EROEI for dummies

I meet little Prosper carrying fire wood on his head in Butare, Rwanda. I try to ask him, the mother and the two other children if it is for the household or for sale, but fail to communicate. My assumption in this case is that it is for sale. Most poor people in the work use fire wood for their cooking. When population grows people, mostly women and children, have to go further and further to collect it. This image is a simple way to understand the concept of Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROEI) and why it matters for us and the economy.

There is little work to cut down a tree in your backyard to use for fire wood.  As fewer and fewer trees remain in your courtyard, you have to walk to collect firewood, and you may gradually have to use twigs and bushes instead of logs as trees grow scarcer and scarcer. So you end up spending more and more energy on getting a lower and lower quality of energy for the family supper.   

The first fossil fuels were easily available and there were little efforts needed to bring it up, in a similar way as the first trees in the backyard. The Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROEI) was something like 100. That is it took one liter of oil to extract 100 liters of oil. Many oil sources now yield just 10 or 20 liters for each liter used. The net effect is that we have to increase the total energy use just to keep the net energy delivered to society on the same level.

EROEI is the ratio of the amount of usable energy acquired from a particular energy resource to the amount of energy expended to obtain that energy resource. When the EROEI of a resource is less than or equal to one, that energy source becomes an "energy sink", and can no longer be used as a primary source of energy. (Wikipedia)

EROEI is often showed with a diagram like this[i]:


What we see is that when EROEI approached 5 there is a dramatic increase in the amount of energy that has to be used to produce energy. In its early days, oil frequently yielded an EROEI in excess of 100:1, meaning that 1% or less of the energy contained in a barrel of oil had to be used to deliver that barrel of oil. Not a bad bargain. Oil production today more typically has an EROEI around 20:1, while tar sands and oil shale tend to be about 5:1 and 3:1, respectively. Perhaps the effect is better seen by re-writing the graph assuming that we want a constant supply of energy (set at 100 in the graph).

 Here we see very well the extreme effects of an EROEI going below 5. If we want to get energy corresponding to 100 barrels of oil from a process that has an EROEI at 3, like shale oil, we have to produce 150 barrels as energy corresponding to 50 barrels will be used in the production process. Some of the biofuels are have an EROEI under 2, which is a rather meaningless exercise, especially considering the huge environmental impact of their production. Solar energy from photovoltaic element are in the range of 3:1-10:1. Wind energy perhaps in the range of 15:1

This has big economic effects. As Richard Heinberg writes in End of Growth

“As EROEI declines over time, an ever-larger proportion of society’s energy and resources need to be diverted towards the energy production sector.” 

I will come back to this very soon in another post.

And it also has huge environmental effect. For instance, if the US is going to build its energy supply around shale oil and tar sand the gross energy use will increase tremendously, and also its emissions of green house gases.

EROEI is mostly discussed in the phase of energy production, i.e. at the well or mine head. Another aspect of EROEI is also to consider the whole system. For instance, for solar systems, one can calculate the EROEI directly in the panel, but one should include the storage and distribution systems that are an integral part of the system. Finally, one should look at the EROEI all the way to consumption. So if the EROEI of petrol at the pump is 10:1, the EROEI of the use of petrol in the car is only 3:1, as only a smaller part of the fuel is converted into the movement of the car (Garden Earth).

There are many other aspects of relevance when discussing energy systems, for example, the quality of the source and how it can be used. For solar and wind energy there are also big problems associated with intermittence and storage.

For a rather recent EROEI update, read A Review of the Past and Current State of EROI Data Ajay K. Gupta  and Charles A.S. Hall.

For related post on this blog

Energy squeeze, Is it a trap, a cliff or just a simple adjustment?
Burning food?
It takes more energy to eat than to farm
Energy and Agriculture
There will be no nuclear power without oil
our energy debt

 

 

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[i] Mearns, E. In The global energy crises and its role in the pending collapse of the global economy, Royal Society of Chemists, Aberdeen, Scotland, October 29th, 2008; Aberdeen, Scotland, 2008

3000 readers

Just wanted to thank the increasing number of people reading my blog. December was the first month exceeding 2,500 page views and January has already beat 3,000. Stíll a blog dwarf, but growing. I expect that my book Garden Earth will drive more traffic in the future.

Is commercialized farming the cure for smallholders' ills?

In the period 1996 to 2011 I worked a lot with various efforts to link smallholder farmers to markets, mainly organic, in developed countries. The biggest engagement was in EPOPA:


"By 2008, 80,000 farmers contracted by EPOPA have sold organic products to exporters for approximately US$ 15 million per year. All farmers received higher prices due to the organic premium, which ranges from 10-25% over the conventional price. Taking into account the size of households, 600,000 people have benefited from the programme."
This is how the Export Promotion of Organic Products from Africa is presented as one of a limited number of case studies of "Evidence of Impact" on the joint donor web site. 

The cost of the programme for the Swedish taxpayers is one cup of coffee per taxpayer. You can read a whole book about this successful project here.

Overall EPOPA was a success. Today, linking farmers to markets is an overarching policy for almost all development agencies as well as governments. It also fits very well with a development model that assumes that more markets and more capitalism is the best path to development. Considering that small-scale farming is a main component of the livelihood of something like a third of the worlds population, and most of the worlds very poor it is only natural that there is a huge interest in how to improve livelihood of them. While I do think it works quite well, it has, unfortunately, been oversold.

A recent report from Hivos, Small Producer Agency in the Globalized Market, looks deeper into if and how smallholders can benefit from globalized markets. In short the answer is that a few of them will - and they will soon not be smallholders as the recipe for success is to grow, mechanize and buy up your neighbours farms. This should be no surprise, this is how the farm sector developed in other parts of the world. The report estimates that linking farmers into modern value chains (be they organic, fair trade or normal) may benefit only about 2-10 percent of the farms - and it will be those with the greatest assets.

The reality is that commercialization of farming is good for the economy and for a few so called progressive farms, but that most of the farms will not benefit from it. Some will become farm labourers at the farms of the more successful, or in huge agri-business plantations, other will only get a better life if there is some place for them to go. 

The report does a good job in demonstrating how diverse the group of small farmers is and therefore also their coping strategies:

"multifaceted livelihoods that use diversity of economic activities to hedge risks and make the most of scarce land, cash and other resources. Farmers may rent various plots and grow multiple crops; move in and out of different informal (and sometimes formal) markets; and combine farm income with off-farm jobs and remittances from migrant family members. With more rural people, especially youth, moving back and forth from farm to city, there are fluid frontiers between urban and rural markets, boosting the vibrancy of local economies."

The report recognise that the informal economy may actually be very important for most farmers and that the army of middlemen, often considered parasites, can play a positive role in markets for small-holders by offering easy market access and intensive competition for supply, rather than tying farmers into integrated value-chains. Those trade links are also the ones that supply the hordes of urban poor. In many parts of the world the informal economy is on the rise according to OECD reports.

The authors, Bill Vorley, Ethel del Pozo-Vergnes and Anna Barnett, concludes that

"we should not continue to expect multiple wins — on poverty reduction, food security, security of supply, ecosystem services and rural development — from the single-minded approach of including farmers and their organisations in value chains and ‘empowering’ them in markets as beneficiaries of external initiatives. to get the future right for the majority of small-scale producers who cannot readily participate in modern value chains, or for the many youth with aspirations out of farming, we must recognise other layers of the picture."

See a video from the launch of  Small Producer Agency in the Globalized Market


Other posts of relevance:
The road to food security: What works and what doesn’t?
Don't buy organic instead of changing the world - do it as part of changing the world
Traditions, Western Union, Churches and Taro
Will there be farmers?

Economy of the Common Good

According to an opinion poll in Germany and Austria, nearly 90 per cent of the population want an “alternative economic order”.  The author and political activist Christian Felber developed the basis for the Economy of the Common Good in his book Neue Werte für die Wirtschaft. Eine Alternative zu Kommunismus und Kapitalismus (New Values for the Economy. An Alternative to Communism and Capitalism) in 2008. In response to this publication, numerous entrepreneurs have come together in order to refine the model together with Christian Felber and have termed it “Economy of the Common Good”.

The Economy of the Common Good (ECG) want to change the driving entrepreneurial motivation shift from the pursuit of profit towards the pursuit of the common good and from competition to cooperation.

You can download a short summary of the 20 most important elements of the ECG.

And listen to an informative lecture by Christian Felber here


Some 200 companies are now busy implementing the concept. Initially they hope to attract consumers to buy the products from the companies voluntarily. However, a market based on profit-seeking and competition will not be able to reward good behaviours fully, so the initiative also promotes incentives and tax benefits for companies that follow the code of the Economy of the Common Good. 

While the proposal sounds reformist and not so radical, they don't fall far from being a "revolution" as they suggest abolishment of financial markets, private profit and want to redistribute wealth and income radically. Christian Felber underlines that any change should take place in a constitutional and democratic way. I appreciate in particular the clear analysis of the combined damage by profit-seeking and competition, which I also state in my book Garden Earth.

As a result of my long experience in the organic market and other sustainability markets I am less optimistic about how useful the various indicators and measurements they propose are in this context. Even more so as it is proposed to tie advantages such as:
‐ Lower taxes
‐ Reduced customs duties (e.g Fair Trade)
‐ Loans on more favorable terms
‐ Priority in public procurement
‐ Research cooperation with public universities
to companies based on their score in the Common Welfare Score. I simply don't believe in those kinds of ranking and scoring systems, and even less to have them as a basis for policies.

Thinking fast and slow about the world

Did you know that if you make people think about old age, they will walk more slowly? Or if you have a poll about more money to the schooling system more people will support that proposal if the poll is in a school than in the municipal building? Those are effects of what is called priming. 

I just read Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. He shows that if you make people think about ”money”, even by simply having dollar bills in your screen saver, people don’t only become more interested in money they also become more selfish, they are less inclined to help someone in need and show more preference for being alone. In short, the thought of money feeds individualism.

Most of the book is about how we make choices and how we form our views. Kahneman shows how intuition and emotion, stereotypes, often rule our behaviour, also when we believe that we are acting ”rationally”. Here he also deliver a criticism of the idea that people are governed by rational economic assessments, which is a cornerstone of the neo-liberal ideas, in particular those expressed by Milton Friedman at the Chicago School of Economics.

Actually, not even in the very heartland of economics are people very rational. Kahneman cites research that examined 10,000 individual private investors over seven years. On average, the shares that individual traders sold did better than those they bought, by a very substantial margin: 3.2 percentage points per year. “It is clear,” concludes Kahneman, “that for the large majority of individual investors, taking a shower and doing nothing would have been a better policy than implementing the ideas that came to their mind.”

Cabbies in New York work fewer hours in rainy days despite the fact that they earn the most per hour those days, while they sit and sweat in empty cabs in sunny days instead of going to the beach. And even when it comes to simple buying and selling we all have a tendency to value an item we have higher than what we would be willing to offer to buy it.

Kahneman says that the robots of neoliberal economics, Econs he calls them, are not real Humans. I believe that most economists and their study objects are subject to ”priming” which makes them much inclined to see all aspects of society from the perspective of classic economic theory. The bigger tragedy is that by the constant bombardment of economistic messages combined with the commercialism of the market place taking over almost all space and time of our lives, the idea that we all act as Econs is self-fulfilling to some extent.I write about this in Garden Earth:

Simpleton economicists and their popularizers want to explain all human actions by economic drivers. Also, many Marxists tend to see the acts of different groups to be fully dependent on their economic standing in relation to production factors—here the concept of ‘class’ is critical. The reasoning goes from self-evident things to very cumber­some explanatory models. ... The basic error is the perception that economic drivers are superior to all other drivers and that all other drivers can be ‘trans­lated’ into money. The strength in the reasoning is that the economic driver is a forceful paradigm with many self-reinforcing loops. And as a society is built along this paradigm, human beings consciously and subconsciously create a world that rewards exactly this; in such a way it becomes self-fulfilling. But this is not truer than the statement that the most important driver for human development is the ability of an individual to throw a spear farther than anyone else. This ability was most likely very important in a hunter society or a war society, much more important than the ability to amass wealth.

The book

Thinking Fast and Slow is very comprehensive, even though Kahneman, in typical modesty, says the target for the book is to be relevant for the gossip at the water cooler. The largest part of the book is about two sorts of thought processes, which Kahneman calls System 1 and System 2, or “fast” and “slow” in the words of the title of the book. System 1 is intuitive, often unconscious, relying on past association of ideas. System 2 is conscious, reasoning, full of effort but often lazy. For instance, even experts are rarely basing their reasoning of consideration of statistical evidence, and even scientists make a lot of errors. Kahneman readily admits that he himself is also a victim. While we might believe that it would be best to suppress System 1 and let System 2 take command all the time, Kahneman thinks that System 1 is the “hero of the book”; the skilled craftsman or professional certainly couldn’t be what they are if they didn’t work also with intuition.  

We hugely underestimate the role of chance in life. As the example of fund managers above shows you'd do just as well if you entrusted your financial decisions to a monkey throwing darts at a board. And again and again, we are fooled by our low understanding of sampling and statistics. The fact that most of the best performing schools are small is taken as a proof that small schools are better, while in reality, Kahneman says, smaller samples will always produce more variation. Not only are the best schools small, also the worst are small. Bigger schools represent a bigger sample and therefore they tend to move towards the average. The same goes for incidences of a disease; the highest rates will always come from small population groups. There are certainly a lot of interesting facts in the book.

But frankly, the book is hyped. It is described as an ”immediate classic”, ”groundbreaking”, and is compared to the works of Darwin, Smith or Kopernikus etc.  There is not much new in the book for those that have read their behaviour psychology and biology. The discussion about System 1 and System 2 are long-winded while the examples given are predominantly tests in simple game and choice experiments from universities.

The examples from real life situations are just so more interesting. For instance, the fact that Israeli parole judges would grant parole to almost 65 per cent of the cases after the judges had eaten a meal, but almost zero by the time the next meal was due! Or that the only thing that is worse at work than being alone is that your boss is with you. 

While too much text is spent on the two systems, Kahneman takes up very interesting topics towards the end of the book, but here in a too rhapsodic manner. He discusses risk assessment as well as happiness and well-being. In particular the latter deserves a better analysis than the one in Kahneman’s book. Still, the book is worth reading, and Kahneman has a humble and human attitude and sound scepticism towards overconfident science.  And you can always discuss it with your colleagues at the water cooler.  

Some reviews of the book

NYT

The Telegraph

Financial Times

The Guardian

Svenska Dagbladet (Swedish)

Aftonbladet (Swedish)

Who says gaps are closing?

I just wrote about the distribution of wealth in the world. Below you can see the development of agriculture value added per worker. As you can see the gap between the rich countries and the poor countries is increasing a lot. Not even China has kept pace in agriculture productivity with the OECD countries. It has indeed increased value added per worker three times in thirty years, but France increased it 5.5 times in the same period. In Africa it was more or less constant for thirty years.



The development is perhaps better visible in a logarithmic diagram:


Apart from debunking the myth that "business-as-usual" will help the poor, it also puts into question who is benefiting from the increased global competition in agriculture commodities.


Agriculture value added per worker is a measure of agricultural productivity. Value added in agriculture measures the output of the agricultural sector (ISIC divisions 1-5) less the value of intermediate inputs. Agriculture comprises value added from forestry, hunting, and fishing as well as cultivation of crops and livestock production. Data are in constant 2000 U.S. dollars.

Looking at yield per hectare the picture is not as straight-forward. But then again, yield per hectare has never been a strong indicator of development, even if some agronomists are obsessed by it. 
Check here how it looks at Gapminder 

Read also: 

Stop pretending there are only winners in the global market

Agriculture: How cheap energy (and capitalism) increased the gaps between rich and poor

 

We are the world - or?

The richest 10 percent have almost 90 percent of the total assets in the world, while the poorest half of the global population has a mere 1 percent of the assets. The richest percent alone controls 46 percent, almost half of the world.

 This and a lot more can be found in the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook 2012*. Their figures show that global household wealth totaled USD 222.7 trillion in mid-2012, equivalent to USD 48,500 for each of the 4.6 billion adults in the world. The corresponding values for the end of the year 2000 are USD 113.4 trillion in aggregate and an average of USD 30,700 for the 3.6 billion adults alive at that time. Thus global household wealth rose by 96% between end-2000 and mid-2012 and wealth per adult climbed 58%.   

"To be among the wealthiest half of the world, an adult needs only USD 3,700 in assets, once debts have been subtracted."

Averages are deceitful, especially when it comes to distribution of wealth. Some are dirt poor while others are stinking rich. 

Credit Suisse estimates that there are 84,500 Ultra High Net Worth (UHNW) individuals worldwide with net assets exceeding USD 50 million each. North America dominates the regional ranking, with 40,000 UHNW residents (47%), while Europe hosts 22,000 individuals (26%), and 12,800 (15%) reside in Asia-Pacific countries, excluding China and India.


The enormous Indian middle class. really? 95% of the population in India have assets below 10,000 dollars.

First, it is even hard to comprehend how such a skewed distribution of wealth is at all possible. Second, it is astounding that there is not more attention to it, Third, I think is is absolutely clear that redistribution of wealth is  the easiest, the quickest and the most morally just approach to global poverty. Not the only approach of course;  over time it is essential that wealth creation is reaching everybody. But even to start that process presupposes that the dirt poor get access to resources, which equals wealth.


Read also:
Growing inequality, between people, between countries, between region, between urban and rural.
Who gave you your property?
The wealth Pyramid - a sign of poverty
And of course, I write a lot about this in Garden Earth. 


*Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook. – an in-depth project that offers investors the most
comprehensive study of world wealth, and which remains the only study that analyzes the wealth of all the world's 4.6 billion adults.

Read all about it

'This book presents a powerful narrative overview of the human condition in the 21st century. In the decades ahead, our species must navigate the end of fossil fuels and economic growth as we've known it — a tall order by any estimation. The risks are great, but so are the potential rewards if Rundgren's advice is heeded and humanity embraces a post-carbon, post-industrial culture.'
Richard Heinberg, Senior Fellow, Post Carbon Institute, Santa Rosa USA, Author, The End of Growth


If you enjoy my posts, you now have the chance to get whole load by reading my book
Garden Earth - from Hunter and Gatherer to Global Capitalism and Thereafter. 
420 pages of facts, analysis and challenging ideas.

In the first step it is published as a paperback available from
Create Space
Amazon.com

Amazon.de 
Amazon.es  
Amazon.fr
Amazon.it
Amazon.co.uk

It is also available as an e-book for Kindle
Amazon.com
Amazon.ca
Amazon.com.br
Amazon.de
Amazon.es
Amazon.fr
Amazon.it
Amazon.co.jp (also published in Japanese)
Amazon.co.uk

It will be published as a hard cover within a few month.

For the Swedish version look here
For the Japanese version look here

It is particularly rewarding that I managed to get it published still 2012, even if it was the very last days...
Enjoy reading.

Increase happiness productivity

Compare a litre of water in the swimming pool of a rich person with a litre used for drinking or for cooking in the house of a poor person. To make things worse, the cost of a litre of water that one has to carry by hand is often higher in the slums in developing countries than a litre conveniently poured from the tap by the rich, and the quality of the water is also mostly better for the rich. So the poor are discriminated against thrice over. Isn’t this perspective in itself enough to make one argue in favour of global redistribution of resources?

An increase in the absolute income by a certain sum does a lot more good—results in more well-being—for a poor person than for a rich person. One could discuss the ‘happiness productivity’ of a certain resource, that is, how to use a resource to deliver as much happiness or satisfaction or well-being as possible. 

Diener and Seligman 2005

There is no direct correlation between an individual’s or a country’s economic (material) wealth and their sense of happiness, satisfaction or well-being. This is an old observation. The more balanced defendants of capitalism also agree; for example, the economist Joseph A. Schumpeter says that people in industrial societies don’t have to be happier or experience more well-being than people in the Middle Ages. An American study from 2004 states that while economic wealth has increased threefold in 50 years (see figure), people’s feeling of well-being has been constant; in fact, mental health has deteriorated and social networks are weaker. Between 1958 and 1991, the average income of the Japanese increased sixfold; still, in 1991 they were as satisfied (or as little satisfied) as their parents were in 1958.

Material wealth doesn’t lead to more well-being; on the contrary, it appears that the human quest for more things is threatening not only our space on earth but, ultimately, also our own well-being. There is no reason to moralize over this; considering that scarcity has been the norm for millennia, no built-in barriers exist against over-consumption of food or things. But now the damage is evident, for the physical environ­ment, for society as a whole and for individual human beings. Both the values that hail consumption and the economic system that is driven by this consumption and that, at the same time, amplifies consumption have to be changed. And these two are strongly linked, one feeds on the other, therefore they need to be tackled simultaneously. Inequality adds to the equation by leading to people being more frustrated than they would be in a more just society. To compensate for this frustration they consume. Not only that, inequality itself drives comparison and competition, which had growth as its main expression.

(based on Garden Earth -From Hunter and Gatherer to Global Capitalism and Thereafter, my book that will be published next week)

Do you like the cover?

The publication of Garden Earth is now imminent. This is the proposed book cover. Do you like it?

There is a poll on the right side for you to fill in. It is perfectly anonymous.

And you can also make more elaborate comments below.
What the book is about? Read here....

Don't cry for ISO 9001

In 2011, global uptake of ISO 9001 falled. There is just above a million firms certified to ISO 9001 globally. There have been marked drops in the uptake in North America and Europe lately. In Europe almost 40,000 fewer companies were ISO 9001 certified 2011 compared to 2010. In North America the number dropped from a high of 61,000 (ISO 9001 was never that big in North America) in 2006 to just 37,000 in 2011.


Also for the rather new ISO 22000 standard there seems to be little interest.

I will not shed any tears over this as I consider the systems being hyped and sometimes even counterproductive. See my earlier posts on the matter.


Quality management is a management fad elevated to divinity
How quality Management can result in low quality....
What gives value to an eco label

Read the whole ISO 2011 survey here 

And check Dilbert's view here:
Dilbert explanation 1
Dilbert explanation 2

Update: 26 February: It seems like all companies implicated in the horse meat scandal in Europe have had their ISO 9001 certificates...

 

Ten reasons to build another word

     The difference between reality and rhetoric in which all are said to be equal and to have the same opportunities is simply too great. Our use of both mineral resources and living resources, with their origin in photosynthesis, is now at a level that simply cannot be sustained.We have now reached a stage where we need to divert more attention to building a new world than to fixing the old one. 

  

 

1.   Our relationship with nature is characterized by over-exploitation of raw materials and natural resources. Certainly, history shows that we have a remarkable capacity to overcome the limitations of our natural environment. Nevertheless, our use of both mineral resources and living resources, with their origin in photosynthesis, is now at a level that simply cannot be sustained. This can be expressed in different ways such as that we are soon reaching ‘peak oil’; that our ecological footprint is already one and half Earth; that we are already using more than half of the entire biosphere; and that wilderness is now only marginal compared to human-dominated ecosystems.

2.   We know that the release of greenhouse gases, largely the effect of extraction of fossil fuels and degradation of natural resources, will lead to marked changes in climate, resulting in great human suffering and material costs. In addition, we have caused severe reduction of biological diversity, the very web of life on earth. We have manipulated other life processes, such as the nitrogen cycle, to such a scale and in such a way that it will most certainly lead to severe disruptions.

3.   We have unleashed 100,000 chemicals, but we have no idea how they affect us. We take medicines, eat food additives and indirectly consume pesticides we spray on crops. Drinking water and the air we breathe are full of man-made chemicals. We have very little knowledge about the long-term impact on us of the cocktail of chemicals we spread, and we know even less about how it affects our living environment.

4.   The production and productivity revolution, which we explain with entrepreneurship, the superiority of capitalism and an individual’s strive for personal gain can equally be interpreted as the result of one thing: access to external sources of energy, primarily fossil fuel. Use of energy is also the cause of many problems, most obviously the greenhouse effect. At least equally serious is that energy is the engine in almost any other resource depletion and degradation of ecosystem services. But the cheap energy sources are drying up and, more importantly, their efficiency is dwindling.

5.   With the commercialization of farming and the introduction of chemical fertilizers, we no longer have to reproduce our production ability and capacity within the system itself. To replenish natural capital, fertility, labour and genetic resources are bought over the counter, thus separating production and reproduction. This system is commercially efficient, but very inefficient in its use of energy; it is threatening the long-term fertility and capacity of the soil. Despite the emphasis on production, a billion people go to sleep hungry every day.

6.   The system does not have sufficient self-correcting feedback loops to keep in check income inequality; the only thing that can keep it running is a constant economic growth so that those at the bottom, after all, will be a little better off every year. This is not primarily an economic problem but a social and moral problem. The difference between reality and rhetoric (in which all are said to be equal and to have the same opportunities) is simply too great.

7.   The capitalist model of development was most successful in countries that industrialized first, followed by countries that had different comparative advantages in certain development stages. But large parts of humanity are outside of the development, including both the individuals who are left behind in industrialized countries and those whole countries that have no comparative advantages to exploit. Just like not all communities could make the transition from gathering and hunting to farming, many communities today cannot make the transition to a capitalist society because they lack the right conditions.

8.   The values, attitudes and mechanisms that form the foundation of capitalism are obstacles to the harmonious development of society. Competition is promoted at the expense of cooperation, self-interest at the expense of solidarity and commitment to others, private property at the expense of commons and exploitation at the expense of stewardship or nursing.

9.   The combined effects of those values, industrial technology, capital accumulation and market competition drive endless growth and consumption. It is certainly within human nature to be a little dissatisfied, to want more, to explore new opportunities. Without those properties, we would probably never become human beings in the first place. It is in society’s nature to contain these desires so that they continue to benefit us all. With the capitalist takeover of society, these restrictions don’t work any more, and we are all trapped in a treadmill of ever-increasing consumption. This consumption, driven by several of the factors mentioned above, has made us healthier, wiser, more beautiful and perhaps happier to begin with, but it has long crossed a line after which ‘more things’ do not mean more well-being.

10. That things are not a lot worse than they are is a result of the deep and strong properties of humanity and of our larger organism, our society. We do our best to mitigate the ills produced by our economic system. When old social institutions break down, we build new ones; when old values and culture lose their meaning, we develop new ones. Ultimately, we will also build a new world. We have now reached a stage where we need to divert more attention to building a new world than to fixing the old one. 

These ten points are from the introduction  of Garden Earth which is due to be published within a month. I will keep you posted...

 

Mounting resistance to pesticide expansion

"PESTICIDES are like bombs being dropped in the food web creating enormous destruction," said Dr. K. L. Heong, an entomologist who once worked with the Laguna-based International Rice Research Institute.

In recent decades, there has been a steady increase in the amount of pesticides marketed for argicultural use. In the European Union alone, more than 200,000 tonnes of pesticides (active ingredients) are used annually. Between 2005 and 2010, the total volume of global sales rose from US$ 31 billion to US$ 38 billion. The amount of pesticides used internationally has risen fifty-fold since 1950. China is now the country that both uses and produces the largest amounts of pesticides (PAN Germany, Pesticides and health hazards, Facts and figures). 

Luckily there is mounting resistance to the pesticide expansion. Pesticides are not as essential as many people think, according to the  International Rice Research Institute (Irri). An Irri study on the effects of pesticides on rice productivity and health shows that farmers’ earnings from chemically-treated crops are often greatly reduced by the cost of treating pesticide-related health problems. "The value of the crops lost to pests is invariably lower than the expense of treating pesticide-caused ailments," Irri said in a statement. "When health costs are factored, the use of correct rice varieties and reliance on natural control by predators and parasites is the least expensive pest control strategy." (Sunstar 25 November).

In the UK, The Environment Secretary Owen Paterson is examining the possibility of banning the controversial nerve-agent pesticides increasingly implicated in the decline of bees and other pollinating insects (Independent 22 November). And in Saudi Arabia, the Saudi Gazette reports that the ministry of agriculture recently banned 30 different agricultural pesticides after research has pointed to the dangers that these harmful chemicals pose to public health. The Ministry of Agriculture has established a center with a total expenditure of SR70 million to promote organic agricultural methods throughout the Kingdom.  

Global chemical pollution impacts on both humanity and ecosystems, and includes adverse effects from long-term exposure to low or sub-lethal concentrations of single chemicals or to mixtures of chemicals. More than 90 per cent of water and fish samples from aquatic environments are contaminated by pesticides. (Global Chemicals Outlook: Towards Sound Management of Chemicals.)  

In most countries there is no systematic follow up of pesticides in nature and in no country there is monitoring of all active substances; what is found is still frightening enough. Eighty percent of all rivers in the USA contain pesticide residues. Sixty percent of all wells have residues. The proportion contaminated wells was almost as high in urbanized areas, due to use in home gardens, gravel or stone paths, golf courses etc. In France, pesticides are found in all rivers and half of all water sources had at least traces of them. Of the fifty substances that are checked in the Netherlands, two thirds were found in ground water (OECD 2001). 20 pesticides were found in groundwater used by 3.5 million people in the Santa Ana River watershed. On the great plains in the USA researchers detected two insecticides and 27 herbicides in reservoir water. Water treatment removed from 14 to 86% of individual herbicides. Drinking water contained 3–15 herbicides (average, 6.4).

Pesticide Suicides

Because of their availability, intake of these pesticides is a frequent suicide method. Many hospital records show that a high proportion of severe acute pesticide poisonings are in fact suicides, especially in Asia. The WHO estimates that there are about 2 million pesticide suicides and suicide attempts worldwide every year. The number of suicidal deaths through pesticides was estimated as being as many as 370,000 in 2007. In Asia alone, more than 300,000 people die this way each year. The numbers reported from Sri Lanka are especially alarming. In several rural areas there, pesticide suicides are the most frequent cause of death in hospitals. (PAN Germany, Pesticides and health hazards, Facts and figures).

In 1990, the WHO assumed that one million severe cases of unintentional pesticide poisoning occurred annually. What is remarkable is another, much higher WHO estimate from the same year that is rarely cited in the relevant literature. This figure refers to 25 million unintentional poisonings annually of farm workers in developing countries alone, with on average 3% of agricultural workers in developing countries suffering an episode of pesticide poisoning per year. A recent study by PAN International assumes that currently, of the total 1.3 billion farm workers worldwide, about 41 million suffer pesticide poisoning each year, with average poisoning rates at 32%. (PAN Germany, Pesticides and health hazards, Facts and figures)

Statistics on illnesses due to chronic poisoning as a result of pesticide use or pesticide contamination of food are very limited. But there is reliable evidence that the increasing incidence of cancer, hormonal effects, and neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s disease is linked to the use of certain pesticides in agricultural production. (PAN Germany, Pesticides and health hazards, Facts and figures)

The damage on nature and the suffering of humans also come with costs. UNEP Cost of Inaction Report (2012) reveals that the costs of injury (lost work days, outpatient medical treatment, and inpatient hospitalization) from pesticide poisonings, in Sub-saharan Africa alone, amounted to USD $4.4 billion in 2005. This is an underestimate as it does not include the costs of lost  livelihoods and lives, environmental health effects, and effects of other chemicals. Another study suggests that the major economic and environmental losses due to the use of pesticides in the United States amounted to USD $1.5 billion in pesticides resistance and USD $1.4 billion in crop losses, and USD $2.2 billion in bird losses. (Global Chemicals Outlook: Towards Sound Management of Chemicals)

Enough is enough, It is now high time to simply ban most pesticides. There are in almost all cases good alternatives available. They might be a bit more costly for the farmers, but for society it makes economic sense to ban pesticides.

The changing climate for cimate change....

"The global energy map is changing, with potentially far-reaching consequences for energy markets and trade. It is being redrawn by the resurgence in oil and gas production in the United States and could be further reshaped by a retreat from nuclear power in some countries, continued rapid growth in the use of wind and solar technologies and by the
global spread of unconventional gas production. "

This "rapid growth in renewables sound promising, BUT

"Coal has met nearly half of the rise in global energy demand over the last decade, growing faster even than total renewables."

"Natural gas is the only fossil fuel for which global demand grows in all scenarios, showing
that it fares well under different policy conditions"

"Growth in oil consumption in emerging economies, particularly for transport in China,
India and the Middle East, more than outweighs reduced demand in the OECD, pushing
oil use steadily higher."

"The transport sector already accounts for over half of global oil consumption, and this share increases as the number of passenger cars doubles to 1.7 billion and demand for road freight rises quickly. The latter is responsible for almost 40% of the increase in global oil demand"

Some of the conclusions in the latest World Energy Outlook

So oil increases slightly, coal increases a lot and natural gas increases.
It seems like climate change is forgotten...Or rather that actions against climate change are forgotten.

Quality management is a management fad elevated to divinity

Every second shipment was delayed and the invoices were never correct. Those were the experiences I had as a client of one freight-company in Sweden in the late 1980s. What was special with this company? They were pioneers in the implementation of an ISO 9000 certified quality management system. 

When I first implemented a quality management system some 23 years ago, it was new and fresh, and seemed like a good idea. I mean, who could possibly oppose a focus on quality, and approaching quality in a systematic way through a management system? The approach really suited my personality of an introvert system designer. Just write down how things should be done; do; check that it is working and revise if it isn’t; then repeat the cycle. However, over the years I have grown more and more cynical about the use of such systems, and in particular how the belief in them is like a dogma that can’t be questioned.

What is a QMS

There are many definitions of quality management systems (QMS). It can be ‘A set of coordinated activities to direct and control an organisation in order to continually improve the effectiveness and efficiency of its performance’. Alternatively, it can be “A system by which an organisation aims to reduce and eventually eliminate nonconformance to specifications, standards, and customer expectations in the most cost effective and efficient manner.’  The latter is at least a bit more modest about what a QMS can deliver, or should deliver.

In my view, the time is overdue to challenge this management idea, to expose it as just another fad, loaded with jargon and promoted by a hoard of consultants (including myself), certification bodies and accreditation bodies who earn their living from it. My objections to it are based on two different issues; on the one hand it is based on some erroneous principles or assumptions and on the other hand, even if it were useful, the positive effects are not big enough to justify the energy spent. What I am discussing here is quality management as a management principle. Clearly, I have no objections to quality, how could I? After all, quality is anything you define. I also have no objections to ‘management systems’, how could I? All organisations are managed according to one or the other system, documented or not, good or bad. But those who have spent weeks writing manuals and training staff etc know what I am talking about, the quality management system (QMS).     

Proudly certified!

The main standard for quality management is the ISO 9000 standards. ISO 9000 was first published in 1987.  It was based on the BS 5750 series of standards from the British Standards Institute. However, its history can be traced back some twenty years earlier to a US Department of Defense standard in 1959, which was aimed at ensuring bombs go off at the target and not in the hangars or in the factory – a laudable effort (not for the targets, though). The concept of the ISO 9000 has spread into a wide range of other standards, such as the ISO 14000 series for environmental management, the ISO 22000 for food quality management and the ISO 65 for certification bodies and ISO 17011 for accreditation bodies.

Despite its rapid uptake in various industries quality management is not a proven method. Agreed, there are many reports and statement from quality managers, and consultants and certification bodies about how good quality management is. However, very little peer-reviewed research has been conducted that evaluates whether the system delivers what it promises to do, that is, consistent quality. And there has been even less work done to prove that it delivers general management benefits, which proponents claim most often. One study in Australia and New Zealand did look at the effect of ISO 9000.¹ The central finding of the project was that ‘on average ISO 9000 certification has little or no explanatory power of organisational performance.[1] Another study reports that ‘However, surprisingly no significant difference is found with respect to defective part production and manufacturing cost between the two groups [those who had a QMS and those that hadn’t].’[2]

We are told to put quality first, but what does that really mean? Is quality more important than following the law? How does it relate to workers’ safety, the environment or, the most obvious factor in organisations, profit? The quality management culture is based on the fact that there are special quality manuals and a special quality system. But organisations are not managed by these kinds of manuals, and controllers and financial departments work with a different logic. Where does that really leave quality management? Instead of acknowledging the contradictions and different interests in an organisation, QMS proponents spread the illusion that the QMS is the most important part of the management system, which is at best delusional.   

The starting point in the development of a quality system is, almost exclusively, the standard itself, and all the issues required by the standard. This is in itself a very bad starting point. ‘Planners of quality systems, guided by ISO 9000, start with a view of how the world should be as framed by the Standard. Understanding how an organisation works, rather than how someone thinks it should, is a far better place from which to start a change of any kind’ says British management consultant, John Seddon.

QMSs are based on a view that people perform better when told what to do, rather than when they are given freedom and motivation. They exaggerate the use of written instructions at the expense of social interaction and continuous problem solving. This degrades people to automata, a development that risks the quality in their work and ultimately the performance of the organisation.

Even good systems take considerable time and energy to implement. Consequently their implementation competes for resources and attention, resulting in less energy and attention orientated to other (real) problems within the organisation. In addition, QMSs discriminate against small firms as they are more costly to implement while the potential benefit is even less than in a big firm.

While a well functioning QMS might be good for operations, they are often badly designed and implemented, and thus are likely to do more harm than good. An organisation with shelves full of files telling people what to do and how to do it, with a workforce that disregards the policies, is worse off than a company with very few policies, which are vigorously enforced and promoted, and grounded in the organisation’s culture. Many organisations implement a QMS because they ‘have to’ – as a result of demands from the clients or from other outside parties – and not because they see the value of them. Again a very bad starting point for good implementation.

And finally, there are the audits of quality management systems. The actual quality of the product or service is not included in an audit or assessment. Auditors look into systems, procedures and organisational structures, and very little at implementation. Increasingly, audits look at ‘meta-systems’, that is the systems used to develop and maintain the system, for instance, internal audits. Here it follows the footsteps of financial audits, which also has gone from checking the actual books, stocks and assets to auditing the system. This has been well analysed, and criticised, by Michael Power in the book Rituals of Verification. Power says that most effort is actually spent on making the systems auditable, and not on making them reliable.

In the organic sector, where I have a lot of first hand experience all from farming to accreditation of certification bodies, conformity assessment has moved towards focusing on ‘auditable performance’. Quality management is enforced all along the food chain, from the accreditor to the farms; every level expects the next level to implement a QMS. QMS in accreditation demands QMS in certification, which in turn demands QMS on farms. On the farm level this is not as yet formulated in demands for fully fledged QMS, but the tendency to enforce QMS style demands on farms and even more on food processors is clear. Real control is rarely made – this was pointed out in a recent report by the European Court of audits of the EU control systems, and it was pointed out by the Swedish Food Authority some years ago. It is clear that audits don’t address, detect or prevent fraud to any larger extent. When blatant mistakes are made – if the mistake is even detected – the “corrective action” is mostly to insist on more quality management policies or written procedures, which are actually counterproductive.

In certain situations a QMS can be useful, even very useful, for organisations, but that does not imply a QMS is good for all organisations. Nor does it suggest that a functioning QMS contributes to the integrity of the system in general. Instead they should be seen as one of many tools organisations use to manage themselves and the service they offer; a tool that suits some much better than others because all organisations differ in size, culture, resources and stability.

Footnotes:

1. The Business Value of Quality Management Systems Certification. Evidence from Australia and New Zealand,  Samson, D. Terziovski, M. Dow, D. Journal of Operations Management Vol. 15, No. 1, 1997, pp. 1-18

2. The impact of ISO 9000 quality management systems on manufacturing, Tufan Koc, Journal of Materials Processing Technology Volume 186, Issues 1–3, 7 May 2007, Pages 207–213

Swedish article about the quality management craze:
Update: 22 January, I have another article about quality management published in Svenska Dagbladet (Swedish).