What we know -- and don't know -- about the safety of eating GMOs

As a conservationist first and foremost, I'm all in favor of agricultural advances that help stem the devastating impacts of farming and ranching on biodiversity and ecosystem services. We badly need to deploy new farming methods and crop strains that enable humanity to produce more food on less land, using much lower inputs of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides.

Importantly, some of the most intriguing approaches I've learned of, such as The Rodale Institute's 30-year farm system trial and The Land Institute's work toward perennial crop varieties, also boost the resilience of our agricultural system to climate change.

When it comes to genetically modified crops, however, my sense as a scientist is that we don't know enough about GMOs' long-term health or environmental impacts to know whether these things are really ready for prime time yet.

This piece by Grist's Tom Philpott sums up a bit of what worries me about GMO's:  

What we do know is that GMOs are not acutely toxic to eat. That is, we know that if you dine on a burger made from cows gorged on GM corn and soy, French fries cooked in oil from GM cottonseed, and soda laced with high-fructose syrup from GM corn, you're not likely to keel over in agony. Tens of millions of people do it every day. 

But what about more subtle, long-term effects -- problems that public-health professionals call "chronic"? Here we enter less certain territory. With our highly processed diets largely deficient in fruits and vegetables, Americans have high and rising rates of chronic diseases like obesity and heart disease. Meanwhile, food allergies, autism, and non-alcohol-related liver disease have rocketed. It's highly plausible that GMOs, which have existed in our diets for less than a generation, have emerged as another of many contributors to such long-term conditions. 

So GMOs could theoretically be unsafe to eat. What does science tell us about the matter? Unfortunately, not much. 

It seems that the body of research in this area lacks depth of credibility due to the intense secrecy of GMO makers. That is, the literature is dominated by findings of agricultural industry-funded scientists, and needs more contributions from independent scientists (who I'm sure would be glad to sign fairly worded non-disclosure agreements or "NDA's").

What is trickling out seems to indicate that there is "smoke" around this issue (and where there's smoke...):  

So where does all of this leave us? Obviously, in need of much more independent research. In April, a bit more trickled out from Quebec, Canada -- and again, the results are unsettling. The study, published in the journal Reproductive Toxicology, focused on corn engineered to possess a trait from the bacteria Bt, which is toxic to a range of insects. So-called Bt corn is extremely common in the United States; according to the USDA, upwards of 60 percent of corn planted here has it. Since its introduction in the '90s, its maker, Monsanto, has insisted that Bt corn must be safe, because the toxin embedded in it cannot survive the human digestive system.   

The Quebec study (here's the abstract) casts serious doubt on that bedrock assumption. Researchers checked blood samples of 39 pregnant women and 30 non-pregnant women for the presence of the toxin. None were exposed directly to Bt, but all had conventional diets. The results: The Bt toxin showed up in 93 percent of pregnant women and 80 percent of their fetuses. It was also present in 69 percent of non-pregnant women in the study.   

So, 15 years after the introduction of GMOs, we know that they pose no threat of immediate, spectacular harm. That is, they won't kill us suddenly. Whether they're killing us slowly -- contributing to long-term, chronic maladies -- remains anyone's guess.

Well that certainly doesn't sound like a crop technology that is ready to be approved for our food supply, does it?  My wife is pregnant with our second daughter, and these kinds of findings indicate to me that our Food Safety regulatory system is dropping the ball in a big way here. Or at the very least is jumping the gun on GMO safety, likely due to intensive political pressures influenced by the Monsanto's of the world.

I hope, for the safety of our children and ourselves, that we aren't looking at a very expensive agricultural, health and environmental catastrophe in the making.

What are your thoughts on GMO safety? What's the best way to grow more food on less land, using lower inputs of synthetic chemicals and fertilizers?

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Global Weirding: Nature Can't Save Us From Ourselves

Some who refuse to accept that that heat-trapping carbon pollution poses significant risks to human well-being, not to mention ecosystems and biodiversity, claim that more CO2 will be good for us.  Plants will grow more, it will be warmer, and more plants in a warmer climate will absorb more CO2, helping to stem heating.

Is this true?

Huffington post reports on a new study from Northern Arizona University, published in the esteemed journal, Nature, which throws some surprising cold water on to that idea:  

The study -- a meta-analysis of dozens of separate studies of soil emissions in variety of ecosystems, including forests, farmland, rice paddies, grasslands and wetlands in North America, Europe and Asia -- found that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide causes soil to release methane and nitrous oxide in amounts significant and sustained enough to reduce the overall cooling effect of increased biomass by nearly 20 percent. 

What's going on? Organisms in soil, it seems, thrive on both nitrate and carbon dioxide. These microbes also produce methane and nitrous oxide, which are, respectively, about 25 times and 300 times more effective at trapping heat than even CO2. As humans pump more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, these organisms pump out more N2O and methane.

The body of literature on this effect suggested that it varied in degree from one ecosystem to another. This variation made it difficult to determine whether, on the whole, its impact on the global climate was significant or merely a wash. Yet the new study provides a clear answer: the effect is significant.

Climate scientist, Ken Caldiera, summed up the implications of this study quite concretely:

"To solve the carbon-climate problem, we need to transform our energy system into one that does not dump its waste into the sky," Caldeira said. "Land plants help. It looks like they won't help quite as much as we thought they would. Clearly, we can't expect nature to solve our problems for us."

The bottom line: as much as scientists know about how human activities are heating the ecosystems that sustain civilization as we know it, untold numbers of surprises await us if we continue to mess with the stability of our climate.

Do we really want to find out what's behind those doors?

Or do we want to choose the door that we KNOW what's behind: a clean energy technology revolution that creates exciting new industries, creates millions of new jobs, saves the public $billions per year in health costs of dirty energy-caused air pollution, cuts off the flow of oil money to terrorists, and gives America the morale boost that our economically hurting citizens so badly need?

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New Research: Protecting Forests Will Deliver Economic Boom for Southeast Asia

Are forests more valuable to humanity left standing or for what's produced when they're cut?

More and more, we are learning just how much value healthy, intact and sustainably managed forests provide to society.

According to this post on Mongabay.com, for example, this lesson is being realized in Southeast Asia, where tropical rainforests face a range of threats, including conversion to palm oil and rubber plantations, illegal logging and poaching, and slash and burn agriculture.  It turns out that ecologically unsustainable practices are proving to be economically ruinous:

• The Rajawali Institute for Asia at the Harvard Kennedy School of government estimates that by eliminating its natural capital for negligible gains, deforestation caused losses of $150 billion to Indonesia between 1990 and 2007
• An investigation by a task force set up by Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono found that clear-cutting and conversion of forests to palm oil is so widespread that it's drastically reduced the availability of wood to be cut, costing the Jambai province, alone, 76,000 jobs in the sector.
• "According to the Rand Corporation, particularly intense forest fires in Indonesia and Malaysia have increased deaths by 22 percent.  Bad air quality can also send people to the hospital and increase asthma attacks, lowering productivity.  One of Southeast Asia's challenges is attracting global companies to locate high-level executive headquarters in the region, in part because of the intense air pollution exacerbated by forest fires."

Clearly, the economic impacts of "unsustainability" reach far beyond agriculture and forestry sectors, influencing public health, safety and economic competitiveness.

Conversely, more sustainable practices are being found to confer wide-ranging socio-economic benefits:

• Studies have shown that coastal mangrove forests can reduce tsunami flow by as much as 90 percent. During the infamous 2004 tsunami, villages that had cut down their mangroves were often wiped out while those that maintained them fared much better.

So how do we incorporate the conservation value of intact forests, such as the mangroves described above, into our economic system?

In most cases, the only option for landowners to earn income and feed their families is still extractive: clearing, logging, farming, grazing, mining or otherwise converting their forest plots.  The Natural Capital Project, The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) and The Partnership for Wealth Accounting and the Valuation of Ecosystem services (WAVES) are among those making progress developing systems for valuing ecosystem services and compensating landowners whose property provides them. 

But at a time of increasing financial hardship and budgetary constraints, will we be able to deploy these new payments for ecosystem services systems quickly enough to restore and protect the world's remaining hot spots of biodiversity?

If there were ever a time for the emerging field of sustainable business to help conservationists entrepreneurially innovate, this is it.

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The Forest (Ecosystem Service) Companies of the Future

As efforts grow to better align our economy with our ecology (due to very real biophysical limits of natural resource availability), businesses and landowners are exploring how to generate income via the valuable ecosystem services produced by their property.

The Guardian reports on how forest companies are making the transition from solely extractive-based revenues to diversified revenue streams that capitalize on conservation value:  

Climate change, population growth, and soaring demand for food, energy, water and other resources are changing the way the world sees and values forests. A vision is emerging of a new kind of company – the forest services company. 

Our vision is being propelled by new markets that are emerging for forest services such as carbon storage, wildlife preservation, recreational facilities and watershed protection. This trend is creating huge business opportunities for forest companies with the foresight to reinvent themselves and look beyond the traditional equation of forests equal timber. 

Forest companies of the future will expand their business model beyond delivering products to providing an array of crucial services to communities. Timber revenue will still be important, but successful companies will have supplemented their income from the fast-growing new markets that emerge from the increasing scarcity of ecosystem services.

Sounds rosy. But is this just more unrealized happy talk about the future potential of ecosystem services markets?  I was pleased to find some real-world examples of these types of changes actually happening now -- both at home and abroad:

Sveaskog, Sweden's largest forest company, is doing exactly that. Approximately 15% of annual net sales comes from biomass for energy and non-timber services such as windfarm leases and hunting and fishing licences. In addition, Sveaskog is managing one-fifth of its land for conservation and promotion of biodiversity. The company is also experimenting with ways to maximise carbon uptake through different forest management measures and plans to sell the additional uptake to carbon markets. In 20 years, Sveaskog expects its current sales share of 15% from biomass and different kinds of non-timber services to have doubled. 

Other major companies are similarly shifting focus to incorporate services. Plum Creek, the largest US private landowner, has about a third of the company's 7m acres of timber lands under revenue-generating conservation and wildlife protection agreements. Mondi, a leading international paper and packaging group, recently identified opportunities to tap into growing markets for biomass and ecotourism through a review of ecosystem services at three of its South African plantations. 

The shifting nature of forest companies is a win-win opportunity for governments as well, creating new jobs in struggling rural areas and improving the quality of life for urbanites.

One question I'd love to explore: are these ecosystem services-oriented revenue streams being designed in conjunction with neighboring landowners as part of regional-scale conservation planning efforts?

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Timberland Documentary About the Conservation Value of Urban Forests - Dig It

I'm proud to share a clip from my first documentary film appearance. The film is named "Dig It" -- about the valuable benefits that urban forests provide to people and biodiversity alike.

Huge props to Danny Clinch, Tim Donnelly and crew for an exceptional job on this, and special thanks to Timberland for their support.

Enjoy...

UN Report Warns of Economic Impact of Biodiversity Loss

The UN today issued a new report that warned of the economic impact of biodiversity loss:

The relationship between nature loss and economic harm is much more than just figurative, the UN believes.

An ongoing project known as The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) is attempting to quantify the monetary value of various services that nature provides for us.

These services include purifying water and air, protecting coasts from storms and maintaining wildlife for ecotourism.

The rationale is that when such services disappear or are degraded, they have to be replaced out of society's coffers.

Loss of coral reefs will reduce humanity's supply of seafood

TEEB has already calculated the annual loss of forests at $2-5 trillion, dwarfing costs of the banking crisis.

"Many economies remain blind to the huge value of the diversity of animals, plants and other lifeforms and their role in healthy and functioning ecosystems," said Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN Environment Programme (Unep).

"Humanity has fabricated the illusion that somehow we can get by without biodiversity, or that it is somehow peripheral to our contemporary world.

"The truth is we need it more than ever on a planet of six billion heading to over nine billion people by 2050."

The more that ecosystems become degraded, the UN says, the greater the risk that they will be pushed "over the edge" into a new stable state of much less utility to humankind.

For example, freshwater systems polluted with excess agricultural fertiliser will suffocate with algae, killing off fish and making water unfit for human consumption.

The main question that I keep coming back to is how we go about enacting land use plans that simultaneously protect biodiversity and human well-being without ticking a lot of people off.

How can we make conservation both possible and profitable, and transform the public's perception of biodiversity conservation from a threat to their economic well being to a new revenue opportunity?  It comes down to creating smart land management and policy solutions that reward property owners for the conservation value that their lands provide to society -- perhaps via some form of payments for ecosystem services system.

The bottom line is that humanity is still working on management and policy solutions for making conservation an economically viable alternative to extractive uses.  We're getting there in some places, but in many others, we've got real work to do.

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Conservation Group Hands Out Native Plant Seed Bombs to Citizens

Now this is an idea I'd consider for helping to restore California's natural flora in our heavily invaded landscapes:

The Conservation Council of New Brunswick is hoping a new tool it's using to encourage the growth of native plants and species will take off with a bang.

The environmental group will be handing out so-called seed bombs at Fredericton's farmers market in the coming months.

People will be encouraged to throw the little balls of soil, nutrients and New Brunswick wildflower seeds into vacant lots, backyards and other places that need greening, spokeswoman Tracy Glynn said.

"It's needed. Our biodiversity is at threat and I think we need something to protect our native biodiversity," she said.

"We were trying to do something about the problem of the disappearing bumblebees, so we wanted to encourage biodiversity in urban areas, so we thought by planting pollinator-friendly vegetation like New Brunswick wildflowers, it would also help the bumblebees that are in trouble," she added.

When I was reading this article, I got the image of needing to do this by dropping giant seed bombs from helicopters here in California.  But it wouldn't be easy.  Many of our native grasses and wildflowers have been gone from the bulk of our grasslands and oak savannas for decades.  As a result, there is no longer a seed source for them to return.  On top of that, a thick mat of highly competitive weedy non-native annuals inhibits native seedlings from establishing.  So even if we dropped cruise missile-sized native seed bombs from helicopters, they'd only take hold if the exotics were beaten back by either properly-timed grazing or burning.  So maybe we'd need Apache helicopter gun ships... ;-)

That said, it would be a fun exercise to see how this works in local communities, to at least get our native flora re-established in the landscaping of our parks, school grounds, vacant lots and yards.  I've been doing this very thing little by little over the last few years, and it's fun to watch the colorful natives bloom each spring.

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Banning Sales of Invasive Species -- A Money-Saving Win for Taxpayers

Last weekend, I made trips to a couple of stores to purchase crops and soil amendments for our spring/early summer garden.  I was dismayed to find that damaging invasive species are for sale in both OSH and Home Depot. 

Shame on OSH for selling the invasive shrub, Scotch Broom, and shame on Home Depot for selling the invasive weed, Japanese Honeysuckle (I'm guessing there were others, but I didn't have time to check).  Both species are on the noxious weed lists of many states and conservation organizations across America.

What are OSH and Home Depot doing wrong here?  These species are or have been classified in many states as "Noxious weeds", which were defined by the 1974 Federal Noxious Weed Act as:

Noxious Weed means any living stage, such as seeds and reproductive parts, of any parasitic or other plant of a kind, which is of foreign origin, is new to or not widely prevalent in the United States, and can directly or indirectly injure crops, other useful plants, livestock, or poultry or other interests of agriculture, including irrigation, or navigation, or the fish or wildlife resources of the United States or the public health.

These plants are injurious and economically harmful!  So why on earth are they for sale, for people to buy and plant in their yards or otherwise on their property?  Is the ability to sell noxious weeds really that important to the horticultural industry and the sales of stores like Home Depot and OSH that such species can't be banned?  Really?

Is it too much to ask for the horticultural industry to show some level of moral responsibility to society and stop selling noxious weeds to typically unsuspecting customers who think they just look pretty?

The result of noxious weeds like this being commercially available to consumers who've probably never even heard of "noxious weeds" is undoubtedly that some plantings escape and become expensive, time-consuming, environmentally-damaging problems for state and federal agencies, environmental NGO's and private landowners.  Even worse, they probably often result in pest control officials using pesticides of questionable or even harmful levels of toxicity to eradicate the infestations.

Why should horticultural companies and stores like Home Depot and OSH get to profit off the sales of harmful invasive weeds at the expense of taxpayers?

This just can't be too hard of a problem to fix in today's day and age of uber-tight agency and NGO budgets.  It's time to ban commercial sales of species legally classified as invasive or noxious.  This is no-brainer conservation action that will save consumers, agencies and NGO's money, protect the public health from pesticide use that can be avoided, and benefit the health of ecosystems and biodiversity.
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Deforestation's Impacts in Africa: "The rains stopped, and banana groves and corn stalks died"

I'm a big fan of pictures and stories of the benefits that healthy ecosystems provide to humanity.  As I drove up toward Redwood Regional Park for my weekly meditative hike on Saturday, I was glad to find Living On Earth airing on NPR.

This quote got me -- a story about a reforestation project in Uganda, where the locals talk about what happened after the government cut down their forests:

HOFFMAN: Jerome Byesigwa chairs the group and explains how it started. In 2003, he says, the weather in the area suddenly changed when the government cut down much of the nearby Central Forest Reserve for timber. The rains stopped, and banana groves and corn stalks died.

[BYESIGWA SPEAKING] VOICEOVER: As soon as it had been harvested we realized there was a change in the weather. Just even ordinary people would tell you that the problems we were experiencing were because our forests there had been harvested.

The fact that these folks are getting carbon credits for planting highly invasive, water-hungry non-native tree species is just wrong.  It's great to see the World Bank funding reforestation projects like this, but it would be nice if they would help the local people by selecting native species, adapted to local environmental conditions (especially water needs) that help to replace the ecosystem services that have been lost to deforestation.

Clearly, we've got a ways to go to better integrate the science of sustainability into the planning of Uganda and the World Bank.

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The Benefits of Biodiversity: Even Bacteria Do Wonders for Humanity

It's not just charismatic megafauna like bears, wolves, lions and monkeys that should come to mind when you think about the wonders of biological diversity.  And it's beyond the beauty and healing power of plants.

According to this article from Science Daily, humans should be thanking even some types of bacteria for making our lives better, in this case by providing a possible cure for Alzheimer's Disease:

Rapamycin, a drug that keeps the immune system from attacking transplanted organs, may have another exciting use: fighting Alzheimer's disease. The drug  -- a bacterial product first isolated in soil from Easter Island -- rescued learning and memory deficits in a mouse model of Alzheimer's, a team from The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio reported on Feb. 23.

The study, in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, offers the first evidence that the drug is able to reverse Alzheimer's-like deficits in an animal model, said the senior author, Salvatore Oddo, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Physiology of the UT Health Science Center San Antonio.

Could climate change and/or sea level rise threaten the existence of similar bacteria out there in remote locations?  Who knows.

This may be yet another instance of a highly isolated endemic species (one that occurs in only one place) that is discovered to be incredibly valuable to humanity.  How many such species -- that contain a compound found to cure a crippling diseases or otherwise provide a life-changing solution -- are on the verge of being lost forever due to rainforest destruction or other human environmental impacts?  The best way to not worry about that is for us to support and foster sustainability whenever we can -- both in the voting booth and when we vote with our wallets.

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Pacific Northwest Forests Act As Massive Carbon Storage Banks

A new report by The Wilderness Society identifies 10 Pacific Northwest National Forests as the most prolific for storing carbon in our national forest system.

These forests are my favorite in the U.S. -- unbelievably vibrant, and remaining old growth stands are magically cathedralesque...

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The Jobs are in The Trees

I just finished reading an interesting piece about how investments in green job creation -- in fields such as conservation and restoration, efficiency retrofits, clean energy and mass transit construction -- provide far greater employment returns than investing in dirty energy or nuclear jobs:

With Congress and the White House considering spending scarce dollars to jump-start employment, they’ll need to get the biggest jobs bang for the buck to give Americans confidence that they’re spending our money wisely. Probably the biggest jobs generator of all, and one of the least recognized, is investing in forest and land restoration and sustainable management, with conservation, watershed projects, and park investment coming close behind.

Heidi Garrett-Peltier and Robert Pollin at The Political Economy and Research Institute of the University of Massachusetts report the following numbers for jobs created per dollar of investment.

To summarize, reforestation and restoration outperforms even the second-most jobs-intense activity analyzed by 74 percent, and conservation exceeds other major jobs alternatives, including especially new highway construction, Wall Street, and conventional energy sources like oil and nuclear.

This is further justification for the bold investments needed to transition America to a clean energy economy, which will also solve climate change. 

Recently, I co-authored a policy brief on green job creation to combat the spread of invasive species -- a key area of conservation that will also save agencies and landowners on control costs while benefiting the health of ecosystems and their native species diversity.  Efforts to stem the spread of invasive weeds and other costly pest species are currently plagued by a lack of personnel and resources.  Job creation in this area will both put people to work and help solve a major threat to the health of both ecosystems and human well-being.

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Biodiversity Loss Threatens Our Health and Safety and Communication is Crucial

Scientists and the media need to step up efforts to communicate the importance of solving the biodiversity crisis, says this article in SciDev.net:

Both (climate change and biodiversity loss) face formidable challenges in persuading political leaders and the public of the urgent need to take action. The reasons are complex. But at root is the conflict between the need to radically change our use of natural resources and the desire to maintain current forms of economic growth in both developed and developing countries.

The solutions are equally complicated. Part of the answer, in each case, lies in enhancing the media's ability to communicate messages emerging from the underlying science, so that these accurately reflect both the urgency of the situation, and how ordinary people's lives may be affected.
 
Getting these messages across is no easy task. And so far, in the case of biodiversity, efforts have largely failed.

As delegates to the London conference and other meetings held to launch the Year of Biodiversity have freely admitted, this failure to act partly results from shortcomings in communication. The scientific community has not been able to effectively communicate its concerns to decision-makers — at least not in a way that sufficiently prioritises biodiversity conservation within a political agenda predominantly concerned with employment and economic growth.

(N)ew (conservation) targets must not only be more realistic and concrete, but must also be accompanied by a more sophisticated communications strategy.

This is where I've always thought the ecosystem services paradigm has potential to make a difference in improving the public's understanding of the importance of biodiversity and health ecosystems.  Except we need to rename these critical benefits that ecosystems provide to society something other than "ecosystem services."

Any ideas?

Even the word "biodiversity" is ineffective for helping the public get the problem, says the article:

Even the term 'biodiversity' suffers from this weakness, lacking the concreteness of concepts such as sea level rise. Some media advisers even suggest avoiding the term wherever possible for that very reason — not very promising to those trying to create a global campaign around the same word.

Too much media coverage of biodiversity fails to connect with the issues directly affecting people's lives. Even concepts such as 'the web of life', used to emphasise the interrelatedness of living systems, does not immediately explain why we should be worried about the declining number of insects or plants in distant locations.

So how do we motivate the public and decisionmakers to support conservation of "biodiversity"?  What do you think is a good term that reflects its value to human well being and can be as catchy, concrete and emotive as "ancient forests"?

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Wetlands: Good for the Planet and Your Health

Honoring World Wetlands Day (which was on Tuesday), here's some info on why we care -- from Planet Green:

Wetlands are the "kidneys" of the landscape. They have the ability to remove excess nutrients, toxic substances, and sediment from water that flows through them, helping to maintain and improve downstream water quality. Studies show that pollutant removal rates for natural and restored wetlands indicate that, wetlands can retain significant percentages of nitrates, ammonium, phosphorus, and sediment loads. Natural wetlands have also been effective in removing contaminants such as pesticides, landfill, dissolved chlorinated compounds, metals, and stormwater runoff.

Wetland.org explains why we need to be concerned about wetlands:

"There is a connection between a healthy wetland eco-system and human health. In the developing world, 1 in 5 people do not have access to clean drinking water. Poor management strategies that support the health of wetland eco-systems can affect the health of humans, with wetland-related diseases claiming the lives of 3 million people each year and bring suffering to many more. It is estimated that 1.4 billion people live in water basins where water uses exceed sustainable levels."

Of course, they're also some of the most species-rich systems on the planet, and some of my favorite places to birdwatch.   I remember back in my undergraduate days at Cornell, we'd head up to Montezuma National Wildlife refuge and check out birds from bald eagles to herons.

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The Economist: Why It is Important to Put a Price on Nature

The Economist weighs in on the emerging paradigm of paying people and communities for the ecosystem services provided by their healthy natural habitats.  They report on a gathering of experts in the field who recently met to assess how things are going and plot next steps:

They looked at the progress and prospects of their attempts to argue for the preservation of nature by better capturing the value of the things – such as pollination, air quality and carbon storage – that it seemingly does for free.

Environmental valuations aim to solve a problem that troubles both economists and ecologists: the misallocation of resources. Take mangrove swamps. Over the past two decades around a third of the world’s mangrove swamps have been converted for human use, with many turned into valuable shrimp farms. In 2007 an economic study of such shrimp farms in Thailand showed that the commercial profits per hectare were $9,632. If that were the only factor, conversion would seem an excellent idea.

However, proper accounting shows that for each hectare government subsidies formed $8,412 of this figure and there were costs, too: $1,000 for pollution and $12,392 for losses to ecosystem services. These comprised damage to the supply of foods and medicines that people had taken from the forest, the loss of habitats for fish, and less buffering against storms. And because a given shrimp farm only stays productive for three or four years, there was the additional cost of restoring them afterwards: if you do so with mangroves themselves, add another $9,318 per hectare. The overall lesson is that what looks beneficial only does so because the profits are retained by the private sector, while the problems are spread out across society at large, appearing on no specific balance sheet.

To this end, the Natural Capital Project, a group based at Stanford University, California, has developed a suite of computer programs called InVEST, which will analyse and map ecosystem services. InVEST allows farmers, landowners and government officials to make better-informed decisions about the current and future costs of an activity.

I'm a big proponent of figuring out how to devise smart strategies to make conservation both possible and profitable.  I recognize that without new mechanisms to allow people to make a living off the land by means other than logging, grazing, mining or otherwise destroying natural habitats, the loss of critical ecosystem services and biodiversity will continue.

That said, I also recognize 'Slippery Slope' argument -- the potential that valuing nature will provide new justification for destroying it.  But I haven't heard enough from the Slippery Slopers about constructive suggestions for solutions.  The status quo isn't working.  If you're against payments for ecosystem services, what do you suggest are viable solutions with bright prospects for reversing habitat destruction and biodiversity loss and maximizing the resilience of ecosystems to climate disruption?

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2010 Is The Year of Biodiversity: Why It Matters to Our Well-Being

The year 2010 is dubbed the International Year of Biodiversity -- intended on focusing humanity on solutions for doing more responsible -- and respectful -- job of coexisting with the spellbinding array of beings that we share the planet with.

As this piece from The Guardian reminds us, protecting biodiversity is also protecting our well-being:

Biodiversity is integral to our daily lives. It is not about the loss of exotic species which have been the focus of conservation activities by the foundations and trusts of wealthy nations. It is about the vital resources which underpin the wealth and health of the world's poor and that provide the vital needs for the heath and wellbeing of us all.

The equivalent to the Stern report for biodiversity is called The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB). It warns that our neglect of the natural services provided by biodiversity is an economic catastrophe of an order of magnitude greater than the global economic crisis. Year on year, the irreversible loss of natural diverse genetic resources impoverishes the world and undermines our ability to develop new crops and medicines, resist pests and diseases, and maintain the host of natural products on which humans rely.

Equally significant, are the vital natural services that the world's ecosystems provide. These include providing vital oxygen, decomposing waste, removing pollutants, providing the natural buffers that help manage drought and flood, protect soil from erosion, ensure soil fertility, and provide breeding nurseries to maintain fish ocean stocks. The list goes on, and among these immeasurable vital functions of nature is of course its ability to absorb carbon dioxide. The ability of forests, bogs and salt marches, tundra, coral and ocean plankton to sequester carbon should be our greatest ally in managing the increased emissions of fossil fuel activity – a key theme of the climate negotiations in Copenhagen last month.

Rather than seeing biodiversity and ecological mechanisms being eroded, we need to see a massive effort towards finding a more effective sustainable relationship between human society and nature. This is not a scientific or environmental issue, it is a social question and an ethical one about what our generation leaves for those in the future.

We'll keep you posted on the emerging array of efforts to make conservation both possible and profitable.  You can track our reporting about the ecosystem services that nature provides to humanity right here...

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David Suzuki and Faisal Moola: Protecting Nature Has Economic Benefits

Last year, when the Canadian government was debating how to invest in economic stimulus, conservationists at the David Suzuki foundation offered its ideas on how to spend the money.

I've described many of these ideas on this blog before, but there are a few fresh factoids in here:

Protecting nature results in cost savings for governments, because natural areas provide many ecological benefits that sustain the health and well-being of our communities at little or no cost. These include services like clean air, clean water, wildlife habitat and flood control. All are costly to replace if they are degraded or lost due to mismanagement, assuming they can be replaced at all.

The fiscal rationale for protecting nature is not new. Many ambitious policy solutions have come about not because leaders were motivated to protect wildlife habitat, but rather because they were looking for ways to save a buck. In the early 1990s, New York City chose to protect its watershed through land purchase, pollution control and conservation easements, rather than build new infrastructure to filter its water. In doing so, the city has saved billions of dollars.
Providing clean water at an affordable cost is a challenge in many Canadian cities because few draw their drinking water from protected watersheds. They must rely on expensive treatment systems because the ecosystems from which the water is drawn are degraded or tainted by pollution.

In comparison, drinking water for the capital region comes from protected watersheds in the Sooke Hills. These mature forests filter, store and regulate the region's drinking water at no cost to the taxpayer, providing a beneficial natural service that complements engineered solutions like water filtration.

Studies suggest a strong fiscal incentive exists to grow the urban forest cover in B.C.'s cities. For example, a recent joint study by municipal, provincial and federal agencies in B.C. estimated Vancouver and surrounding communities could save about $1.1 million annually in stormwater infrastructure costs if they significantly increased urban forest cover by planting more trees and taking better care of the ones they have.

The economic benefits of nature conservation were also recently profiled in a United Nations report called the Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity. It found that protecting natural ecosystems and biodiversity is worth trillions of dollars in annual economic benefits globally. The lead author, banker Pavan Sukhdev, told the media that investments to protect ecosystems can return 25 to 100 times more in benefits from the natural services they provide, such as pollination, climate regulation and water filtration.

This sort of research is important, because policy-makers often ignore the full economic costs of degrading land and the ecological services it provides when making development decisions.

Here's my biggest hope for 2010 and the new decade: that we actually see payments for ecosystem service schemes both become reality, and start to make a real difference in making conservation both possible and profitable -- making a real dent in our efforts to protect and restore both biodiversity and human well being.

Otherwise, we're going to be constantly learning new ways that a service that nature had been providing at low or even no cost -- such as carbon uptake -- is much more expensive to replace with a technological solution.

Just think how much it would cost to build and deploy machines that take up enough carbon dioxide to replace the carbon-absorbing services provided by the millions of acres of forests that are destroyed each year.  Really -- how much do you think it would cost, relative to the economic benefits provided by cutting down all those trees?  Of course, that's just getting into the carbon uptake service provided by forests.  You'd still need to replace the water provisioning services, water filtration services, pollination services, and more...

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In California, Greens and Solar Providers (Unnecessarily) Clash Over Endangered Tortoise

Efforts to install solar projects in deserts are running into problems with conservation organizations who point out that there's no reason to place renewable energy infrastructure in prime endangered species habitat, reports Treehugger:

California's renewable energy providers and utilities are pushing to meet their state's 2020 deadline of providing at least 30 percent of the state's energy from renewable resources. But...one project, scheduled to break ground in the Mojave Desert, is now being challenged after green groups objected to its site, home to several dozen endangered turtles.

BrightSource Energy, the developer of the large solar project, is based out of my hometown of Oakland. They want to create a concentrated solar project made up of 400,000 mirrors on U.S. Bureau of Land Management property, but the Sierra Club wants the site moved closer to the highway to help protect the endangered desert tortoise.

Note to Brightsource (and other renewable energy developers): next time you need a sighting analysis to identify suitable locations for your planned clean energy facility, please hire me and you won't run into expensive, aggravating problems like this.  We will use GIS to identify good parcels of land near roads that are already relatively degraded (e.g., by invasive species, livestock grazing, or ORV's), and thus don't have any endangered species in sight.   We will check in with our contacts both at environmental groups and in agencies, and make sure it all looks good to them. 

I'm all for renewable energy, and it's really not that hard to balance renewables development with biodiversity conservation.  You just need a good, smart, conservation-minded sighting analysis process.

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'Back to Nature' Cuts Flood Risks and Costs

Flood plains are some of the most ecologically rich areas on earth, and in the American West, these habitats harbor an amazing 80% of the region's species diversity.  Thus, development of these sites -- both urban and agricultural -- has come at a tremendous environmental cost.

As you probably know, development in flood plains has also come at a tremendous economic cost.

Now, reports the BBC, planners are increasingly looking for economically sensible ways to restore floodplains and allow them to go 'back to nature' as a means of curtailing increasingly exorbitant costs of flood damage:

A study by US researchers said allowing these areas to be submerged during storms would reduce the risk of flood damage in nearby urban areas.

Pressure to build new homes has led to many flood-prone areas being developed.

Writing in Science, they said the risks of flooding were likely to increase in the future as a result of climate change and shifts in land use.

"We are advocating very large-scale shifts in land use," said co-author Jeffrey Opperman, a member of The Nature Conservancy's Global Freshwater Team.

"There is simply no way economically or politically that this could be accomplished by turning large areas of flood-plains into parks," he told the Science podcast.

"What we are proposing in this paper is a way that this strategy can be compatible, and even supportive, with vibrant agricultural economies and private land ownership."

One of the sites that the authors feature as an example, the Sacramento, CA area's Yolo Bypass, is an area of summer farmland that I enjoy watching flood each winter, transforming into a rich habitat for waterfowl and spawning fish alike. 

This type of ecosystem management scheme, which both safeguards human communities and benefits biodiversity, is teeming with potential, and is sure to become more common as we head into the new decade.

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Wall Street's Worrisome Dive Into Forestlands

The Oregonian takes a look at the disquieting rise of Real Estate Investment Trusts (REIT's) and Timber Investment Management Organizations (TIMO's), which are not required to pay corporate taxes.

Such timber giants as Weyerhauser have recently become REITs.

With timber prices flatlining and real estate values rising, many private forestland owners are shifting their gaze to building homes rather than growing trees. Landowners elsewhere in the country, under pressure to maximize returns, have looked to convert forests into subdivisions and resorts as trees become less valuable than the land they occupy.

The unprecedented change in land ownership raises concerns about the impact on wildlife and natural resources, as well as the increased costs of protecting residents from forest fires. Nationwide, about 1 million acres of forestland are lost to development every year. In the Pacific Northwest, it begs the question: What does the future for forestry look like in a region defined by it?

In timber-dependent towns like Glenwood, the change carries the fear of the unknown. As landowners come and go quickly, their financial decisions could create a patchwork of forests and rural sprawl.

There is something very worrisome about all the ownership changes and fragmentation of ownership described in this article -- treating living, breathing forests as even more of a Wall Street-style tradable commodity than they were as industrial forest lands.

Over the next decade, we'll really need to get the right valuations of these lands in place (i.e. of the environmental services provided by the forests), and to make sure we have smart rules in place for ensuring that the activities of entities like TIMO's and REIT's don't endanger the public interest.

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