Vandana Shiva: Earth Democracy, and Preserving our Food Independence

This lecture was originally given and hosted at Portland Community College

Want to know 500% more about our food in the modern world, and dozens of other important themes? Watch this 1 hour talk + questions at the end.

Rex Weyler on Living Systems: No more "Paper Parks"

This article was kindly shared by Rex Weyler, author and founding member of Greenpeace. A link to Rex's blog is at the bottom of this article, as well as a link to his Deep Green Column for Greenpeace International.


Piecemeal ecology isn’t working.

Forty years have passed since the founding of Greenpeace and the first UN environment meeting in Stockholm, fifty years since the landmark Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, and 115 years since Svante Arrhenius warned that burning hydrocarbons would heat Earth’s atmosphere.

Today, we have more environmental groups and less forests, more “protected areas” and less species, more carbon taxes and greater carbon emissions, more “green” products and less green space.

The human demand for land, materials, and energy has consistently overwhelmed our collective efforts to preserve and restore Earth’s environmental health.

For example, the “Living Planet Index” of species diversity reveals that since 1980 – even with new endangered species regulations and protected areas – terrestrial and marine species diversity has plummeted and the rate of decline has accelerated. We create more protected areas, but lose more species.

We gain 30% energy efficiency in buildings but double the average space-per-person and then add more people. After twenty years of Kyoto talks and deals, we have more CO2 emissions each year, not less. After forty years of international ocean dumping bans, the oceans are more toxic, not less.

Why?

Paper parks

The failure of protected areas to save endangered species helps explain our challenge. In July of this year, Camilo Mora, at the University of Hawaii and Peter F. Sale from the UN University in Ontario, Canada, published “Ongoing global biodiversity loss and the need to move beyond protected areas.”

Their report shows that since 1965, land based “Protected Areas” (PAs) have grown by 600% to 18 million square-kilometers. Marine PAs have grown by 400% to about 2.1 million sq-km. However, in both cases – on land and in oceans – biodiversity has declined, and the rate of decline has increased. Since 1974, the terrestrial biodiversity index has declined by about 40% and since 1990 the marine index has plummeted by about 21%.

Mora and Sale cite problems with the size and management of the protected areas and the disintegration of large scale ecosystems. The biologists trace these impacts back to growing human populations and growing demands on vulnerable ecosystems.

The authors support the establishment of protected areas but warn that these areas alone will not stop biodiversity decline without larger, systemic programs. Mora points out that most protected areas are only “paper parks,” legislated but not truly protected.

Sale says flatly, “Protected areas are a false hope in terms of preventing the loss of biodiversity.” The 2010 global biodiversity protection agreement signed in Nagoya, Japan pledged to preserve 17 % of land area and 10 % of oceans. Sale says it is “very unlikely those targets will be reached,” due to the growth of human demand for resources. Furthermore, “Even if those targets were achieved, it would not stop the decline in biodiversity.”

In “paper parks,” plants and animals disappear to poachers, development, and industrial pressure for logging and mining. Often, without adequate enforcement, industrial developers simply ignore protection rules. For example, in the 1980s, environmentalists won international bans on pelagic whaling and toxic dumping, yet those bans are routinely ignored by whalers and the toxic waste industries.

Furthermore, park boundaries cannot restrain pollution and global warming impacts. Typically, when a forest or coral reef is protected, the neighbouring area is overharvested and often decimated, breaking natural ecosystem links. Finally, this study points out that ecosystems require appropriate scale to allow for variations in ecological diversity, richness, abundance, synergies, and co-dependence.

Even so, Mora, Sale and many other biologists and ecologists have warned that we cannot stop biodiversity decline without putting limits on human population and consumption growth. “There is a clear and urgent need for additional solutions,” the authors warn, “particularly ones that stabilize ... the world’s human population and our ecological demands.”

Ecosystems

In practice, human efforts to protect and restore Earth’s ecological health have focused on a “species,” a “habitat” or some isolated thing that needed protection. But this has failed to account for the fundamental nature of living systems.

Earth’s ecology is not a collection of things. Rather, Earth’s ecology operates as co-evolving systems, shaped by feedbacks and interactions.

The systems remain always dynamic, never completely stable, always correcting for instability, as a hummingbird in flight or a bicycler.

Every subsystem in Nature interacts with others. Nothing exists alone in nature. Nothing survives alone in Nature. Biological and physical sciences do not describe “things.” Science tracks and describes relationships. Nature – from cells and bodies to communities and empires – is a web of relationships.

Global environmental strategies to date reveal isolated efforts and a few successes but systemic failures. As planners and implementers of ecological wisdom, we have not yet grasped the rules and demands of systems, the feedback mechanisms, co-evolution, and dynamic complexity.

In short, human environmentalism has yet to embrace Earth’s biosphere as a living process. The biosphere itself survives nested in a geosphere and solar system, which generate materials, energy and information for all the subsystems. Deep within the biosphere, communities, families, organisms, organs, and cells represent finer subsystems, each level nested in larger, more complex networks.

Nature is a continuum. Ecosystems are not “managed” by any of the parts. An ecosystem represents the highest level of complexity we know, orders of magnitude more complex, for example, than human societies or economic systems, which we struggle to manage. An ecosystem is not a thing. It is a web of interactions, drawing resources across boundaries; decoding information, responding to randomness and chaos, making collective decisions, and passing new information, products, and waste, back into the system.

Ecosystems have “rules” but do not determine absolute outcome because of “stochastic” or random inputs, similar to the process of a chess game or a hurricane.

Nature follows patterns and creates variations on themes as a jazz musician.

The random inputs give rise to new patterns, called “emergent behaviour,” which can influence the system in radically novel directions. The variations and patterns that replicate themselves become living systems, never just “things.” Every subsystem within an ecosystem, from cell to society, remains an interactive process.

Living systems do maintain states that ecologists call “dynamic equilibria” – a body, a forests, a community – during which system instabilities oscillate within mutually supportive limits for long periods of time. Even so, because of random factors, ecosystems are not entirely predictable, even if one could know all the rules, which we cannot. Thus, systems themselves evolve, and for human planning, we need to understand that the emergent relationships that follow disruption almost always include unintended consequences.

Accounting for human impact

In 1971, the year of the first Greenpeace campaign, Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich and Harvard ecologist John Holdren proposed a formula to account for human impact on the environment. Their famous formula, published in the journal Science, stated that the Human Impact (I) equalled the Population (P), times average Affluence (A), times a factor for Technology (T), so the formula looked like this:

I = PAT

The factors of the formula can be difficult to quantify, but provide a reference tool to think about and discuss human impact on the environment. We can’t just blame population, because wealthy societies consume far more resources than more modest communities. We can’t just blame consumption, because sheer numbers of people – or any species – can and do impact a habitat. We cannot just blame technology (such as fossil fuel machinery) because history shows us that humans degraded habitats long before modern technologies. The Syrian desert, for example, used to be a cedar forest before human communities obliterated the forest with hand axes and goats. Animals with no technology at all can deplete an environment if they grow in numbers beyond the habitat’s capacity.

The formula is useful, but something is missing from this way of thinking. Given our discussion above regarding living systems, it appears that the formula requires another factor that we could call “S” to account for the systemic reactions within the system itself. Thus:
 
I=PATS

The system factor would prove even more difficult to quantify than the others, but it should appear in the formula nevertheless. Although we cannot reduce our environmental impact to a simple formula, the point of the “Systems” factor is that our impacts on the environment are not linear. The impacts often multiply among themselves, so that a polluted river depletes fish, which may deplete birds, which allows certain insects to overpopulate and destroy plants, which can cause soil erosion, and so forth.

We must not forget to include the fact that every time we disturb nature, we set in motion a sequence of system responses, reactions, and feedbacks, which may have their own impact independent of human activity.

 
Global heating feedbacks provide a disturbing example. As we heat the atmosphere with CO2, the permafrost melts, releasing methane, which increases the heating. Melting sea ice increases Earth`s heat absorption. Depleted forests absorb less CO2. Increasing heat causes more fires; acidic seas kill algae, reducing carbon capture; and so forth. We need to account for such system feedbacks when we reflect on our environmental impact. We cannot control most of these systemic processes, so good ecological planning will leave a margin of safety to allow the larger system to adjust to our activities.

So far, our ecological protection has failed to account for the fact that human society exists inside a complex living system. If we continue to ignore this fact, the system itself may reject the human presence.

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Links:
Rex Weyler’s Ecolog
www.http://rexweyler.com/blog-placeholder/

Rex's Deep Green Column can be found at Greenpeace International
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/about/deep-green/

Living Planet Index:
J. Loh, et. al., Royal Society, Biological Sciences,
http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/360/1454/289.full.pdf+html

UN, graph, from Loh, Goldfinger
http://maps.grida.no/go/graphic/the-living-planet-index-measures-trends-in-the-abundance-of-species-for-which-data-is-available

C. Mora & P.F. Sale, “Ongoing global biodiversity loss and the need to move beyond protected areas.” http://www.int-res.com/articles/theme/m434p251.pdf

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The Bike Pirates: Something Good - Happening NOW

by Andrea Peloso

A link to The Bike Pirates, and community bike organizations outside of Toronto, are at the bottom of this article. Thanks to The Bike Pirates, and other volunteer bike groups.

Yesterday, a hazy August evening, I slowly rode my broken bicycle down Landsdowne towards Bloor, Toronto's thriving neighbourhood of cultures, grit, and relative affordability. I'd spent over $100 to get my bike fixed 3 weeks prior, only to have the back tire completely go on my 2nd ride. There is something disheartening about this sort of thing: if this bike store had been my chance to vote, I'd have voted for President Nobody the next time round.

There I was, not much time left in the summer, with the choice of abusing my back steel tire or just going without my bike entirely. I had chosen the former.

I slowly half-rode-half-walked my bike along the sidewalk, passing through invisible yet omnipresent realms: first of cooked curry, next of capoeira rhythm, and finally of a seeming cacophony of activity coming from The Bike Pirates, a DIY volunteer bike shop. I had never been in. I figured I could at least get some free air - subconsciously having decided that there was something unique about my flat that made it unfix-able.

Upon entering, everything sped up: the bright light of a the shop cascading through generally blackish hues of metal bikes woke me up like a fresh breeze, but maybe it was the people.

I got permission to pump my tire. Before I could, a rosy fellow in a bright green t-shirt eyed my bike for what seemed like a mili-second and advised: "you can pump that if you want, but the tube is almost definitely shot". He explained that by the way the air tube nozzle was tilted, it was a sign of an obvious flat. "I'll just pump it anyway and see what happens", I said stand-offishly, grateful, but already involved more than I wanted to be. Of course, he was right. "Now...", he said, pausing enough to give me a chance to think about it, you can wait and pay for somebody else to fix it, ...or you can wait till 9 and fix it tonight, I can stay late to help you". Wow, really?  I found myself deciding to stick around for 1 hour until there was time, and learn how to fix my own flat.

The center buzzed with a myriad of cyclists and volunteers coming in and out with problems of varying levels of difficulty. Some fantastically reconstructed bikes lay outside.

A cyclist needs to eat. Heading back in the direction of the curry realm, I loaded up a vegetarian thali and sat on a concrete tree pot, joining a swirl of capoeria dancers just done class, cyclists, pedestrians. It was a common moment of relaxed enthusiasm, creative interest casually and unintendedly shared amongst people in their city.

Soon enough I was full, and there was space for me early. WE WILL NOT FIX YOUR BIKE FOR YOU-signs abounded as I entered the work space, and tried to as nonchalantly as possible mount my own bike on the bike stand, making only three obvious mistakes, or every possible "not the right choice" option. I noticed how carefully the first pirate taught me. Not doing for me, doing when clearly no beginner would be able to do it, and then quickly returning the role to me. "A 16 nut is rarely used", he explained,"go find yourself a 15 that works on your tire". Somehow, I did, and two with built in washers, reused by me. I left them my parts for the "rare miscellaneous container". When I went to grab the 15 size wrench, it was the only one missing. As the most popular wrench, and the most commonly used, it was clear it had been stolen.

"How could somebody steal from a bunch of volunteers, people working for free to help others?" I fumed to two of the nearest pirates, one the man in the green shirt. "That's what we ask them when we catch them", he said, "But, that's life".  He seamlessly continued to aid the person the bike stand in front of me. Something about the speed of our interchange, and the cheerful focus with which he returned to the task at hand without bitterness spoke to me.
If sharing skills, tools, and knowledge was voting, and he got robbed, he'd just get up and vote again.

One pirate took the time to test and study my tube. "This is what happens when you pay someone else to fix your bike." He said, advising me to keep the tube and question the shop on what happened. It felt like that wonderful moment in Annie Hall when Woody Allen dreams that Marshall McLuhan shows up to back him in a debate about himself, only this was a real way to take care of myself.

A new pirate showed me how to put my tire back on the steel frame once the new tube had been added. "Try to put your tire back on without any tools" he said, "it gets hard near the end". Doing it his way I felt my nails slowly separate from my now oily blackened thumbs, but I found another way with my fingers that mimicked his and managed to do it minus a tool. "Put the tire back on before you pump it up, hold it up while you tighten the screws" were the only two instructions I got from another pirate with a anarchic black t-shirt and a soft Australian accent... I did it.

All pirates seemed to be helping me. There were six volunteers, all who could stop by and help me with any particular aspect of the puzzle, they hummed through the shop, taking over where the other had left off, or teaching what they felt was important.

I paused for a moment to look up from my bike, in a room that felt entirely of movement, action, learning. Aged slogans and stickers were everywhere, mostly cheerful lines on fixing bikes. I was trying to answer a question for myself: why are so many intelligent, expert people devotedly helping others fix their bikes even over their allotted volunteer hours - even when they get robbed? My eyes fell on one old poster in the corner: "Everyone wants revolution, but nobody wants to fix their bike chain". If this bike chain were a vote, we'd all be voting revolution.

When I asked what a decent donation was for the help, teaching, free use of tools, a tube at cost, and 2 free nuts, I heard the common refrain that I'd heard all night: "You'll have to decide that for yourself." In a situation based upon the solid recommendations of others, I'd still had the choice handed back to me, whenever it was possible.

Riding home smoothly, on plush tires, the concrete a faint texture beneath me, I felt exhilarated. The sultry, almost Southern, August air seemed to flow around a brightly lit bike shop still alive in my head. I parked my bike differently, more lovingly than before in the dusty garage. And the thought of it breaking only seemed like a great excuse to jump back on the pirate ship, knuckle down, and be willing to fix my bike chain.

The Bike Pirates: http://bikepirates.com/
How to find a Community Bike Organization near You (Worldwide): http://www.bikecollectives.org/wiki/index.php?title=List_of_Community_Bicycle_Groups