Climate Finance, Water Resources and Effective Action

In response to the announcement that Boris Johnson’s government is committing the UK to more than £3 billion in international climate finance for biodiversity and nature, I was contacted by Voice of Islam Radio UK for some thoughts on the matter. Here is the gist of what I said.

WHAT DOES BIODIVERSITY MEAN AND WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?

The Convention on Biodiversity defines biodiversity as "the variability among living organisms from all sources including, inter alia, terrestrial, marine and other aquatic ecosystems and the ecological complexes of which they are part; this includes diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems”. In my view, it is Important in the sense that systems that are diverse are more robust in the face of some external shock or stressor. Let’s take food production for example. Nearly 70% of all agricultural land is devoted to 9 crops (wheat, rice, soy, maize, etc); these strains are singular; a single pest can threaten global food security. Is this wise to put so few crops into one food basket? 

According to the Secretariat of the CBD (2000), although species naturally go extinct through evolutionary processes, human activity is believed to be accelerating rate by 50-100 times. Currently 34,000 plants and 5,200 animal species face extinction. The WWF’s global living planet index has declined by 58% between 1970-2012. If you look at a map of ‘biodiversity hotspots’, you will note that basically all coastal environments and proximate marine and terrestrial environments are at risk. This should come as no surprise since more than 60% of all humanity is settled along coastlines. For too long we have used the high-modern notion of the best means to control pollution is dilution, hence dumping waste into our waterways which then make it out to sea. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is one of the most notable human achievements, it seems to me. Some of the drivers of biodiversity loss are:

• Habitat loss and degradation (e.g. draining of wetlands; conversion of forested areas to housing)
• Species overexploitation (e.g. the collapse of the cod fishery)
• Pollution (e.g. plastics in the ocean; farm-runoff of nitrogen creating dead zones in ocean deltas)
• Invasive species and disease (e.g. zebra mussels in the Great Lakes, the expanded range of lyme disease in North America)
• Climate change (e.g. acidification of the oceans and destruction of coral reefs)

If we are more biodiverse, we are more robust and resilient in the face of environmental stresses (e.g. pollution, climate change). How to explain this simply? Think of pure-bred dogs and how their genetic vulnerabilities - e.g. weak hip bones - are transferred and exacerbated across generations. It is the same with humans: we marry and reproduce outside of our immediate families, thereby increasing the genetic complexity in our off spring. 

In my view, most of the problems associated with biodiversity loss can be attributed to high-modern thinking. In other words, it’s a problem of mindset: we have built all of our systems in terms of living apart from and dominating nature, treating the Earth as both an endless source of stuff we want and sink for things we don’t. More than 50 years after the first Earth Day, we are still struggling to see ourselves as part of nature and as a species that should adapt to the environment rather than seek to change it according to our whims. Rather than expand our diets to include a wide variety of staple crops, we prefer to engineer wheat and rice to be able to withstand shocks. New shock? New biogenetic engineering trick. This belief in techno-mastery of the Earth must stop. 

Of course many people benefit from the growth of wheat in an arid environment, so are vested in its success and the success of genetic mutation engineering. Most of us interested in sustainability are very familiar with the dangers associated with privatized seed banks, for instance. What to do? For one, we can try to recover lost culture. Mike Hulme has written about climate as culture. What he means is that cultures have developed around the world over millennia and both their specific characteristics and high degree of robustness reflects adaptations not just to weather but to climate. With the advent of colonialism and imperialism, and the transposition of European temperate zone practices to the tropics, for example, an endless array of problems related to human settlements, agricultural practices, and resource use in general have emerged. The tropical world continues to be treated like a grand Western experiment in Man’s attempt to dominate nature. (‘Man’ is used here deliberately, because such a view is undoubtedly associated with hyper-masculine notions of command and control, of power over things and others.) Adapting to climate variability and change therefore requires a recovery of respect for one’s own culture. Rather than re-engineer wheat to become “wheat”, is it not better to adopt ‘orphan crops’, i.e. those that emerged naturally from tropical, sub-tropical and semi-arid savanna environments? 

Another attempt to rehabilitate nature is to subject it to the language of capitalist economics: ‘Ecosystem services’ seeks to show politicians and private sector actors that the natural world provides a series of services that can be quantified. These services are of four types: regulating, supporting, provisioning, and cultural. Those in support of ecosystem services believe that if we can show how much money we save a government by not draining a wetland, then they will be less likely to do so. Of course this is more easily said than done. Which brings us to the second question.

UK CLIMATE SPENDING: IS THIS A GOOD INITIATIVE?

As noted earlier, the UK government pledged £3Billion for international climate finance for biodiversity and nature. In my view, this is a good initiative, but it must be set in broader context. Together, the rich world has committed to raising £100 Billion/yr in climate finance for poor countries over 2020-25. The UK portion of this is something like £5.6 billion. Holding aside a critique regarding what exactly this money will be used to support, there is the small matter of getting the left foot and the right foot to walk in the same direction. In the past 4 years, the British government provided £21 Billion in supports for UK oil and gas exports through trade promotion and export finance. This alone is >£5 Billion/year. Granted, the government vowed to end these in December 2020, but my point is simple: with one hand we support climate actions; with the other hand we undermine those actions. Which raises the question about what the money will be used for. Some will go to adaptation, such as rehabilitating mangrove forests in coastal areas. Some will go to mitigation, such as support for protecting forests as carbon sinks. 

What we know about Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to lowering carbon emissions, is that the UK has set very positive targets that must be applauded. Under COP 15, it was initially agreed that only a small percentage of these emission reductions could be attributed to actions taken outside of the country (e.g. through support for forest protection in another country such as Ethiopia or Vietnam through programs such as UN REDD and REDD+). The majority must be derived from initiatives taken within the sovereign state’s boundaries. This has changed. It is alright for states to derive whatever percentage of their NDC from international action. This raises two questions. First, will buying forests in Ethiopia have only positive impacts on Ethiopians, or will it lead to uneven impacts? Second, will buying forests in Ethiopia allow the UK to remain on a carbon dependent track (even expanding it through the Cumbria coal mine, for example) while claiming to be ‘carbon neutral’? These are serious issues that require deeper investigation. 

CHALLENGES OF SUSTAINABLE WATER MANAGEMENT?

Let’s shift to the so-called world water crisis and its relation to climate change, climate finance and so on. It is important to begin by noting that, in the world’s of the Dutch King Willem-Alexander, ‘the world water crisis is a crisis of governance’. He said this at the opening of the 2000 World Water Forum held at The Hague. His view is important, because he is saying that water problems are neither a unilinear consequence of too little or too much water; nor a consequence of ill management derived from a dearth of capital, Human Resources or technical capacity. Rather, he was saying that water is power. The way we use it today reflects that past and present dominant interests have martialled water to their perceived needs. Just picture Las Vegas or Los Angeles or Phoenix: big tech, big money and political power made the desert bloom. This system of supply is dependent upon a combination of demand (money to pay for big infrastructure) and supply. In the case of the aforementioned cities, this means snow melt from the Rocky Mountains. With climate change creating extreme and often unpredictable events, how much longer can Las Vegas survive? Clearly, we need to think about water differently.

A primary challenge is to see water in its totality, not just as an input into production or something we use in daily life, but altogether, as part of a system with users of many types who need water in many different ways -- including the natural world (of which we are a part). Generally, we see water in terms of water for households (rural and urban) and water in agricultural production and they are treated separately, requiring different types of development interventions. This depiction, what Falkenmark and Rockstrom describe as a ‘blue water bias’, results in a contradictory narrative of ‘get more’ but ‘use less’. But both getting more and using less are deeply political issues. How to see water differently? How to ensure that the right people are at the decision-making table? 

WHO ARE THE KEY STAKEHOLDERS IN NATURAL RESOURCES MANAGEMENT? HOW CAN WE IMPROVE OUTCOMES?

There is a massive literature on ‘stakeholder participation’ for integrated and adaptive resource management, be it water or forests or protected areas, or coastal commons. This language can be found in today’s Sustainable Development Goals, in particular SDG6, SDG14, SDG15, SDG16 and SDG17. Development practitioners have long known the answer to the two questions I ask immediately above this section. Part of the problem continues to be unequal capacity among stakeholders. Let’s take the Okavango Delta Management Plan, of which I was a part. In the ODMP, four types of stakeholders are identified: Primary (those ‘ecosystem’ people immediately dependent on the natural environment for their livelihood, e.g. fishers, hunter-gatherers); Secondary (those who derive their livelihood from the indirect use of the resource, e.g. tour operators); Tertiary (those whose livelihoods depend on providing necessary services, e.g. restaurants, doctors, dentists, panel beaters); and ‘Key’ (those who make the rules in relation to resource access, allocation, use and management, i.e. different levels of government).  Two things are worthy of note here. First, when hosting and attending meetings to devise the ODMP, it quickly became clear that the most powerful actors in government and the private sector rarely showed up at meetings. This, it seems to me, is because they consider themselves on another level of decision making and influence. Second, that those who are physically furthest from the resource are labelled as ‘key’ actors suggests the difficulty of getting the most powerful actors to act in the direct and immediate interests of those most directly dependent on access to the resource, i.e. the ‘primary’ actors. How to improve outcomes, then? Clearly, devising appropriate stakeholder engagement platforms at the most appropriate scale is of paramount importance. Related to this is an agenda that puts the last first is important but extremely difficult. When I say ‘last’, I am not only talking about primary stakeholders but about the natural environment itself. The recent controversy of the Botswana government awarding oil exploration contracts within the Okavango River catchment area to a Canadian multinational is exemplary of this difficulty.

ARE THERE EXAMPLES OF POSITIVE CLIMATE ACTION?

While there are so many problems associated with pathways of influence and dependency, there are nevertheless many positive examples of effective climate action. These can be divided along technical, economic, legal/institutional and social lines. For example:

• Technical: e.g. moving away from oil-based products - biomass based packaging for example; renewable energy systems at scale such as micro-hydro, micro-solar, micro-wind.
• Economic: innovations in ecosystem servicing; financial incentives for renewables; R&D attached to renewables and job creation
• Legal and Institutional: collective action from the local to the global in support of e.g. protected areas, forests, commons, and communities 
• Social: change in public discourse; social movements

In my view, we should not undervalue social movements as a climate change success. Greta Thunberg and the youth movement are far more important to sustainable development and effective climate action than are self-driving cars and geo-engineering. For the former is about changing mindsets -- they are about transformation, not reformation, not doing the same thing only 'a little bit greener'. 

HOW CAN THE PUBLIC AID ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY AND CLIMATE ACTION?

As I said earlier, a primary challenge is getting influential actors to move in new directions. Old dogs learn new tricks only slowly if at all. Social movements are very important in this regard. We need organized groups to press for the collective good. At the same time, there are allies inside powerful institutions. We must find them and work for change from the inside. What can the public do? Too often, ‘Joe and Jane Q. Public’ feel disempowered. Climate change in particular feels like a phenomenon far beyond our individual control. But I would argue that we in so-called ‘mature democracies’ owe it to the billions of people who reside in states where they have no voice, to exercise our voices and to make effective choices. What is the ‘public’ anyway? The public is not a singular thing. Rather, each of us members of the public may be sub-divided in terms of at least four categories:

• We are Citizens
• We are Consumers
• We are Individuals who are part of families and communities
• We are members of groups in pursuit of our interests, aka ‘civil society’

As citizens, we must engage with government. As consumers, we must lessen our environmental footprint. If you think that £3 Billion of UK taxpayer money is a lot, consider that British pet owners spent an estimated £57 billion in 2018 on their dogs. We can make deliberate choices safe in the knowledge that we do not act alone; we are part of a movement united in support of sustainable, equitable and less wasteful forms of development. As individuals, our actions reflect our values. Too many of us continue to see ourselves as apart from nature not a part of it. We must educate ourselves, our children and our neighbours. We must reflect on our values and take decisions in support of both our individual but also our familial and collective interest. Lastly, 

as part of civil society we must join in — every little bit helps, from local to global. 

Pandemic Pandemonium: Calling Malcolm Gladwell!

Two questions lie at the heart of this post: (1) Are we sacrificing mental health in pursuit of physical health? (2) If so, what are the likely short, medium and long-term consequences of our actions, well meaning though they may be?

One year into the global coronavirus pandemic it is increasingly clear that, with only a few exceptions, leaders cannot lead and followers cannot follow. To be sure, forty years of neoliberalism hasn’t helped with its ‘shrink the state, expand the market, now off you go on your own now’ mantra. Each of these elements of the mantra have led to pathological outcomes: states incapable of forcefully and effectively taking the coordinated national, regional and global action necessary to ‘flatten the curve’; markets that have collapsed, including many delivering ‘essential services’; and people running off madly in all directions, from anti-maskers to dutiful citizens ‘staying the blazes home’. Indeed, many more nefarious elements have raised their ugly heads: vaccine nationalism, black markets for (often fake) vaccines, vaccine tourism for the rich, and widespread social protest. In some states, ‘leaders’ have simply used the pandemic to squash civil society. The private sector has done the one thing it knows how to do: respond to demand by developing a wide array of more or less effective vaccines. What this seems to have done, however, was to fuel a type of euphoria - there are clear skies ahead - quickly followed by a turn toward nihilism - there is no way out - due to the fiasco of many vaccine rollouts. And let’s not forget the stock markets which are, as usual, wildly out of step with reality and well on their way to another crash, the impact of which will be havoc for the average to poor, and a shrug of the shoulders for the one percent.

What is missing here is Malcolm Gladwell. Why Mr. Gladwell? Because what the world needs now more than anything is someone who can see outside of the scientific-rational box we’ve gotten ourselves into. One year into the pandemic and we average and well-meaning folks around the world are still being counselled to do the same things that clearly are not working: stay home, wash your hands, wear a mask, social distance. Don’t get me wrong; I am doing all of these things and am faring very well thank you kindly. But, like the ‘leaders’ of the world, I have options unavailable to almost everyone on the planet. I am able to work from home. It is not ideal but it is also not terrible. I continue to pull my weight and I get paid well for it. So does my spouse. We live in a rural area with lots of natural open space both on our property and all around us. For the first 60 days of the pandemic I did not leave my property but had a grand old time with my chain saw and assorted yard tools getting ready for summer. We also have no children, and we have a very strong marriage where prospects of '24-7' gives me shivers, but primarily of delight. We like being with each other. We have enough space to be on our own if necessary. The only hassle is the 20 minute drive to the shops for provisions. I suspect that all world leaders have a wide range of options similar to mine. Maybe not the ability to fly between personal golf courses on a government plane, but probably not too far off from that either. 

If those at the top were able of walking a mile in the shoes of those at the bottom - or in the middle - they would most likely not be so wedded to rational thought informed by science. They would feel the emotion of cramped quarters, fraught gender relations (intimate partner violence and binge drinking are way up), and children of varying ages with differing capacities to process the logic of restrictions and adapt. Households in many parts of the world are multi-generational, and the responsibility for holding this all together falls disproportionately on the shoulders of women. They would also feel the emerging, unwelcome rise of mental illness. They would begin to see that isolation and lockdown is tantamount to a trade-off between physical and mental health: you are safe from the virus but slowly going mad as a consequence. The revolving door of lockdown, partial opening, red, yellow, green zones and so on makes things worse. Uncertainty goes hand in hand with high levels of stress. Will the market solve this problem too? Wellness apps are all the rage. We are constantly being counselled on how to get creative at home. And people are trying their best to be rational and to do their part for the common good. Are we better off? Amazon and Netflix most certainly are. But what of people? A simple scan of the global social environment reveals people in the streets protesting against lockdown; protesting against not only the loss of their livelihoods but also of their sanity. Governments respond with a combination of water cannon and charts showing vaccine delivery and roll out plans. It’s a powder keg ready to blow. Since ‘Plan A’ is not working, how can the answer to ‘solving’ the pandemic be more ‘Plan A’, or ‘Plan A prime’. We need a fresh approach. We need clear eyed thinking. We need Malcolm Gladwell?