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My professional experience of environmental work is that true positive environmental impact is very difficult. In complex systems, unintended consequences are l
by Biologist123 3y ago
My professional experience of environmental work is that true positive environmental impact is very difficult. In complex systems, unintended consequences are likely. Environmental problems often arise at the interface between multiple complex systems, further increasing complexity. For example, in a project I worked on, we organized for farmers to receive payments to build soil conservation measures. With the money they were paid, we believe it was mostly used for fuel, pesticides and fertilizer, all which carry their own environmental cost. So we’d solved one environmental problem, but inadvertently created another.
In another project I heard about, fishing communities were provided with better access to contraception on the hope that smaller families would reduce consumption pressure. A PhD researcher uncovered that actually smaller families increased their fishing activity as they wanted to boost the life chances of their fewer offspring. (Those results were swept under a carpet apparently).
I’m happy about this law reported on here as it will force some honesty about environmental trade-offs, and also hopefully apply to environmental organisations which have in the past been misleading in their claims about environmental benefits of their work.
- palata 3y ago> With the money they were paid, we believe it was mostly used for fuel, pesticides and fertilizer, all which carry their own environmental cost. So we’d solved one environmental problem Genuinely interested: what environmental problem did you solve there? > A PhD researcher uncovered that actually smaller families increased their fishing activity as they wanted to boost the life chances of their fewer offspring. Are "fishing families" really the problem with fishing? I would have thought that the industrial fishing boats are not "family businesses"...
- Biologist123 3y ago> Genuinely interested: what environmental problem did you solve there? Soil erosion. > Are "fishing families" really the problem with fishing? I would have thought that the industrial fishing boats are not "family businesses"... They fish different zones. Big trawlers offshore/deep sea. Artisanal fishers inshore. The inshore fisheries catch has declined 75% in 30 years in some areas.
- xg15 3y agoBut did some behaviour of the artisanal fishers actually change that would lead this decline back to them? It could just as well be industrial trawlers disrupting migration routes, pollution, ocean acidification etc disrupting ecosystems etc.
- palata 3y agoMy question as well! I have no idea, but intuitively I would rather stop the industrial trawlers than the "family businesses" :-).
- Biologist123 3y agoYou don’t have to stop the family business, the resource just needs to be sustainably-managed - sustainable offtake levels, otherwise the resource itself will crash. Indeed they already have - as although catch volume is down 75%, people now catch and eat fish not consumed in the past.
- Biologist123 3y agodefinitely the big guys are causing havoc all of their own deep sea where they fish, with bottom dredging nets etc. And maybe there was some contribution inshore, certainly I’ve heard complaints about this in Somalia. But the more immediate causes in inshore decline seems to have been increase in fishing pressure due to demand growth (population growth, exports, tourism), loss of spawning sites due to mangrove destruction, and dynamite fishing which destroys habitat.
- xg15 3y agoWith all due respect, and I'm sure you all did great work there, but the underlying assumptions of those projects seem strange to me. E.g. if you want to reduce overfishing, why would the size of individual fishing families even be a problem - and not, say, factory trawlers that probably catch orders of magnitude more fish?
- Biologist123 3y agoThe fishing project was not mine. It’s an example of one where the results were not expected and the organisation involved shelved the findings, which might be illegal under this new European directive. Factory trawlers don’t fish inshore reefs where artisanal fishermen tend to be active. You’re conflating two different activities in two different marine resources.