ANGFA Queensland

Original story by Carl Obst and John Wiseman, University of Melbourne at The Conversation

A more sustainable Australia. As the 2013 election campaign continues, we’ve asked academics to look at some of the long-term issues affecting Australia – the issues that will shape our future.

We need a better way of understanding and predicting how well our society is doing. Photo: Klesta/Flickr

How successful is Australia? You’d think we’d have a fairly easy answer to that – you could get it by looking at our gross domestic product, or GDP. But over the years we’ve gained a number of other success indicators, from health and wellbeing, to the environment, and they often tell a different story.

In 1968, US senator Robert Kennedy observed that GDP “measures everything … except that which makes life worthwhile”. These days not many experts believe GDP is enough to measure whether a country is succeeding.

It’s obvious that we should be using a winder range of progress measures. The real question is why we still struggle to bring those measures into decision making. Why don’t we take it for granted that all decisions must balance economic, social and environmental factors as a matter of course?

Why do we struggle?

People have a collective lack of willingness to think long term, beyond five to ten years. This is the normal state of humanity – we dislike change. This approach works well when external conditions pose no obvious threat. But this means we can end up like the frog in hot water, which doesn’t realise the water is warming until it’s too late.

We tend to assume that whatever is the case now will remain the same. This leaves us in a difficult position when some of the things we depend on, such as functioning environments and societies, gradually deteriorate.

Another problem is that these problems are collective, rather than individual. This means that when resources are used by everyone – such as ocean fisheries, or the atmosphere – self-interest always wins out and the resources suffers. This, known as the tragedy of the commons, continues to be a major problem for global resources.

We also fear things we believe are complex. Our approach to complexity is to divide it up: we find it easier to consider economic, environmental and social aspects independently. We can become quite expert in each one. But we lose the ability to consider all factors simultaneously. It makes it difficult for leaders to make balanced decision when these aspects have all become separated.

Reinforcing this separation, we have developed information that does not support balanced, integrated decision making. For example, over the past 50-60 years economic information has had a significantly larger weight in decision making, notwithstanding the significant increase in the amount of social and scientific data over the same time period.

Combined with the tendency to short attention spans, this leads to more weight being placed on information about current activity (such as income and consumption) rather than longer term drivers of change such as the condition of public infrastructure, the environment and social capital. We have information on the condition of these assets but it tends to not be integrated or organised in a meaningful way. That makes it hard to use it efficiently in standard analytical and related frameworks – let alone broader public debate.

The consistent recording of trends over time provides information to assess past decisions, correct mistakes and visualise the future. In the wonderful words of Abraham Lincoln, “If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how do to it”.

Developing the habit of recording past events in a structured and widely disseminated fashion also has the significant side effect of reducing apparent complexity. There is nothing simple about the economic system or the measure of GDP that we use to reflect its performance. But we are now attuned to it and thus, as a collective, see the economy through a different lens to the one we use for environmental or social issues.

How do we adapt our point of view?

One solution would be to change human nature. This is likely to be a tough ask. A more practical approach is to record trends in economic, environmental and social factors, on which we can base decision in the future.

Fortunately, new frameworks for this sort of data collection are being implemented in Australia and globally. In 2012 the United Nations statistics group adopted an international statistical standard: the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA). It integrates environmental data (such as flows of water, energy, waste, and emissions and stocks of natural resources) with the standard measures of economic activity.

This SEEA provides an information base for other indicators, such as resource efficiency and sustainable consumption, and inclusive and comprehensive wealth. It could also be used in standard analytical tools such as economic modeling and cost benefit analysis.

Further research has shown the potential to integrate ecological information with standard economic accounting. In particular, we need to consider environmental and economic data for small areas (such as forests, farms, or wetlands).

This integration of environmental, economic and social information at local scales could drive changes in the way we consider decision making at national and international scales. At local scales we deal better with complexity, since there are fewer unknowns and we have a greater interest in thinking for the long term since the impact of decisions and choices affect us directly.

Australia has a small yet strong tradition in environmental-economic accounting and has been a leading country in the development of the SEEA and other measurement frameworks. This work should be encouraged, supported and more actively co-ordinated to build nationally accepted histories of our relationships with the environment.

We need a comprehensive and regular Australian land and ecosystem assessment program along the lines of the recently commenced UK National Ecosystem Assessment. This would first entail dividing Australia up into regions of different land and ecosystem types, such as forests, agricultural land, wetlands, and coastal zones.

Then, using a variety of indicators we would:

• assess the quality and change in quality of those ecosystems
• assess the type and quantity of ecosystem services (such as food, fibre, air and water purification, and recreation) provided by those ecosystems.

While there are a number of related initiatives in Australia, these need to be co-ordinated, regularised and resourced through institutions. Maybe then we can stop thinking about the short-term, and start thinking about the future.

Thanks to the Sustainable Australia Report 2013 for inspiring this series.

Carl Obst was the editor and lead author for the United Nations System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA) from 2010-2013 and continue to work on a consultancy basis for international organisations that are implementing the SEEA as an international standard.

John Wiseman is a Professorial Fellow with the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute (MSSI), University of Melbourne.

This article was originally published at The Conversation.
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Original story by Cris Brack at The Conversation

Green alternatives such as wind and solar may be touted as the solution to our environmental problems such as climate change, but how green are they really?

Can’t see the wood for the trees? Forests are a source of truly green technology. Photo: Flickr/petrichor

Wind and solar rely on technologically-sophisticated industries and infrastructure including rare earth batteries, highly-processed composite building materials, computer controlled switching and balancing programs and continuous maintenance.

There are natural alternatives to such technologies that are arguably “greener”. So, why aren’t we looking to make our technologies truly green?

Wind, solar … wood

Fire is probably the greatest discovery of humankind, if not the discovery that set us on the path to becoming civilised and social.

Wood still fuels the energy needs of millions in Africa, China and India. Perhaps surprisingly, it also fuels the energy needs of many thousands in Europe, Canada, the US and even Australia. Why do we in the developed word seem to have forgotten its power?

Wood fuel has numerous advantages over wind or solar. Wood can be grown right where it is needed – even along the boundaries of residential properties, around commercial enterprises or even in urban and peri-urban parks.

While it is growing, trees look good and provide a temporary home for birds and other wildlife – certainly not something that can be said for every wind farm.

A continuous supply of winter home heating can be produced by selecting relevant tree species (or group of species) and progressively planting them around a “quarter acre” residential block. Each year, one seventh of the boundary could be planted and after seven years the owner could begin harvesting, drying, burning and replanting the oldest trees.

A suburban house with over one dozen trees, planted at different times around its boundary, which could grow over half a tonne of firewood every year. Image: Google Earth

Changing the trees species and the harvesting rotation lengths could allow co-production of products such as honey or flowers without ultimately endangering fuel reserves. Such a system would however require some management. Neighbourhood groups could coordinate their individual plantings and use of the trees to encourage community projects, including planting in parks, that benefit from trees at different stages of their life or allow longer life spans for selected trees.

Such a system could continue pretty much indefinitely and may rightly be classified as sustainable yield: renewable energy with very little need for unnatural elements or practises.

But somehow the use of wood as a fuel source is specifically included from a range of renewable energy and environmental improvement schemes, despite its advantages.

Timber!

The timber industry could benefit from similar rethinking.

Plantations are gaining a reputation as the “green” option for the production of solid timber for use in construction or high-value products.

The management required in plantations includes ploughing, ripping, spraying and fertilising for preparation, followed by more spraying and fertilising over time. Exotic species are used to avoid losses from local pests and diseases. This intensive management is designed to ensure that final harvest revenues don’t happen so far into the future that the “time cost of money” erodes the net profit.

While not as intensive or invasive as agriculture, and orders of magnitude less intensive than the industries associated with plastic, steel or concrete products, plantations are never-the-less more intense and less natural than native forest management.

In native forests, local or endemic species are kept even though growth is slower. Fertiliser is not applied, partially because its cost cannot be justified but also because the local species are commonly adapted to local soil fertility. Similarly, weedicide application is rare.

Producing wood products in such a forest is slower, and to produce the same amount requires a larger area. One hectare of intensively managed plantation can produce the same amount of solid wood product as 30-to-50 hectares of native eucalypt forest.

But the managed native forest will have a greater diversity of tree sizes and stages, and only relatively small areas of disturbance. The vast majority of the forest simply grows and changes in a natural way, which is orders of magnitude better for birds and animals.

There is a strong branch of forest management in Europe called “nature-based forestry” or “near natural silviculture” that attempts to make human induced disturbances during harvesting or regeneration as close to natural-like conditions as possible. Visitors need special training to detect the difference between the human induced changes and the natural ones.

But, like high-technology systems, plantations are seen as the “green” alternative to low-technology native forest management.

Green values

The “green” alternatives market has been captured by systems that require high levels of technology, energy inputs and processing.

Is the ultimate green goal is to leave nature altogether, replacing nature-based solution with technological ones – perhaps ultimately living in space stations powered by solar cells measured in kilometres?

Machines could make our air, water and nutrients out of raw mineral stocks mined from asteroid belts without impinging on natural earth at all. A “green” but precarious future totally reliant on sophisticated technology.

To be green and natural, we must re-engage with nature. Recall battles over battery chickens. The battle against that industry could not have commenced until the connection between the product (the egg) and the system (chickens in backyards or battery farms created by us) was re-established. Many urban children have never seen a farm or even touched a chicken.

Similarly a battle for green and natural alternatives can only be commenced once the connection between natural systems that produce goods and services are appreciated and compared with unnatural and energy demanding systems that they have been replaced by.

Cris Brack does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.

This article was originally published at The Conversation.
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Original story by Chris McGrath at The Conversation

China recognises environmental protection is good for the economy, and has gone all out to fund it. Photo: Dainis Matisons

A very different approach is emerging between Australia and China’s treatment of jobs and industries providing goods and services for environmental protection.

In Australia, major investors are reported to be planning for the impact if the Coalition wins power, axes the carbon price and dismantles the clean energy finance system. They expect private funding would be directed away from large-scale renewable power – starving the sector of capital – due to regulatory uncertainty and a lack of solid returns.

In stark contrast, China recently announced it will elevate environmental protection to a “pillar industry” that would receive government support in the form of tax breaks and subsidies to tackle dire pollution. There are staggering amounts of money involved.

China has vowed to raise the total output of environmental protection industries to 4.5 trillion yuan (US$730 billion) by 2015, an average annual increase of 15%. To put that in some sort of perspective, that is equivalent to nearly 9% of China’s GDP in 2012. It is equivalent to nearly 50% of Australia’s GDP in 2012.

On improving air quality alone, China says it will spend US$275 billion over the next five years. That’s roughly twice the size of its annual defence budget. The Economist points out that even by Chinese standards this is an enormous sum.

A missing pillar in election policies

Coincidentally, economic pillars are the “it” metaphor in Australian politics. In this election both the Coalition and Labor have built their economic policies around pillars. The Coalition has five and the Labor Party has seven.

As the Coalition looks likely to form the next government, let’s concentrate on the five economic pillars in its policy platform. They are: manufacturing, advanced services, agriculture exports, education and research, and mining.

You won’t find any direct reference to the environmental protection industry in the economic pillars of the Coalition policy.

It might be hiding in “advanced services” but the Coalition’s policy does not mention it. Advanced services is referred to as a “highly diversified sector” and particular mention is made of financial services, health services, engineering and architectural services.

The 19th of 21 policy themes in the Coalition’s policies is “delivering a cleaner and more sustainable environment”. This emphasises the benefits of direct action on climate change rather than the carbon tax, a Green Army, and creating a one-stop-shop for environmental approvals.

Strewn throughout the Coalition’s policies are calls to reduce regulation and constraints on business, particularly the carbon tax and the mining tax.

Overall, the clear impression is that the Coalition views environmental protection as a constraint on industry that should be minimised – like trips to the dentist – rather than a business opportunity in its own right.

A pillar or the whole foundation?

Thinking of environmental protection as an industry in its own right is innovative but perhaps it misses the bigger point that the whole economy depends upon it.

Adapted from Daly (1996) Beyond Growth: The Economics of Sustainable Development

As the late US senator Gaylord Nelson famously said, “The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment, not the other way around.”

Rather than think of environmental protection as an industry competing with other industry sectors and other social goals, we should think of it as the foundation of all of our economic and social goals.

When speaking as a teacher to classes on environmental law, a metaphor that I like to use is of a tree where social and economic goals like jobs and housing are the fruit we aim for and education, good governance and justice, and a healthy environment are the roots that sustain the tree.

When we think of environmental protection as the foundation or root sustaining social and economic goals such as jobs, housing, peace and security, and public health, we avoid the common and arid dichotomy of jobs versus the environment.

Maintaining a healthy environment is the foundation of all of our goals as a society. Text added to graphic design by OCAL on clicker.com

Still, the Chinese approach of recognising environmental protection as an industry has the benefit of saying clearly that there are jobs in it. Can we learn from that? Can we make the environmental protection industry a major job creator and export earner?

The easiest way for the Coalition to incorporate this approach within its existing policy framework would be for it to expressly recognise Australia’s environmental protection industry within its economic pillar of “advanced services”.

An incoming Coalition government could promote trade with China in the environmental protection industry to build Australia’s exports into the massive business opportunity that China’s new policy represents.

Linking “environmental protection” and “industry” is an idea that is likely to win support across the political spectrum.

Chris McGrath is employed in the environmental protection industry discussed in this article as a lawyer and university lecturer teaching environmental law to town planning, environmental management and engineering students.

This article was originally published at The Conversation.
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