Race to Save the Tropics: Ecology And Economics For A Sustainable Future

By Robert Goodland and Dan Janzen

Race to Save the Tropics documents the conflict between economic development and protection of biological diversity in tropical countries.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Island Press
• Release date: Apr 10, 2013
• ISBN: 9781597268691

Book preview

JANZEN

PREFACE

The most important challenge for tropical ecology is for tropical ecologists to stop intellectualizing and start implementing what needs to be done. Thus wrote Dan Janzen (1988), arguably the world’s foremost practitioner of applied tropical ecology. This book shows what applied tropical ecology is and how it already has started to be used in improving economic development in developing countries.

Applied ecology, the application of ecological principles to solving real world problems, is discussed in the introduction. The integration of applied ecology into the process of economic development has already improved it significantly and will improve it much more when such integration becomes systematic rather than the exception it is at present. Even so, applied ecology is an intractable science as Slobodkin (1988) points out: One reason is that ecology is called upon to solve all types of real and conceivable problems about the interaction of organisms and their environment. . . . Both ecology and medicine when confronted with questions about new symptoms attempt to establish ad hoc research programs to find solutions, and thereby tend to annoy clients who want quick, direct replies.

This book, written by front-line, muddy-footed practitioners of applied ecology, shows the enormous benefits to be gained and the staggering and usually irreversible losses to be prevented when ecology is applied to economic development. Ecology is applied to agricultural development, both agroecology and agroforestry, moist forest management, pest management, and to large-scale hydro and irrigation schemes, all of them in tropical developing countries. This is complemented by chapters on teaching applied ecology to nationals of tropical countries; ecology applied to conservation; and environmental sustainability.

Applied tropical ecology is a young science—this is the first book to be published on the subject. This book is not a research tome. Rather, it records the attempts, many empirical and ad hoc, to apply what little is already known to real life development issues in tropical countries.

INTRODUCTION

ROBERT GOODLAND AND MARYLA WEBB

Economic development has been vigorously pursued as the means for achieving the goal of fulfilling human potential and improving standards of living. Economic development is a complex process, usually accompanied by major cultural changes involving systems of governing, social relationships, attitudes toward nature, and technological artifacts. Development is usually characterized by a gradual transformation from a subsistence economy—in which families or villages are essentially self-sufficient, and any trade of goods and services is largely through barter—to a market economy—in which production of goods and services are specialized and trade in goods and services involves a national currency—or by growth in a market economy. Market economies are frequently measured as growth in gross national product (GNP). GNP is a national account statistic that measures aggregate national generation of income or the monetary value of resource flows. Only recorded economic transactions involving a national currency are included in the statistic. Its environmental deficiencies are recognized but not amplified here.

After World War II, attention began to focus on economic development for more-traditional societies in largely tropical countries not yet so affected by the world market economy and modern technological conveniences. This led to international cooperation for economic development on an unprecedented scale. International lending agencies and programs of bilateral aid were established to transfer resources and provide technical assistance to developing countries. The governments of developing countries also set about fostering the market economy—setting macroeconomic policies, investing to build infrastructure and expand basic services, fostering and sometimes engaging directly in productive activities. Although these efforts have been successful in transforming millions of lives and increasing per capita GNP—per capita GNP has risen an average of 3 percent annually since 1965 in developing countries—it can be argued that overall quality of life and human well-being has not risen commensurately.

This chapter suggests how and why economic development has not always been successful in increasing quality of life. It focuses the impact of economic development on the natural environment—although the impact of economic development on the social environment also is a critical issue and lack of attention to it has caused social malaise and failure in specific development projects. Also, it is suggested that applied ecology can enhance economic development so that it preserves rather than damages quality of life and of the environment; the influence of multilateral development banks (the World Bank, founded in 1945; the Inter-American Development Bank, founded in 1959; the African Development Bank, founded in 1964; and the Asian Development Bank, founded in 1966) on the economic development process is discussed. How applied ecology can enhance these multilateral development banks is described, and critical areas for future research are suggested.

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND QUALITY OF LIFE

The acute environmental stresses many developing countries experience are intensifying rapidly. Overall many of today’s activities are degrading the world environment at an accelerating rate.

More environmental degradation and destruction has probably occurred in the last twenty years—while GNP was rising 3 percent a year in developing countries—than the previous fifty. The greatest environmental destruction in the history of humanity has occurred in the last one hundred years, as technologies have become more powerful, agriculture has become more mechanized, and the market economy has spread globally. Despite laborious attempts to solve environmental problems, implemented solutions to deforestation, desertification, overfishing, pollution, the greenhouse effects, acid rain, depletion of the ozone layer, and extinction of species evade us. Daly and Cobb (1989) offer the most encouraging ways out of current planetary impasse.

One of the reasons for this state of affairs is that the very process of economic development leads to environmental degradation; whereas traditional systems of resource use (social and technical) often set up circumstances whereby environmental quality is preserved. For example, traditional systems usually develop through long periods of trial and error in an area. They build detailed familiarity and sensitivity to a local environment. The ones that preserve environmental quality are often essentially subsistence systems (including storing modest surplus for lean times). The people have little incentive to overexploit the environment, since most traditional societies—even migratory ones—are tied to a certain territory and therefore have a stake in its preservation and protection so that it continues to provide for societal needs. In many traditional societies, preserving nature or respecting the land is a universal human obligation.

Conversely, in modern developed societies, most people lose sensitivity to, understanding of, and appreciation for their natural environments. In the world market economy, the incentive is to produce as much surplus as one can sell, because stockpiling wealth increases materials power and options. Nothing in the structure of the market induces conservation. On the contrary, if the demand is there, all incentives are to overexploit in modern societies. The profits from sustainable harvesting are less per unit time than unsustainable mining of a potentially renewable resource. If one resource becomes depleted, all that is necessary is to have stockpiled enough capital to allow substitution of another resource. Fiscal policies, such as tax (dis)incentives, can soften this fundamental market characteristic, but cannot remove it. Treatment of the land that provides for all one’s material needs (except for one’s immediate living space) becomes no longer a particular concern. Modern societies usually take a usability approach to nature—that is, they do not adhere to a belief in a moral obligation to nature.

ROLE OF APPLIED ECOLOGY

The systematic application of ecology (page 6) to development planning, although not a panacea, can go a long way toward alleviating the problem outlined. Although much remains to be discovered, ecology has uncovered many principles of natural ecosystem functioning critical to successful development planning. Most failed economic development projects have ignored critical ecological attributes of an area. At the very least, they are not likely to achieve as many sustainable benefits as economically as would be achieved if ecological principles were used.

Applied Ecology Defined

Applied ecology is the application of ecological principles to solving real world problems. Theoretical (pure) ecology uncovers the ecological principles that explain the structure and functioning of the natural world. Both branches of ecology are essentially positive, rather than normative, activities. They focus on what is or will be, rather than on what ought to be.

Even so, applied ecology is closely associated with normative activities. A broad political goal, or the solution to a local problem—how things ought to be—is usually decided in the political or socioeconomic arena. Applied ecologists use basic ecological knowledge to aid reaching socioeconomic or political goals. These goals include the conservation of biological diversity or sustainable natural resource management such as the optimization of products from forests. Applied ecologists also conduct research at a local level to solve a particular problem, such as the alleviation of an algal bloom in a lake, or the establishment of the boundaries of a nature