the rapid destruction of habitat for many species, and I think we humans must voluntarily reduce our impact on nature, but in the process of finding a sustainable relationship between man an nature, we would not only need to get rid of unscrupulous business tycoons. We would also be better off with fewer people having an idealistic view of nature, where the human being is seen as an alien. It is only by seeing the importance of the interaction between man and the rest of nature that we can find our way for the future.

Also we need to shed the idea of ecosystems being in some kind of static balance. They might be in some kind of balance (whatever that means) most of the time, but they are far from static, they change all the time. And humans are part of those ecosystems. This insight are in no way a justification for the current rape of the earth and the total disregard of other species. On contrary, it is an insight that shows the way for a future redefined relationship between (wo)man and nature.

God and nature

Mostly, the emergence of religion is explained by the need of people to have the mysteries of the world explained to them and to understand how the human being interacts with nature. Perhaps that is true, I don't know and I don't think that there is any way to verify that assumption. But looking at the monoteist religions of today it is hard to see that link.

I think that the role of religion has a lot more to do with society and our relations among ourself, than about our relationship with nature. The early animist and polytheist religions were a lot more "democratric" and some of them included some kind of worship of nature. Gods were like people, they quarreled and fought with each other (like the Greek gods or the Nordic ones). Things changed with the introduction of the monoteist, omnipotent and judging God. Both in regard to the relationship to nature and the relationship between God and (wo)man.

In these religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, there is very little about nature and the place of the human being in the world, and there is very little about all these scaring natural phenomena that religion is supposed to explain. Of course one can find passages in the Bible which are about nature - such as the creation- but they are really few compared to what is about the human being, society and God himself (or herself if you prefer).

Of the ten commandments in the Bible seven are about how we relate to each other and the other three about how we relate to God and to religion itself. I think that shows quite clearly the societal nature of religion.

More people, less nature

One doesn't have to be an economist to realise that we value something higher that is in short supply than something that is abundant. For a long time nature was seen as unlimited, just for us to exploit as we saw fit. Up to the industrial revolution exploitation was fairly proportionate to the growing population. With the industrial revolution we expand exploitation through the application of energy and technology at a raging pace. But we can see that resources are depleted and that we need to take better care of them. At the same time our population has exploded.

Not that I think we should compare humans and trees but to put it a bit provocatively: As we have more and more people and less and less nature, we have to value nature higher and people less, or at least human labour less."Saving" nature must have priority over saving labour. A question is how we make a system of regulations and incentives to cater for that, a system that doesn't erode respect for human rights and human values?

Or is there another logic here?

Garden Earth - a modern civilization

There is no land left to settle, the last frontier we have left to civilize is ourselves.(Jewel)

Garden Earth is my project to summarize thirty years of thoughts and a whole lot of practical experiences of environment economy and society. I have been frustrated with that most books and debates are about one issue at the time and then people try to explain and predict everything from that perspective. One year ago it was climate change, today it is the financial crisis. I have written the Garden Earth to merge political, social, ecological and economical analyses.

I look at the history of human society, how it was shaped by ecological and social conditions. As an example, I show the importance of trade for our ecological adaptation. People might believe that trade emerged as a means to make profit, but the reality is that trade is what enabled us to populate areas were some essential resource was missing. A main focus are the technical and energy development “complexes”. From the first use of fire, we harnessed energy in animals for animal traction and transport and in the wind for trade and for new conquest. Up to around 1750, wood was still the main source of energy, and that led to a very high pressure on the forests, large tracts of Europe and other developed parts of the world were almost deforested.

Coal changed all this. In the short run it saved the forest. In the long run however it was paving the way for an enormous expansion of our energy use to a level where each human use energy resources corresponding to thirty, forty people. And this has enabled the development where we now use more than 40 percent of the land surface for production of food and for our cities, and where we annually use more than 100 percent of the total production capacity of the planet – clearly not a sustainable situation.

Our society faces a lot of challenges. On the one hand, the pressure on the natural resources, in particular all the ecosystem services. On the other hand poverty and inequality. Our society has no mechanisms to value the services of nature. This has led to large scale depletion. One way of dealing with this is to “liquidate” these resources and services, e.g. with carbon payments or payment to farmers for environmental services. There is a certain logic to that, but it also means that we let the same system that actually created the problem, capitalism, fix it. Is that wise. Capitalism and market economy has gradually expanded to bigger and bigger parts of life. From markets for goods, then to labor and soil. Later on financial markets – buying money for money – developed. Lately we have seen a large scale “marketization” of social capital, when public goods have been transferred to private ownership and management. To also let nature itself, the air we breathe, the water we drink be managed by markets seems like a very risky venture.

My study has a special focus on energy and farming, both critical for our survival. And farming is all about energy, our food is the basic energy source. In early societies it was obvious that we had to produce more energy than we consumed, otherwise we could not work and reproduce. With the introduction of fossil fuel this all changed. Now we use some 15-150 times (figures vary a lot depending on how it is counted) as much energy to produce our food than we get from farming. Hey, that is a extremely inefficient system!

Our society and the capitalist market economy has failed in creating wealth for the many. Big parts of humanity are as poor today as they were fifty years ago, despite an unprecedented growth. We have failed to create an equitable society. In addition, the economic system, supposedly managing itself through the “invisible hand”, is in constant need of corrections and controls, simply because it doesn’t work as it is supposed to work.

The capitalist economy and its associated values – such as the vision of constant growth – were perhaps appropriate for a world bent at expansion and colonization. But we have now colonized what there is to colonize and spread ourselves on all parts of the globe. Even if economic growth perhaps is still possible (we can always create some new virtual globes on the internet, can’t we?), biological, physical and geographic growth isn’t. Therefore we need new values and paradigms. Most likely we also need a new economy and new forms of social capital.

We have changed the globe so much that Nature can’t make it without us anymore. On contrary, more and more wild life is dependent on us for its survival. There is no point in looking back to the time when we were equal to the elk, the carrot and the sheep. Today, weather we like it or not, we must act as gardeners for the whole Garden Earth. And we must manage the planet as a garden.

The thoughts above are some of the essential parts of my thinking. Garden Earth is currently a 400 page book in Swedish, where those thoughts are elaborated. My plan is to make an English edition - I am looking for a publisher.

How the cow and the wheat conquered the human being

We all know the story. We, the humans domesticated plants and animals and thereby created agriculture. Have you ever thought about taking the opposite perspective? That is to see it as an evolutionary strategy of the cow or of the wheat.

The cow saw these humans roaming the plant with forceful weapons (that is a bow and an arrow). She was afraid that she could be exterminated. And "if you can't beat them join them" as Mother Cow always told her subjects. So the cow decided to make the human being dependent on her. In this way she could give the human som service - meat, milk and hides - in exchange for protection.

And even more important, the human would expand the glory of the cow to almost all the corners of the planet. Cows don't like rubbing noses with polar bears or swimming in the ocean very much, so there were limits for cow expansionist. In India we can still see the traces of the religion the Cow so insidiously established to sway the lowly humans to take care of her. So now the cows fills the earth. The wheat had a similar strategy.

The cows are now getting quite worried for several reasons. One is that some people don't think there should be no cow-man cooperation in the future. They believe man should free himself from the dependency of the cow. Another issue is that man blame the cow for causing climate change. In Denmark the cows will now pay a special green house gas tax, as if cows ever liked greenhouses. But ultimately the cow is mostly worried for that in the process she has become so dependent on man. And man seems bound to exterminate himself by wreckless behaviour. And if man goes, cows will also go. Representatives of all cows are about to meet in a big cow-how to try to figure out what to do to save the human being from herself.