GEOG 352: Day 3Resilience

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Housekeeping Items0The Geography Department is having a welcome

back social in the map library/ lounge (next door) at 10:30. Please come out and meet faculty and your fellow students. Normally, we have pizza, but it’s little early to source it at that time of day.

0Anybody still on the waiting list? If so, come and talk to me after class.

0For those of you familiar with West Linley Valley, it is facing its ‘last stand’ and concerned citizens are holding a public meeting on Wednesday, September 18th at 7 p.m. in the Kin Hut in Departure Bay (Kinsmen Park).

0Is Katy in class today?

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Housekeeping Items0I didn’t ask you to sign in last Thursday, so if you

were here please put a check mark.0We need to start signing people up for specific

discussion topics and dates.0I will put the instructions for the major

assignment on the web site today, but I will walk you through it today.

0Any other questions or concerns?

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Introduction to Resilience

0The authors start off with a nice quote: “Our job is to make hope more concrete and despair less convincing.”

0The paradigm of Western society, capitalist (and former communist) for the past two hundred years is that growth is the greatest good, as reflected (more recently in the GDP). Only a few voices – amongst them John Stuart Mill, John Maynard Keynes, and Kenneth Boulding – have been able to conceive of a no-growth economy.

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Introduction to Resilience0The human race has gone through numerous

challenges to its existence through its history – surviving against predators who were bigger or stronger, coping with the Pleistocene Ice Age, making the transition from hunting and gathering in many parts of the world to agriculture and, from there, to industrialism.

0Today we face a transition which is every bit or more as challenging; the transition to a sustainable society.

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Key Stages in Human Evolution

Hunting & gathering

Agricultural Revolution

Industrial Revolution

Sustainable Revolution?

Evol

utio

n of

hom

o sa

pien

s ap

prox

. 400

,000

yea

rs a

go

Still exists in some places

6-8000 years ago to present

Late 1700s to present; coincides with use of fossil fuels

Will make it or not in the 21st century

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Specific Challenges0Climate change (carbon dioxide now at 400 ppm)0Peak oil and rising costs of fossil fuels0Population growth0Decline in biodiversity0Overfishing of the oceans0Decline in availability of and competition for

freshwater0Erosion and degradation of soil, increasingly

widespread drought, and potential threats from herbicides, pesticides, fertilizers, and GMOs.

0Volatility of the global economy0Other??

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Specific Challenges0Has anyone seen the film, “The Inside Job”? It

explains how the widespread defaults on housing mortgages occurred as a result of the invention of collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) on Wall Street, and how the proliferation of these financial instruments led to a domino effect that had huge impacts on the global economy, bringing it dangerously close to a second Great Depression. The economy has still not fully recovered.

0The authors cite statistics that the speculative financial economy is surpassing the economy of good and services production as the motor of the economy and the source of its profits.

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Specific Challenges0The book suggests that, unless

we change course, demand for fossil fuels will increase by 22% and carbon emissions will increase by 40% in the next 20 years. And yet the media doesn’t alert people to the dire consequences of the status quo.

VS.

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Specific Challenges0Can we have “Prosperity Without Growth,” as Tim

Jackson and others argue? Jackson redefines prosperity as “our ability to flourish as human beings – within the ecological limits of a finite planet.”

0This relates back to the distinction mentioned last week between growth, throughput, and development.

0To achieve an economy where growth is not the goal will involve a revolution as profound as the Galilean – of no longer believing that the cosmos revolves around the Earth. Our whole economy, social system, political institutions, cultural expectations, and dominant ideology are all based on continuing growth.

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Specific Challenges0Is such a society possible? If so, how? If not, why

not?0What would it look like? What would be different?0What are your thoughts?

GDP/ energy use population

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Specific ChallengesThe definition of resilience cited by the authors is “the

amount of change a system can absorb (its capacity to absorb disturbance) and essentially retain the same functions, structure and feedbacks.” One of the originators of the concept is a former university professor from UBC who now lives in Nanaimo.

0What does this concept mean in the real world? What are some examples and what can it be applied to?-----

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Resilience0The authors offer seven resilience principles:Diversity (biological, landscape, social, cultural and

economic). This is a variant of the old axiom: “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” What would be some examples?

Modularity- The ability of systems to function somewhat independently of others. Why would this be desirable?

Innovation- Encouraging learning, experimentation, local models, and being open to change. Examples?

Overlap- Encouraging redundancy (i.e. some duplication of function). Why would this be desirable?

Tight feedback loops- How does this contrast with what we have now and what other principle is it linked to?

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Resilience0The authors offer seven resilience principles

(cont’d):Ecosystem services- Making sure a full-cost

accounting occurs for such services and the economy does not disregard them. Efforts have been made to put dollar values on them.

In 1997, ecological economist, Robert Constanza, and his colleagues estimated the annual value of ecosystem services at $33 trillion dollars, almost twice the value of global GNP ($18 trillion).

As is indicated by the illustration on p. 21, the seven principles reinforce one another.

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Supporting services: ecosystem services "that are necessary for the production of all other ecosystem services"

• nutrient dispersal and cycling• seed dispersal• primary production (role of plants in supporting food chains)

Provisioning services: "products obtained from ecosystems" • food (including seafood and game), crops, wild foods, and spices

• water• minerals (including diatomite)• pharmaceuticals, biochemicals, and industrial products• energy (hydropower, biomass fuels)

Regulating services: "benefits obtained from the regulation of ecosystem processes"

• carbon sequestration and climate regulation• waste decomposition and detoxification• purification of water and air• crop pollination• pest and disease control

Cultural services: "non-material benefits people obtain from ecosystems through spiritual enrichment, cognitive development, reflection, recreation, and aesthetic experiences"

• cultural, intellectual and spiritual inspiration• recreational experiences (including ecotourism)• scientific discovery

Source: W

ikipedia

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National Academy of Sciences Study0 “The cheap plastic junk you buy at big-box stores is

cheap only because the externalities have not been priced in…” – Thomas Friedman.

0He insists that radical revisions in prices are the key to changing individuals’ and societies’ behaviours, but will people go for that?

0Current negative ecological externalities = $47 trillion0High- and middle-income countries cause $5 trillion

in damage0Poor countries inflict $ .68 trillion in damages on rich

countries, but their foreign debt is $1.8 trillion.

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Reclaiming the Commons0 “Humans arguing over private property rights is like two fleas

arguing over who owns the dog.” – Crocodile Dundee0 The authors argue that private property and commercial

markets are quite recent in origin, or at least played a marginal role. Part of why settlers and indigenous people got into conflict in North America and Australia was because the natives thought they were agreeing to share the land base – the commons – not hand it over as private property.

0Any ideas as to when and why private property and markets arose?

0 Garrett Hardin, in his famous essay, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” argued that commons will always be overexploited because of personal greed. Ayn Rand thought greed was in the collective interest. This is similar to Adam Smith’s notion of “the invisible hand.”

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Reclaiming the Commons0The case of the Pakistani fisheries shows that declining

fisheries may not be explained by the ‘tragedy of the commons’ notion (see pp. 22-23). Some would argue that the high seas are an open access resource system, in contrast with the coastal fishery which was a commons enclosed by government and corporations.

0Co-operative resource management institutions (see example of Chilean fishery (see p. 23) often seem to work well. We will likely have a speaker in to address this issue in a Canadian context.

0Some say what has been occurring for the past several hundred years, and is still occurring today, is “the enclosure of the commons.” What does the term mean and can you think of contemporary examples?

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Reclaiming the Commons0The authors raise the issue of whether there can be

true political democracy without economic democracy.

0Are there examples of where the lack of one seems to inhibit the other?

0Goldman Sachs executives were Secretaries of the Treasury under both Bush and Obama, a Sachs man is about to become the U.S. ambassador to Canada, a Sachs man took over the prime minister’s office of Italy, and the company has been heavily involved in the Greek financial crisis and in helping to run the European Central Bank.

0What would economic democracy look like?

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Reclaiming the Commons0Healthy societies have often had a strong civil society (or

third) sector, with rich social capital.0 In some countries, the private and public sectors are

balanced effectively by the civil society sector, creating a synergistic relationship, where no one sector predominates. Examples?

0See detailed charts on pp. 30-31, with the third system economy consisting of social enterprises, voluntary org- anizations, and the family economy. Such societies often have different values.

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Reclaiming the Commons0From “cowboy economy” to “spaceship Earth” and the

“spaceman economy” (Kenneth Boulding).0From seeing the economy as autonomous to seeing it as

embedded in the yolk of society and the white and shell of the biosphere.

0Achieving ecological, social, and economic sustainability.0Major barriers?0One way to smooth the transition is through Victor and

Jackson’s hypothesized scenarios – particularly #3 (see pp. 36-37)

0Capitalism has been dominant for 5-600 years. What are its strengths and weaknesses? What kind of future does it have? Any viable alternatives?