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Environmental Management

Biodiversity’s vicious loop

There is no clear direction when it comes to sculpting policies that lead to successful environmental management. Politicians, economists, journalists, environmentalists, publishers, merchants, engineers and philosophers talk about climate change, sustainability and biodiversity without rhyme or reason. On the occasion of celebrating Earth Day, the Institute of Catalans Studies (IEC) asked for a pair of leading figures in environmental science, Carlos Montes and Ramon Folch to talk about what concerns them most regarding the state of the biosphere. Both experts are disciples, in turn, of two mythical figures of ecological studies in Spain: Fernando Gonzalez Hernandez and Ramon Margalef.

Jordi Montaner | 6 may 2010

Photo: López Román

Carlos Montes, head of the Socio-Ecosystems Laboratory of the Department of Ecology at the Autonomous University of Madrid, gave a conference under the provocative title: “Myths, Legends and Trends in the Biodiversity Management.” We live, according to the researcher, immersed in the Anthropocene, a developmental stage in which humans must discern the role that corresponds to the endangered species and protected areas that share the planet. The economy exercises a hegemony of power, its crises condition all the other subsequent ones. Montes said that the current economic crisis is only the tip of an iceberg of a far greater crisis: the management of the planet. “Since you have to pay for conservation efforts, we are forced to decide what biodiversity we conserve and for what end,” he explained. Biodiversity, he said, not only has a value, but also a price. Only through a system of fees (or taxes) for biodiversity can we guarantee the survival of certain ecosystems and species.

The inertia of the planetary depletion process is, in any case, harmful. “Paul Ehrlich and his colleagues were wrong in their estimates of 1981, but they were right: we are depleting natural resources, there is a limit, a cap, an expiration date,” Montes said. Plants and animals are becoming extinct at a rate of 27,000 species per year, 72 each days, 3 every single hour . However, he reflected, science does not care how many species become extinct, but rather how they die out. The expert argued that globalization is much more than a fad. “We are changing the essential ecological processes that determine the overall functioning of our planet,” he said. The changes are increasingly rapid, intense, universal and traumatic since they operate in scales of time and space that are much larger than the changes of natural variability. “We have modified the natural rhythms of climate change,” he said. “Things are not what they were, not are they not what they appear to be.”

It is not a matter of splitting up the resource pie in even amounts for all, but rather, if you were to do so, there would simply not be enough pie to go around for everyone According to the ecologist, history states that a global economy based on the principles of liberal capitalism entails limitless growth, ignoring that the sources of energy or water are destroyed at a rate far greater than was believed. The economies are mired in a “idolization of the market” that does not respect the biophysical limits of the planet. The development of technologies deemed pipedreams just a few years before seems to suggest that humans can decouple ourselves from the natural plan (the “idolization of technology”). The global communication and finance networks create a hectic pace that gives rise to profound changes in the structure of the system, marked by a the commodification of public goods and a demographic imbalance. Despite the crisis, the system promotes a growing level per capita consumption (“consumptionmania”) and ignores a serious loss of cultural diversity and socio-ecological memory. “Everything is homogenized, there is a fragmentation of the landscape and a change in the natural regime of disturbances,” he says. “The surprises that nature has in store for us may not be good ones.”

Montes subscribes to the idea that the ecological crisis is not, in fact, an ecological problem, but a human one. “We are called to learn how to live under an economic model without limits on a finite planet,” he said. Economic growth degrades ecosystems and their biodiversity is put in danger. “The answer is sometimes awkward, as in the case of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, whose ‘Biophilia’ has given rise to an abducted conservation philosophy,” he saidi. Protected areas can not protect the biodiversity that inspired them; they turn out to be an exception to the rule. Authorities believe that they can meet their responsibilities through the yearly creation of a hundred of so protected areas, pockets that reveal the lack of an overarching social commitment to protecting the planet’s biodiversity. “These measures are necessary but not sufficient,” Montes says, adding a quote by Albert Einstein, "if you are looking for different results, don’t always do the same thing."

Montes also criticized that priority is given to colorful and rare species, “for motivations closer to those of a Disney film than those of scientific merit.” He gave the example of the Doñana nature reserve, in southern Spain, where great efforts are focused on the conservation of the Iberian lynx, while ignoring that this area is also the habitat of “the only herbivorous spider on the planet.” “There is no conservation without development and no development without conservation," he said, adding that good environmental policies should be based on sound scientific data. He gave the example of the world's largest environmental audit carried out until today, following a United Nations initiative.

He was emphatic in his expectations: “If global warming making headlines today, the degradation of ecosystems will do so tomorrow.” In the future, the world will no longer be divided into ideologies of left or right, according to Montes, “but those who accept ecological limits and those who do not.” It is now up to scientists to perform the delicate task of assessing the amount of change that the system can support without collapsing.

A factory of uncertainty

Ramon Folch, chair of Environmental Science and Socio-ecology at the Catalan Institute of Technology, Barcelona, far from answering Montes’s provocative thesis, elaborated on his strategy by saying that “GDP kills.” Like the classic cartoons of Arcimboldo, nothing is what is seems. “The greater the social injustice, the greater the degradation of biodiversity, and vice versa,” he said.

For Folch, the worrying thing is not that there are too many of us, but that not everyone can live equally. “Facts are facts, and reality is based on one’s perception of them,” he argued. The researcher criticized the lack of rigor in the knowledge of reality of policy makers, who often confuse terms. “The value of a living being is absolute, price is relative,” he said. Many common fronts exist in the defense of nature against the current system, but there is a lack of a realistic alternative model. “We're not apart from nature; we are part of it,” he said. Folch differentiated the “categorical challenges” from the “anecdotal alarms,” criticizing that these alarms are commonly taken out of context: “We're not a society of knowledge, but rather one of Information.”

Climate change, he stressed, is a categorical challenge, “just like the energy models that we insist on continuing to use.” According to this expert, “oil will run out, and this is not a problem raised by environmentalists, but by the industry itself; according to a report from Shell Oil, the estimated date is 2020.” Like rats and pigeons, humans beings are a pest species, "but we only weigh 300 million tons, a meager sum.” We consume the same biomass as ants do, although for every human being there are a million ants. What is worse, he insisted, is not that there are too many of us, but that we spend too much energy.

We measure problems by changing their scale, not noticing that the scale does not give the size but rather the character of phenomena and events. For example, very little applause accompanied the close of the conference, which fell on a night of Champions League, and a few attendees lasted until after 10 pm. The uncommon force of the two lecturers left its mark on the discussion of sustainability energy, unfortunately, it felt almost like a waste.

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