Vol. 4, No. 1 - Special edition: biodiversity
First online: 3 December 2019
David
Samways
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DOI: 10.3197/jps.2019.4.1.5
Licensing: This article is Open Access (CC BY 4.0).
How to Cite:
Samways, D. 2016. 'Editorial introduction – special issue: biodiversity'. The Journal of Population and Sustainability 4(1): 5–14.
https://doi.org/10.3197/jps.2019.4.1.5
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The
focus of this issue of the JP&S is biodiversity. While anthropogenic
climate change has become the dominant issue in public environmental discourse,
and is increasingly recognised as an existential risk, loss of biodiversity has
received less public attention (Veríssimo, et al. 2014; Legagneux et al.,
2018). Indeed, climate change has come to so dominate discourses about human
environmental impact that rather than being seen as just one of many impacts it
is sometimes employed as a synonym for environmental impact per se, with the
implication that solving the climate change problem solves all other environmental
problems. However, while climate change is undoubtedly an urgent and critical
issue, the wider human impact on the earth’s ecosystems may represent as great,
if not a greater, risk (Ehrlich and Ehrlich, 2012) that will not vanish once
anthropogenic carbon emissions have abated. Climate change is itself an
important driver of species extinction, but it is only part of the story; as
the contributors to this issue attest, in general, it is the sheer size and
extent of human activity that is driving species extinction. The 2019
Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem
Services (IPBES) reported the main drivers of species extinction as: land-use
change and the direct overexploitation of animals, plants and other organisms;
climate change; pollution including the introduction of invasive alien species;
human population growth and economic growth (IPBES, 2019).
Legagneux
et al. (2018) report that between 1991 and 2016 climate change received up to
eight times more media coverage than biodiversity, a finding that they argue
cannot be explained by differences between the number of scientific papers
published or the level of research funding. They identify a number of reasons
for this discrepancy including the fact that the causes, consequences and
possible solutions to climate change were simpler to communicate than the more
complex and diverse dimensions of biodiversity loss and its consequences for
human beings.
Attempts
to reduce global warming can easily be summarized as any action that will limit
it to 1.5 or 2◦C. However, there is no clear biodiversity benchmark to meet
that can easily be translated to policy. (Legagneux et al., 2018 p.4)
Climate
change is frequently regarded as an essentially technological problem, which
has, as with almost all previous environmental challenges, technical solutions.
While potential policies to reduce national carbon footprint entail a range of
social changes to reduce consumption as well as technical fixes, it is the
latter in the form of transitions to low and zero carbon technologies that
grasp public attention. Policies built around these technical fixes have
obvious attractions to politicians too since they hold out the hope of
mitigating climate change without either having to attempt to change their
constituents’ behaviour by intervening in choices previously regarded as
entirely personal and self-regarding (e.g. what people eat, the size of their
family, etc.), or moving to an alternative economic model. Such a view sees
technological progress, in the form of greater efficiency, renewable energy,
energy storage systems, new technology for increased agricultural production,
carbon capture and storage (CCS)[1] and so on, as the solution to our
environmental problems. However, while these technical fixes are essential to
curbing carbon emissions they are unlikely to meet IPCC targets if we do not
simultaneously address consumption – of which population growth is an important
multiplier. Moreover, and perhaps most significantly, the dominance of climate
change in public environmental discourse has eclipsed other more apparently
intractable and possibly more critical problems, the foremost of which is loss
of biodiversity and species extinction. One reason for this may lie in the fact
that loss of biodiversity, as the recent IPBES report shows, has so many causal
factors that no simple technical fixes analogous to those for decarbonising of
the economy appear to be available.
The
Norwegian eco-philosopher Arne Naess characterised mainstream environmentalism
as “shallow ecology” since its aim was to:
Fight
against pollution and resource depletion. Central objective: the health and
affluence of people in the developed countries. (1973 p.95)
One
does not have to subscribe to Naess’ “deep ecology” to concur with his general
observation that a significant part of environmental concern has largely been
oriented to these narrow anthropocentric objectives. The recent growth in
environmental concern, while dominated by the “climate crisis”, has also
included anxieties about the fate of other species, much of which might be attributable
to the “Blue
Planet effect”[2] (Gell, 2019). Environmental concern is
at the highest level ever recorded (Smith, 2019). But does this represent a
clear indication that narrow anthropocentrism is being softened and that people
might be open to significant changes in lifestyle and curbs on their personal
autonomy to protect the environment? A brief overview of the history of
environmental concern shows shifts in attitudes but also little appetite for
bearing the cost of action.
Arguably,
the environmental movement, and indeed popular environmental consciousness, as
we know it today began in the 1960s with the serialisation in The New Yorker of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962).
Carson’s focus was on the effect of pesticides on what we would now call
biodiversity, a term only coined in the mid 1980s, but the movement she
inspired went beyond this to mobilise against the impact of anthropogenic
pollution in general on the natural world. However, in contrast with many
environmentalists, much of the general public’s concern with the environment,
as in earlier times, myopically focused on the shorter-term consequences of
such pollution for themselves, their families and communities. In the developed
world, public concern about environmental degradation was largely pacified by
regulatory measures and technical fixes which cleaned up the most obvious local
pollutants or shifted them elsewhere. Over the next half-century or so the
environment waxed and waned in the anxieties of the general public, arguably
mirroring the ups and downs of the economy (Kahn and Kotchen, 2011; Scruggs and
Benegal, 2012). However, during this time the longer-term and global nature of
human environmental impact flagged up by books like the Club of Rome’s Limits to Growth (Meadows
et al., 1972) slowly seeped into public environmental discourses, and latterly
the issue of climate change with its global scope and impact on future
generations has taken centre-stage.
It
might be argued that this transition from a local and short-term focus to a
global and long-term one represents a paradigm shift in public environmental
consciousness. However, a number of studies show that despite this broadening
of scope and the currently very high levels of concern, local and short-term
environmental issues such as water and air quality are of at least equal
importance in people’s minds (IPSOS, 2018; McCarthy, 2019). Moreover, although
survey data shows that people are genuinely concerned about the plight of other
species and biodiversity (see for example European Commission, 2015), evidence also
indicates that issues such as wildlife conservation can rank well below climate
change, air pollution and dealing with waste (IPSOS, 2018). The results of
survey data and polls need to be treated with some degree of caution since
attempting to get a firm handle on public attitudes to the environment is
extremely difficult. Media coverage of particular issues at particular times,
such as plastic pollution, has a massive influence on public perception of the
importance of an issue in terms of its overall environmental impact (Henderson,
2019). Moreover, where it comes to individual behaviour, people are obviously
much more likely to engage in an action that is easily achieved without
personal cost (be it monetary, time, convenience or personal autonomy), like
declining a plastic carrier bag, than more fundamental and costly changes to
their lifestyles such as eating less meat, driving fewer miles or taking fewer
flights[3] (see Taylor, 2012; Alcock et al.,
2017; Fisher et al., 2018; Hill, 2019). Moreover, a number of studies have
shown that personal experience of extreme weather events increases concern
about climate change and also increases the likelihood of changing personal
behaviour (Spence et al., 2011; Broomell et al., 2015; Demski et al. 2017).
Such studies indicate that threats that are far-off in time and space are
unlikely to motivate significant behavioural change until the effects are
immediately obvious and costly.
Despite
these caveats, it is clear that the environment has become a narrative that is
an important dimension of public discourse – with the 2019 UK general election
attesting to this. However, it is also clear that these high levels of anxiety
are not only fairly readily eclipsed by other factors such as economic
recession or security issues (Scruggs and Benegal, 2012; Taylor, 2012), but are
also still primarily concerned with human well-being. The picture is made more
complex since this relatively narrow anthropocentrism is tempered with a
genuine interest in the fate of other species – even if this has largely been
with those that people find most appealing. Whether this concern with the
condition of nature can be elevated to the same level as that of climate change
is yet to be seen. Where it comes to concrete action, the public still has
great faith in technological solutions and is resistant to restrictions to
their personal autonomy. Technology will play a critical role in mitigating climate
change, but without also simultaneously addressing the two other terms in the
IPAT equation (impact = population x affluence [consumption] x technology) the
existential threat of ecological collapse will remain.
When
it comes to species extinctions, public concern has largely been focussed on
the so-called ‘charismatic’ vertebrate species such as the giant panda, tiger,
rhino, elephant, leatherback turtle, birds of prey and so on. In the first
paper in this issue, Fred Naggs draws on his extensive knowledge of land snails
(probably counted by most as amongst the least charismatic of animals) as
barometers of biodiversity to illustrate the contrasting effects of population
growth on the islands of Madagascar and Sumatra. Naggs points out that while
public concern about vertebrates is legitimate, invertebrate extinctions are
massive and particularly worrying since they are part of the ecological
foundation on which creatures higher up the food chain are reliant. He writes:
“If we are concerned about biodiversity loss then their story needs to be told
and their fate needs to be a focus of our attention.” Examining the islands of
Sumatra and Madagascar individually, Naggs concludes that the driving forces of
biodiversity loss in each are a product of endogenous and exogenous factors. In
the case of Sumatra exogenous demand for natural resources has been the major
factor, while in Madagascar it has been endogenous population growth that has
led to deforestation and ecological destruction. Naggs finds conservation
responses to the developing anthropogenic mass extinction wanting. He argues
that the objective of ‘sustainable development’ has subordinated and
compromised conservation programmes. But in particular Naggs finds that the
notion of ‘sustainable development’ fails to address the combination of
overconsumption and overpopulation as the ultimate drivers of the sixth mass
extinction. Given the pace of species loss, Naggs argues that there is an
urgent need for a zoological species inventory. While technology cannot halt
species extinctions, the preservation of biological material offers the
technological means of underwriting traditional conservation and may offer the
possibility of species restoration if future environmental conditions permit.
Like
Fred Naggs, Freya Mathews is critical of the notion of ‘sustainable
development’. In our second article she examines how the concept of
biodiversity conservation has unwittingly been complicit in the expansion of
human numbers and the decline of populations of wild species. She begins with
the observation that anthropocentrism, or human-centeredness, has been the
organising principle of global developmental modernisation enabling the growth
of human numbers and ecological footprint leading to the ever-greater “annexation”
of the habitats of wild species. Mathews suggests that the shift from the
concept of ‘wilderness’ conservation, which contained a moral pushback against
anthropocentrism, to the conservation of ‘biodiversity’ entailed an unintended
contraction of scope so that conservation became popularly understood as the
prevention of species extinctions.
Thus, rather than enabling the flourishing of species populations, conservation
was only triggered by critical endangerment of particular species that fell
below ‘minimum viable populations’ – ones which were only a fraction of their
pre-disturbance numbers. The eventual mutation of viable populations
into sustainable populations
permitted further modernisation and industrialisation clothed with a veneer of
‘sustainability’ in terms of biodiversity. This validated human populations in
the billions while accepting wild species populations at minimal levels. For
Mathews, biodiversity conservation is clearly self-defeating and requires
replacement with a concept that protects earth-life in its own right beyond
anthropocentric concerns. While biodiversity, she argues, is a necessary but
not sufficient condition for the flourishing of earth-life, proliferation and
abundance is also necessary for optimal and ecologically proportional species
populations. Mathews refers to the latter as bioproportionality and is a principle which requires
humankind to allow species to optimise their populations in accordance with
their inherent ecological dynamics. However, it follows that humankind must
also optimise our own numbers in ecological proportion with those of other
species, which, Mathews argues, requires a massive consensual or
incentive-driven reduction in human numbers.
Articulating
similar themes to Freya Mathews’ paper, Philip Lymbery focuses on how the
growing footprint of humankind’s food system has marginalised wilderness and
wildlife contributing to the creation of the Anthropocene. Critically, he shows
that the huge populations of animals kept for food has a direct effect on
biodiversity. More than 27bn domesticated animals are living at any one time
with more than 65bn slaughtered for meat every year (Ritchie and Roser, 2017).
And these numbers are growing rapidly, with population growth, rising incomes
and urbanisation as the driving forces (WHO, ND; Godfray et al., 2018).
Supporting an ever-increasing and more affluent human population, agriculture
has crowded out wilderness until it now only represents a fraction of the
earth’s land area. Intensification of livestock production in factory units
rather than in open farmland has gone hand-in-hand with the industrialisation
of the production of crops used to feed them, which in turn has led to the
destruction of habitats and loss of biodiversity. Moreover, Lymbery warns that
“the way we produce food alone could take us to the brink of catastrophic
global heating”.
To
achieve a sustainable global food system three factors must be addressed: the
level of meat consumption, the method of production, and the size of the human
population[4].
All three require programmes of action dealing with underlying drivers: for
population reduction these include poverty, poor education, and inadequate
access to contraception. Reducing consumption of animal-based foodstuffs
requires governments and food businesses in the high-consumption regions to
lead the transition by encouraging adoption of a greater proportion of
plant-based foods and the setting of targets to reduce the proportion of meat
and dairy products consumed. Lymbery calls “on the United Nations to forge a
global agreement to create a regenerative food system without factory farming
and excessive meat production”. With fewer humans consuming smaller amounts of
high-quality meat, factory farming can be abandoned and animals returned to the
pastures. Lymbery argues that returning to mixed, rotational agriculture brings
a host of environmental benefits including increases in biodiversity.
While
the previous articles have primarily focused on biodiversity loss, Philip
Cafaro and Frank Götmark’s paper examines the impact of immigration, and
consequent population increases, on both climate change and biodiversity policy
objectives of the individual nation states of the European Union (EU) and the
region as a whole. They argue that there is a shared implicit assumption
amongst environmental groups and the EU policy community that “population size and immigration
rates have no important roles to play
in the efforts of EU nations to meet their environmental challenges and create
ecologically sustainable societies”. Examining projected
European population growth under five immigration scenarios, they establish
that relatively small annual changes in the rate of immigration have the
potential to accumulate into large overall differences in population in the
relatively near future. Applying these demographic scenarios as multipliers of
three possible trajectories of per capita greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions,
Cafaro and Götmark demonstrate that “in every case, increased immigration leads
to larger populations, which in turn lead to smaller decreases in total GHG
emissions, in individual countries and in the EU as a whole”. Similarly,
population growth has negative effects on biodiversity, although they admit
this is more difficult to quantify than for GHG emissions as the relationship
between population density and biodiversity is complex and they are therefore
unable to show the effect of their five population scenarios. However, using a
number of different examples they make a convincing case to show that the
pursuit of policies designed to preserve and enhance Europe’s biodiversity is
made all the more difficult with an increasing population. They state: “while
the complexity of the phenomenon prevents us from affirming a strict 1:1
inverse relationship [between population density and biodiversity], the overall
trend is clear: greater human numbers reduce biodiversity”. Cafaro and Götmark
conclude, therefore, that the implicit assumption is false and that population
growth through immigration represents a serious impediment to the realisation
of both GHG and biodiversity policy objectives.
We
close with Herman Daly’s thought provoking review of Bill McKibben’s Falter: has the human game begun to play itself out? – a book that counters the Panglossianism
of writers like Steven Pinker without losing a degree of optimism and a sense
that resistance to the dangers humankind faces is possible.
Notes
[1] Indeed
the 2016 Paris UNFCCC agreement on climate change relies on as yet
unsubstantiated CCS technology and systems to achieve the zero emissions target
by 2060-70.
[2] BBC
television’s Blue Planet II first broadcast on 29 October 2017 highlighted the
impact of plastic pollution.
[3] Notably,
the question of having fewer children to save the planet has yet to make it
onto the pollsters’ questionnaires.
[4] These
factors map nicely onto the I=PAT equation mentioned above: environmental
impact of the food system = human population x meat consumption x technology of
food production.
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