The Long and Short of Environmental Solutions
| Author | Peter Kareiva,Emma Fuller |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12414 |
| Date | 01 May 2017 |
| Published date | 01 May 2017 |
The Long and Short of Environmental Solutions
Peter Kareiva
UCLA
Emma Fuller
Granular Farm Management System
A Response to ‘Why Politics and Context
Matter in Conservation Policy’
Florence Damiens
et al. (2017)*
Abstract
Capitalism, globalization, consumerism and an almost religious commitment to perpetual growth are often blamed for the
world’s environmental woes. But does this mean that economic stagnation and Marxism, for example, would be the friend of
the environment? We need to analyze the flaws of our current socioeconomic ecosystem and work to make concrete improve-
ments. Some improvements are short term and simply reflect improved ‘best practices’and more flexible frameworks for
implementing existing policies. These improvements can make a difference in a matter of years and are relevant to the
urgency of avoiding species extinctions in the near term. These changes are analogous to ‘tuning’a car’s engine. Other
improvements will require fundamental changes in how our economic system works –changes such as breaking the reliance
of developing nations on cheap fossil fuels. These changes are analogous to rebuilding and redesigning a car’s engine. But
whatever actions are explored, they must be practical and concrete. Bemoaning the avarice and resource exploitation of capi-
talism and its addiction to growth is a, by-now, stale and unactionable critique of the modern world.
The author of the response article accuses us of failing to
address five core issues of conservation. The author is right
–we did not. Our goal was short-term: to identify immedi-
ate conceptual shifts that could bring rapid advances within
the current regulatory, economic and political systems. For
instance, management goals based on feasible future desir-
able portfolios of biodiversity as opposed to some historical
diorama could yield more conservation at lower cost. Simi-
larly, rejecting a rigid adherence to the precautionary princi-
ple might allow actions such as translocation of species in
the face of climate change. And instead of being anti-regu-
lation, we endorsed regulation –but regulation that is flexi-
ble and able to be tuned to local conditions and local
ecologies. We were writing about what could be done
today about populations that are declining and habitats
that are disappearing before our eyes. We made no
assumption of inevitability; in fact our assumption was the
opposite –actions can be taken to change the course of
biodiversity decline, if we change how we approach the
problem.
The author is concerned with potentially systemic prob-
lems in existing political and economic systems –what is
refered to as sociopolitical choices. The author urges us to
pay more attention to ‘power relations, inequality, and
democratic deliberation’. We do not know what that means
at a practical level. We did talk about business –not as an
endorsement, but rather to examine how the private sector
responds to rapid change and uncertainty in the hope of
learning something of use when, as conservationists, we
must also deal with rapid and uncertain change. While we
feel that the critique is largely misplaced, what is interesting
is the long-game that the author of the response article
brings up, and which we admit was not part of our article.
If we were to transform the world in a fundamental way
so that biodiversity and environmental sustainability were
more secure, what type of fundamental changes might we
start working towards? First, recognizing that there is a
growing movement towards ‘green investment’, we would
work to develop data-based assessments of corporate
impacts and dependencies on the environment, with
mandatory annual reporting and full transparency. Similarly,
recognizing a growing movement towards ‘green consump-
tion’, we would work towards science-based labeling of
*Damiens, F. L. P., Mumaw, L., Backstrom, A., Bekessy, S. A., Coffey,
B., Faulkner, R., et al. (2017) ‘Why Politics and Context Matter in
Conservation Policy’, 8 (2). DOI:10.1111/1758-5899.12415.
Global Policy (2017) 8:2 doi: 10.1111/1758-5899.12414 ©2017 University of Durham and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Global Policy Volume 8 . Issue 2 . May 2017 257
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