Solutions Volume 5, Issue 4 by The Solutions Journal

July-August 2014, Volume 5, Issue 4

For a sustainable and desirable future

Solutions Amazon Deforestation: How Brazilian Partnerships are Working for Change by R. Bruce Hull, David Robertson, Courtney Kimmel, and Barbara McCutchan Greater Transparency in China is Good for Business by Michelle Ker Waste Management in the Garden of Eden by Mark Nelson Building a More Equal American Society by Anna Barford and Kate Pickett

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Holding Illegal Fishing at Bay in the Southern Ocean by Henrik Österblom, Örjan Bodin, U. Rashid Sumaila, and Anthony J Press

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Steffen, W. (2014). Connecting the Solution to the Problem. Solutions 5(4): 1. https://thesolutionsjournal.com/article/connecting-the-solution-to-the-problem/

Editorial by Will Steffen

Connecting the Solution to the Problem

here is little doubt that most people tire of hearing about problems only and would like to hear about solutions. But disconnecting the solution from the problem has its own dangers. Many of the most serious problems facing society today—those in most urgent need of solutions—are so-called wicked problems. These are complex, not amenable to simple cause–effect logic, often deeply systemic in nature, and continually evolving. They cannot be dealt with by a linear process of generating an understanding of the problem and then going on to solutions. Climate change is a classic example of this type of problem. Our experience with the previous Australian Government’s Climate Commission and now with the Climate Council of Australia demonstrates the dangers of disconnecting the solution from the problem. Our communication works best when we connect the solutions to the problem. Otherwise, people ask: Why do we have to change? If there isn’t a problem, why are you proposing “solutions”? The need to connect solution to problem is probably more important for non-expert audiences than in academic circles, a fact that is often overlooked when experts attempt to communicate their knowledge to lay audiences. We quickly learned in the public forums that the Climate Commission held around Australia in the 2011 to 2013 period that we needed to open with a brief presentation on the nature of the problem. If we jumped too quickly to solutions—that is, focused too strongly on policies, technologies,

and economic instruments that could solve the climate change problem—we lost the audience. Our most effective and rewarding forums invariably involved a rich interplay between the nature of the problem and the types of solutions that could be effective in dealing with the problem. Problems such as climate change—and virtually everything else associated with sustainability— require that the connections between the problem, its nature, seriousness, dynamics, and time dimensions, and the potential solutions need to be made explicit and made often.

of this with proposals to “solve” the problem through various geoengineering approaches. The most common is solar radiation management, where insertion of aerosols into the stratosphere would reduce temperature. But this is a classic example of applying simplistic cause -effect logic. Such an approach would also change rainfall patterns, allow acidification of the oceans to continue unabated, and change the patterns and intensities of light for photosynthesis. Third, for all of these wicked problems, there is, in fact, an adaptive loop between problem and solutions.

We live in a complex, adaptive system that abounds with wicked problems and complex challenges. There are several other good reasons for repeatedly connecting the solution to the problem. First, a focus on solutions only could, in some cases, be a symptom of an immature society, one that only wants to hear good news and wants to avoid confronting or disturbing messages. A society that is unwilling to understand and accept the problem, confronting though it might be, is unlikely to support the type of solutions that are likely to be effective. Disconnecting solutions from the problem could then easily lead to superficial, one-dimensional or ineffective “solutions.” Or worse yet, it could lead to denial of the problem in the first place, as often happens with climate change. Second, a disconnection between problem and solutions can not only lead to an ineffective solution, it could also lead to a decidedly maladaptive and dangerous one—the “cure is worse than the disease” syndrome. Again, climate change provides a good example

As we learn more about the problem, we may need to modify the solutions. And as we begin to implement the solutions, we may in fact change the nature of the problem itself, or unexpected consequences of the solution could lead to additional problems or modify the one we are trying to solve. So we need to periodically go back to the problem to see how effective the proposed solution is and learn how we can deal with it better. The bottom line is that we need to look at the 21st century sustainability challenge in the context of the Earth System, including of course, the everexpanding human enterprise as a part of the system. That is, we live in a complex, adaptive system that abounds with wicked problems and complex challenges. We definitely need to think about “solutions” to these challenges, but we also need to frame them in terms of navigating through a complex system space where problem and solution are intrinsically linked.

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Contents

July/August 2014

Features

Getting Down to Business: Deepening Environmental Transparency in China by Michelle Ker Environmental incidents in recent years have encouraged Chinese citizens to advocate for increased, transparent environmental protection laws. There are benefits in creating a national Pollutant Release and Transfer Register system to collect and centralize information from industrial facilities, allowing for governmental and public emissions monitoring.

Collaborative Leadership for Sustainable Development in Global Supply Chains: Partnering Across Sectors to Reduce Amazon Deforestation by R. Bruce Hull, David Robertson, Courtney Kimmel, and Barbara McCutchan

Brazil’s soy farms increasingly contribute to Amazon deforestation, as global food demands make them lucrative. In Northern Brazil, the Santarem Collaborative provides incentives for multi-national corporations, NGOs, governments, and farmers to work together to limit deforestation while increasing production.

How to Build a More Equal America

Reducing Illegal Fishing in the Southern Ocean: A Global Effort

by Anna Barford and Kate Pickett

Despite being one of the strongest economies globally, inequality in the US has exacerbating health and social issues. Lessons can be learned from policies in other countries aimed at increasing education access, nationalizing services, encouraging income equality, and redistributing wealth.

by Henrik Österblom, Örjan Bodin, U. Rashid Sumaila, and Anthony J Press

In the mid-1990s, illegal, unregulated, and unreported fishing nearly depleted the toothfish population of the Southern Ocean. Establishing an international commission for the conservation of Antarctic marine life facilitated collaboration, reducing fishing and protecting the toothfish and other endangered species.

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On the Web

Perspectives

www.thesolutionsjournal.org Explore the Solutions website for more content and interactivity. What are your solutions? Share your vision for a sustainable and desirable future and learn more about the Solutions community.

Envisioning

An Overarching Goal for the UN Sustainable Development Goals by Robert Costanza, Jacqueline McGlade, Hunter Lovins, and Ida Kubiszewski

Adam and Eve’s Sewage Problem by Mark Nelson

E-waste Risks and Disposal Disasters by Steve Skurnac

Changing the Course: A New Model of Freshwater Conservation and Restoration by Sandra Postel, Todd Reeve, and Christian McGuigan

Fairphone’s Supply Chain Revolution: Changing the World, a Handset at a Time by Dr. Edoardo Monaco

On the Ground

Restoring the Balance between People and Nature by Anna Beech and Marc Brody This year, the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda will begin reintroduction programs returning members of this endangered species into their natural habitats. The Panda Mountain program is working to harness this event as an opportunity to promote ecological restoration of traditional panda habitats, and demonstrate how the restoration of degraded habitats can occur globally.

Work and Opportunity in the Human Service Society by Bruce Cooperstein What will youth employment look like in 2043? Increased reliance on public transportation, the rise of urban agriculture, and a focus on leveraging community resources will create new positions through which high school and college students will interact positively with the disabled, children and the elderly.

Solutions in History

China’s Democratic Future? Lessons from Britain during the Long Eighteenth Century by Michael T. Davis Parallels drawn between eighteenth century England and modern day China suggest that the industrialization of the latter will bring with it a movement toward democracy. Will China’s growing middle class demand political reforms as did the British working classes?

Idea Lab In Review

80 Interview

Who Should Govern, Cities or Nation-States? A False Choice by Fred Keeley

Media Reviews

Calculating the True Value of Nature: An Interview with Richard Mattison Interviewed by Sam Whitefield Richard Mattison is the CEO of Trucost, an environmental accounting firm. Working with companies, governments, and investors, Trucost quantifies the economic costs and benefits of environmental actions. Mattison has worked with both the UN and UK to develop environmental policies for businesses.

America’s Healthiest Cities Looking Beyond Conflict Filmmaking for the Greater Good

Noteworthy

06 Editorial

Empowering Women Affected by AIDS in Rural Tanzania

Connecting the Solution to the Problem by Will Steffen A new look at how to frame problems within complex spaces and systems, where the issue and solution are inevitably intertwined, with climate change as an example. www.thesolutionsjournal.org | July-August 2014 | Solutions | 3

Solutions Editors-in-Chief: Robert Costanza, Ida Kubiszewski

Contributors 1

Associate Editors: David Orr, Jacqueline McGlade Managing Editor: Colleen Maney Senior Editors: Christina Asquith, Jack Fairweather History Section Editor: Frank Zelko Book & Envisioning Editor: Bruce Cooperstein Editor: Naomi Stewart

Graphic Designer: Kelley Dodd Copy Editors: Maria Hetman, Hana Layson, and Barbara Stewart Business Manager: Sung Lee Interns: Victoria Clark Editorial Board: Gar Alperovitz, Vinya Ariyaratne, Robert Ayres, Peter Barnes, William Becker, Lester Brown, Alexander Chikunov, Cutler Cleveland, Raymond Cole, Rita Colwell, Robert Corell, Herman Daly, Thomas Dietz, Josh Farley, Jerry Franklin, Susan Joy Hassol, Paul Hawken, Richard Heinberg, Jeffrey Hollender, Buzz Holling, Terry Irwin, Jon Isham, Wes Jackson, Tim Kasser, Tom Kompas, Frances Moore Lappé, Rik Leemans, Wenhua Li, Thomas Lovejoy, Hunter Lovins, Manfred Max-Neef, Peter May, Bill McKibben, William J. Mitsch, Mohan Munasinghe, Norman Myers, Kristín Vala Ragnarsdóttir, Bill Rees, Wolfgang Sachs, Peter Senge, Vandana Shiva, Anthony Simon, Gus Speth, Larry Susskind, David Suzuki, John Todd, Mary Evelyn Tucker, Alvaro Umaña, Sim van der Ryn, Peter Victor, Mathis Wackernagel, John Xia, Mike Young

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On the Cover An art exhibit in the 798 District of Beijing. Photo by Bridget Coila / CC BY-SA 2.0 Solutions is subject to the Creative Commons license except where otherwise stated.

1. Jacqueline McGlade—Jacqueline

McGlade was executive director of the European Environment Agency from 2003 until 2013. Prior to this she held academic positions in Europe and North America, focusing her research on spatial data analysis and informatics, climate change, scenario development, and the international politics of the environment and natural resources. 2. Hunter Lovins—Hunter Lovins is

president of Natural Capitalism Solutions, which helps companies, communities, and countries implement more sustainable business practices profitably. Over her 30 years as a sustainability thought leader, Lovins has written hundreds of articles and 13 books. A founder of the field of sustainable management, she has helped create several MBA programs and currently teaches sustainable business at the Bainbridge Graduate Institute, the University of Denver, and Bard College. 3. Mike Davis—Michael T. Davis is

Lecturer in the School of Humanities at Griffith University. His publications include Radicalism and Revolution in Britain, 1775-1848 (2000); London Corresponding Society (2002); Newgate in Revolution: An Anthology of Radical Prison Literature in the Age of Revolution (ed. with I. McCalman and C. Parolin, 2005); Unrespectable Radicals? Popular Politics in the Age of Reform (ed. with P. A. Pickering, 2008); and Terror: From Tyrannicide to Terrorism in Europe, 1605 to the Future (ed. with B. Bowden, 2008). 4. Mark Nelson, Ph.D.—Mark Nelson

is an ecosystem engineer and researcher, and one of the original “Biospherians.” He is Chairman, CEO, and a Founding Director of the Institute of Ecotechnics (www.ecotechnics.edu) and head of the Biospheric Design Division of Global Ecotechnics Corp. In addition to the deserts of Iraq, his Wastewater Gardens projects have taken him to the coast of Yucatan, Mexico; the high desert

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grassland south of Santa Fe, New Mexico; the semi-arid tropical savannah of West Australia; and the resorts of Bali. He is the author of The Wastewater Gardener: Preserving the Planet One Flush at a Time (www.wastewatergardener.com), published in June 2014 by Synergetic Press. 5. Dr. R. Bruce Hull—Dr. Bruce Hull is

Professor and Senior Fellow at the Center for Leadership in Global Sustainability at Virginia Tech. He writes and speaks about constructing sustainable development, innovative leadership, and collaboration among government, business, and civil society. He has authored or edited over 100 publications, including two books: Infinite Nature (Chicago 2006) and Restoring Nature (Island Press 2000). He serves on the Board of Directors of Climate Solutions University. 6. Todd Reeve—Todd Reeve is the

CEO of the Bonneville Environmental Foundation (BEF), where he leads work to advance innovative water stewardship solutions. Todd co-developed BEF’s Water Restoration Certificate Program™—a first of its kind program that allows corporations to balance their water footprint by restoring water to critically dewatered ecosystems. He is also co-creator of Change the Course—a national campaign led by BEF, National Geographic, and Participant Media that redefines how society values and uses freshwater. In addition, Todd leads implementation of the first 10-year Model Watershed approach to support community-based groups in their efforts to restore degraded watershed ecosystems. 7. Sandra Postel—Sandra Postel

directs the independent Global Water Policy Project and lectures, writes and consults on global water issues. In 2010 she was appointed Freshwater Fellow of the National Geographic Society, where she serves as the Society’s lead water expert. Sandra is co-creator of Change the Course, the national

Contributors 9

16 18

19 10

freshwater conservation and restoration campaign being pioneered by National Geographic and its partners and piloted in the Colorado River Basin. Sandra is the author of several acclaimed books, including the award-winning Last Oasis, which appears in eight languages and was the basis for a PBS documentary. 8. Henrik Österblom—Henrik

Österblom is Associate Professor and Deputy Science Director at Stockholm Resilience Centre. His primary focus in research is on a multidisciplinary understanding of the dynamics of marine social-ecological systems. Henrik has experience in working with research on environmental governance of the Baltic Sea and with international fisheries management. He received his PhD in Marine Ecology at Stockholm University and did a post doc on fisheries in the Southern Ocean, at the University of British Columbia and at the University of Tasmania. Henrik has worked several years for the Swedish Government, as an advisor to the Minister of Environment.” 9. Anna Barford—Anna is a geogra-

pher who works on international health and socio-economic inequality. Anna is currently researching the history of infectious diseases amongst forced migrants, on a project entitled Humanitarian Crises, Population Displacement and Epidemic Disease 1901–2010. Anna’s Ph.D focused on attitudes towards socio-economic inequality. This was inspired by her earlier work on the Worldmapper project which produced hundreds of cartograms (apparently distorted maps) to show the distribution of variables ranging from commuting times to life expectancies. She is currently based at the University of Cambridge, and is about to go on maternity leave. 10. Michelle Ker—Michelle Ker was

formerly a Research Fellow with the National Resources Defense Council’s (NRDC) China Environmental Law &

Governance Project based in Beijing. Her main research interests are in Chinese environmental governance, focusing in particular on environmental law, transparency, and monitoring and enforcement. Before joining NRDC, Michelle worked with the Stimson Center and the International Crisis Group on rule of law reform and human rights issues. She is currently a graduate student at the George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs. 11. Christian McGuigan—Christian

McGuigan is currently Director of Social Action Campaigns and Programming at Participant Media, a Los Angeles-based global entertainment company specializing in socially relevant documentary and narrative feature films, television, publishing and digital media. Christian has developed and led social impact campaigns on numerous films with the express goal of driving impact through meaningful social change. Recent campaigns have addressed issues including water restoration, mandatory minimum drug laws, freedom of political expression, civic action in the digital age, fair sentencing of youth, hunger in America and farm workers’ rights. 12. Kate Pickett—Kate Pickett is pro-

fessor of epidemiology at the University of York and a cofounder and director of the Equality Trust. She is coauthor, with Richard Wilkinson, of the best-selling book The Spirit Level, now translated into 23 languages and voted one of the top ten books of the decade by the New Statesman. 13. Will Steffen—Will Steffen is

executive director of the ANU Climate Change Institute at the Australian National University, Canberra, and also serves on the Multi-Party Climate Change Committee and as a climate commissioner. 14. Robert Costanza—Robert

Costanza is a Chair of Public Policy at

the Crawford School of Public Policy at Australian National University. Costanza is cofounder and former president of the International Society for Ecological Economics. He has authored or coauthored over 350 scientific papers and reports on his work have appeared in Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report, the Economist, The New York Times, Science, Nature, National Geographic, and National Public Radio. 15. Ida Kubiszewski—Dr. Ida

Kubiszewski is the managing editor of Solutions. Dr. Kubiszewski is a Senior Lecturer at the Crawford School of Public Policy at Australian National University. Her publication experience includes being the co-founder and formermanaging editor of the Encyclopedia of Earth, an electronic reference about the Earth, its natural environments, and their interaction with society. She is also the Managing Editor of Ecological Economics Reviews, an annual publication providing in-depth reviews of the most timely and important issues in the field of Ecological Economics. She has worked on dozens of internet projects primarily related to science communications including establishing a suite of online courses and creating energy related information systems. 16. Bruce Cooperstein—Bruce

Cooperstein is Professor of Mathematics at University of California, Santa Cruz, where he has taught since 1975. He was a Pew National Scholar for Carnegie Fellows from 1999–2000 and was Provost of College Eight (one of the ten resident Colleges at UCSC) from 1984–1990. In addition to his mathematical specialties in group theory and incidence geometry, he is interested in the interaction of education, politics, economics, and ecology. He has written numerous op-ed pieces on these and other topics as well as articles on economic conversion and the economic foundations of peace.

17. Steve Skurnak—Steve Skurnac,

President, Sims Recycling Solutions, is at the forefront of the nation’s electronics recycling industry through his oversight of the growth and success of all Sims’ electronics recycling facilities globally. Steve has been directly involved with electronics recycling since 1991. He has served on the board of numerous industry associations, participated as a stakeholder in all major cooperative e-scrap policy groups, including the EPA Common Sense initiative, the National Product Stewardship Initiative (NEPSI), and UN Basel Workgroup standards development, and spoken on the topic of e-scrap recycling at conferences worldwide. Prior to joining the Sims Group in May 2007, Steve was the President of Noranda Recycling (now Xstrata Recycling) where he had spent 24 years in various international metals and recycling capacities. He graduated from the University of Toronto with an engineering degree in mining and metallurgy. 18. Fred Keeley—Fred Keeley is the

elected county Treasurer for Santa Cruz County, California. Mr. Keeley has held this position since 2005. Prior to his service as Treasurer, Mr. Keeley represented the Monterey Bay area in the California State Assembly. From 1988 through 1996, Mr. Keeley served two terms on the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors. Mr. Keeley teaches local government at San Jose State University and California State University Monterey Bay (Osher Life-Long Learning Institute), and lectures at the Panetta Institute for Public Policy. 19. Edoardo Monaco—Dr. Edoardo

Monaco is Assistant Professor and Director of the Government and International Relations Program at Hong Kong Baptist University & Beijing Normal University’s United International College (UIC) in Zhuhai, Guangdong Province, China. His research interests concern geography of development, sustainability, political systems and economies in transition, and national resource management.

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Whitefield, S. Empowering Women Affected by AIDS in Rural Tanzania. (2014). Solutions 5(4): 6. https://thesolutionsjournal.com/article/empowering-women-affected-by-aids-in-rural-tanzania/

Idea Lab Noteworthy Empowering Women Affected by AIDS in Rural Tanzania by Sam Whitefield The Tanzanian shore of Lake Victoria is one of the most densely populated areas of the country, which sadly makes it a hotbed of poverty and STIs, such as AIDS. One of the groups trying to improve the lives of people in this region is the Hurumia Watoto Organization (HWO), a local NGO dedicated to community building to support the most vulnerable members of society. Women in rural Tanzania face many challenges, chief among them

being a lack of opportunity. The educational system is poor, and it is both difficult and unusual for a woman to go to university—more often, she is expected to stay in the local area and have children. Since the beginning of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, more and more women have seen their husbands die, and thus taken on full responsibility for raising their children. However, without the source of income that a husband provides, this is a daunting challenge. Drawing from other successful NGOs, the Hurumia Watoto Organization aims to provide these women with income-generating opportunities. Their central project

is providing teaching and equipment for sewing, tailoring, and embroidering garments to be sold on the open market. By offering the tools and expertise needed to begin working with clothes, HWO provides one of the few opportunities for these women to advance themselves. The HWO umbrella also encompasses a number of other projects. Naturally, sex education to help prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS is a focus. Other aims include improving the water sanitation system, providing medical services, organizing community projects, planting trees and community gardens, and facilitating dialogue to promote and empower women.

World Bank Photo Collection / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

The Hurumia Watoto Organization works to empower women living in the Lake Victoria region of Tanzania. 6 | Solutions | July-August 2014 | www.thesolutionsjournal.org

Cooperstein, B. (2014). Work and Opportunity in the Human Service Society. Solutions 5(4): 7-9 https://thesolutionsjournal.com/article/work-and-opportunity-in-the-human-service-society/

Envisioning

Work and Opportunity in the Human Service Society by Bruce Cooperstein

This article is part of a regular section in Solutions in which the author is challenged to envision a future society in which all the right changes have been made.

fter her commencement remarks at the University for International Leadership and Conflict Resolution (UILCR) in Spring 2043, several of the graduates wrote Ms. Rodrigues to ask her to elaborate on how work and employment had changed from the early decades of the 21st century to the present. We remind readers that Ms. Rosa Rodrigues served as Chief of Staff during the first term (2033–2037) of President Delores Hernandez. Below are her remarks. In my remarks at graduation, I described in broad strokes the contrast between the world of work between the period from 2001 to 2017 and the present period. In these brief remarks, I want to give you a sense of some of the jobs and opportunities that are now widely available that were not so back then. Let me remind you that in the first two decades of this century, people got around in and between cities primarily by private automobiles, whereas today over 90 percent of such travel is on integrated public transit systems consisting of standard and light rail (trams), fuel-cell and electric-battery minibuses, electric jitneys, along with some private taxi companies. When debating the design of the system, one of the key questions that came up was if it would work for persons with physical disabilities, including the elderly with mobility problems. One proposal was to have a

Sandor Weisz / CC BY-NC 2.0

Youth working for the Transportation Escort Service will assist parents, the elderly, and physically disabled riders in using public transportation.

supplemental system for this segment of the population as an alternative to accommodating them on the system by creating a Transportation Escort Service (TES). After much experimentation and evaluation, the latter was adopted because it did not socially isolate and segregate elderly and disabled riders, and for financial reasons. The TES employs thousands of young people (high schools students aged 14 to 19) nationwide who have two to three shifts of four hours each week with a minimum starting wage of $10 USD per hour. Each escort is given a mini-tablet and assigned a region. Then using technology originally developed by Uber, they receive requests from

persons needing or wanting assistance, usually elderly riders, the physically disabled, and parents traveling with two or more young children. The request also indicates whether it is for one way (and to or from home) or roundtrip, whether carrying (packages or luggage) is involved, and the mobility of the requester. The rider pays a flat moderate fee for a basic escort (immediately charged against their e-money account) with additional fees: if carrying is needed, if there are more than two children, or if any child is less than two years old. The modest fees are made possible by subsidies, paid by the city and state governments from a general fund allocation.

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Envisioning

Summer in the City / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

College students working as Urban Agricultural Assistant Analysts will use technical skills to assist urban gardeners.

Another job available in large numbers to high school students (aged 16 to 19) is as an Elder Support Assistant (ESA). An ESA works from eight to ten hours a week with a minimum starting hourly wage of $12 USD/hour. An ESA works under the supervision of a social worker/professional elder caregiver and is assigned one client whom they visit four to five times each week. The goal of the overall Elder Support Program is to make it possible for aging individuals and couples to remain in their own homes and communities as an alternative to nursing home care. Some light cleaning, shopping, and meal preparation is required. The major responsibilities

are to 1) use state-of-the-art streaming video technology to insure that the home environment remains safe and convenient; 2) use and evaluate monitoring technology to assess the client’s physical and emotional well-being; 3) provide companionship through such activities as conversation, game-playing, and reading; and 4) alert the supervisor to any potential physical, emotional, or psychological problems. For college-level students, there are many technical positions available. An especially popular opportunity for those studying chemistry or life sciences is that of an Urban Agricultural Assistant Analyst (UAAA). The UAAA’s

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responsibility is to assist urban gardeners and farmers with achieving the best yields at minimum financial and environmental cost through the production of locally appropriate food crops. Among the things they do is come out to a requesting gardener’s plot and take photos and videos as well as soil samples. The photos and videos are analyzed by the assistant (supervised by a trained scientist) to determine the amount and intensity of sunlight, rainfall patterns, and whether the topography has features that might affect the choice of what to grow. The UAAA does a full chemical analysis of the soil samples to determine acidity, its capacity to hold moisture, and what amendments it

Envisioning

San Mateo County Library / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Resident assistants will work at universal after school programs for all students attending public elementary and junior high schools.

will need to increase fertility. The UAAA makes a full report with recommendations of what to grow, what to add to the soil, what measures to take to deal with weeds and insect pests, and how often to water (consistent with normal weather patterns). Then throughout the growing season, the UAAA returns to record progress and to troubleshoot if any problems arise. For students ultimately interested in working with kids, they can get a start as a Recreation Assistant (RA). The RAs work in the universal after-school program open to all kids attending public elementary and junior high schools, which operate from 3:00 to 6:00 pm. Parents pay a modest fee, the amount of which is determined by the number of hours

per day and days that their child participates. An RA is supervised by a Recreation Specialist. Among their responsibilities are to supervise a sports activity, such as a volleyball or basketball game, teach and coach students in chess, organize tournaments in board games, supervise arts and crafts, and numerous other activities. Each year, millions of kids participate, requiring the employment of thousands of Recreational Specialists and as many as 100,000 RAs, who work from one to three afternoons for a total of three to nine hours. The minimum starting pay is $10 USD/hour. For those people with some special artistic talent such as drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, video, dance, song, music, composition, choreography, acting, directing,

poetry and/or other forms of creative writing, a very special opportunity is provided by the Artists and Writers in Residence Program (AWRP). Supported financially by a partnership of foundations and the US Federal Government, funds are distributed to schools, neighborhood centers, community and senior high schools, hospitals, nursing homes, senior centers, and housing projects in all types of communities—urban, surburban, and rural. In turn, selection committees in these organizations give stipends to artists and writers of every stripe and color in order for them develop and pursue their talent. The stipends range from part-time to full-time and are set at the national median wage of $45,000 USD for a full stipend. The grants are for three years, with one-third of the recipients chosen in each year. Currently, a quarter of a million artists and writers are supported. In addition to pursuing their own craft and periodically giving demonstrations and shows, the artists are also community resources: they act as instructors, coaches, facilitators, directors, and in many other ways to promote more active participation in arts and culture. There is also a foreign exchange component to the AWRP organized for the purpose of fostering better understanding between other countries and the United States, in particular, the values, system of democracy, commitment to peace and ecological balance of the US, and, reciprocally our appreciation of the traditions, problems, and aspirations of other countries. Thus, about two percent of our participants, or five thousand of the artists and writers, take up their residences in foreign countries and approximately the same number come to reside here from other countries. Rosa Rodrigues

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Whitefield, S. (2014). Calculating the True Value of Nature. Solutions 5(4): 10-12. https://thesolutionsjournal.com/article/calculating-the-true-value-of-nature/

Idea Lab Interview

Calculating the True Value of Nature Interview by Sam Whitefield

ichard Mattison is the CEO of Trucost, an environmental accounting firm that works with companies, governments, and investors to quantify the economic costs and benefits of actions. Since its founding in 2000, Trucost has run hundreds of analyses using its proprietary economic models. Their data analysis allows clients to make more informed decisions by more precisely quantifying the environmental aspects of that decision. Mattison received his PHD in Neuroscience from the University of Edinburgh, and joined Trucost in 2002 after working as a strategy consultant. In his time at Trucost, he has overseen many special projects, including aiding the UN Principles for Repsonsible Investment by valuing environmental externalities for the 3,000 largest companies in the world and developing the first Environmental Profit and Loss Account. He also helped create the UK Government’s Environmental Reporting Guidelines for Business.

Trucost calculates the true cost of economic activities on the environment. How do you do that? Basically what we’re doing is valuing nature. The first thing we do is to gather biophysical information on a company’s environmental impact and all of the environmental benefits that might be accruing. That’s often challenging because our starting point is to look at a company not just as an entity that exists within the scope of its own operation, but as an entity that exists within the scope of its entire value chain. So what we have to do is find

ways of looking upstream and downstream, looking at the full life cycle of a product or company. In many cases we find there is a lack of data, so we use economic models called input–output models to analyze value-chain flows. We find the output of things like tons of carbon, tons of waste, use of water, air pollution, and land conversion. The final step is that we use various different economic techniques to put a price on those biophysical units. We look at the social costs of carbon to put a price on climate change, we look at air pollution from the perspective of health care costs—in China specifically that’s quite an issue—we look at other forms of pollution in terms of the damage they create to the local environment and local economy. Once you’ve gathered all of this data, formatted it, done your analysis, how do companies use the analysis that you give them? There’s three main areas in which companies use that information: risk management, product development and design, and communications. With risk management, because the cost is expressed in financial terms, we can compare different types of environmental impacts. If you need to know what’s more important to your business, 10,000 tons of carbon emissions or 10 grams of mercury emitted into a local river, these types of metrics will enable you to compare those two to determine what is material to your business in a financial context. You can use it to look up your supply chain

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Trucost

Richard Mattison is the CEO of Trucost, an environmental accounting firm.

to identify areas where risk is particularly concentrated. You might find that making your product requires a lot of water and this will allow you to put a price on water that reflects its scarcity, rather than today where there is actually a negative correlation between the price of water and how scarce it is. Then what we do with this information is say what would happen to costs if that market failure were corrected—which it’s likely to be, in our opinion. So this allows risk managers and financial managers to analyze the extent to which input costs might increase. It allows product designers to have a better view on material selection and look potentially at substitutes that are more sustainable. From a communications perspective, it allows those involved to communicate quite clearly about the extent to which their company is having an effect on the planet, the extent to which their interventions might be counterbalancing, and exactly how much each of those amount to in

Idea Lab Interview dollar terms. A new trend in communications terms is integrated reporting, which enables boards to identify what the material issues and opportunities for their businesses are in financial terms and to compare that to other financial measures of what’s going on. Can you give us an example of companies using this information to positive ends? Sure, as an example, Puma has developed a new product range called the Incycle according to cradle-tocradle principles. You can compost the shoes. We analyzed that range of clothing for environmental benefits and using these metrics, we’re able to say that the range of products, on average, was 31 percent better for the planet than the conventional products. Puma could quantify the impact of water use, air pollution, zero-pesticide and zero-fertilizer manufacturing. They could quantify the benefit of not landfilling the shoe, and they could quantify the take-back scheme. In our world now, we’re trying to move out of an economic recession, but the biggest challenge is decoupling economic growth from the environmental impacts and these metrics let you do that. You started your career as a neuroscientist, which is not really related to environmental advocacy. How did your career path evolve? I actually started out my studies doing environmental chemistry, so I’ve always had an interest in environmental issues. I studied biology and neuroscience because I liked the challenge of thinking about a system. You can’t take one piece of the brain and by analyzing it to death understand the totality. You have to take a systems approach to it. I eventually decided to

switch my career to business because I felt I could make a difference in a business arena. I became a strategy consultant, learned a lot of techniques, and through a former member of Trucost I was invited to come to the company to develop their initial set of plans. I’ve stayed ever since because it married up my interest in the environmental with a systems approach to analyzing and solving problems with a business application. You were integral in producing the UK government’s environmental and reporting guidelines for business. Because you’ve done government work and private-sector work, how effective can a government be in regulating environmental issues like this? Governments have a big role to play. A lot of people say governments can be quite ineffective, and sometimes that’s true, but I do think that, for example, you can’t underestimate the impact of regulations such as fuel-efficiency in cars. That will have a huge effect on oil consumption. Just because we haven’t come to an agreement on global emissions of greenhouse gases (which frankly is a herculean task), that doesn’t mean that governments have no role. The role of the government is to regulate as much as possible, as swiftly and effectively as possible, while keeping an eye on those global negotiations. If you look at China, they’ve implemented a huge carbon-trading scheme across seven provinces. That was not because China feels the need to comply with Kyoto, it just makes business sense. China’s near-term clear and present danger is air pollution. One way to regulate it is a carbon-trading scheme. What they’ve done is killed two birds with one stone. They’ve been able to regulate on carbon, which will incidentally

regulate on air pollution, and create fuel efficiency. So perhaps even three birds with one stone. There’s a huge role for businesses to play, too. You anticipate my next question—what is the role for businesses? I think businesses can make decisions pretty quickly. Once they realize what’s going on, businesses will act in a very self-interested way, and that’s going to be good for the environment. What we’re finding is that there’s lots of geopolitical risk created by environmental factors, a lot of volatility is caused by events related to climate change and water scarcity. For a business that relies on leather, for example, the price of wheat is hugely important because it goes in as a foodstock to beef. What happens with climate change, floods, and terms of droughts is therefore important to your product design, your sourcing, your materials, and how much of your supply chain you want to own in a world of ever-increasing scarcity. We’re finding some clients seriously considering vertically integrating their supply chain, in other words, buying up their suppliers in order to guarantee that they get their supply. So a lot of these metrics are helping guide companies’ decision-making. Going back to the guidelines that you wrote: If you had to redo them now, is there any major change that you would make to them? Something you think “we really should have covered this?” Yeah, we’re now 9 years down the line from writing those guidelines, so quite a lot has changed. The major problem in the marketplace is making sure, from a reporting perspective, that what’s being reported is relevant. There has been a tendency to create long lists of environmental indicators

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Idea Lab Interview

Stan Wiechers / CC BY-SA 2.0

Trucost calculates the social and economic costs of business operations.

that organizations can check off and report on and put that out there. The question is, who is your reader? Because if your reader is someone in the financial community and you’re reporting on tons of carbon, tons of waste, grams of mercury emitted into a stream, honestly most financial analysts wouldn’t know how to interpret that information. If I were to think about revisions or changes you could make, they would be in the direction of making sure that there are clear guidelines

about the way in which you report on environmental issues. Let me give you a concrete example of how that could apply today. A lot of companies are thinking about issuing “green bonds.” The bonds are tied to improvements in companies’ infrastructure and many different things, and they usually have to be audited. I would imagine that, faced with the prospect of investing in a green bond, it would be helpful if there were some simple metrics, using natural-accounting techniques, to communicate the benefit of those

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bonds. Rather than say “over the next 20 years we will deliver 10 million tons of carbon savings, 500 tons of waste, and 20 grams of mercury,” wouldn’t it be fantastic if, as part of the mandate of the bond, you can say “it’s a million dollar bond, but it will deliver 10 million dollars’ worth of value to society over the term of the bond.” I think that will be quite a useful metric for people to consider in terms of thinking about what real benefit is accruing from sustainability and investments.

Costanza, R., J. McGlade, H. Lovins, and I. Kubiszewski. (2014). An Overarching Goal for the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Solutions 5(4): 13-16. https://thesolutionsjournal.com/article/an-overarching-goal-for-the-un-sustainable-development-goals/

Perspectives An Overarching Goal for the UN Sustainable Development Goals by Robert Costanza, Jacqueline McGlade, Hunter Lovins, and Ida Kubiszewski

ommunities, countries, and the planet as a whole need to articulate shared goals, and create ways to track progress in meeting them. This is the essence of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) process currently underway at the UN. The SDGs are the follow-up to the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), due to expire in 2015. They represent a substantial commitment on the part of UN member states to achieve truly sustainable development over the next 15 years. The SDG process is building consensus on what these shared goals are and how to measure progress towards meeting them. While discussion continues on a list of SDGs due to be announced in 2015 (currently 17— see Table 1), there is a critical missing element in the process: articulation and measurement of the overarching goal or “ultimate end” of the SDGs and how the list of sub-goals and targets contribute to achieving that larger goal. The goals are being discussed as separate elements in isolation from each other and from any overarching goal to which they might contribute. In fact, there is broad emerging agreement about this overarching goal. There are many ways of expressing it, but the essence is “a prosperous, high quality of life that is equitably shared and sustainable.”1 There are three elements to this goal that cover the usual three components of sustainable development: economy (a high quality of life or well-being), society (equitably shared), and the environment (sustainable, staying within planetary boundaries). There is also the understanding that all three of these elements are

United Nations Information Centre / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

The UN Sustainable Development Goals will further extend the mission of the organization’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which are due to expire in 2015. www.thesolutionsjournal.org | July-August 2014 | Solutions | 13

Perspectives

Overarching Goal:

Equity & Human Well Being or “Ultimate Ends”

a prosperous, high quality of life that is equitably shared and sustainable

Economy, Technology, Politics & Ethics or “Intermediate Means”

Natural Environment or “Ultimate Means”

Efficient Allocation: Building a Living Economy Fair Distribution: Protecting Capabilities for Flourishing Sustainable Scale:

Staying Within Planetary Boundaries

Figure 1. A hierarchy of goals along the Ends-Means spectrum9

interdependent and must be satisfied jointly. It is no good to have a high quality of life for an elite few that is not equitably shared or sustainable, or a sustainable but low quality of life where everyone suffers equally, or a high quality of life for everyone that will collapse in the future. We want all three together in an integrated and balanced way and any one or two without the others is not sufficient. It is also important to recognize that the economy is embedded in society, which is embedded in the rest of nature.2, 3 These three elements are nested in a way that means that they are extremely interdependent. We can no longer treat the economy separately, without considering its strong interdependence with society and the rest of nature. This goal as stated above can be seen as the ‘ultimate end’ in the spectrum of means and ends shown in Figure 1. The SDGs are ‘intermediate means’ or ‘ultimate means’ on the diagram that contribute to achieving the ultimate end or overarching goal. The SDGs can therefore best be considered as ‘sub-goals’ contributing in different ways, in different times and places to the overarching goal or ultimate end.

For simplicity we will refer to this overarching goal as ‘sustainable well-being’, recognizing that this well-being or quality of life must be equitably shared, both within and among nations, and that it is interdependent with the well-being of the rest of nature. Another way of describing the three elements of sustainable well-being4,5,6 is as the integrated provision of: 1. Efficient Allocation: Building a Living Economy 2. Fair Distribution: Ensuring Capabilities for Flourishing 3. Sustainable Scale: Staying Within Planetary Boundaries Table 1 shows how the current draft list of 17 SDGs cluster under these three headings as sub-goals. Major challenges in achieving the sustainable well-being include improved understanding of: (1) all the aspects of sustainable wellbeing; (2) how the intermediate and ultimate means contribute to it; and (3) how to measure progress toward a world in which all people can achieve it.

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There are several alternative measures of progress toward sustainable well-being currently being developed and tested7 (see also www.wikiprogress.org). They can be divided into three broad groups: 1) those that adjust economic measures to reflect social and environmental factors; 2) those that depend on subjective measures of well-being drawn from surveys; and 3) those that use weighted composite indicators of well-being including factors such as housing, life expectancy, leisure time, and democratic engagement.8 None of these measures are perfect, but collectively, they offer the building blocks for the integrated measures of sustainable well-being that we sorely need. Creating a viable and broadly accepted measure of sustainable well-being will require a sustained, transdisciplinary effort to integrate metrics and build a broad consensus. This process of developing measures is underway, but can be accelerated by connecting it with the ongoing SDG process, either as an integral part of the process or as a follow-on. The SDG process represents a huge global opportunity to recalibrate our shared goals and commit ourselves

Perspectives Efficient Allocation: Building a Living Economy Proposed goal 7

Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all

Proposed goal 8

Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all

Proposed goal 9

Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation

Proposed goal 11

Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable

Proposed goal 12

Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns

Fair Distribution: Protecting Capabilities for Flourishing Proposed goal 1

End poverty in all its forms everywhere

Proposed goal 2

End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture

Proposed goal 3

Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages

Proposed goal 4

Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote life-long learning opportunities for all

Proposed goal 5

Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls

Proposed goal 10

Reduce inequality within and among countries

Proposed goal 16

Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable, and inclusive institutions at all levels

Proposed goal 17

Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development

Sustainable Scale: Staying within Planetary Boundaries Proposed goal 6

Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all

Proposed goal 13

Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts

Proposed goal 14

Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas, and marine resources for sustainable development

Proposed goal 15

Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, halt and reverse land degradation, and halt biodiversity loss

Table 1. The three elements of Sustainable Well-Being and the current list of 17 SDG sub-goals that most directly contribute to them as a way of organizing the SDGs. www.thesolutionsjournal.org | July-August 2014 | Solutions | 15

Perspectives to the path toward a sustainable and desirable future. Some will argue that building this kind of consensus is unnecessary or impossible, but the history of the MDGs shows that broad consensus around shared goals is possible and it can drive significant positive change. This needs to be accelerated and integrated into the SDG process. The overarching goal of sustainable well-being should be clearly articulated as the integrating element. Time is clearly running out and missing this opportunity would be a global disaster.

It is often said that you get what you measure. To build a sustainable and desirable future we need to measure what we want—sustainable well-being—remembering that it is better to be approximately right than precisely wrong.

Economy-in-Society-in-Nature. United Nations Division for Sustainable Development (2012). 4. Ibid. 5. Daly, HE. Allocation, Distribution, and Scale: Towards an Economics that is Efficient, Just, and Sustainable. Ecological Economics 6: 185–193 (1992). 6. Costanza, R, Cumberland, JC, Daly HE, Goodland, R & Norgaard, R. An Introduction to Ecological Economics (St. Lucie Press, Boca Raton, Florida, 1997). 7. Costanza, R et al. Time to leave GDP behind. Nature

References 1. Costanza, R et al. Time to leave GDP behind. Nature 505: 283–285 (2014). 2. Griggs, D et al. Sustainable Developent Goals for People and Planet. Nature 495: 305–307 (2013). 3. Costanza R et al. Building a Sustainable and Desirable

505: 283–285 (2014). 8. Costanza, R et al. Time to leave GDP behind. Nature 505: 283–285 (2014). 9. Daly, HE & Farley, J. Ecological economics: Principles and Applications (Island Press, Washington DC, 2004).

MT_bulli / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

UN staff in Bonn bring awareness to the 2015 deadline for the Millennium Development Goals, marking the same year that the list of Sustainable Development Goals will be announced in the next step toward global equity and sustainability. 16 | Solutions | July-August 2014 | www.thesolutionsjournal.org

Nelson, M. (2014). Adam and Eve’s Sewage Problem. Solutions 5(4): 17-22. https://thesolutionsjournal.com/article/adam-and-eves-sewage-problem/

Perspectives Adam and Eve’s Sewage Problem by Mark Nelson

Meridel Rubenstein Eden in Iraq Project 2011, Site Photo and Drawings 2014

“Boat at Dusk in Central Marshes”—Legend places the Garden of Eden in Iraq, where there was once the largest wetland in western Eurasia.

t last the Garden of Eden in southern Iraq will have ecologically sound waste treatment and re-use. Iraq forms the southeasterly bend of the Fertile Crescent and literally means the land between two rivers: the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Amid the country’s ongoing strife it’s sometimes easy to forget that Iraq is the birthplace of Western civilization and where legend placed the Garden of Eden. This once rich wetland has supported 5,000 years of culture and the largest wetland in western Eurasia, is home to the richest ecosystem in

the world, home to otters, sacred ibises and basra reed warblers, and an important layover for migrating flocks of flamingos, pelicans, and herons. The most recent inhabitants, Iraq’s Marsh Arabs, have evolved a way of life intimately enmeshed with the wetlands, using its reeds for their houses and to sustain their water buffalo—a way of life that stretches back centuries. But recent decades have been disastrous and unprecedented for both the region’s ecology and inhabitants. The Marsh Arabs are Shi’ites and joined in an attempt

to overthrow the government of Saddam Hussein in the early 1990s. Saddam’s reprisals were brutal—bombing Marsh Arab villages, hunting down opponents, and accelerating plans to build a system of canals through the rear of the wetlands that contributed to draining vast swathes of Marsh Arab territory (dams in Turkey and Syria also reduced water flow in this period). The result was that the marshes dried out and became deserts, and virtually all the half million or so Marsh Arabs were abruptly forced to leave since their way of life was destroyed.

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Perspectives

Meridel Rubenstein Eden in Iraq Project 2011, Site Photo and Drawings 2014

“Adam and Eve of the Marshes” - Iraq’s Marsh Arabs are dependent on the wetlands for their way of life.

Then, in 2003, following the fall of Saddam’s government, local Marsh Arabs, assisted by Nature Iraq (www. natureiraq.org), an NGO dedicated to conserving Iraq’s environment and cultures, punched holes in the diversion canals. The Tigris and Euphrates again flowed in their natural channels. Now, a decade later, about half of the historic marshes are recovering, and hundreds of thousands of Marsh Arabs are returning from their forced exile. This is a rare piece of good news in a country that is once again beset by sectarian conflict, and it is not without its problems. Although some Marsh Arabs have returned to their traditional lives in reed islands among the wetlands, most have spent the past decade living in the environs of major cities like Baghdad. They have largely returned to towns on the outskirts of the marshes. These communities often have no sewage treatment,

a condition unfortunately very prevalent in the developing world. The Iraqi government has created “switch plants”—ostensibly to take away rain from the houses through deep drainage pipes, but in reality taking the raw sewage to a centralized pumping station. Here, the sewage is simply pumped into the wetlands and rivers. The health and environmental consequences are dire. In 2011, I was contacted by Meridel Rubenstein, a world-class photographer who is a professor of art at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. She had a vision of a symbolic art/ecology project: Eden in Iraq (Ecological and Cultural Restoration through Art, Design, and Environmental Science; www. meridelrubenstein.com/eden-in-iraq). In researching the history of the wetlands and its legendary status as the Garden of Eden, she’d discovered

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both the waste disposal problem and my work with so called “Wastewater Gardens”—high biodiversity constructed wetlands to treat and recycle sewage while supporting beautiful and productive gardens and landscapes (www.wastewatergardens.com). Meridel suggested we both get in touch with Azzam Alwash, the IraqiAmerican who founded Nature Iraq, which had done so much to restore the marshes, and suggest how we might be able to help. Alwash immediately seized the opportunity and connected us with Jassim al-Asadi, a water engineer who heads the Nature Iraq efforts in the wetlands. The next step was to try and work out how to adapt my work to an Iraqi context.

Wastewater Gardening Constructed wetlands for sewage treatment is an approach that has been rapidly evolving over the past

Perspectives

Meridel Rubenstein Eden in Iraq Project 2011, Site Photo and Drawings 2014

“Ehmad Looking out over Marshes”—The project is a collaboration between the author, professor and photographer Meridel Rubenstein, and Jassim al-Asadi, a water engineer and head of Nature Iraq efforts in the wetlands.

few decades. They change the paradigm from viewing sewage as a “toxic waste” to dealing with it as a natural resource. Constructed wetlands offer a much more natural approach to sewage treatment than conventional

sewage plants because they utilize the same mechanisms that make natural wetlands so effective at reducing pollutants and nutrients—plants and microbes. So unlike high-tech sewage plants that require large amounts of

machinery, electricity, and chemicals, constructed wetlands are mainly powered by sunlight and rely far more on gravity-flow than pumps. This makes them often less expensive to build and far cheaper to operate. Maintenance costs can be 10 percent that of the high-tech approach and the systems can last far longer. Instead of a sewage “factory,” green zones are created and wastewater is recycled, not simply treated and discharged. Design engineering takes into account the local climate, which also dictates which plants can be used, but constructed wetlands work in both cold and tropical regions and are also valuable because they conserve high-quality water by creating landscape greenery through using water that is otherwise wasted. “Wastewater Gardens” is an approach to constructed wetlands that had its origin in Biosphere 2, a two-year experiment in which eight crew members lived inside a large closed ecological system in Arizona. I was one of that crew of “biospherians” and fell in love with the constructed wetlands developed for the Biosphere to recycle domestic animal and human “wastewater.” The wastewater supplied the nutrients that created two sets of beautiful wetland ecologies. Remaining nutrients and the now much cleaner water was sent back to the irrigation supply of our mini-farm and so the system was designed for sustainable maintenance of soil fertility. As an added benefit, I periodically pruned the vegetation and fed it to the chickens and goats, thus giving us extra eggs and milk. After Biosphere 2, I researched constructed wetlands while a Ph.D. student at the University of Florida and developed “Wastewater Gardens,” first with the support of the Biosphere Foundation (www.biospherefoundation.org) and now with

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Perspectives

Mark Nelson

Schematic of the three treatment steps in a Wastewater Garden constructed wetland.

the Institute of Ecotechnics (www. ecotechnics.edu) and my company, Wastewater Gardens International, which has a network of regional affiliates implementing the systems. We have since created over 150 systems in 11 countries. Wastewater Gardens systems use a wide biodiversity of plants with the aims of making constructed wetlands more beautiful and ecologically robust than systems that use just one or two types of plants (so-called “reed-beds”). This allows us to include plants with harvest/commercial value, ones that benefit wildlife, and attractive plants that make the systems appear as beautiful gardens and green landscapes. There are three steps in a Wastewater Garden system. First is primary treatment, separating sewage solids from liquids, which is

done in sedimentation tanks (septic tanks) where anaerobic bacteria begin the purification process. Next, the liquids pass to the constructed wetland itself. In very large systems, such as those we plan for the Marsh Arab towns, there are two types of wetland: vertical flow and horizontal flow. In both, the wastewater is kept subsurface, so that there is no odor. The vertical flow wetlands are dosefed batches of wastewater to their entire surface. As the wastewater drains downwards through the 2 to 3 feet of gravel media, the plants and the beneficial aerobic bacteria on their root systems and on the gravel take up many of the nutrients that would otherwise cause eutrophication of waters when raw sewage is sent into the environment. Next, the semi-treated wastewater goes to the horizontal flow wetlands

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(which fill up like bathtubs) where further treatment by the wetland plants and microbes (now again mostly anaerobic ones since these wetlands are not well-aerated like the vertical-flow wetland cells). Pathogens, disease-causing bacteria, in the sewage are killed by a myriad of natural mechanisms, and constructed wetlands can achieve 99+ percent control without the use of expensive and harmful chemicals like chlorine. The last stage is using the treated water for subsoil irrigation—a final green landscape which can use a wider variety of plants since they are now growing in soil. These plants continue utilizing the freshwater and remaining nutrients, reducing discharge and making more complete use and recycle of the wastewater.

Perspectives Back in Iraq The proposed Wastewater Gardens for the Marsh Arab towns has been enthusiastically approved by two of the large towns in the region, which understand that the current situation endangers both their health and the health of the wetlands. Our restoration project, “Eden in Iraq,” has also recently gained the support and financial backing of the Directorate of Dhi Qar province (which includes the wetland region) with help from the Iraqi Ministries of Water Resources and the Environment and the Center for Restoration of Iraqi Marshes and Wetlands. With the support of a grant from Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore where Meridel teaches, we are developing plans to make our first project also a symbolic celebration of the region’s rich culture and history. Meridel Rubenstein’s design team includes Prof. Peer Sathikh (NTU) an environmental designer, Dr. Sander van der Leeuw, archaeologist and former Dean of the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona and Dr. Davide Tocchetto, an Italian constructed-wetland designer who has built systems serving thousands

Horizontal Flow

water level

waterproof membrane

inlet 600mm main slope 15-30mm washed gravel

5-10mm washed gravel

outlet (perforated pipe)

Mark Nelson

Schematic of horizontal flow wetlands.

Vertical Flow inlet sand 15-30mm washed gravel 5-10mm washed gravel 15-30mm washed gravel outlet (perforated pipe)

waterproof membrane

Mark Nelson

Schematic of vertical flow wetlands.

Meridel Rubenstein Eden in Iraq Project 2011, Site Photo and Drawings 2014

“Waterway to Central Marshes”—As conflict escalates in the country, the project leaders hope that the garden will become a natural place of peace and relief. www.thesolutionsjournal.org | July-August 2014 | Solutions | 21

Perspectives

Thrity Vakil

In Puerto Rico at the Las Casas de la Selva rainforest sustainable timber project (www.eyeontherainforest.org), the Wastewater Garden treats all the sewage and protects a mountain stream that feeds a water reservoir in the Patillas region.

of people in Europe, and myself. In the past year, the Iraqi government has created the first National Park in the country, protecting most of the restored marshes as the Mesopotamian National Park. Our initial project is for some 6,000 Marsh Arabs in Al-Manar, a town that lies in the wetland region between Basra and Nasiriyah, creating constructed wetlands for the sewage collected by one of the town’s switch plants. Among the plants we will use in the wetlands are oleander, pomegranate, date palm, taro (elephant ear), bougainvillea, papyrus, canna lilies, fig, and olive. The vertical-flow wetlands feature a wide diversity of native plants

found in the surrounding marshes. The gardens will also have an educational display of their beauty and water-purifying power—and should become a symbol of the slow return to health of this vital ecosystem and of the people who live there. The current situation as we write (July 2014) is that despite military and political unrest elsewhere in Iraq, southern Iraq where the population is heavily Shi’ite, remains undisturbed. The local government is functioning and we hear from Jassim Al Asadi, the director of the Nature Iraq office in Al Chibaish, in the midst of the marsh region, that our project is proceeding with an Environmental Impact Assessment and Economic

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Feasibility study. Project Director, Meridel Rubenstein writes: “The design team is continuing to finalize the design, using local materials like adobe brick, woven reeds, ceramic tiles and relief patterns from the rich history of the region. The project site is on the main road from Basra to Nasariyah and on to Baghad, across from the Mesopotamian National Park. We envision this to be a site for locals to rest and enjoy their natural and cultural heritage of the marshes. In these difficult times, visitors will find here, with a symbolic meeting of the two great rivers near the historic Garden of Eden, a metaphor for opposing forces finding relief and restoration in the remediation of Nature.”

Skurnak, S. (2014). E-waste Risks and Disposal Disasters. Solutions 5(4): 23-27. https://thesolutionsjournal.com/article/e-waste-risks-and-disposal-disasters/

Perspectives E-waste Risks and Disposal Disasters by Steve Skurnac

Vibek Raj Maurya / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

An e-waste dump in Ghana.

n 2013, the global consumer electronics industry accounted for more than $1 trillion in sales, and worldwide phone sales of consumer electronics totaled 435 million units just in the second quarter, according to Gartner.1 There is no question that technology is being purchased and used more than ever, but with the average device only lasting 1–3 years before being replaced, these electronics have now also become the fastest growing waste stream, and unfortunately, some of it is flowing into developing nations.

China, Ghana, and other developing nations have become international hot spots for digital dumping. These regions generally receive daily shipments of large containers filled with nonworking electronic components. E-waste contains harmful chemicals such as arsenic, barium, beryllium, and many others. If not disposed of properly, these substances can be extremely harmful to human health and the environment.2 In 2008, CBS released a documentary on 60 Minutes about an e-waste dump in Guiyu, China, a place that

is found to have the highest level of cancer-causing dioxins in the world.3 Discussions furthered the following year when PBS released a similar Frontline documentary about toxic e-waste dumps in Ghana.4 These two developing nations share many of the same characteristics, including impoverished citizens, polluted air, contaminated water, and hundreds of millions of tons of e-waste brought in each year from first-world nations like Germany, the U.K., and America. Citizens living in these developing nations work the electronic

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Perspectives

baselactionnetwork / CC BY-ND 2.0

A worker dismantling toner cartridges by hand at an e-waste dump in Guiyu, China.

wastelands by hand without proper disposal methods or environmental, health, and safety standards. Adults and children who work and live near the area are exposed to toxic chemicals every day. Staggering health side effects can range from mild to very serious conditions. Two of the most toxic compounds on earth, polychlorinated and polybrominated dioxins, pollute the air quality in these areas due to the open burning of plastics as a routine maneuver used for separating out precious metals from electronic devices by hand. This e-waste crisis does not stop at environmental and health detriments, it also leads to an upsurge in cybercrime. A recent study by the National Association of Information Destruction (NAID) found that 30 percent of recycled computers had hard drives that still contained sensitive personal data.5 Computers,

cell phones, and digital copiers containing private information are amongst the piles of e-waste shipped to third-world countries every day, oftentimes under the previous owner’s assumption that it had been wiped clean. Salvaged hard drives are resold in open markets where organized criminals seek them out for the personal information they store. Under these circumstances, data spanning from bank information to family photographs have the potential to remain on devices for criminals to use in unlawful endeavors. The illegal activity has worsened to the point that the U.S. State Department has labeled Ghana as one of the top places in the world for cybercrime. For those living amid the digital dumps, real-life survival often hinges on the choice between hazardous working conditions that pose severe

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health risks and illicit cybercrimes, but it doesn’t have to stay this way. With industry regulations, responsible recyclers, and an international commitment to end the problem, big changes are possible, and it can start right here in the States.

Current Recycling in America Within America, each of us has the choice to responsibly recycle our electronics and doing so is beneficial to our livelihood. Studies show 10,000 tons of e-waste in a landfill creates only six jobs, but when that same 10,000 tons of e-waste is recycled, 36 jobs are made available.6 Electronics recyclers around the nation offer pickup and drop-off services to consumers and businesses typically at little or no charge. Unfortunately, even while 70 percent of Americans have recycled some type of electronic device,7 the Environmental Protection

Perspectives pay for or operate their own electronics recycling programs and meet specified recycling benchmarks. Other state laws range from requiring manufacturerfunded education programs, mandating manufacturers to join state-run recycling programs, or for municipalities to offer electronics recycling facilities to their residents. Depending on your local legislation, one of the following services may be available to you:

Fairphone / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Personal data from devices can often still be harvested from electronics not recycled through legitimate and reliable means.

Agency (EPA) estimates only 25 percent of the total e-waste in America are actually recycled.8 America has far more disposal and landfill regulations in place than in Ghana and China, but even in the States, 70 percent of the harmful chemicals in our landfills come from electronics.9 Recycling these items not only prevents hazardous chemicals from polluting our environment, it also saves energy and materials for reuse. Recycling one million laptops saves the energy equivalent to the electricity used by 3,657 U.S. homes in one year.10 Recycling electronics helps preserve raw materials as well. Recycling one million phones will allow for the reuse of 75 pounds of gold, 772 pounds of silver, 35,274 pounds of copper and 33 pounds of palladium.10 The environmental and societal benefits of recycling are indisputable, but the challenge is getting consumers to research local options and proceed with responsible disposal.

Recycling Programs Most people want their electronics to be recycled in a safe manner, but many do not know how. Recyclers around the nation partner with local cities and states to offer programs for consumers to properly dispose of electronics. Oftentimes e-waste can be brought to the city landfill where it is stored in designated piles to be picked up by electronics recyclers. Some cities have programs in place to toss out electronics with your other household waste to be sorted at the landfill later and others have drop-off locations available. Your local city website will be able to identify where you can bring your e-waste for proper disposal and what is required by state law. In 2003, California became the first state to pass e-waste laws regarding the disposal and recycling of electronic devices. Since then, 25 U.S. states have enacted some type of electronics recycling legislation, but what that law entails varies state-to-state. Some laws require electronics manufacturers to

• Collection Events Collection events are a simple alternative to tossing electronics in the landfill. Cities, schools, and other nonprofit organizations are the most common groups that host these collections. These types of functions are held occasionally at designated times and places where residents can drive up and unload their e-waste into the hands of responsible recyclers. Collection events occur every day in cities across the nation. To find an event in your area, visit http://www. simsrecycling.com/.11 • Collection Sites Some local businesses including thrift stores, storage units, and bigbox retailers may offer permanent e–waste drop-off services. In addition to ordinary businesses, electronics retailers and wireless carriers almost always have areas to drop off unwanted electronics, gadgets, and tablets to ensure appropriate recycling. Next time you’re at one of these stores, keep an eye open for an e-waste recycling container. • Cell Phone Buyback The extreme popularity of mobile phones shows no signs of fading anytime soon; in fact, there are now more active cell phones in use in America than there are Americans who use them.12 The good news for consumers is that easy-to-use mobile phone buy-back services

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Perspectives have sprung up all over the place. Programs like Zombie Phone (http://zombiephone.com/) can provide consumers with an easy and convenient method to sell their old mobile devices.13 Most services like these provide postage-paid envelopes that require minimal effort from the consumer and offer a monetary return for a device you may no longer use, whether it’s working or not. • Mail Back Programs A similar kind of mail-back service is available with newly purchased electronics. Have you ever seen the prepaid envelopes that come with your new cell phone or laptop? Equipment manufacturers recognize the growing e-waste problem and offer mail-back services to their consumers. The old products you are replacing can be packaged in an envelope and easily shipped back to the source for proper recycling, just make sure to remove any data stored on the device before sending it in.

What to Look for in a Recycler

With many avenues for electronics recycling available, consumers are more willing than ever to do the right thing, but there are a few crucial factors to consider before that e-waste leaves your possession. Any device that stores data should be erased prior to passing it off to the electronics recycler. A basic procedure to consider is deleting all saved data from the device, such as contacts, photos, and personal files. However, to further ensure data privacy you may want to consider using a dataerasing tool that you can find on the web or to conduct a simple factory reset on all computers and mobile devices. In addition, it is suggested to verify how your chosen electronics recycler intends on wiping hard-to-clear data from the devices brought in and what they will do to protect it once received.

• ISO 14001, the environmental standard, aims to decrease the pollution and waste a business produces. • OHSAS 18001 is a certification designed to manage occupational health and safety to protect employees while on the job. • ISO 9001 assures there are defined quality management processes in place verified by routine audits. • ISO 27001 ensures adequate company processes are in place and followed to minimize information security risks.

Not all electronics recyclers are created equal, and some recycling processes will better safeguard the data on your electronics than others. So it is important to know what look for. The recycling industry is ruled by a few key standards and certifications, one of those being the e-Stewards certification.14 This accredited thirdparty certification program identifies recyclers that will not export their toxic e-waste to developing countries, dump it in local landfills, or use prison labor. The e-Stewards standard is endorsed by more than 140 environmental groups, major enterprise companies, and cities. Another important certification to note is the Responsible Recycler (R2) certificate, which calls for electronics recyclers to follow a stringent set of requirements in areas of recording, tracking, and exporting of e-waste as well as promoting the reuse of materials. Other certifications involve environmental, health, and safety standards. Some you may want to watch for include the following:

While all of these standards and certificates are undoubtedly crucial, there is one more less-common designation to be aware of. The Transported Asset Protection Association (TAPA)

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certification specifies security requirements for the handling, warehousing, and transportation of goods in an effort to fight cargo crime. This standard ensures that once assets, including hard drives, are en route, there are security procedures in place that prevent thieves from attempting to steal them. When you trust your assets with a legitimate recycler that adheres to these standards, you are granted the assurance that your assets (and data) will not end up in the wrong hands and that they will be recycled in an environmentally safe manner. There is no stronger confirmation of the negative impacts electronic waste can have on the environment than looking at the overwhelming sights of developing nations such as Ghana and China where electronic waste is collected every day. The air and land pollution along with the health side effects felt by local populations are indisputable consequences of irresponsible recycling practices. What is further troubling is that much of the whole e-waste components that are shipped overseas to developing countries come from the United States, where there are recycling programs available through accountable recyclers15 committed to providing solutions for this issue. Cities, businesses, and electronics manufacturers have teamed up with responsible recyclers to ensure they not only refuse to become a part of the problem, but are dedicated to the education and outreach necessary to curb the rising amounts of e-waste. The journey towards a safer environment for everyone must start with the individual. Make sure the next time you discard your old television or computer to check for health, safety, security, and environmental certifications so your electronic waste does not end up contributing to these toxic digital dumps.

Perspectives

Mosman Council / CC BY 2.0

A free e-waste recycling drop off point organized by a town council. These can often be found atmunicipal dumps.

References 1. Gartner Says Smartphone Sales Grew 46.5 Percent in Second Quarter of 2013 and Exceeded Feature Phone Sales for First Time. Gartner.com [online] (2013). 2. Hazardous substances in e-waste. Ewasteguide.info [online] (2014). http://ewasteguide.info/node/219. 3. Following the trail of toxic e-waste. Cbsnews.com [online] (2008). http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ following-the-trail-of-toxic-e-waste/. 4. Ghana: digital dumping ground. Pbs.org [online]

com/story/tis-the-season-to-recycle-project-rebootlaunched-to-increase-electronics-recycling-2013-1211?reflink=MW_news_stmp.

campaign=Feature%20Article. 12. Seifert, D. U.S. now has more cellphones than people. Mobileburn.com [online] (2011).

8. Trent, R. Infographic: recycling instead of dumping electronic waste. Windowsitpro.com [online] (2013). http://windowsitpro.com/hardware/infographicrecycling-instead-dumping-electronic-waste.

13. http://www.mobileburn.com/16994/ news/us-now-has-more-cellphones-thanpeople#ozXuZgyCrIuJScLu.99. 14. Zombie Phone [online]. http://zombiephone.

9. Cloud capital group partners with trusted industry leader e-cycle to offer mobile device recycling

com/?utm_source=feature%20article&utm_ medium=solutions&utm_content=zombie%20

(2009). http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/

and buyback programs. Curacaochronicle.com

phone&utm_campaign=Feature%20Article.

ghana804/video/video_index.html.

[online] (2014). http://curacaochronicle.com/fs/

15. Sims recycling solutions achieves e-stewards

5. Study shows recycled computers give away

cloud-capital-group-partners-with-trusted-industry-

certification. Simsrecycling.com [online]

our most personal information. Foxnepa.com

leader-e-cycle-to-offer-mobile-device-recycling-and-

(2014). http://www.simsrecycling.com/

[online] (xxxx). http://www.myfoxnepa.com/

buyback-programs/.

Newsroom/Press-Releases/eStewards-

search?vendor=ez&qu=study-shows-recycled-

10. 11 facts about e-waste. Dosomething.org [online]

Certification?utm_source=feature%20

computers-give-away-our-most-personal-

(2014). https://www.dosomething.org/facts/11-facts-

article&utm_medium=solutions&utm_content=e-

information.

about-e-waste.

stewards&utm_campaign=Feature%20

6. Recycling benefits to the economy. All-recycling-

11. Local electronics recycling services.

Article#sthash.UTXEn57T.dpuf.

facts.com [online] (2014). http://www.all-recycling-

Simsrecycling.com [online] (2014). http://

16. Who is Sims Recycling Solutions? Simsrecycling.

facts.com/recycling-benefits.html.

www.simsrecycling.com/Consumer/Find-

com [online] http://www.simsrecycling.com/

EWaste-Drop-Off?utm_source=feature%20

About-Us?utm_source=feature%20article&utm_

to increase electronics recycling. Marketwatch.

article&utm_medium=solutions%20

medium=solutions&utm_content=accountable%20

com [online] (2013). http://www.marketwatch.

journal&utm_content=find%20an%20event&utm_

recyclers&utm_campaign=Feature%20Article.

7. ‘Tis the season to recycle: project reboot launched

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Postel, S., T. Reeve, and C. McGuigan. (2014). Change the Course: A New Model of Freshwater Conservation and Restoration. Solutions 5(4): 28-34. https://thesolutionsjournal.com/article/change-the-course-a-new-model-of-freshwater-conservation-and-restoration/

Perspectives Change the Course: A New Model of Freshwater Conservation and Restoration by Sandra Postel, Todd Reeve, and Christian McGuigan

n more and more river basins around the world, water use is bumping up against the limits of a finite supply. Groundwater is being overpumped, wetlands are drying out, lakes are shrinking, and large rivers—from the Indus and the Nile to the Murray and the Colorado—are so tapped out that they rarely reach the sea.1 Society faces a difficult conundrum: water is finite, but human demands for it are not. Water is needed to produce just about everything we use, eat, and wear—from electricity and paper to burgers and blue jeans. Researchers at the University of Twente in the Netherlands have estimated that humanity’s collective water footprint totals some 9,087 cubic kilometers per year—a volume of water equivalent to the annual flow of 500 Colorado Rivers.2 We depend on freshwater ecosystems for clean water, fisheries, food, and recreation. They support the web of life on the planet. Any hope to keep rivers healthy requires that we do two things: shrink our human water footprint and restore flows to depleted ecosystems. At the moment, however, the cards are stacked against success. As long as water flows from a tap when the faucet is turned, most people do not think about water. Few have any idea that each of their cotton shirts requires some 700 gallons (2,650 liters) of water to make (with most of those gallons consumed by cotton crops in the field). Likewise, most people are unaware that it takes vast quantities of water to cool the thermoelectric power plants that generate their electricity or that each

gallon of gasoline fueling their cars takes 13 gallons of water to produce. All told, the average American’s water footprint amounts to some 2,000 gallons of water a day—twice the global average.3 On the production side of the equation, many farmers have little incentive to use their water supply more efficiently as irrigation is heavily subsidized and legal regimes often promote usage over conservation. With agriculture accounting for 70 percent of global water use,4 these issues present major barriers to downsizing humanity’s water footprint. Corporations increasingly recognize the risks of water shortage

Enter Change the Course In 2012, the National Geographic Society, Bonneville Environmental Foundation (BEF), and Participant Media launched a first-of-its-kind freshwater restoration effort designed to address these global water challenges. This campaign, called Change the Course (CtC), combines the educational reach and storytelling power of National Geographic, innovative water restoration tools and experience of BEF, and the social engagement acumen of Participant Media to create a virtuous and expanding cycle of freshwater education, conservation, and restoration.

Any hope to keep rivers healthy requires that we do two things: shrink our human water footprint and restore flows to depleted ecosystems. to their operations and bottom lines,5 with the most forward-thinking businesses pro-actively reducing their water footprints. But these actions are typically designed to reduce the vulnerability of business operations in the face of water shortages and only rarely address the needs of depleted freshwater ecosystems. Lastly, in this time of tight budgets and competing priorities, funding is scarce to implement on-the-ground projects that can conserve water and enhance flows in dewatered rivers and streams. New financial models and revenue sources are needed to fill this funding gap.

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We are piloting CtC in the Colorado River Basin, the iconic North American river that sculpted the Grand Canyon, that supports more than 30 million people and 5 million acres of cropland but that is now tapped out: water demands exceed the available supply. In most years, the Colorado dries up 90 miles before it reaches the Sea of Cortez (Gulf of California) in Mexico. Heavy diversions severely drain many of the Colorado’s tributary rivers as well, placing fish, birds, wildlife, and a $26 billion regional economy that depends on healthy river flows in the basin at risk.6

Perspectives

Change the Course

Change the Course projects span the Colorado River Basin. Rivers in which CtC has supported flow restoration (orange) or anticipates supporting flow restoration (blue).

The basic model of CtC involves five key elements: public engagement, personal water conservation pledges, corporate sponsorships that fund our restoration efforts, the execution of onthe-ground flow restoration projects, and the sharing of our successes and lessons through online storytelling and public outreach.7 Our efforts to educate and engage the public around freshwater include innovative online and social media

tools that focus on building an understanding of each individual’s water footprint. We employ SMS text messaging and email platforms as well as online interactive tools. By using National Geographic’s water footprint calculator, for example, people can discover how much water they use on a daily basis through their diets, energy consumption, home activities, and purchases of consumer goods. Through this tool and our periodic

texts and emails, they also receive tips on how they can conserve water. We also engage the public through more directed efforts, including presentations at events, corporate employee engagement initiatives, and NGO partnerships. The CtC campaign also invites individuals to pledge to take action in their lives to shrink their own water footprint. We motivate people to join our pledge community by promising

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Perspectives that for each individual pledge, CtC will restore 1,000 gallons of water to a depleted portion of the Colorado River Basin.7 This promise is possible because CtC also offers corporations the opportunity to join the campaign as a sponsor, which provides a built-in mechanism for them to balance their own water footprint by returning some water to a depleted ecosystem. In this way, corporate sponsors underwrite the public pledges to conserve, fund CtC’s flow restoration projects, and expand the envelope of corporate water stewardship. Working closely with local conservation organizations, CtC invests these corporate funds in on-the-ground projects. These work collaboratively with water-rights holders to modernize irrigation systems or apply new wateruse practices that can restore water to depleted ecosystems. Our aim is to demonstrate that flow restoration can be beneficial not only to rivers but to the larger community around them— in effect, increasing the value of water. Through BEF’s Water Restoration Certificate program,8 each project is third-party certified, ensuring high ecological value for the investment made, and the volume of water restored is verified and registered in an online registry. For corporations seeking to meet sustainability goals, this accountability tool is an important feature. Lastly, we share the stories of these projects with our pledge community and the wider public. National Geographic produces short videos for online distribution, as well as articles and photo galleries that tell the stories of these projects in an engaging way. By involving a broad segment of the public in conservation activities and promoting the idea that good water stewardship requires corporations to help return flows to the environment

to balance out their water impacts, we aim to change the way society uses, manages, and values fresh water.

Progress to Date We initiated CtC in 2012 and launched all of its elements in February 2013. To date, we have built a pledge community of 91,000 people from all 50 states and more than 100 countries, raised over USD $1.2 million from corporate sponsors to support river restoration projects, and restored 2.8 billion gallons of water to depleted ecosystems in the Colorado watershed. Through our work with partners on the ground, so far we have restored flows to five rivers that span the basin—from headwater tributaries in the Rocky Mountains to the Colorado River Delta in Mexico (see map). The following project descriptions show that each of our restoration projects spotlights an innovative policy or technology that can restore flows while also benefiting local economies.

A Water Lease for the Yampa River The Yampa River is a beautiful headwater tributary that flows through western Colorado farm country, the popular tourist town of Steamboat Springs, and Dinosaur National Monument before joining the Green River and ultimately the main channel of the Colorado River. In late June 2012, when drought gripped much of the West, flows in the Yampa had dropped to 5 percent of the normal for that time of year. The river’s native whitefish population was at risk of crashing, and tubing and fly-fishing businesses had been shut down due to the lack of flow.9 In response, CtC partnered with the Denver-based Colorado Water Trust (CWT) to execute a water lease that kept the river flowing at healthier

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levels throughout the summer, averting a major fish die-off and enabling recreation activities to resume. As CWT’s executive director Amy Beatie said, the purpose of the lease was “to maximize the beneficial use of water in Colorado.” 9 Besides rescuing a river and its dependents, the Yampa drought-lease set a precedent in Colorado. It was the first use of a 2003 state law that allows farmers, ranchers, water districts, or other entities to temporarily loan water to rivers and streams in times of need. The 2012 lease was so successful that the CWT executed several others in 2013, including another one for the Yampa.

Restoration of Wetlands and Base Flows in the Colorado Delta One of the planet’s great desert aquatic ecosystems, the Colorado River Delta was once a lush area of wetlands spanning some two million acres. But half a century of upstream river diversions that siphoned off virtually all of the Colorado River’s flow have dried it out. About 90 percent of the wetlands are gone and with them large portions of the native fish, birds, and wildlife.10 The CtC campaign is working with partners in the US and Mexico to help fund and execute wetland restoration projects in the Delta through a water bank called the Colorado River Delta Water Trust. The trust purchases or leases water rights from delta farmers who voluntarily decide to commit that water to restore critical wetland habitats, river flows, and riparian areas. As cottonwoods, willows, and other native vegetation return, the ecosystem is bouncing back. Thanks to the historic agreement known as Minute 319 signed by the US and Mexico in late 2012, the delta received an ecologically

Perspectives

Cheryl Zook/National Geographic

During the drought of 2012, an innovative water lease brought the Yampa River back from the brink of an ecological crash and allowed for recreational use in Steamboat Springs throughout much of the summer.

beneficial “pulse flow” during the spring of 2014 that rejuvenated the river’s channel, promoted native cottonwood and willow germination, and brought water to active wetland restoration sites.11 The CtC campaign has partnered with the Delta Water Trust to help secure the “base flows” that are crucial to sustaining the ecological benefits of the pulse, as well as to purchase permanent water rights for a new restoration site that will create the habitat connectivity essential for the rebuilding of bird and wildlife populations. The delta is an important ecosystem along the Pacific Flyway, so residents of both the US and Mexico will benefit from this increase in bird populations.

An Irrigation Upgrade Lifts Flows in the Verde River Most farmers in the Verde River Valley of central Arizona irrigate as their predecessors did 150 years ago: they build a simple earthen dam in the river channel to divert water into their irrigation ditch. Laterals off of the main ditch bring water from the Verde to their homes and farms. With no way to measure or monitor the volume of water in the ditch system, irrigators often take nearly all the water in the river channel.12 As a result, the Verde, which runs 195 miles (314 kilometers) from spring-fed headwaters north of Prescott then south to its confluence with the Salt River near Phoenix, gets severely depleted during the growing

season. At times during the summer months the river channel is dry for several miles at a stretch. With irrigators having neither the funding nor the incentive to alter their practices, the river’s health suffers year after year—and so do the myriad fish, birds, beavers, river otters, and other wildlife dependent on the Verde for their sustenance. In 2013, CtC partnered with The Nature Conservancy and local irrigators to upgrade the irrigation system and demonstrate that with smarter water management and improved infrastructure, it is possible to restore flow to the river with no sacrifice in crop production. With the installation of a solar-powered “smart” gate and water-level sensor, the irrigators can

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Perspectives

Cheryl Zook/National Geographic

Conservation groups are reintroducing tens of thousands of native cottonwoods, willows, and mesquite into the Colorado Delta landscape, creating jobs, habitats and a healthier environment. Here, an aerial view of the Laguna Grande restoration site.

now divert just the amount of water they need for their crops, leaving the rest for the river.12 The relatively low unit cost for the upgrade and the large corresponding flow increase is a bargain compared to many other water projects in the western United States. The CtC campaign plans to continue investments for irrigation efficiency upgrades that further restore flows in the Verde Valley and other watersheds across the Colorado basin.

The Power of Stories For each of these projects, our CtC team produces articles, photo galleries, and videos that tell the stories of why flow restoration was needed, what it achieved, and to introduce the local

people who made it happen.13 This not only enables our pledge community and sponsors to see tangible results from their pledges and funding, it inspires replication and innovation, generating momentum for more conservation and restoration. For example, a year after the Yampa water lease, CtC again partnered with the Colorado Water Trust to execute projects and agreements that helped restore flows to the Fraser and the Roaring Fork, two headwater rivers of high ecological and recreational value. Following our production of three videos about the Colorado Delta, the Mexican conservation group Pronatura Noroeste requested Spanish-language versions of the videos for distribution to conservation

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and community groups in Mexico. And after viewing CtC’s video about the Verde River restoration effort, an official at the US Department of Interior decided to share the video with her staff.

Moving to Scale Given the results of our first full year of implementation, we have confidence that our pilot in the Colorado River Basin has achieved “proof of concept” and that our CtC model is ready to be implemented in other river basins, both nationally and internationally. That said, we have learned important lessons along the way and do not wish to underplay the challenges involved in replicating CtC in other geographies, cultures, or

Perspectives

Cheryl Zook/National Geographic

The picturesque Verde River in central Arizona is a hot spot of biological diversity.

legal frameworks. A few of the lessons noted are the following: • Strong relationships with on-theground conservation groups are essential. • Securing corporate sponsorships and acquiring funding takes time. • The ability to track, monitor, and account for the volumes of water restored—made possible for CtC by BEF’s Water Restoration Certificate program—is a key motivation for corporate participation. • Developing highly effective restoration projects on the ground is time-consuming and laborintensive; it requires strong, local NGO capacity and a reasonable measure of public support.

We designed CtC to directly address the global freshwater challenge: how do we meet the food, energy, and water demands of growing populations while at the same time sustaining the health of freshwater ecosystems? We knew of no integrated approach that addressed the fundamental social, economic, and environmental drivers of freshwater depletion, and that had the potential to advance transformational solutions to this challenge. Our CtC team chose an unconventional strategy that ties together the experience and capacity of three very different, yet complementary, organizations. By bringing together storytelling, education, public engagement through social media, corporate action, sponsorship, and on-the-ground restoration

projects that work closely with farmers and local water users, CtC is testing a new model that bridges long-standing divides and elevates water stewardship. Its ultimate success, however, lies in its potential to scale up. Our goal in sharing our model and some results from our pilot in the Colorado River Basin is to catalyze a dialogue. Where and how can a multifaceted approach like Change the Course be adapted for other river basins? Is the model scalable? What are the toughest challenges? What are the potential pitfalls? Our sense is that by building this movement of public and corporate water stewardship, we can in fact positively change the course of humanity’s water future. We look forward to new ideas and partnerships to make that happen.

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Perspectives

Cheryl Zook/National Geographic

“Ditch boss” Frank Geminden shows off a new automated headgate that allows the Diamond S ditch to meet its users’ needs while leaving more water in central Arizona’s Verde River.

References 1. Postel, S & Richter, B. Rivers for Life: Managing Water for People and Nature (Island Press, Washington DC, 2003). 2. Hoekstra, AY & Mekonnen, MM. The water footprint of humanity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109, 3232–3237 (2012). 3. Water footprint calculator. Nationalgeographic.com

coming scarcity? Wharton.upenn.edu [online]. http://environment.wharton.upenn.edu. 6. Protect the Flows. Economic Contributions of Outdoor Recreation on the Colorado River & Its Tributaries (Southwick Associates, Fernandina Beach FL, 2012). 7. Change the Course [online]. www.changethecourse.us. 8. Water restoration certificates. B-e-f.org [online].

10. Zamora, F et al. Conservation Priorities in the Colorado River Delta: Mexico and the United States (Sonoran Institute et al., 2005). 11. Flessa, KW et al. Flooding the Colorado River Delta: a landscape-scale experiment. Eos, Transactions American Geophysical Union 94, 485–486 (2013). 12. Postel, S. Arizona irrigators share water with

[online]. http://environment.nationalgeographic.

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desert river. Nationalgeographic.com [online]

com/environment/freshwater/change-the-course/

restoration-certificates/why-wrcs/.

(2013). http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.

water-footprint-calculator/. 4. United Nations. Water in a Changing World: United

9. Postel, S. How the Yampa River and its dependents survived the drought of 2012. Nationalgeographic.com

com/2013/09/03/arizona-irrigators-share-waterwith-desert-river/.

Nations World Development Report 3rd edn (UNESCO,

[online] (2012). http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.

Paris, 2009).

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dependents-survived-the-drought-of-2012/.

com/environment/freshwater/change-the-course/.

5. Valuing water: how can businesses manage the

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13. Change the course. Nationalgeographic.com

Monaco, E. (2014). Fairphone’s Supply Chain Revolution: Changing the World, a Handset at a Time. Solutions 5(4): 35-39. https://thesolutionsjournal.com/article/fairphones-supply-chain-revolution-changing-the-world-a-handset-at-a-time/

Perspectives Fairphone’s Supply Chain Revolution: Changing the World, a Handset at a Time by Edoardo Monaco

Fairphone / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Fairphones are fully recyclable and responsibly produced in China using conflict-free minerals sourced from the DRC.

he really “smart” phone of the future? Fully recyclable, responsibly produced in the People’s Republic of China, and built on blood-free minerals from Congo’s South Kivu province. Good news: in Amsterdam, apparently, the future has just begun, since a young organization is attempting to change the way we look at our mobiles and—more in general—remind us of the role we play with our daily choices as consumers in defining socio-economic development patterns worldwide. Fairphone, a social enterprise launched in 2013, employs a truly hands-on approach that utilizes existent market forces and supply chain systems to produce smartphones whose every stage of production is

closely monitored to ensure compliance with sustainable practices and fair working conditions. Globalization has meant faster, cheaper, easier trade across the entire world. But that has not necessarily entailed equal levels of well-being and grassroots development for all parties involved. Supply chains have become complex, hard to monitor, and this has occasionally created fertile ground for murky deals, unlawful exploitation, disregard of basic human rights, and even outright incentive for armed conflict and civil strife (e.g., Democratic Republic of Congo’s conflict minerals, Sierra Leone’s blood diamonds, etc.). Fairphone’s founders aim to address this wider problem. Mobile phones represent a mere initial focal point

in sparking a trade-based, consumerdriven, peaceful “revolution.” Fairphone wasn’t founded by experts of the electronics industry, but by activists with a broad mission: reminding consumers about the power of their demand to shape any market. Their roadmap seems reasonably clear: indentifying a common, but at times “socially problematic” manufacturing supply chain; introducing alternative, sustainable practices into all of its stages; setting an example for the industry; and—most of all— providing consumers with a viable alternative that may kindle their conscience. That is, of course, easier said than done. Fairphone has, in fact—purposefully—jumped right into the thick of a series of problems.

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Perspectives

Fairphone / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Fairphone ensures their supply chain does not perpetuate conflict by working with mines such as this one in the Katanga region of the DRC, which has ensured that minerals sourced here do not finance warlords.

Smartphones are popular, sought after items cherished by millions of consumers, but they are also the end product of some of the most intricate, hard-to-map production cycles in modern economy, involving activities ranging from mining to soldering, from software engineering to design, and carried out by different actors in virtually every corner of the globe. Moreover, Fairphone is not a charity, but a social business: it’s a no-loss entity that must be self-sustaining and self-perpetuating, not depending on philanthropy or donations and operating in the very same market as major, long established corporations. It has therefore had to build a network of relevant partners and suppliers that would not only commit to transparency and sustainability along the whole production cycle, but that could ultimately deliver quality and profitability, too.

Sustainable from Cradle to Grave—and back The phone’s essential raw materials such as tantalum and tin are sourced from the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) Katanga and South Kivu provinces through projects such as Solutions for Hope and Conflict-Free Tin Initiative (CFTI), which guarantee that the minerals sourced from their mines do not finance any of the many warlords active in the region. The whole of eastern DRC, and in particular the provinces of North and South Kivu, represent some of the most conflict-ridden regions in the world. Various rebel groups— offshoots and remnants of the belligerents of the two Congo wars— have been wreaking havoc in the area since the 1990s: Rwandan-backed militias (e.g., RDC, CNDP, M23) and Hutu armed groups (most of which

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fled Rwanda after the genocide, for fear of Tutsi retaliation, such as FDLR) are hardly contained by the ill-equipped and often corrupt DRC army. Rebels have managed to finance their prolonged guerrilla warfare by controlling, among others, the export revenues of many local mines, which also happen to employ most of the local population.1 The 2010 US Dodd-Frank Act (Sections 1502 and 1504) implemented a de facto ban on the export of minerals from eastern DRC, by mandating strict traceability certifications for minerals sourced in the region by any company listed on the US stock exchange. The new requirements were considered so vexing and unrealistic in such a resource rich, but uniquely chaotic and restive region that big electronic companies simply shifted their sourcing elsewhere, as the risk of being

Perspectives

Fairphone / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

A Fairphone representative meeting with a local business man in Kolwezi, in the Katanga region of the DRC.

publicly associated, albeit indirectly, with the brutality of rebels’ activities was deemed far too high. This scenario did reduce the militias’ income from minerals, but it also caused a dramatic loss of livelihood for local miners and their families. CFTI was among the very first schemes, in 2012, to bring them back to work. The initiative, in fact, kick-started the export of certifiable conflict-free minerals from selected pits in the region in compliance with the Dodd-Frank requirements, thanks to the participation—i.e., the renewed demand—of established electronics industry giants like Philips, Motorola,

HP and, more recently, Apple, as well as emerging actors like Fairphone itself. The key task of actually manufacturing the “fair” phones was entrusted to A’Hong, a Shenzhen-based subsidiary of the Chinese group Changhong. The choice may sound like another surprise: China isn’t exactly the first place that pops to mind when thinking of sound labor laws enforcement and corporate social responsibility. Shenzhen itself— among the very first ever Chinese Special Economic Zones (SEZs), located along the coast of “the world’s factory,” Guangdong province, right next to Hong Kong—has long been

considered the symbol of outsourced manufacturing, too often in the form of sweatshops. Even the contractors of internationally renowned brands have found it hard to remain immune to occasional criticism: many may remember, for instance, the recent debate on working conditions sparked by the suicide cases among the several-hundred-thousand strong Chinese workforce of Hon Hai / Foxconn, the world’s largest maker of electronic products such as iPad, iPhone, or Xbox. But that’s another aspect in which Fairphone shows vision—and outright courage. “We purposefully

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Perspectives intend to go where the problem is, not run away from it,” Roos Van de Weerd, Public Engagement Officer at Fairphone, said in a personal interview in fall 2013. “What real impact would we make if we decided to artificially create from scratch a ‘niche’ supply chain that remains foreign to the mainstream ones? We want to demonstrate that in DRC, just like in China, it is possible to implement sustainable practices, and that a growing number of relevant actors on the ground are actually willing to [do so].” For instance, Changhong Electric Co., headquartered in Sichuan, was chosen on the basis of a series of criteria including commitment to fair workers’ conditions, transparency, accountability, use of sustainably sourced materials, as well as the delivery of technologically sound products. TAOS (Training and Auditing Organization Systems) Network, an organization founded in 2006 to promote corporate social responsibility in China, conducts regular assessments at both the level of management and among the workers to verify short-term and long term “social compliance.” Attention to transparency and accessibility translates also into flexible configuration of the phone’s operating system and user-friendly assembling of spare parts such as batteries, that are meant to be removable and replaceable. Last but not least, Fairphone has paired up with Closing the Loop Foundation and the Dutch-based Techreturns to maximize the reuse of dismissed phones—in part transferred from high to low income countries— and to ultimately promote safe e-waste recycling in countries such as Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, and Uganda, once handsets have completely exhausted their full life cycles.

Massimo Mercuriall / CC BY 2.0

With a second batch of phones distributed in the European market in April 2014, it is hoped that Fairphone smart phones will prove competitive among with young, socially conscious and socialmedia savvy buyers.

Relevance that Transcends Tech Specs While the concept of fair trade isn’t a novelty, Fairphone’s model does mark an interesting progress—perhaps a paradigm shift—within the movement, increasingly heading towards composite, even technologically advanced industrial products in addition to traditional agricultural commodities—such as coffee, tea, or cocoa—that have constituted the bulk of fair trade so far. This is an inevitable sign of changing times: today’s global society encompasses economies whose manufacturing and service sectors have expanded far beyond national borders by creating elaborate supply chain networks—intertwining countries and realities thousands of kilometers apart. In order to be effective in such a challenging context, fair trade organizations must be able to reflect and follow these new complex patterns by conceiving solutions that are increasingly “multi-dimensional” and

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by promoting transparent and socially responsible practices at all stages of production—in different countries— at the very same time. Fairphone does attempt to do so, employing a bold yet pragmatic approach. This single, relatively small organization has built a solid network of partnerships without which the mission it initiated could never be attained: even just mapping all actors involved in modern phones’ production cycles can prove to be cumbersome, let alone ensuring their continued “responsible conduct.” It targets real-world supply chains, and brings the solution to the very locations where problems are more acute. Moreover, Fairphone uses “natural” market dynamics —namely demand—as a driver for change. It does not intend to aggressively divert or “re-educate” consumers, but rather to merely inform and present them with an alternative.

Perspectives

Fairphone / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Fairphone has partnered with organizations to maximize the reuse of dismissed phones and promote safe e-waste recycling, through efforts such as this “Urban Mine” event in 2011.

In late January 2014, the very first batch of 25,000 phones was delivered to European buyers that had, months before, subscribed to the purchase of a piece of technology they had never seen or tested, displaying a remarkable readiness to buy into a sheer idea for the hefty price of 325 EUR. Word-ofmouth seems to have spread quickly, mostly within young, educated, social-media-savvy circles. A new batch of 35,000 phones is in production at the time of writing (April 2014), again exclusively for the European market. If the phone’s performance and functionality prove comparable

to its competitors’, future expansion to other markets seems a logical and promising prospect. In an era driven by the converging forces of liberalism and unavoidable economic interconnectedness, consumer demand—especially in developed countries—is essential to create an actual market for the very traceability, transparency, and responsibility that have a shot at making global trade truly conducive to sustainable, inclusive development. Endeavors such as Fairphone’s can significantly contribute to a process of “parallel evolution” in this direction,

both in terms of trade practices and consumer behavior. Be it the morning coffee, a chocolate treat, or your daily dose of texts, chats, and internet surfing on your (really smart) smartphone, it is now increasingly conceivable for socially and environmentally conscious patrons to make comprehensive, sustainable living choices that, on a daily basis, invest in multiple sectors and make a difference across the world. References 1. Seay L.E., What’s Wrong with Dodd-Frank 1502?, Working Paper 284, Center for Global Development, Washington DC, January 2012.

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Ker, M. (2014). Getting Down to Business: Deepening Environmental Transparency in China. Solutions 5(4): 40-50. https://thesolutionsjournal.com/article/getting-down-to-business-deepening-environmental-transparency-in-china/

Feature

Getting Down to Business: Deepening Environmental Transparency in China

by Michelle Ker Lei Han / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Tiananmen Square in Beijing cloaked in smog.

In Brief Large-scale reductions in emissions must be realized in order to address China’s formidable pollution problems. To that end, in addition to strengthening enforcement, the government needs to incentivize companies to reduce their emissions, and decision-makers need to be able to identify key sources of emissions and encourage public monitoring of pollution sources by opening access to environmental information. The establishment of a national Pollutant Release and Transfer Register system—an environmental database to collect and disseminate information on environmental releases and transfers of conventional and toxic pollutants from industrial facilities—could help improve the implementation of China’s environmental policies, and would be a meaningful step to encourage companies to reduce their emissions.

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series of high-profile environmental disasters in 2013, including northern China’s winter “airpocalypse” and the discovery of thousands of dead pigs littering Shanghai’s main water source, have indelibly illustrated the stakes of not enacting stronger environmental policies. In recent years, the Chinese government’s policies have started to reflect the need to balance economic growth with environmental sustainability. As part of this policy shift, in 2008, China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) issued a set of measures that require government agencies to disclose a wide range of environmental information, in response to the State Council’s Open Government Information Regulations. Despite the gradual progress made in government disclosure, environmental information from Chinese companies has, until very recently, remained in a black box. Over the last year, developments in Chinese laws and regulations, including pathbreaking amendments to China’s bedrock Environmental Protection Law, support for environmental transparency in policy statements from China’s new leaders, unprecedented public awareness of environmental issues, and best practices already underway in various Chinese cities, have enlarged the space for deepening environmental transparency in China. The establishment of a national Pollutant Release and Transfer Register (PRTR) system, building upon a pilot PRTR project currently underway in Tianjin, could help improve the implementation of China’s environmental policies, and would be a meaningful step to encourage companies to reduce their emissions.

Historical Context In the mid-1980s, informal disclosure of information related to public affairs emerged first at the village and then at the enterprise level as a consequence of economic reforms. Guangzhou became the first city to come out

with official provisions on open government information in 2003, and several major cities soon followed suit. These rules and regulations served as the main legal basis for disclosure of government information by local governments until 2008, when the central government enacted China’s first national regulations on open government information.1 The State Council’s Open Government Information Regulations, enacted in 2007, require state administrative agencies to proactively release information related to their work and allow citizens to request information.

Key Concepts • New laws and regulations with potentially game-changing provisions for environmental information disclosure present significant opportunities for deepening environmental transparency. • In contrast with the gradual progress made in government disclosure of environmental information, corporate environmental information disclosure has been extremely limited. • China’s next step should be to formalize corporate disclosure of pollutant releases and transfers through establishing a national Pollutant Release and Transfer Register system.

The regulations—a milestone for a country not known for a tradition of transparency—were motivated by a growing recognition that transparency can benefit economic development and improve government performance. Since 2003, China has passed a series of environmental laws and regulations that incorporate a variety of environmental information disclosure requirements. One of the earliest was the 2003 Cleaner Production Promotion Law, which requires heavily polluting enterprises to disclose information about emissions and other environmental data. The 2003 Environmental

Impact Assessment (EIA) Law and the related 2006 Measures on Public Participation in EIA required partial public disclosure of EIA documents. In 2005, a key State Council document setting forth guiding principles on environmental protection stressed the importance of information disclosure, public supervisory mechanisms, and the disclosure of enterprise violations of environmental standards.2 As the most active agency in pushing for greater disclosures, MEP was the first and only ministry to operationalize the Open Government Information Regulations, enacting the Measures on Open Environmental Information on May 2008. Yeling Tan, a global governance scholar at the Harvard Kennedy School, argues that these open environmental information measures are unique in several ways. First, the burden of disclosure in China lies with government rather than industry. Only enterprises that have exceeded pollution standards are required to disclose their emissions. Second, the measures hold less weight than law. Under China’s legal framework, the State Secrets Law and Archives Law both have higher status, causing uncertainty on the official level as to whether the disclosure of certain information might be in violation of the State Secrets Law or Archives Law. In practice, this confusion has allowed officials some degree of discretion on disclosure. Third, “the measures are technocratically designed to improve governance outcomes rather than to support a ‘right to know’, such as the U.S.’s Toxics Release Inventory, which is based on Freedom of Information Act.”3

How We Got To Where We Are Today As China’s increasingly prosperous and middle-class society has become more aware of environmental issues, it has demanded stronger government action on environmental protection, and has called for greater participation and government transparency. In a 2013 survey

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conducted by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 80 percent of respondents stated that the government should prioritize environmental protection over economic development, and over 60 percent said that government information about environmental protection is not transparent.4 Lacking an effective institutional mechanism through which they can participate in the environmental policy-making process or, until recently, seek redress through the legal system, citizens have turned to protest—online, and increasingly, offline—to make their grievances heard.5 A flurry of environmental incidents in recent years have pushed up public engagement in environmental issues. The greatest headway has been made with public mobilization over urban air pollution. Since 2011, haze and smog have cloaked wide swaths of China for long periods of time, negatively affecting the health and quality of life of millions of residents. A particularly toxic few weeks during the winter of 2011–2012 spurred millions of city-dwellers to take to the internet to express outrage at the environmental conditions of their cities. But much of the outrage came from the lack of government transparency about the pollution—government statistics not only excluded data on key pollutants, but also claimed that air quality was continuously improving, which was easily belied by observation and experience. Alternative data streams, most notably from the U.S. Embassy, contributed to growing public distrust. In response to widespread public criticism, the government reversed course. By the end of January 2012, Beijing began to track and publicly report ambient levels of PM 2.5, fine airborne particles believed to pose the greatest health risks, and decreed that some 30 major cities would begin monitoring PM 2.5, followed by 80 more in 2013, and most other cities by 2015. By March 2012, the State Council announced revised national air quality rules—along

1010global.org / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Recent years have seen increased public engagement in environmental issues across China. Here, an event organized by the China Youth Climate Action Network.

with mandatory PM2.5 data and ozone measurements, standards would be tightened to be more in line with the World Health Organization’s recommended levels.6 It was a milestone of sorts: public mobilization online had reached the highest levels of government and triggered concrete changes in national policy. But success with public mobilization on air pollution has not translated into success with less visible but no less damaging types of pollution, such as soil pollution.

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While some environmental concerns have been channeled online, in many cases, it is not enough. Environmental protests—generally stemming from citizens’ concerns over the potential for adverse health impacts and depreciation of property value that environmental degradation and environmentally risky projects pose7—are fast becoming one of the biggest forms of social unrest in China, growing, by one estimate, an average of 29 percent annually from 1996 to 2011, and by 120 percent from

2010 to 2011.8 Last summer saw the eruption of large-scale environmental protests: in Kunming, over plans to build a China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) oil refinery and paraxylene (PX) project; in Shanghai, against plans for a lithium battery factory; and in Ningbo over work on an oil and petrochemical complex. Just this May, a similar large-scale protest took place in Hangzhou against a planned waste incinerator. Such protests, particularly when there is potential for the protest to turn violent or to spread from one city to another, pose a significant threat to social stability. The severity of ongoing environmental degradation in China and its impact on social stability has led the central government, which has traditionally placed limited value on transparency, to view environmental transparency as a necessary policy tool for improving environmental outcomes through: (i) strengthening its capacity to monitor local governments and polluting enterprises; (ii) enabling non-state actors to monitor and exert pressure on local governments and polluting enterprises, and (iii) and improving channels for citizen participation.9 This shift can be seen in public calls by Premier Li Keqiang for the proactive disclosure of environmental pollution information in a “transparent” and “timely” manner and a recent circular from the State Council asking government officials to release information in an “active, timely, comprehensive, and accurate manner.”10 Moreover, the central government and increasingly, some local governments, view the disclosure of environmental information as being key to improving public trust in government information and as one environmental protection official put it, “reconciling differences between the public, enterprises and the state.”11 This mentality shift, however, will take time to take root and spread. Local environmental protection officials have traditionally viewed

information disclosure as thankless work that only adds on to their already full plates, and have limited disclosure for a variety of reasons (e.g., for fear of undermining social stability, negatively affecting economic development, or generating bad press). But with the increasing frequency of environmental protests, where grievances are often as much about the lack of transparency as the pollution itself, environmental officials have learned that the timely disclosure of information can help mitigate citizen concerns at an early stage.12

environmental protection bureau (EPB) enforcement campaigns, clean production audit information, enterprise environmental performance ratings, disposition of petitions and complaints, environmental impact assessment reports and project completion approvals, discharge fee data, and responses to public information request. Out of a possible 100 points, basic compliance with the regulations earns 60 points.13 The 2009 assessment, made one year after China’s national open government information regulations

Last year, Ningbo began requiring companies to disclose their own pollution data—a first in China. What the Data Tell Us How has implementation of China’s open environmental information regulations played out? The Pollution Information and Transparency Index (PITI), a ranking of open environmental information amongst 113 Chinese cities, offers perhaps the most comprehensive independent assessment to date. Since 2009, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs (IPE) have produced the PITI on an annual basis. The PITI assesses government disclosure of environmental information at the municipal level. It does not cover disclosure at the provincial and national level nor does it cover corporate information disclosure. Another limitation is that the PITI, along with other existing studies, covers the availability and access, but not the quality of the environmental information disclosed. The PITI assesses cities’ performance implementing open environmental information regulations across eight categories: records of enterprise violations, results of

came into effect, found that overall implementation of environmental information disclosure was relatively low. Only four cities received more than the minimum compliance level of 60 points. Thirty-two received fewer than 20 points, and the average score of all 113 cities was just over 31 points.13 The 2012 assessment found that the average PITI score continued to rise, reaching 42.73 points, with 20 cities scoring above 60 points. However, the assessment also saw the largest number of cities (35 percent) with decreasing PITI scores over of the previous three years.14 Overall, PITI scores since 2009 show a very uneven performance across the country, as well as significant fluctuations in city scores, highlighting the challenges of policy implementation in China. Uneven Performance of Chinese Cities The main challenge to implementing policies in China stems from its decentralized governance system. National environmental policies are

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Jonathan Kos-Read / CC BY-ND 2.0

View of the city of Anchang in Sichuan province, a region with some of the highest levels of pollution in China.

drafted in Beijing and implemented by subnational governments that may have competing goals, such as economic growth. The main burden of implementing the open environmental information measures falls on the EPB within each local government. EPBs receive their policy directives from the MEP, but local governments control EPB resources as well as personnel promotion decisions. The open environmental information measures require that EPBs disclose information on enterprises that have violated pollution standards. However, economic growth remains an overriding priority for most localities, leading local government incentives to be closely aligned with those of industry. This close relationship translates into poorer bargaining power for EPBs in relation to enterprises. 15 Thus, local government objectives—specifically, the degree to

which the local government values maximizing growth vs. balancing growth with environmental sustainability—as well as state-enterprise relations strongly affect the implementation of the open environmental information measures. Based on PITI data, scholars Lorentzen, Landrey, and Yasuda and Tan both find that “Chinese cities dominated by large industrial firms are less transparent than those with a less-concentrated industrial base,” and “the negative effect on environmental transparency is stronger when the city’s largest firm is in a highly polluting industry.”16 PITI scores have shown gradual improvement among municipal governments in economically advanced regions, such as the Pearl River Delta and the Yangtze basin. Ningbo, a city in Zhejiang Province, has led the PITI rankings for all four years, receiving high marks for disclosing enterprise

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violation records (a rarity among its peers), for the disposition of verified petitions and complaints, and for being responsive to public information requests. Last year, Ningbo began requiring companies to disclose their own pollution data—a first in China. Best practices by other high performing cities include publishing real-time online monitoring data, publishing emissions violation data, citizen petitions, and complaints information; and regularly publishing data on enterprise emissions.17 However, the open environmental information measures have failed to improve transparency in the most polluted cities, which is precisely where they are most needed. Indeed, cities in provinces with high levels of pollution, such as Shandong, Inner Mongolia, Sichuan, Henan, and Hunan, have made little progress or even regressed.18

Uneven Disclosure with Different Types of Information Beyond the large variation in performance changes across cities, changes in government disclosure have also depended on the types of information being released. The Measures on Open Environmental Information distinguishes between “government environmental information” and “enterprise environmental information,” with the former defined as “information made or obtained by environmental protection departments in the course of exercising their environmental responsibilities” and the latter as “information recorded or stored by enterprises relating to environmental impact arising from enterprise operational activities and enterprise environmental behavior” As a general rule of thumb, EPBs maintain relatively adequate information on policy documents, basic environmental quality, environmental news and announcements, and the environmental agency itself, but are less forthcoming with complex and sensitive information, such as environmental supervision, emissions data, EIA outcomes, accidents and emergency responses.19 In 2010, the types of environmental information with the largest percentage increase in average scores relate both to public appeals (disposition of verified petitions and complaints [8.63%] and responses to public information requests [14.01%]). In 2011, the information types with the largest score increases relate to government performance (fees imposed and collected on pollution discharge [11.55%] and clean production audit [8.58%]).20 Unfortunately, the types of information with which environmental authorities have been least forthcoming happen to include the most critical kinds of environmental information: disclosure of enterprise emissions data, enterprise supervision records, and EIA information. In industrialized countries, it is

common practice to make mandatory the disclosure of the categories and amounts of hazardous substances discharged to the environment on a regular basis. Routine enterprise supervision information—including enterprises’ violations of emission standards, violation of total emission control targets, and records of administrative penalties—are crucial for determining whether an enterprise has been in compliance with environmental regulations. EIAs, which identify potential environmental impacts from proposed development actions, are important for facilitating informed decision-making and sound environmental management. In these three areas, most cities have made no substantive progress since 2008. Particularly troubling is the finding from the 2012 PITI assessment that “none of the cities surveyed made entire EIA reports public, nor were there any EIA hearings that invited the public to participate.”21

China’s Next Step: Formalizing Corporate Disclosure of Pollutant Releases

Measures on Open Environmental Information (2008) •• Lays out the scope of governmental environmental information disclosure, listing seventeen items of environmental information EPBs must disclose to the public “on [their] own initiative.” •• These items can be clustered into four major categories: environmental laws and regulations; environmental quality; environmental management and supervision; and environmental accidents and emergency responses. •• In addition, companies that discharge above emission standards must publish information on four categories: the company’s name and address and the name of its legal representatives, the concentration and volume of each pollutant and its discharge mode, the environmental facilities in operation, and the company’s emergency response plan. •• Disclosure for companies who comply with emission standards is voluntary.

In contrast with the steady progress made in government disclosure of environmental information, the environmental information disclosure from Chinese enterprises has been extremely limited. Until the promulgation of new corporate environmental information reporting requirements over the last year, regulations only mandated disclosure for enterprises known to have exceeded national or local pollution standards, and even this requirement was often flouted. A 2009 Greenpeace study on the implementation of mandatory corporate information disclosure found that none of the 500 Fortune Global and the 100 Fortune China companies found to be in violation of pollutant discharge standards disclosed environmental information within the required period of 30 days.22

Large scale reduction in emissions must be realized to address China’s formidable pollution problems. In addition to strengthening enforcement, the government needs to incentivize companies to reduce their emissions, and decision-makers need to be able to identify key sources of emissions and encourage public monitoring of pollution sources by opening access to information. International experience has demonstrated that well-designed environmental disclosure policy tools can help drive pollution reduction. China’s next step should be to formalize enterprise disclosure of pollutant releases and transfers through the establishment of a national Pollutant Release and Transfer Registers (PRTR) system (see page 46).

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International Experience with Environmental Information Disclosure Policy Tools Over the past two decades, an increasing number of countries around the world have adopted national or large-scale environmental disclosure programs, motivated by goals spanning the public’s right to know to encouraging pollution reduction. Such programs are widely considered to be the “third wave” of environmental management, complementing “command and control” approaches and market-based tools. Two main types of programs have emerged: pollutant release and transfer registers, and performance rating and disclosure systems. Why China Needs a National PRTR System Now Just a few years ago, talk of a PRTR for China might have seemed a bit abstract, yet that is precisely the direction China is headed today. The foundation for a PRTR-like system in China has existed for some time. Under the 2003 Cleaner Production Promotion Law, the MEP and other agencies are required to disclose factory-level emissions for heavily polluting enterprises. However, as a “promotion law” with no regulatory teeth, it effectively relies on voluntary disclosure by enterprises. New laws and regulations with potentially game-changing provisions for environmental information disclosure present significant opportunities for deepening environmental transparency. At a macro level, the passage of long-awaited amendments to China’s Environmental Protection Law this April provides environmental protection officials with greater enforcement authority. Significantly, the law now has an entire chapter devoted to environmental information disclosure and public participation, including provisions locking in recent regulations on real-time emissions data disclosure for key state-controlled enterprises (see

Pollutant Release and Transfer Registers The Pollutant Release and Transfer Register (PRTR) system—an environmental database to collect and disseminate information on environmental release and transfers of toxic chemicals from industrial facilities—was first pioneered in the U.S. in the 1980s with the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI), created in the wake of the devastating Union Carbide chemical accident that killed over 3,700 people in Bhopal, India. In less than a decade, chemicals on the TRI list decreased by over 45 percent. To get a sense of the scale of reductions, 1.3 billion pounds fewer toxic chemicals were emitted to the air, water, and land in the U.S.23 The key to the success of the TRI—at its crux, a simple pollution accounting program—was in how it was used by a diverse range of environmental stakeholders for follow-up actions. Individual citizens and environmental and community groups use TRI data to pressure polluting companies to clean up and to promote legislative action for environmental protection. Government agencies can compare the emissions of similar facilities across the country, identify needs and opportunities for source reductions, and evaluate existing environmental programs. Companies have used the data for internal identification of source reduction opportunities as well as to support negotiations with community groups.24 Since 2000, when the EU established the PRTR, pollutant discharge databases have become a convention in modern industrialized countries. To date, PRTRs are in place in over 50 countries and regions around the world. Most tend to be mandatory, specified in legislation, and focused on toxic pollutants not covered by conventional regulations. According to the OECD Council, the core elements of a PRTR system are: ••A listing of chemicals, groups of chemicals, and other relevant pollutants that are released to the environment or transferred off-site; ••Integrated multi-media reporting of release and transfers (to air, water and land); ••Self-reporting by covered industry or business categories; ••Periodic reporting (preferably annually); and ••Making data available to the public. International experience demonstrates that PRTRs can improve environmental protection by enhancing the government’s ability to prioritize and target enforcement efforts, fostering competition among enterprises to reduce emissions, and strengthening public monitoring of polluters.25 PRTRs tend to operate in countries with well-developed regulatory systems and a strong, well-organized environmental civil society sector capable of using PRTR data to mobilize public pressure on offending firms.

page 48), and provisions forbidding and creating potentially substantial penalties for the falsification of data. Furthermore, MEP’s “Measures for the Registration of Hazardous Chemicals for Environmental Management,” which went into effect in March 2013, and “Measures on Self-Monitoring and Information Disclosure of Key State-Controlled Enterprises”, which went into effect in January 2014, provide for a PRTR framework. The former makes it mandatory for companies using or producing hazardous chemicals to

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disclose release and transfer information of priority hazardous chemicals and pollutants, as well as the emission monitoring results.30 Under the latter, key state-controlled enterprises—the biggest polluting companies that together account for 65 percent of China’s industrial emissions as identified on an annual government authored list—are now required to monitor and disclose their air emissions and wastewater discharges continuously to the public on a platform established by the provincial or city-level environmental department.31

USCG Press / CC BY 2.0

The city of Ningbo, in Zhejiang Province, has led the PITI rankings for four years.

Under these regulations, ad hoc provisions for a prototype PRTR now exist in practice, even if not in name. The next step is formally establishing a PRTR system. Rather than a constellation of city and provincial disclosure platforms as proposed under the new measures, having a centralized national database of emissions data using common identifiers for chemicals, facilities, and locations would facilitate comparison and aggregation of data and allow for tracking of emissions trends over time, which would be a boon for environmental officials. In the past, China’s capacity (or lack of it) to implement such a system was cited as the main barrier to implementing a PRTR system. Under its 12th Five Year Plan, however, China has invested significantly in

expanding monitoring networks— spending USD $6.6 billion between 2011 and 2015 to boost its real-time monitoring capacity—and has committed to environmental investment and the development of environmental protection industries.32 Finally, a national PRTR has some domestic precedent to build upon. A pilot PRTR project, funded under the EU-China Environmental Governance Program, is currently underway in the Tianjin-Economic Technological Development Area (TEDA).33 The project began in January 2013 and will run until December 2014.34 The political commitment, funding, and human resources for better enterprise environmental information disclosure are now all in place for the establishment of a national PRTR system in China.

Recommendations for Implementing a PRTR System in China In the short-term, TEDA Eco Center should conduct monitoring and evaluation of the TEDA PRTR pilot. MEP should develop additional municipal-level PRTR pilot projects, building upon TEDA PRTR evaluation results, as a proof of concept. Successful municipal-level pilots could be expanded into provinciallevel programs. Implementing a PRTR in several stages can help identify potential problems and issues before implementation on a national scale. It would also provide industry and government opportunities for learning. Ideally, candidates for municipal-level PRTR pilots would be cities that have performed well in implementing the open

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environmental disclosure measures, and that are also industry-heavy. Each pilot should consider partnerships with research institutions, international environmental NGOs, and international organizations, which can provide technical assistance and policy support.35 Based on the early experiences of the TEDA PRTR pilot, where a major obstacle for project implementation has been companies’ lack of understanding of PRTRs, it would be crucial to provide adequate training and guidance for companies. This is particularly important considering the corporate sector’s generally low levels of awareness of environmental information disclosure.36 This could include training workshops introducing PRTRs to companies to increase their understanding of what is required of them, as well as more sector-specific trainings. Finally, to ensure stakeholder buy-in and cooperation, the MEP should regularly engage a wide range of affected and interested stakeholders, including representatives from government, industry, and environmental organizations, in consultations throughout the PRTR’s design and development. In the long-term, the MEP should develop a national PRTR system covering conventional and toxic pollutants in order to use the PRTR data to track pollutant emissions over time, evaluate progress in reducing emissions, and inform national pollution prevention and sustainability priorities. The process of developing a national PRTR system provides a good opportunity for China to consolidate existing environmental reporting requirements. MEP should consider the potential to integrate current reporting on pollution information into a single national database covering releases and transfers across all environmental media. An integrated pollution information system could aid government officials in making national environment assessments and formulating national

Environmental Performance Rating and Disclosure Programs The challenges posed by PRTRs for developing countries—technical feasibility and the public’s ability to understand and use complex emission reports—have led to a preference for programs that condense complex information into publicly disclosed environmental performance ratings. Such programs have been touted as a means of getting around perhaps the most daunting obstacle to pollution control in developing countries—weak regulatory institutions. Motivated by its environmental enforcement agency’s limited capacity to tackle growing environmental challenges arising from industrial expansion, Indonesia established the developing world’s first environmental performance rating and disclosure program in 1995, with support from the World Bank and U.S., Canadian, and Australian development agencies. Under the Program for Pollution Control, Evaluation and Rating (PROPER), companies selfreport their pollution levels, which are subsequently analyzed and checked by the government’s environmental enforcement agency, and are then assigned a rating according to a simple, five-color grading scale. Ratings are first shared with the companies and, following a retesting period, are then disclosed to the public. PROPER has been credited with improving the average environmental compliance rate of covered companies from 30 percent in 1995 to nearly 70 percent in 2011.26 China followed suit with its Green Watch program in 1999, establishing pilot programs in two municipalities, Zhenjiang (Jiangsu Province) and Hohhot (Inner Mongolia Autonomous Province). Modeled after Indonesia’s PROPER, Green Watch rated companies based on environmental performance and broadcast the results through media outlets. Several preliminary studies on the Green Watch pilots suggested they had positive impacts on regulatory compliance, with compliance rates among covered companies increasing 10 percent in Zhenjiang and 39 percent in Hohhot after the first year of the pilot programs.27 Based on its pilot, Jiangsu Province decided to promote province-wide implementation of Green Watch in 2001. The State Environmental Protection Administration, MEP’s predecessor, subsequently issued non-mandatory guidance in 2005 encouraging nationwide implementation of Green Watch, but the rating system was halted in Hohhot after the pilot phase and does not seem to have taken off beyond Jiangsu Province.28 However, a trial guideline on corporate environmental performance rating jointly released this January by MEP, the National Development and Reform Commission, and China’s banking regulators may revitalize this approach.29 Under this new initiative, targeted companies, which include both heavy polluters and those that have been sanctioned for environmental violations, will have their environmental performance considered by financial institutions when applying for loans.

environmental policies and strategies. On a more practical level, it could reduce reporting burdens and administrative costs for both government and industry. Finally, considering the nature of PRTRs as soft policy tools that require follow-up action to drive improvements in environmental quality, the importance of robust civil society engagement cannot be understated. MEP can help facilitate public access and engagement through developing complementary tools to help users understand and utilize PRTR data.37

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Concluding Thoughts Going forward, an important consideration for China’s environmental transparency movement is what the impact of information disclosure has been. In other words, has greater disclosure of environmental information led to improved environmental outcomes, and has that improvement led to greater responsiveness and accountability? Environmental transparency is substantive to the extent that a society’s stakeholders—government, companies, civil society, and individual citizens—make use of the

information disclosed. Though beyond the scope of this paper, China’s vibrant environmental NGO sector has and will continue to play a critical role in its environmental transparency movement and, increasingly, in using the data obtained to assist the government in enforcing its environmental laws. The forces that have triggered demand for public access to environmental information elsewhere around the world are in full force in China: environmental problems of indisputable gravity and scale, rising activism in civil society, and the development and spread of information technology and means of communication. On top of that, we are seeing an unprecedented commitment to environmental transparency at the national level. The overall form of China’s environmental transparency movement is lumbering forward—it is a trend that is unlikely to be reversed—but the momentum must be seized. The time for the establishment of a national PRTR system in China is now. References

five years and have no illegal offenses on record.

Transparency without Democracy: The Unexpected

These conditions theoretically expand the number

Effects of China’s Environmental Disclosure

of groups that can raise public interest lawsuits to

Policy. Governance: An International Journal of Policy, Administration, and Institutions (2012).

as many as several hundred. 6. Geall, S (ed). China and the Environment: The Green Revolution (Zed Books, London, 2013).

17. Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs, Natural Resources Defense Council. Bottlenecks

7. Johnson, T. Environmental discontent and China’s urban middle class. China Dialogue (October 2013).

& Breakthroughs: The 2012 Pollution Information Transparency Index (2013).

A pilot PRTR project, funded under the EU-China Environmental Governance Program, is currently underway in the Tianjin-Economic Technological Development Area (TEDA). 8. Duggan, J. Kunming pollution protest is tip of rising

18. Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs, Natural

Chinese environmental activism. The Guardian

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(May 2013). “The number of environmental protests

Information, Taking Stock: The 2011 Pollution

rose by 120% from 2010 to 2011, according to Yang Chaofei, the vice-chairman of the Chinese Society

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for Environmental Sciences. Yang told a lecture

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organized by the Standing Committee of the NPC

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on the social impact of environmental problems that the number of environmental ‘mass incidents’

(2011). 20. Tan, Y. Transparency without Democracy: The

has grown an average of 29% annually from 1996 to

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2011.”

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9. Tan, Y. Transparency without Democracy: The Unexpected Effects of China’s Environmental

(2012); Institute of Public & Environmental

Transparency: A Comparative Law Study on

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Affairs, Natural Resources Defense Council. Open

Chinese Open Government. American University

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International Law Review 26, 983–1008 (2010).

(2012).

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1. Liu, W. Approaching Democracy through

2. State Council. Decision on the Implementation

10. Bandurski, D. Li Keqiang urges more information

(2012).

of the Scientific Outlook on Developing and

openness. China Media Project (March 2013); China’s

Strengthening Environmental Protection. State

cabinet promises information transparency. Xinhua

Natural Resources Defense Council. Bottlenecks

Council Document, [online] No. 39 (2005). http://

(October 2013).

& Breakthroughs: The 2012 Pollution Information

english.mep.gov.cn/Policies_Regulations/policies/ Frameworkp1/200712/t20071227_115531.htm 3. Tan, Y. Transparency without Democracy: The Unexpected Effects of China’s Environmental Disclosure Policy. Governance: An International

11 Environmental Open Information: Between

21. Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs,

Transparency Index (2013).

Advance & Retreat. NRDC News (December 2010). 12. Sims, A. The Chinese data chase. China Dialogue (February 2011).

22. Greenpeace China. Silent Giants: An Investigation into Corporate Environmental Information Disclosure in China (Greenpeace,

13, 14. Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs,

Beijing, 2009).

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Natural Resources Defense Council. Breaking the

(2012).

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Regulation from the Grassroots Up: Explaining

Pollution Information Transparency Index (2009).

and Expanding the Success of the Toxics Release

environment. China Daily (May 2013). The study

“The maximum score on the PITI evaluation is 100

Inventory. Environmental Management 25, 115–127

was conducted among 3,400 residents from 34

points. Sixty points relate to actions mandated by

cities in China through computer-aided telephone

law, and the remaining 40 points relate to actions

interviews from March-April 2013.

that improve public convenience. Therefore, we

4. Survey: Government needs to focus more on

5. Long-awaited amendments to China’s Environmental Protection Law passed this April

23. Fung, A & O’Rourke, D. Reinventing Environmental

(2000). 24. Lynn, FM & Kartez, JD. Environmental Democracy in Action: The Toxics Release Inventory. Environmental Management 18, 511–521 (1997).

designated 60 points as the “passing” score.” 15. Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs,

25. Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs,

establish a legal basis for public interest litigation

Natural Resources Defense Council. Bottlenecks

Natural Resources Defense Council. Breaking the

and extend standing to bring public interest cases

& Breakthroughs: The 2012 Pollution Information

Ice on Environmental Open Information: The 2008

to social organizations that are 1) registered with

Transparency Index (2013).

the civil affairs departments at the prefecture level

Pollution Information Transparency Index (2009).

16. Lorentzen, Landry & Yasuda. Impeding

26. Afsah, S et al. Environmental Regulation and Public

or above; and 2) have been continuously active in

Authoritarian Transparency: How China’s Industrial

Disclosure: The Case of PROPER in Indonesia (RFP

environmental public interest activities for at least

Giants Hold Back Institutional Reform (2010); Tan, Y.

Press, New York, 2013).

www.thesolutionsjournal.org | July-August 2014 | Solutions | 49

Gustavo Madico / CC BY 2.0

As of January 2014, state-controlled enterprises are required to monitor and disclose their air emissions continuously to the public on a platform established by the provincial or city-level environmental department

27. Dasgupta, N et al. Pollution and Capital Markets in Developing Countries. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 42, 310–335 (2001); Wang, H et al. Environmental Performance Rating and Disclosure: China’s GreenWatch program.

Implementation). Ministry of Environmental Protection (2013). 32. Chen, K & Reklev, S. China’s big polluters exceed emission limits—report. Reuters (January 2014). 33. Tianjin-Economic Technological Development

Intergovernmental Forum on Chemical Safety. 36. Zhang, C. Examining Business Perceptions of a PRTR in China. MSc Thesis (2013). 37. For inspiration, MEP could look at the experiences of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA),

Journal of Environmental Management 71, 123–33

Area (TEDA) is situated within the Tianjin Binhai

which has recently designed a suite of online

(2004).

New Area, a Special Economic Zone in Tianjin. The

tools for citizens to analyze TRI information. For

TEDA PRTR pilot is coordinated by the TEDA Eco

instance, the EPA’s My Right-To-Know is a user-

Environmental Behavior. No. 125 State Environmental

Center (a non-profit organization supported by the

friendly mobile application that helps users locate

Protection Administration (2005).

TEDA Administrative Commission and regulated by

nearby facilities for a given address, and provides

the TEDA Environmental Protection Bureau).

summary-level TRI information, including the

28. Opinion on Accelerating the Evaluation of Corporate

29. China links corporate credit with environmental efforts. Xinhua (January 2014). 30. Measures for the Registration of Hazardous Chemicals for Environmental Management (Provisional). Ministry of Environmental Protection (2012). 31. Measures on Self-Monitoring and Information Disclosure of Key State-Controlled Enterprises (Trial

34. EU-China Environmental Governance Programme.

facility’s toxic chemical releases and the associated

Policies and Practice of Corporate Environmental

potential health effects. For more experienced users,

Information Disclosure in China (May 2013).

the EPA developed the Toxics Release Inventory

35. Beyond the EU, other international organizations

Chemical Hazard Information Profiles (TRI-CHIP), a

that support national development of

searchable database containing toxicity information

PRTRs include the OECD, UNITAR, and the

for TRI chemicals.

50 | Solutions | July-August 2014 | www.thesolutionsjournal.org

Hull, R.B., D. Robertson, C. Kimmel, and B. McCutchan. (2014). Collaborative Leadership for Sustainable Development in Global Supply Chains: Partnering Across Sectors to Reduce Amazon Deforestation. Solutions 5(4): 51-59. https://thesolutionsjournal.com/article/collaborative-leadership-for-sustainable-development-in-global-supply-chains-partnering-across-sectors-to-reduceamazon-deforestation/

Feature

Bruce Hull

As a consequence for the global demand for food, deforestation in Brazil is partially due to the growth of soy farms.

In Brief Agricultural supply chains move massive amounts of resources around the world, transforming landscapes where production occurs. For example, meat produced and consumed in Europe and Asia is linked—through soybean farms—to deforestation in Brazil. This study describes a collaborative effort to limit deforestation while increasing production of soybeans by promoting compliance with existing laws and regulations. Collaborators included the Nature Conservancy, Cargill, farmers, government agencies, and other stakeholders. A key message is that organizations from different sectors can achieve direction, alignment, and commitment of goals and resources to create novel solutions to complex problems.

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mazon deforestation is a consequence of global demand for food.1 Forests get cleared mostly to graze livestock, but some get cleared to grow soybeans, as soy is a more profitable crop. Brazilian soybean production increased from 1 million tons in 1969 to 63 million tons in 2009 to about 90 million tons today, which would make it the world’s largest soy producer, much of which is exported to China as feedstock for pork production.2 China began looking overseas for soy in the mid-1990s when it became clear that its domestic production capacity was insufficient to meet rising demand for this waterhungry crop, so it now imports most of the soybeans it needs and thereby imports 14 percent of its annual water needs.3 This trend is expected to continue.4 Soybean agriculture is the focus of this study. Massive amounts of water, land, and pollution flow through global supply chains. Solutions to challenges of this scale require collaboration among actors from business, government, and civil society. The study reported here describes one such innovative collaboration.

Global Trends: Towards Cross-Sector Collaboration Global Trends 2030, the recent National Intelligence Council publication, is illustrative of literature examining cross-sector collaboration, in this case driven by the declining influence of nation-states. In a scenario titled “Non-State World,” the report describes collaboration with non-state actors as becoming the norm.9 Nations increasingly struggle to control what crosses their borders through global supply chains or manage systems critical to their wellbeing such as climate, fisheries, and capital flows. Other literature examines how new roles are being played by businesses, which are devising and applying strategies to mitigate risks that were once the

purview of governments, such as climate change, degraded ecosystems, and social unrest.10,11,12 Cross-sector collaboration was cemented as a cornerstone strategy for sustainable development at the 1992 United Nations Conference of Environment and Development, with the conference’s explicit emphasis on building capacity in all sectors, not just government.13,14,15 Governance transitioned towards more marketoriented solutions and NGOs began targeting market actors.16 This transition accelerated with the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development,

Key Concepts • Rich in water and land, Brazil is increasingly at the production end of global agricultural supply chains, with deforestation as a consequence. • Cross-sector collaboration has been dogma since the 1992 United Nations Conference of Environment and Development, yet acceptance and understanding of it remains limited. • Cross-sector collaboration in Santarém, Brazil promoted compliance with Brazil’s forest laws and regulations, limited deforestation, and increased soybean production.

which further promoted collaboration as the preferred means of governance for sustainable change.17 Neoliberal policies deepened this trend by promoting privatization, outsourcing of government services, and otherwise assigning to market actors responsibilities previously exercised by governments.18 Actors from the three sectors are motivated to collaborate for different reasons. Businesses collaborate with governments and civil society to justify their publicly-granted license to operate.19 Collaborative solutions also can reduce costs of energy, raw materials, accidents,

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and remedial training.20 Collaboration also can inspire innovation of new technologies and, relevant to the story told here, help reduce risks, increase productivity, and expand markets.21 Governments collaborate with cross-sector actors to extend influence beyond their formal institutional limits, political boundaries, and regulatory powers.22 Collaborative approaches tend to be more politically palatable and less expensive than regulatory solutions because they are more transparent, voluntary, and selfenforcing.23 In addition, governments find fewer political obstacles when new programs draw on recognized international standards used by transnational NGOs and corporations.24,25 Civil society actors collaborate in order to leverage their resources. NGOs targeting labor, public health, and justice issues have long accepted that cross-sector collaboration is both necessary and desirable.26 Through collaborative efforts, NGOs extend reach to powerful actors and more resources, increasing the potential of broader and more lasting change.27,28

Responding to Amazon Deforestation: The Santarém Collaborative Santarém, the setting for this study, is a municipality in northern Brazil, in the state of Pará, in the Amazon River watershed. Compared to other states in Brazil, Pará has amongst the highest amounts of mining activity, timber harvesting, smallholder farmers, designated indigenous lands, and people living in poverty.29 It is experiencing rapid growth in exports through new ports and roads. Understandably, Pará is attracting intense interest from multinational corporations and transnational NGOs because of its development opportunities and challenges. Lessons learned here likely have wider applicability because developing regions around the world face similar challenges of being on the production end of powerful global

Tom Bradnock / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

In 2004, Cargill partnered with The Nature Conservancy to develop a strategy in response to the negative impacts of the corporation’s new port in Santarém.

supply chains.30 The following study is based on interviews with key participants, reports, and grey literature, as well as cited published literature. In 2000, Cargill—a leading international provider of agricultural products and services—began constructing a port facility in Santarém to ship grain down the Amazon river rather than trucking it along crowded, potholed roads to distant and crowded Atlantic ports. Infrastructure developments of this type are consistent with longstanding government efforts to promote northern Brazil’s economy,31 but licensing this new port became controversial because it was seen as the leading edge of enormous change

and access to Amazonian resources (as of this writing, at least 10 new ports are in various stages of licensing and construction in Pará). In 2004, The Nature Conservancy (TNC)—a global conservation organization—began discussions with Cargill in São Paulo Brazil and with the Cargill Foundation in the United States to develop a strategy for responding to the port’s impacts on soybean production and deforestation. Initially, TNC and Cargill focused on developing a Forest Friendly Soy certification that rewarded producers who don’t deforest. These efforts were tabled when both TNC and Cargill joined the Roundtable for Responsible

Soy (RTRS), a parallel effort that began about the same time to set industry-wide production standards targeting deforestation (lead by WWF and Unilever).32,33 However, TNC and Cargill worried that RTRS would not launch soon enough to slow escalating deforestation in Para or to address delays in approval of Cargill’s new port. They joined RTRS, which became the prime platform for soy standards, but continued their independent collaboration to initiate what we are calling the Santarém Collaborative. In April of 2006, Greenpeace published Eating Up the Amazon. 34 Greenpeace asserted that multinational agricultural companies, (e.g.,

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Farmers are motivated to participate in the Collaborative by Cargill’s promise to purchase from all deemed compliant, as well incentives such as access to loans and technical assistance. 54 | Solutions | July-August 2014 | www.thesolutionsjournal.org

Bruce Hull

Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge, and Cargill) financed deforestation of the Amazon by facilitating production and export of soy. The report also targeted the US and European food industry (e.g., McDonalds) as being complicit in supporting soy-based animal feed. It also criticized the Brazilian government for lack of governance. International attention on soybean production intensified Brazil’s Forest Code requires landowners to maintain, restore, or offset 20 percent to 80 percent of forest cover—the actual amount varies with biome—as well as maintain forest cover along water edges and in other ecologically significant areas.35 It is one of the most ambitious environmental laws in the world. Critics argue that it infringes on private property rights, hinders economic competitiveness, and makes farmers environmental criminals. Various revisions have reduced the required size of riparian buffers, granted amnesty to owners of small parcels who had cleared forests before 2008, and—significant to this study—established the Environmental Register that requires landowners to map their lands or face fines. Each property is supposed to be mapped for farmers to receive authorization to legally clear forests compliant with the Forest Code; those who clear too much are fined. However, inspections were often infeasible due to limited staffing, the vast size of the region, and inadequate satellite imagery. Even if inspected, enforcement was minimal so as to not scare off landowners from program participation and in recognition of the important economic and political roles of agriculture in the region.36 Thus, actors lacked sufficient budget, staff, technical capacities, and motivation to enforce existing environmental law. Santarém was not unique in this regard. Research has shown that compliance with government policies, anywhere, requires that certain conditions exist, including affordable

and reliable assessment of compliance, meaningful consequences of noncompliance, practical and affordable means of becoming compliant, and tangible benefits for being compliant.37 The Santarém Collaborative sought to put these conditions in place. Mapping properties and monitoring compliance was difficult and cost prohibitive. So, in 2005, the Santarém Collaborative funded (significantly with Cargill Foundation financing) and built (initially by TNC staffing and contracting) a system to do it. The resulting geo-referenced database allowed Cargill, TNC, government agencies, and producers to map properties and monitor land cover. Mapping and monitoring capacities now exist in private consultancies and government agencies, so TNC is, intentionally, working itself out of this job. Other obstacles to compliance were the lack of practical and affordable means of becoming compliant, lack of punishment for being noncompliant, and lack of benefit for being compliant. The Santarém Collaborative addressed these needs by providing free or heavily subsidized technical assistance to landowners striving to become compliant. It also helped broker purchases of forest reserves that farmers could use to offset cleared forest on their land, thus becoming compliant. Cargill incentivized compliance by requiring proof of compliance for all soybeans it purchased in the region and by promising to purchase all the soybeans deemed compliant. Thus, even though there was no price premium for compliant soy, farmers could be confident of a steady revenue stream, making it less risky to invest in achieving compliance.

Stakeholder Motivations TNC was motivated to leverage ongoing efforts to conserve critical habitat and biodiversity. The traditional strategy of buying land or securing

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conservation easements to exclude or limit economic development was neither practical nor desirable given the scale of commodity production in the Amazon and the critical role agriculture plays in regional economic development and global food security. TNC therefore used the strategy of concentrating and intensifying agricultural practices on lands already deforested, thus limiting expansion of agriculture onto lands deemed of “high conservation value.” This strategy was consistent with TNC’s field-to-market and corporate partnership strategies practiced elsewhere.38

south. “Green” product certification and production standards relevant to European Union and North American consumers may not be effective in these emerging markets.41,42 Increasing producer compliance with local environmental laws and norms, however, is a strategy that may be successful. Cargill also had multiple motivations to engage in the Santarém Collaborative, not the least of which was protecting its brand and enhancing its reputation. Campaigns such as Greenpeace’s Eating up the Amazon threatened both.43 Moreover, licensing of its new terminal seemed slow

Collaborative approaches tend to be more politically palatable and less expensive than regulatory solutions because they are more transparent, voluntary, and self-enforcing. Both TNC and government actors were motivated to reduce administrative costs by creating self-perpetuating and self-funding practices that would spread across the region. “Santarém was our school…. When [TNC] started here, we didn’t even have an idea of what to do. This wasn’t about conservation [according to what is taught in] books. We developed a strategy after we got here. Now, we think we have a model that will work for the entire Amazon.”39 Lessons learned and momentum gained in Santarém motivated and informed similar efforts elsewhere in Brazil such as Legal Lucas in Mato Grosso and Sustainable West in Bahia.40 Another motivation of TNC was to devise conservation strategies relevant to the changing and globalizing market. The largest increases in consumption over the next 40 years is likely to occur in rapidly developing countries in Asia and the global

as government actors considered objections by transnational and local NGOs. By helping lead the Santarém Collaborative, Cargill built its reputation as a “good” actor in the region.44 Importantly, Cargill was managing risk. Cargill will profit from a reliable and steadily increasing supply of soybeans, so it benefits from improving efficiencies in soybean production. Intensifying agricultural production is difficult to institutionalize in underdeveloped, frontier economies such as the Amazon, where easily available land and weak governance produce geographically extensive low-yield production systems. The Santarém Collaborative promoted agricultural intensification through investments in technology, agronomic research, extension services, stable property rights, long-term purchase agreements, and predictable government intervention. These conditions should increase supply

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of high-quality soybeans on lands proximate to the Cargill port. Cargill also created capacity to manage future risks by improving its quality control system. The monitoring system used to ensure compliance with forest law was mentioned as something that could be leveraged to monitor pesticide use and water quality, which would help avoid other brand-damaging and public health concerns such as pesticides in breast milk or food supply. Government agencies have goals of sustainable economic development and enhancing public health, both of which the Santarém Collaborative promoted by intensifying soybean production and making it compliant with existing environmental laws. Like companies and NGOs, government agencies (in Brazil and elsewhere) also are motivated to protect and enhance their reputations. We heard concerns about threats to Brazil’s international reputation and national sovereignty. Because the Amazon rainforest and biodiversity are globally significant, Brazil has been and remains a potential target of interventionist policies by international actors. A functional Forest Code and sustainable soybean production mitigates such concerns. Government agencies also are motivated to manage risks and revenue. There was expressed concern about international competition. The United States, one of Brazil’s key competitors in soybeans, is perceived as trumpeting its supposedly higher environmental standards, which could create a competitive disadvantage for Brazilian exports. Additionally, the new mapping and monitoring capacities provide government actors an interim step towards settling land tenure and titling issues, which previously presented intractable political risks. A report from the World Bank suggests that the mapping and registry of farms was an important step towards establishing a more formalized land tenure system.45

Matt Hintsa / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Sunset as seen from the riverside walkway in Santarém, with Cargill’s soybean terminal in the distance.

Farmers and farmers’ unions were reluctant to participate. Most soy producers migrated to the region, purchased farms already deforested, did not understand that a “deforestation debt” applied to them, and did not understand why rules were different around Santarém than other places in Brazil. Yet, they found sufficient profit-oriented and risk-management motivations to justify participation. Participation gave farmers access to markets through Cargill, who required evidence of compliance and in turn agreed to buy whatever was produced. Participation also allowed access to credit. Companies and landowners could access National Development Bank loans and related resources only when their municipalities were off a so-called “black list,” a status that the Santarém Collaborative helped maintain by promoting compliance. Cargill also offered loans and technical

assistance, but only to producers working towards compliance. Another big incentive was assistance with mapping and monitoring, which otherwise would be too expensive and technical for many to achieve. Importantly, the mapping process helped farmers reduce uncertainties about disputed property rights. Producers largely left out of the discussion— and whose needs might not be met by these arrangements—are the owners of small farms using traditional farming practices. These farms and people are scattered throughout the region, pre-date export-oriented industrial agriculture, and seek different socio-economic and environmental outcomes.46

Conclusions New cross-sector collaborative solutions will be needed to achieve sustainable development in the face

of mounting global demand, increasingly powerful global supply chains, and rising risks from price volatility, climate change, and degraded ecosystems.47,48 The expanding soy frontier in the Amazon rainforest is illustrative of these challenges and the collaboration in Santarém is illustrative of a solution. The Santarém Collaborative sought to limit deforestation while increasing soybean production. Many of the collaborators’ motivations may generalize to actors in similar situations. Cargill, like most companies, is motivated to control risks, manage their brand, and add value. Of particular interest to readers of this journal, businesses such as Cargill are increasingly addressing risks from climate change and ecosystem degradation.49 Government agencies in Brazil, like elsewhere, are motivated to increase and sustain economic

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Lima Pix / CC BY 2.0

Initiatives such as the Santarém Collaborative seek to limit deforestation while increasing soybean production in Brazil.

growth and to increase their actual and perceived efficacy and hence legitimacy. TNC, like most NGOs, seeks to leverage scarce resources and remain relevant in a rapidly changing context, such as globalizing markets likely to transform green certification and production standards. Because of overlapping motivations, these actors from different sectors coordinated roles and resources to create a system that was more powerful than the sum of its parts. TNC developed and applied the technology needed to map and monitor compliance with Brazilian forest law. Cargill funded some of the development of that technology, used its purchasing power to encourage farmer participation by agreeing to buy only from producers who were participating in and compliant with the system, and helped fund changes to farming practices required by compliance. Government actors supported this innovation, used the system to

inform enforcement and funding decisions, and adopted complementary programs. Individual farmers and the farmer’s union eventually endorsed participation, applied the technology, and accepted risks and costs associated with becoming compliant such as taking on loans and taking land out of production. Cross-sector collaboration makes possible strategies and solutions more powerful than what can be accomplished when acting independently, and we hope readers are encouraged to experiment. However, cross-sector collaboration is no silver bullet and must be approached with caution. Collaboration requires investments of time, trust, and resources. Common ground is elusive, so agreement isn’t always achieved, and even if it is, most commitments are voluntary and difficult to enforce. These challenges can discourage stakeholder participation, so ultimately there must be enough benefit for each stakeholder to justify

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the “costs” of collaboration. Much remains to be learned about how to help collaborative arrangements emerge and succeed. Efforts such as those at Santarém are important incubators for collaborative, crosssector solutions. Acknowledgments We would like to acknowledgement Christoph Hrdina for the doors he opened, to Edenise Garcia with TNC for fact checking, and the interviewees at Cargill, The Farmer’s Union of Santarém, and TNC-Amazon program headquartered in Belém. References 1. Nepstad, D et al. Slowing Amazon deforestation through public policy and interventions in beef and soy supply chains. Science, 344 (6188), 1118–1123 (2014). 2. Brown-Lima, C, Cooney, M & Cleary, D. An Overview of the Brazil-China Soybean Trade and Its Strategic Implications for Conservation (The Nature Conservancy, Latin America Region, 2011) [online] (www.nature.org/ourinitiatives/regions/southamerica/ brazil/ explore/brazil-china-soybean-trade.pdf).

3. Boucher, D, Elias, P, Lininger, K, May-Tobin, C,

20. Porter, M & Kramer, M. Creating shared value: How

36. Rajão, R, Azevedo, A & Stabile, MCC. Institutional

Roquemore, S & Saxon, E. The Root of the Problem:

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Administration and Development 32, 229–244 (2012).

creating-shared-value). 21. Campbell, JL. Why would corporations behave in

37. Stickler CM, Nepstad, DC, Azevedo, AA & McGrath,

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5. Speth, G. Towards a new economy and a new politics. Solutions [online] 1, 33–41 (2010) (www. thesolutionsjournal.com/node/619). 6. Dalina, C et al. Evolution of the global virtual water trade network. PNAS 109, 5989–5994 (2012).

22. Bernstein, S & Cashore, B. Can non-state global governance be legitimate? An analytical framework. Regulation and Governance 1, 347–371 (2007).

Grosso. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences [online] 368, 1–13 (2013) (dx.doi. org/10.1098/rstb.2012.0160).

23. Bernstein, S & Hannah, E. Non-state global standard

38. Tercek, M. Feeding the World through Smarter

setting and the WTO: Legitimacy and the need for

Agriculture. TNC Blog [online] (2012) (blog.nature.

use: The case of China’s crop trade. Land Use Policy

regulatory space. Journal of International Economic

org/conservancy/2012/04/27/feeding-the-world-

33, 141–150 (2013).

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7. Qiang, W et al. Agricultural trade and virtual land

without-destroying-our-planet/).

8. Skelton, A, Guan, D, Peters, GP, & Crawford-Brown,

24. Meidinger, E. The administrative law of global

D. Mapping flows of embodied emissions in global

private–public regulation: The case of forestry.

production systems. Environmental Science &

European Journal of International Law 17, 47–87

Technology 45, 10516–10523 (2011). 9. Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds (National

39. Amazon report: A conservation success, 19

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exclusion in Brazilian agriculture: Analysis and

25. Bartley, T. Transnational governance as the layering

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of rules: Intersections of public and private

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standards. Theoretical Inquiries in Law 12, 25–51

national-intelligence-council-global-trends). 10. Bell, JE, Autry, DW, Mollenkopf, DA, Thornton, LMA. Natural Resource Scarcity Typology: Theoretical Foundations and Strategic Implications

(Dienhart, P, Cargill News, July–August, 14–25, 2010). 40. Brannstrom, C et al. Compliance and market implications for “soft” governance. Land Use Policy 29, 357–366 (2012).

(2011).

41. Chan, R. Environmental attitudes and behaviors of consumers in China: survey findings and

26. Head, BW. Assessing network-based collaborations Public Management Review 10, 733–749 (2008).

implications. Journal of International Consumer Marketing 11, 25–52 (1999).

27. Cashore, B, Auld, G, Bernstein, S & McDermott,

42. Steering Committee of the State-of-Knowledge

for Supply Chain Management. Journal of Business

C. Can non-state governance “ratchet up” global

Assessment of Standards and Certification. Toward

Logistics 33, 158–166 (2012).

environmental standards? Lessons from the forest

Sustainability: The Roles and Limitations of Certification

11. Dobbs, R, Oppenheim, J, Thompson, F, Brinkman, M & Sornes, M. Resource Revolution: Meeting the world’s Energy, Materials, Food, and Water Needs.

sector. Review of European Community & International Environmental Law 16, 158–172 (2007).

(Resolve, Inc., Washington, DC, 2012). 43. Responsible soy production: supporting soy farmers

28. van Huijstee, M & Glasbergen, P. NGOs moving

and promoting sustainability (Cargill) [online]

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business: An analysis of contrasting strategies

(www.cargill.com/corporate-responsibility/pov/

mckinsey.com/features/resource_revolution).

Business Society 49, 591–618 (2010).

soy-production/supporting-soy-farmers-promoting-

12 Scherr, SJ, Shames, S, & Friedman, R. From climatesmart agriculture to climate-smart landscapes. Agriculture & Food Security [online] 1 (2012) (www. agricultureandfoodsecurity.com/content/1/1/12). 13 van Huijstee, M & Glasbergen, P. NGOs moving business: An analysis of contrasting strategies. Business & Society 49, 591–618 (2010). 14 Head, BW. Assessing network-based collaborations. Public Management Review 10, 733–749 (2008). 15 Glasbergen, P, Biermann, F & Mol, A. Partnerships,

29. Nepstad, D et al. The end of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. Science 326, 1350–1351 (2009). 30. Van Alstine, J & Afionis, S. Community and

sustainability/index.jsp). 44. Environmental Impact Study of Cargill Agrícola S.A.’s Solid Bulk Commodities River Terminal in the

company capacity: the challenge of resource-

port of Santarém, state of Pará (Consultoria Paulista

led development in Zambia’s ‘New Copperbelt’. Community Development Journal 48, 360–376 (2013). 31. Hecht, SB. Soybeans, development, and

de Estudos Ambientais, Gráfica NEOBAND, 2010). 45. Report No 56508 Brazil - Rural Environmental Cadastre Technical Assistance Project (World

conservation on the Amazon frontier. Development

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and Change 36, 375-401 (2005).

worldbank.org/curated/en/2010/09/13816926/

32. Hospes, O, Van der Valk, O & Van der Mheen-

brazil-rural-environmental-cadastre-technical-

Governance and Sustainable Development: Reflections

Sluijer, J. Parallel development of five partnerships

on Theory and Practice (Edward Elgar, Cheltenham,

to promote sustainable soy in Brazil: solution or

46. Steward, C. From colonization to ‘environmental

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part of wicked problems? International Food and

soy:’ A case study of environmental and socio-

Agribusiness Management Review 15, 39–62 (2012).

economic valuation in the Amazon soy frontier.

16 Forsyth,T. Panacea or paradox? Cross-sector partnerships, climate change, and development. Climate Change 1, 683–696 (2010). 17. Glasbergen, P in Partnerships, governance and

33. Schouten, AM, Leroy, P & Glasbergen, P. On the

assistance-project).

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deliberative capacity of private multi-stakeholder

47. Towards a Green Economy: Pathways to Sustainable

governance: The Roundtables on Responsible Soy

Development and Poverty Eradication—A Synthesis

sustainable development (Glasbergen, P, Biermann, F

and Sustainable Palm Oil. Ecological Economics 83,

for Policy Makers (United Nations Environment

& Mol, APJ, eds), 1–25 (Edward Elgar, Cheltenham,

42–50 (2012).

Program, New York, 2011) [online] (www.unep.org/

2007). 18. Young, OR. On Environmental Governance: Sustainability, Efficiency, and Equity (Paradigm Publishers, Boulder, CO, 2013). 19. Higginson, N & Vredenburg, H. Collaborating

34. Greenpeace. Eating up the Amazon (Greenpeace

greeneconomy).

International, Amsterdam, 2006).

48. Vision 2050: The New Agenda for Business (World

35. Stickler CM, Nepstad, DC, Azevedo, AA & McGrath, DG. Defending public interests in private lands: compliance, costs and potential environmental

Business Council for Sustainable Development, Geneva, 2010) [online] (www.wbcsd.org/vision2050. aspx).

for sustainability: Strategic knowledge networks,

consequences of the Brazilian Forest Code in Mato

49. Scherr, SJ, Shames, S & Friedman, R. From climate-

natural resource management and regional

Grosso. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society:

smart agriculture to climate-smart landscapes.

development. International Journal of Sustainable

Biological Sciences [online] 368, 1–13 (2013) (dx.doi.

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Economy 2, 334–351 (2010).

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agricultureandfoodsecurity.com/content/1/1/12).

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Barford, A. and K. Pickett. (2014). How to Build a More Equal America. Solutions 5(4): 60-71. https://thesolutionsjournal.com/article/how-to-build-a-more-equal-america/

Feature

How to Build a More Equal America by Anna Barford & Kate Pickett

Simon Holliday / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Despite having one of the strongest economies globally, the US is also the most unequal among developed market democracies.

In Brief Acknowledging the depth of social crisis in the United States and linking these social problems to its exceptionally high levels of income inequality, this paper illustrates alternative models and policies that reduce inequality. The models described are successful real-life examples that have been employed around the world. They include the following: flattening income structures, taxing highly, nationalizing services and resources, allocating a universal basic wage, and creating spaces for alternative economic and political structures. The United States has deeply ingrained racial discrimination caused by similar processes to economic inequality. Addressing the latter could dramatically reduce the former. Studying successful examples from around the world illustrates how increasing economic equality is a politically achievable goal, which could lead to substantial societal benefits.

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“This is the defining issue of our time.” (Barack Obama, 2013) “The actual existence of lowinequality societies indicates that a commitment to global equalization, whilst controversial, is not Utopian.” (Göran Therborn, ref. 5)

here is a widespread belief that as countries become richer, their citizens benefit from a better quality of life. However, the evidence shows that once countries attain a certain standard of living, it is the distribution of income and wealth within the society that actually determines health and well-being as well as a range of other social factors. This is exemplified by the current status of the United States of America. Today the US is among the richest and most powerful countries in the world. In 2010, the US Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was the largest in the world at US$14.6 trillion and a GDP per capita at purchasing power parities ranked third worldwide after Singapore and Norway.1 Yet in contrast to this material affluence, other indicators suggest that the US ranks very poorly in terms of the well-being of its citizens. Among rich, developed market democracies, the US has the highest income inequality, after taxes and benefits.2 Compared to those same countries, the US also has exceptionally high levels of infant mortality, mental illness, obesity, homicides, imprisonment, and teenage pregnancies, as well as lower life expectancy and social mobility.3 The US also has the second largest ecological footprint in the world, after the oil-producing United Arab Emirates. Within the US, it is the less equal states that tend to fare worse. The more unequal states of Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi have worse health and social outcomes

than more equal states such as Utah, Alaska, and Wisconsin,3 and this is not explained by higher levels of poverty or average incomes. Within and beyond the US, over 200 academic studies have linked income inequality with health outcomes and the relationship fits epidemiological causal criteria.4 Comparing levels

Key Concepts • Economic inequality damages society by exacerbating health and social problems. • The United States has very highincome inequality among rich market democracies. • Equality mechanisms of catching up, inclusion, institutional flattening, and redistribution are considered here. Examples are drawn from Sweden, the UK, Japan, Argentina, Bolivia, and Alaska. • Inequality levels vary greatly over time, and the differing trajectories of countries illustrate that there is room for policy makers, pressure groups, and industry to influence levels of inequality. • Addressing economic inequalities in the United States could have the additional benefit of reducing racial, religious, and gender inequalities because these are generated by similar processes. • Now is a pivotal moment for increasing equality and introducing the policies needed due to the changing political climate and widespread questioning of income distribution in wealthy countries.

of well-being among citizens of the USA to those in other countries would be a futile exercise if it did not also offer an opportunity for reflection and strategic thinking. Learning lessons from history and from societies that manage to attain both high levels of overall economic performance and more equal distributions

of income and wealth, resulting in higher levels of well-being, can lead to a positive and optimistic vision for America’s future.

Mechanisms Underlying Inequality and Equality Levels of inequality can fluctuate significantly over time (Figure 1). Since 1960, the US and UK have converged, while Sweden and the UK have become increasingly different from one another. This demonstrates that there are no long-term cultural inevitabilities that determine inequality in any particular society. Instead, the mechanisms outlined below reinforce or counter one another, shifting the ways in which resources are distributed among people. Sociologist Göran Therborn has identified four processes that produce inequality: 1. Distantiation, where some pull ahead and others fall behind; 2. Exclusion, where barriers prevent certain people from accessing elements of ‘the good life’; 3. Hierarchy, where society and organizations are structured so that some have high status and pay and others are ordered below them; and 4. Exploitation, whereby wealth is taken from the poor by the rich via subjugation.5 Generally, a combination of these processes can be observed, and there is substantial overlap in experience; for example, those who are excluded may also be exploited, and hierarchy encourages distantiation. Therborn identifies a corresponding set of processes that produce greater equality: 1. Catching up, where those who have fallen behind can make progress; 2. Inclusion, where barriers to accessing the ‘good life’ are removed; 3. Organizational flattening, where hierarchies are levelled out; and 4. Redistribution, where money is shared more evenly between people (Tables 1 and 2).5 Therborn’s categorizations offer a framework for understanding examples of successful equality policies.

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40 35 30

Gini Coefficient

25 20 1960

1970

1980

Year

1990

Sweden USA

2000

2010

Source: The Equality Trust (2011) Figure 1. Changes in inequality over time. The GINI coefficient measures inequality: 0 is perfect equality and 1 is complete inequality. In 1960 the UK and Sweden had very similar levels of inequality (GINI coefficients of roughly 0.27, where 0 indicates perfect equality and 1 is perfect inequality), whereas the US was more unequal at that time. The US and Sweden then became increasingly equal until the 1980s, whereas the UK changed very little. From the 1980s onwards, when neo-liberalism gained political and economic dominance in both the US and UK, there were substantial increases in inequality in both countries; by 2010 they had a similarly high GINI coefficient of roughly 0.36. Meanwhile, Swedish levels of inequality remained much lower, and were just 0.23 by 2010, although they have since increased.50

Becoming Equal, Remaining Equal Catching Up Positive action in Higher Education. In 2011, just 1 percent of UK state school students went to the Universities of Oxford or Cambridge, whereas 5 percent of UK private school students went to one of those universities.6 While positive discrimination on the basis of race, sex, or social background is illegal in the UK, positive action to redress misbalances is allowed. Positive action means supporting and encouraging under-represented groups. The University of Cambridge has a target to admit 61 to 63 percent of its students from the state sector

by 2015–16. To help encourage state school applications, the University offers outreach activities including residential Easter and Summer Schools.7 Applicants from particularly deprived backgrounds are flagged up within the application system, so that their achievements are considered in context. These steps towards being more representative of the national population are being made by an institution with an interest in maintaining its high position in the national hierarchy of universities. Thus the overall social structure is not questioned, but those who are disadvantaged are encouraged to catch up. Positive and affirmative action in access to further and higher education,

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targeted provision of early childhood education, and child poverty reduction programs all have potential to increase social mobility and ‘catch up.’ Inclusion Nationalization of services. Nationalization has the potential to ensure that the entire population of a country has access to basic services, with access based on need rather than ability to pay. In more unequal countries there is considerable variation in ability to pay and, therefore, in ability to access services, an inequality of basic rights and justice. The UK National Health Service was established in 1948, funded by taxation. It was the first health service in the world to offer

Inequality Mechanism

Direct Agency

Dynamics, Systemic Dynamics

Distantiation

Running ahead / falling behind, Outcompeting, Social psychology of success / failure

Reward structuration and normation, e.g. ‘winner takes all’, Opportunity structuration

Exclusion

Closure, Hindering, Opportunity hoarding, Discrimination, Monopolization

Membership boundaries, Entry thresholds, Cumulation of advantages, Stigmatization, Citizenship, Property rights

Hierarchization

Super-subordination, Patron– client relations, Put-down / deference

Organisational ladder, Status / authority distance, Hierarchy of family roles, Systemic center and peripheries, Ethnic / racial / gendered hierarchies, Generalizations of superiorityinferiority

Exploitation

Extraction, Utilization, Abuse

Polarized power relations, Asymmetric dependence, Tributary systems

Table 1. Inequality mechanisms. Adapted from (ref. 5, p.14)

free health care based on citizenship at a time when infant mortality was roughly 1 in 20 and thousands died annually from diphtheria, polio, meningitis, and tuberculosis. Former chairman of the British Medical Association, Dr. Marks reflected that “people who had been ill for years and years came forward for help because they did not have to worry about paying for it.”8 Granting all citizens the right of access to free health care is an important step towards equality of outcome. It means that those who do not get health insurance through work can nevertheless access health care.8,9 Flattening Structures Income convergence, wealth limitation. Japan exhibits an alternative route to the redistributive model seen in Scandinavian countries: income differences are smaller before taxes and benefits. The main flattening of Japanese incomes occurred during,

and following, World War II, when top incomes quickly fell: from 1885 to 1941, the income share of the top 1 percent of Japanese earners was 15 to 20 percent. By 1945 it had declined to what would become a relatively stable 8 percent. However, the second richest 4 percent did not reduce their income share during World War II, and following the war, their income share was higher than that of the top 1 percent.10 Postwar, MacArthur imposed changes intended to increase democracy and decentralize wealth and power, including breaking up business conglomerates, promoting labour unions, and legislating a maximum wage.11 Greater pretax income equality has the advantage of less distinction in terms of how much someone’s labour is valued. Further, it avoids the issue of richer people resenting that they are contributing much more tax than others. The decline in top Japanese incomes was accompanied

by a decline in top wealth (ensured by progressive taxes, inheritance laws, and tax incentives for holders of small assets).10 Japan offers a model of a wealthy developed country, with the longest life expectancies in the world, that has achieved its relative equality by limiting divergence in incomes and wealth. One way in which these lower pay differences are maintained is by businesses promoting from within, so managers have personal experience of performing other jobs within their company. Further, it is not uncommon for union leaders to become managers of companies, again bringing with them a heightened awareness of workers’ concerns. The Japanese experience is instructive: it shows that equality need not inhibit growth or undermine world-leading technological innovation, despite the prevalent myths suggesting the opposite. And there is clear evidence that strong trade unions are a feature of more equal societies.12

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Creating alternative structures. Overall, national policies and laws may be the quickest way to redistribute income and wealth and create a more equal society due to the large scale of implementation. However, people have always tried to improve things for themselves and their acquaintances on a smaller scale, and many have experimented with ways of living more equally and autonomously. The Argentine Movements of Unemployed Workers are an example of people creating alternative, nonhierarchical forms of organization and even a parallel economy. These groups started in the 1990s, responding to the needs of the unemployed, and membership involves weekly collective decisionmaking and undertaking certain responsibilities, and most importantly, full participation. Members provide services, make food and clothing, educate themselves, sell products, and take political action together. This has sometimes been a challenging adjustment for newly unemployed workers accustomed to hierarchical work settings.13 These alternative social structures have provided work, support, and income for people who might otherwise be destitute. Instead, they work in egalitarian organizations, participating equally in decision making, and working collectively. Throughout the world, alternative forms of employment and institutions (including employee representation, trade unions, employee ownership, cooperatives, mutual, etc.) increase economic democracy and reduce inequality.12

Equality Mechanism

Examples

Catching up

Compensatory capacitation, Affirmative action, New opportunity openings

Inclusion

Entitlement, Migration, Human rights

Organizational / institutional flattening

Empowerment, Democratization, Unionization, User rights

Redistribution

Taxation, Social policy

Redistribution High income taxes. In Sweden, local and national government income taxes can amount to 60 percent of the income of higher earners, whereas lower earners may have just 29 percent of their income taxed. These relatively high, but progressive, income taxes mean that the state has substantial financial resources to provide services that are

Nationalization of resources. Nationalization has the potential to ensure that the whole population of a country benefits from the resources within its territory, rather than any profits going to private interests. Bolivia’s current president, Evo Morales, has embarked on the nationalization of the Bolivian oil and gas fields. Previously, privatization of

Table 2. Equality mechanisms. Adapted from (ref. 5, p.14)

heavily subsidised or free at the point of use. These include up to 480 days of maternity/paternity leave, where each parent takes a minimum of 60 days; child benefit paid for all children under 16 years of age; free health and dental care for those under 18 years; unemployment pay at 80 percent of one’s previous salary for the first 200 days of unemployment, dropping to 70 percent for the following 100 days; and a guaranteed minimum pension for those who have not worked long enough to secure a state pension.14 This high and progressive taxation thus provides a strong welfare state in which access to health care, education, child care, and pension are guaranteed. By ensuring free access, even those on low incomes have their basic needs met. Toby Ord’s Giving What We Can voluntary income-capping scheme offers an example of self-taxation.15

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services and resources had resulted in declining government revenues and an ongoing economic crisis. The majority of the population had not benefited from privatization; paying more for services while spending on social programmes was cut back.16 Coming into power in 2006, Morales rebalanced the share of additional profits from rises in oil prices. Instead of private companies taking 82 percent of the extra earnings, and the state receiving just 18 percent, these percentages were reversed.17 The revenue generated has funded social programmes, such as a cashtransfer scheme encouraging children to attend primary school and the extension of a universal and noncontributory pension scheme for anyone over the age of 60. The approach taken by Morales is considered by some as a pragmatic approach to capturing some of the surplus from the exploitation of natural resources, rather than a dramatic shift in economic model.18

The (Financial) Costs of Inequality It is worth noting that moving towards a more equal society is not a more expensive option than continuing as we are, despite possible start-up costs of new approaches to inequality. Taking the example of

MD111 / CC BY-NC 2.0

Japan is a wealthy, developed country that has achieved relative equality in part through income divergence and wealth limitation.

imprisonment, more equal countries have lower incarceration rates, which means much less spending on prisons. A more equal America with fewer prisoners could save considerably, not just through the lower costs of imprisoning people, but also because outside of prison people can contribute to their family lives, communities, and wider society. The UK, one of the least equal countries in Europe, fares badly in terms of “almost every preventable social problem,” including crime, mental illness, drug abuse, low child well-being, and obesity. Analysis

by the New Economics Foundation shows that as a result, the UK spends a third more than the next most troubled European country to address these problems.20 If the UK continues as it is, the cost of addressing social problems over the next 20 years will amount to £4 trillion. However, targeted interventions, universal child care, and paid parental leave could together address £1.5 trillion worth of these costs (Note: universal child care and paid parental leave are forms of Therborn’s inclusion and redistribution). Taking into account the costs of transition to a new,

preventative approach, £486 billion could be returned to the UK economy over 20 years.20 Reducing inequality is a financially sound choice due to the lower costs of addressing the problems that stem from inequality. By approaching social spending holistically and over long-time scales, it is clear that prevention is not only good for budgets but also for people’s health, security, and well-being. Lower net inequality even appears “to drive faster and more durable growth for a given level of redistribution” and redistribution generally has a benign impact on growth.21

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America Learning from America One counter-argument to great equality that is heard frequently is that inequality might be an ingrained aspect of a country’s culture and identity and that not all societies ‘want to be like Sweden.’ However, equality and egalitarianism are not inherently Scandinavian, and in the past the US and UK have had similar levels of inequality to those seen currently in Scandinavia. It is not ‘un-American’ to value equality. For example, 1945 to 1968 wages were compressed in the US using the minimum wage. However, as

resources would benefit contemporary and future Alaskan residents. Public support for oil mining was encouraged by the payment of this annual dividend. The value of payment was initially proportional to the number of years someone had been a state resident, but this was soon overturned as it discriminated against recent immigrants. Since 1982, every Alaskan resident who has lived there for longer than six months, irrespective of age, receives an identical payment. The value of this dividend rose from $300 in 1984 to $2000 in 2000 and dropped to $1281 in 2010.24,25

It is worth noting that moving towards a more equal society is not a more expensive option than continuing as we are, despite possible start-up costs of new approaches to inequality. the minimum wage lost value relative to prices, it actually contributed to pretax inequality by holding lower wages down.22 Although there are many lessons to be learned from other countries, there are numerous other historical and contemporary examples within the US of successful policies and approaches that have supported greater equality. As noted earlier, Alaska is one of the more equal states in the US. Alaska is home to what is regarded as the “only genuine basic income system,” the Alaska Permanent Fund. Basic incomes are universal and unconditional, paid to individuals without requiring work or means testing, and made at “the highest sustainable level,”23 so this example demonstrates inclusion and entitlement from Therborn’s model.5 This policy, established in 1976 by the state governor, aimed to ensure that the financial rewards of Alaska’s oil

Another challenge to greater equality is the idea that America’s high levels of inequality result from its high religious and racial diversity. This misconception makes tackling inequality appear difficult, maybe even undesirable, despite the association between inequality and diversity being flawed. But economic inequality is caused by the uneven distribution of resources, not diversity of belief or race. A recent OECD report identified the single most important driver of greater inequality as being greater inequality of wages and salaries.26 In addition, an international study, which collected data on the ethnic mix in each country found that it did not explain the association between poor population health and inequality.27 Interestingly, very similar proportions of the populations of Sweden and the US are foreign born, and Spain is more equal and does better than its neighbor, Portugal, despite having a larger migrant population.

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Among the US states, income distribution tends to be more unequal in states in which a higher proportion of the population are African-American. One paper suggested this explained the relationship between inequality and health.28 But since then, other papers have been published showing this is not so (e.g. ref. 29, 30). In the more unequal states, health is worse in both the black and white populations. But migrant groups sometimes have unexpectedly good health. In the US, the largest group of migrants are Hispanic, predominantly from Mexico. Although their levels of education and income are much like those of African-Americans, for most outcomes, their health is as good as that of the non-Hispanic white population. That they do not seem to suffer the effects of their low social status is sometimes referred to as the ‘Hispanic paradox.’ In the US and Canada, Daly and Wilson have shown that the high rates of homicide in the southern United States are not due to ‘Southern culture’ or ethnicity, as some critics have suggested, but are indeed strongly related to income inequality.31 Race is not “an unchanging presence that necessarily and uniformly pervades the whole of society”; it is not an objective factor that mechanically determines outcomes.32 The same is true for religion: how people perceive racial and religious diversity and choose to act on this shapes inequalities between groups and even creates these groups as distinctive phenomena. Insofar as ethnic divisions are related to inequality and may contribute to the effects of inequality, it is not of course skin color itself—or for that matter religious or linguistic differences—which affect well-being. Instead, they become important when they serve as markers of social status attracting stigmatization, prejudice, and discrimination. This means that rather than ethnic divisions involving quite separate processes from those through which inequality has its

Eneas De Troya / CC BY 2.0

Bolivia’s current president, Evo Morales, has begun to nationalize the country’s oil and gas fields, using revenues earned by the state to fund social programs.

effects, they involve very much the same processes. Whether the markers of social status differences are attributes of class alone or whether they include issues of language, religion, or ethnicity, the underlying processes are basically the same. Reducing economic inequalities within the population could even be

a very effective way to tackle other types of discrimination and horizontal inequality (e.g. gender, race, sexuality, and religion) because people will be able to access services and goods more equally irrespective of their identity and will feel more equality with others. Publicly challenging misconceptions about the causes of inequality

could help prevent these ideas from derailing practical discussions about how to reduce inequality in America.

Conclusion: Wanting Equality In this paper, we have presented examples, or case studies, of policies that reduce inequality. This is in no way intended to be a comprehensive

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list but merely to point out the range of different possibilities for tackling inequality. But do people actually want to live in a more equal society? Public support for greater equality can catalyze and generate change, particularly in democracies, because policies and planned societal shifts generally require some support. Whether inequality is considered natural and inevitable or unjust and unacceptable can have far-reaching implications for how it is handled, and this is true for both public policy makers and academics.24 For many of the policy examples we have described, public support was an important component in making these policies a reality. An acceptance of the idea of a basic income, for instance, requires changes to established ideas and norms, and policy makers and citizens have to adapt their thinking and values.33 In Alaska, support for a basic income was grounded in a desire for citizens to directly access oil revenue, partly due to mistrust of politicians who were perceived to have previously misspent it.25 In Bolivia, there were many public movements and protests against the corruption, debt, and poverty that were associated with neoliberal policies. These movements supported President Morales’ nationalization programs and help him to justify his policies based on public demand.18 In contrast, President Barack Obama’s recent attempts to establish nationalized health care were quashed by a lack of widespread public and political support for the initiative. Universality of welfare provisions can help to ensure public support for measures that improve equality. Universal programmes enable people to feel that they are part of a collective contribution to, and beneficiary of, welfare programmes34,18 and remove the stigma of receiving welfare, so universality can become a crucial expression of citizenship and social cohesion.35 Further, means-tested

welfare programs can act as a disincentive for moving into marginally higher income groups by effectively taxing through the removal of welfare benefits.36,37 Shifts in public opinion can help to disrupt the four mechanisms identified by Therborn that produce inequality.5,38 Firstly, distantiation, where some pull ahead while others fall behind, could come to seem unacceptable if there were a greater awareness of the damaging impact of inequality. Exclusion can come to seem undesirable or unacceptable when people are educated about human rights and entitlements, as well as by the creation of a more trusting, cohesive society. Hierarchical structures in society and institutions can be flattened when alternative structures are shown to be successful. Lastly, in a context of deeper awareness of, and respect for, others, exploitation becomes unacceptable, and knowledge of past exploitation can lead to public support for redistribution as a matter of social justice and human rights.39 Social movements and campaigns can have a dramatic effect on political rhetoric and debate. In the 2010 UK General Election, the newly founded Equality Trust (cofounded by author KP) played a role in bringing discussions around inequality and equality back into the political arena. Founded with the aim of disseminating evidence-based research on the impact of inequality and campaigning for greater equality, the Equality Trust called on all political parties to commit to greater equality in their pre-election manifestos. In the run up to the election and since, discussions of equality and fairness received considerable national radio, television, and newspaper coverage (e.g. ref. 40–43), and the concepts received cross-party support.44 The three main political parties each supported the publication of a report describing policies to increase equality, compatible

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with its own political philosophy.45-47 Publicly and politically engaged campaigns such as these can alter the terms of debate. Beyond public support for greater equality, political will is needed. Otherwise, no matter how strong the evidence base in favor of more equality, it can be used selectively or ignored.48 Politicians need to be made aware of the public appetite for greater equality. In a random sample of over 5,500 Americans, researchers from Duke and Harvard Universities investigated views of the distribution of wealth (rather than income) in society.49 People were shown three pie charts illustrating three different distributions of wealth—one in which each fifth of the population got the same, another which showed (unlabeled) the distribution of wealth in the US and another (also unlabeled) based on the distribution in Sweden. Ninety-two percent said they would prefer to live in a society with the Swedish distribution—and the percentage only varied from 89 to 93 percent depending on whether they were rich or poor, Democrats or Republicans. When asked what they thought the actual distribution of wealth is in the US, the average estimate was that the richest 20 percent of Americans control 59 percent of the wealth. In reality, they control 84 percent. Asked what they thought the ideal distribution would be, people preferred the top 20 percent to have 32 percent of all wealth. There are real opportunities available to American politicians to change the terms of public debate on inequality and take the lead in creating a bold new vision for American politics, compatible with the founding principles of the country and based on research evidence. The strong links between income inequality and reduced social mobility and the impossibility for so many Americans of living the American dream could be a starting point for a new politics.

G. Frank Peterson / CC BY 2.0

Every Alaskan citizen receives an identical annual dividend as a benefit of the state’s oil resources, helping in part to make Alaska one of the most equal states in the US. www.thesolutionsjournal.org | July-August 2014 | Solutions | 69

David Shankbone / CC BY 2.0

Policies should reflect America’s growing public desire for equality.

References 1. World Bank. World Development Report (World Bank Group, Washington DC, 2011). 2. Garfinkel, I, Rainwater, L & Smeeding, TM. A re-

7. Record number of applications to Cambridge in 2013 cycle. Cam.ac.uk [online] (Accessed July 27, 2014). www.cam.ac.uk/news/record-number-of-

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8. The NHS: “One of the greatest achievements in history.” A Special Report. BBC.co.uk [online] (Accessed September 11, 2011). http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/ events/nhs_at_50/special_report/123511.stm. 9. National Health Service (NHS). Sciencemuseum. org.uk [online] (Accessed September 11, 2011).

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10. Moriguchi, C & Saez, E. The evolution of income concentration in Japan, 1886–2005: evidence

98: 216–221(2008). 12. Pickett, K & Wilkinson, R. Reducing inequality through economic democracy. Progressive Economy March 2014. 13. Gordon, N & Chatterton, P. Taking Back Control: A Journey Through Argentina’s Popular Uprising (University of Leeds, Leeds, 2004). 14. Fouché, G. Sweden: where tax goes up to 60 percent, and everybody’s happy paying it. Guardian.co.uk [online] (Accessed September 11, 2011). www.guardian.co.uk/money/2008/nov/16/swedentax-burden-welfare. 15. Ord, T. Giving what we can. BBC.co.uk [online] (Accessed September 11, 2011). www.bbc.co.uk/ news/magazine-11950843.

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16. Kohl, B. Stabilizing neoliberalism in Bolivia: popular

(2002). 17. Stiglitz, JE. Who owns Bolivia? Projectsyndicate. org [online] (Accessed September 11, 2011) www.

30. Ram, R. Income inequality, poverty, and population health: evidence from recent data for the United States. Social Science and Medicine 61, 12: 2568–2576 (2005). 31. Daly, M & Wilson M. Cultural inertia, economic incentives and the persistence of ‘Southern violence’. In Evolution, Culture and the Human Mind (eds Schaller, M, Norenzayn, A, Heiney, H, Yamagishi, T & Kameda T) p. 229–242 (Psychological Press, New York, 2010). 32. Wacquant, L. The puzzle of race and class in American society and social science. Benjamin E. Mays Monographs 2-1, Fall 1989: 7–20. 33. Purdy, D. Is basic income viable? Basic Income Studies 2, 2: 1–26 (2007). 34. Edebalk, PG. Emergence of a welfare state— social insurance in Sweden in the 1910s. Journal of Social Policy 29, 4: 537–551. doi:10.1017/ S0047279400006085 (2000). 35. Lister, R. What should be done next? Poverty 136:14– 17 (2010). 36. Garfinkel, I. Wealth and welfare states: is America a laggard or a leader? Social change—a Harvard Manchester initiative, Crewe Hall. 21.06.2010. 37. Garfinkel, I, Rainwater, L & Smeeding, T. Wealth and welfare states: is America a laggard or a leader? (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2010). 38. Therborn, G. The killing fields of inequality. In The Crash: A View From The Left (eds Cruddas, J & Rutherford, J 109–117 (Soundings, London, 2009). 39. Barford, A. An international comparative study of attitudes towards socio-economic inequality. Whiterose.ac.uk [online] (2010). http://etheses. whiterose.ac.uk/1232/. 40. Asthana, A & Helm, T. Treasury secretary Danny

Jagz Marlo / CC BY-SA 2.0

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Alexander defends budget cuts as coalition comes under fire. In The Observer (29 August 2010). 41. Beattie, J. Translating George Osborne. In The Mirror (17 August 2010).

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18. Kennemore, A & Weeks, G. Twenty-first century socialism? The elusive search for a post-neoliberal

html#history. 25. Goldsmith, S. The Alaska Permanent Fund

for the left, the right and the British public. The

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org [online] (2002). www.basicincome.org/bien/

9856.2010.00496.x/full. [online] (2010). www.economist.com/node/16636027. 20. Backing the future: why investing in children is good for us all. Neweconomics.org [online] (2009). www. neweconomics.org/publications/backing-future. 21. Ostry, JD, Berg, A & Tsangarides, CG. Redistribution, inequality, and growth. IMF.org [online] (Accessed July 24, 2014). www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/ sdn/2014/sdn1402.pdf. 22. Price, M. 2014. Personal Communication. 23. Christensen, J. Basic income, social justice and

Economist [online] (2010) http://www.economist. com/node/16844516 44. Booth, R. Spirited defence: how ‘idea wreckers’ turned bestseller into political punchbag. In The

pdf/2002Goldsmith.pdf. 26. Divided we stand: why inequality keeps rising.

Guardian (14 August 2010)

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45. Cooke, G. Society of Equals (Demos, London, 2010).

inequality.

46. Margo, J & Bradley, W. Wealth of Opportunity.

27. Ram, R. Further examination of the cross-country population health. Social Science and Medicine 62, 3: 779–791 (2006).

2010). 48. Stevens, A. Telling policy stories: an ethnographic

28. Deaton, A & Lubotsky, D. Mortality, inequality and race in American cities and states. Social Science and Medicine 56, 6: 1139–1153 (2003).

study of the use of evidence in policy-making in the UK. Journal of Social Policy 40, 2: 237–255. doi:10.1017/S0047279410000723 (2010).

29. Ash, M & Robinson, DE. Inequality, race, and

49. Norton, MI & Ariely, D. Building a better America—

mortality in U.S. cities: a political and econometric.

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(Demos, London, 2010). 47. Wind-Cowie, M. Everyday Equality (Demos, London,

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ideologues. Time Higher Education (19 August 2010). 43. On equality: the lessons of the spirit level debate

development model in Bolivia and Ecuador. Bulletin

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42. Jump, P. Scholars reject further debate with

one wealth quintile at a time. Perspectives on Psychological Science 6: 9–12 (2011). 50. The Equality Trust. Income inequality: trends and measures. Research Digest 2: 1–8 (2011).

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Österblom, H., Ö. Bodin, U.R. Sumaila, and A.J. Press. (2014). Reducing Illegal Fishing in the Southern Ocean: A Global Effort. Solutions 5(4): 72-79. https://thesolutionsjournal.com/article/reducing-illegal-fishing-in-the-southern-ocean-a-global-effort/

Feature

Reducing Illegal Fishing in the Southern Ocean: A Global Effort by Henrik Österblom, Örjan Bodin, U. Rashid Sumaila, and Anthony J Press

Steve Benton / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

IUU fishing in the Southern Ocean posed a serious threat to the toothfish population.

In Brief Illegal, unregulated, and unreported (IUU) fishing is a key barrier for fisheries sustainability and an issue challenging fisheries managers worldwide. However, there are some innovative examples of how institutions have developed solutions to this problem. This article describes how the international community, including governments, the fishing industry, and environmental nongovernmental organizations has been able to address the critical challenge of IUU fishing of Patagonian toothfish, or Chilean Sea Bass, in the Southern Ocean. In the 1990s, IUU fishing threatened to deplete toothfish stocks as well as substantially reduce the number of endangered albatross caught on baited hooks intended to catch toothfish. Data from interviews, surveys, literature reviews, and official data on estimated levels of IUU fishing illustrates how solutions to these issues were directly dependent on in-depth collaboration between diverse stakeholders. We illustrate the long process of defining and refining solutions to IUU fishing and show that there is substantial potential for other institutions managing fisheries to learn from the experiences in the Southern Ocean. 72 | Solutions | July-August 2014 | www.thesolutionsjournal.org

t is the summer of 2002 in the Southern Ocean. The seas are rough and a ship is hauling in a longline that was set at a depth of more than a thousand meters. The catch is illegally caught Patagonian toothfish—a white-fleshed predatory fish in the Antarctic. It is hauled on board, removed from the hook, and closely followed by an endangered albatross also hooked on the line, and another toothfish. The fishing master is pleased with the prospects of the big money he is about to make. However, the catch needs to be salvaged quickly in order to arrive at the agreed transshipment site before any Australian or French fisheries enforcement vessel shows up. Illegal fishing in the Southern Ocean risks resulting in the collapse of both Patagonian toothfish stocks and endangered albatross populations. In response to this looming ecological and political disaster, the international community managed to mobilize a range of critical human, technical, and financial resources. Today, official estimates show that IUU catches have been reduced substantially compared to peak catches in the 1990s. How was this possible? Illegal, unregulated, and unreported (IUU) fishing is one of the biggest threats to sustaining fish stocks and marine ecosystems globally.1 All three aspects of IUU are often treated together, but they represent different levels of legal offences. Illegal fishing is carried out in direct contravention to existing laws, whereas unregulated fishing is less of a direct legal offense. Unregulated fishing can represent a fishing activity that is carried out on ‘unregulated’ stocks that have no catch limits but can also represent fishing regulated stock with catch limits, where the fishing vessel is flagged to a country that is not part of the regulating body that has defined the quota. Unreported fishing is catch that is removed but not reported. All aspects of IUU are, despite these differences, considered serious challenges

for marine resource management worldwide.2,3 Illegal, unregulated, and unreported fishing remains common in many of the world’s oceans and is resulting in annual economic losses in the order of billions of dollars.3 For example, reduced fish stocks in the northern hemisphere after the 1990s was pushing fisheries vessels south,4 further away from the major markets of Europe, North America, and Japan5,6 and also down to increasing depths.7 This movement also contributed to the emergence of IUU fishing elsewhere.2

Key Concepts • Illegal, unregulated, and unreported (IUU) fishing is a major threat to marine resource sustainability; • Monitoring compliance in remote and high seas areas represents a substantial challenge; • There are ways in which IUU fishing can be effectively reduced: an example is provided from the Southern Ocean; • International cooperation is possible through the development of policy tools, frequent information exchange, and coordination by a centrally placed secretariat; • Nonstate actors (environmental NGOs and the fishing industry) are critical partners to governments in successful reduction of IUU fishing.

How are Global Marine Commons Regulated? Coastal states can declare an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) of up to 200 nautical miles from the coastline within which they have the exclusive right to regulate their fisheries. With the exception of some disputed areas, all coastal states have declared EEZs. Much of the high-seas areas beyond these national jurisdictions are governed by Regional Fisheries Management Organizations (RFMOs). The most important regulatory power

and control over any fishing vessel is the vessel’s flag state, the country to which the vessels is flagged. However, some flag states have limited capacity and/or willingness to control their fleets.8 International Cooperation in the Southern Ocean Yields Results Fortunately, not everything about global marine commons is bad news. There are several areas served by RFMOs that are making at least reasonable progress in fulfilling their mandates and that have well-developed legal frameworks. One of these is the Southern Ocean around Antarctica (Figure 1). In the early 1980s, the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) came into effect. The Convention established the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, also called CCAMLR. The Commission is the international forum for cooperation and collaboration in marine conservation and fisheries management in the Southern Ocean. It has 25 member states (including the European Union as one member “state”) that meet annually to negotiate policy measures, review compliance, and make decisions about fishing catch limits based on scientific advice.9,10 Since the peak of IUU fishing in the mid 1990s, illegal, unregulated, and unreported fishing around Antarctica has been the biggest challenge for CCAMLR over the past eighteen years (Figure 1, Box 1). In the early 2000s, CCAMLR agreed to develop a novel catch documentation scheme to combat international trade in IUU-caught toothfish.11 Extensive diplomatic resources have been directed at both flag states (with the formal responsibility for ensuring fishing vessels comply with international regulations) and port states (where IUU catches are landed and transported onwards to major markets).

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BOX 1, Illegal fishing in the Antarctic: In the 1990s, it became clear that fish stocks around the world had been subject to a too-intensive fishing. Depletion of predatory fish stocks in the Northern hemisphere was increasingly leading to an increased fishing effort further south, including in the Southern Ocean.6 The Patagonian toothfish, primarily concentrated around sub-Antarctic islands, emerged as a promising option. The species is large and long-lived with white and fat meat. It quickly became very popular, particularly in US restaurants, where it is sold as Chilean Sea Bass.24 Patagonian toothfish were initially fished primarily along the coast of Patagonia in southern Chile and Argentina. Fishing fleets from South America and Europe discovered new stocks around the British sub-Antarctic islands of South Georgia. IUU fishing operations later expanded eastward, to the South African Prince Edward Island, the French Crozet and Kerguelen Islands, and Australia’s Heard and MacDonald Islands. Several countries within CCAMLR simultaneouly tried to develop a licensed fishery, in some of the locations where IUU operations had been pioneered the development of toothfish fishing.24

Vessels engaged in IUU fishing that have been detected and/or apprehended have been blacklisted by CCAMLR (see https://www.ccamlr. org/en/compliance/compliance). They are unable to obtain fishing licenses within the CCAMLR area and are denied access to ports. Meanwhile, many countries in CCAMLR, including the United Kingdom, Australia, France, and New Zealand have devoted substantial resources to monitoring and international cooperation.12 As a result of these efforts, there has been a substantial reduction of IUU fishing (Figure 1). No new ships have been discovered fishing in the area despite a marked increase in monitoring by several CCAMLR member states (using satellites, airplanes, and patrol vessels) and the estimated amount of IUU fishing has decreased substantially (>90%) since the peak levels in the 1990s (Figure 1). Simultaneously, toothfish stocks and, particularly, albatross populations have benefitted from this dramatically reduced IUU fishing pressure.13 Detecting vessels, uncovering information on illegal landings or transport, investigating complex networks of ownerships, and securing convicting sentences for globally operating and adaptive illegal fishing operators is obviously not an easy task

and has required extensive multinational cooperation. But CCAMLR has shown convincingly that there is great potential in international cooperation for conserving marine resources. A number of lessons can be drawn from the CCAMLR ‘solution’ to IUU fishing. Here we present how international political pressure, the inclusion of non-state actors, characteristics of some highly engaged key organizations, and the development of tools that faciliate collaboration have contributed to the successful reduction of the IUU fishing in the Southern Ocean.

The Role of Political Pressure In the beginning, most identified IUU vessels were flagged to member states of CCAMLR.14 This created a delicate political sitution, but since these countries mostly had a welldeveloped capacity to address their ships’ activities, they were also able to take appropriate action and deregister the identified vessels. Several vessels received substantial fines and some were even seized and scrapped. Those that managed to escape this first round of enforcement however, developed increasingly sophisticated techniques to minimize the risk of detection and penalties.

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The most common response of the remaining illegal fishery operators was to change their flag state, preferably to flag states with a more limited ability or interest in taking action.14 The name, livery, and call sign of vessels engaged illegally also tend to change continuously in order to evade compliance. While many of the results of CCAMLR’s efforts have had a gradual impact, there are currently no identified illegal fishing vessels flagged to CCAMLR member states.14 In principle, however, this means that there are vessels that exist but are not subject to the CCAMLR regulations. Their fishing activities are thus ‘unregulated’ rather than illegal but still considered serious by members of CCAMLR. This spurred CCAMLR’s introduction of a blacklist as a means to impede these unregulated vessels’ activities. Engaging Non-State Actors to Raise Awareness and Increase Capacity Illegal fishing operators in the Southern Ocean had direct negative impacts on valuable and untapped commercial fish stocks of large interest to a growing licensed fishing industry. It also had a negative impact on globally threatened seabirds, raising the concerns of the international community that valued the Antarctic environment.15 A number of non-state actors (licensed fishing companies and environmental NGOs) quickly understood the scale of the problem with IUU fishing and rapidly formed an alliance to address this substantial challenge. Their shared, strong interest in fighting IUU fishing, both for the protection of valuable seabirds and fish stocks,16,17 led to their active engagement in CCAMLR as observers or as members of national delegations. Governments and non-state actors do not always share the same agenda when it comes to practical management of natural resources, but in the

Figure 1. The area (grey) in the Southern Ocean managed by the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR). The area includes a United Kingdom (UK) South Georgia maritime zone and Exclusive Economic Zones around South African (ZA) Prince Edward Island, French (FR) Crozet and Kerguelen Islands, and Australian (AU) Heard Island. Norway (NO) has not declared an Exclusive Economic Zone around Bouvet Island. AR, Argentina; CL, Chile; NA, Namibia; NZ, New Zeeland; Mocambique; MU, Mauritius; UY, Uruguay. Geographical boundaries derived from www.seaaroundus. org and estimated weight of toothfish (Dissostichus spp.) caught by Illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing in the area between 1995 and 2009 (official data from CCAMLR22,23).

case of CCAMLR, they fortunately did. As a result, states representing the emerging licensed industry were quick to support the development of policy measures directed at reducing IUU fishing. Success in combatting IUU fishing did not come overnight. The consensus decision-making mechanisms used by CCAMLR took time, making rapid responses to emerging threats difficult. Success was instead achieved through persistent and sometimes prolonged negotiation. Initial attempts at combatting IUU fishing had loopholes that were only corrected several years after the implementation of some

measures.10 For example, the US, one of the major markets for toothfish, enforced a unilateral ban on the import of toothfish products from some markets as an “emergency” measure, even though this was seen by some CCAMLR member states as an affront to their consensus ethos. As CCAMLR decisions are taken by consensus, the politically contentious issue of IUU fishing initially complicated the ability of all member states to agree on adequate conservation measures to address this problem.15 However, the licensed fishing industry and the NGO community had abilities that states did not. These non-state

actors published names of vessels and companies associated with IUU fishing in reports presented during CCAMLR meetings, as well as widely elsewhere in order to ensure that IUU operators would be well known. The reports used unofficial information derived from contacts in the fishing industry and from private investigators contracted by the licensed fishing industry and environmental NGOs. This ‘naming and shaming’ strategy was controversial,18 as it implicated countries, banks, and individuals as being involved in IUU fishing, but it proved effective. The publication of such material raised the overall level

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Charles Van den Broek / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Increased monitoring and cooperation among CCAMLR member states has significantly reduced IUU fishing in the Southern Ocean.

of awareness of IUU fishing and stimulated political will to take action.15 These measures seemingly fueled the consensus-based decision-making process, increasing the overall speed at which decisions were being made and helping to maintain the momentum of policy development through periods of political stagnation. Over time, member states have increasingly included non-state actors in their delegations to CCAMLR. There has also been a steady rise in the number of NGOs and fishing industry representatives in the CCAMLR, as well as increasingly diversified national delegations, that covers the range of competencies needed in CCAMLR.12

BOX 2, Using crises as windows of opportunity for change: The problem with IUU fishing was a substantial concern for CCAMLR, and it is clear from Commission documents that IUU fishing even represented international crises, at multiple occasions.12 A first crisis was evident in 1997 at the peak of IUU fishing, when the surprising magnitude of the problem became evident to the commission. After a reduced IUU fishing activity in the late 1990s and early 2000s (much due to actions taken by NGOs), a second crisis was evident in 2003, when it was discovered that IUU fishing had reached a new peak and had now taken on a much more organized and international form. Much of this fishing was conducted around sub-Antarctic islands where a number of countries exercise their national jurisdiction and where biological productivity is high. However, in the late 2000s a third crisis became evident as IUU fishing was now discovered to be conducted in the high seas and now using gillnets, a fishing methods with unknown consequences and where estimated IUU catches are hard to derive. All these crises created substantial concern to the Commission, but it is also clear that they created opportunities for NGOs, the licensed fishing industry, and states to implement new ideas and policies that had been difficult to address in non-crises situations.12

Facilitating Collaboration After several years of moderately successful policy measures developed by states and substantial actions taken by non-state actors, CCAMLR subsequently developed measures that led to the current, reduced levels of IUU fishing.12 These tools were

often developed as a response to crisis situations within CCAMLR triggered by IUU fishing situations (Box 2). The measures include the electronic catch documentation scheme that tracks toothfish products from vessels to markets, a black list of all vessels

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operating outside the agreed international framework, and an extensive system of detection and inspection of vessels, including satellite-based monitoring systems. A number of countries, notably the United Kingdom, France, Australia, and New Zealand also

Figure 2. A simplified example of interorganizational cooperation. The fishing industry in country A (IndA) can communicate their suspicion of an illegal shipment of toothfish to their relevant government agency (GovA). This agency can obtain relevant information related to the IUU list and CDS from the CCAMLR secretariat and can inform colleagues in country B (GovB), where the cargo is heading. This agency can mobilize relevant partners for seizure of the suspected catch. Agencies in country B can also interact with the CCAMLR secretariat for information on the vessel and possibly also with agencies (GovX) and NGOs (NGO) in other countries for additional information of relevance for prosecution.

conduct substantial oceanic and/or aerial inspections of these remote areas as well as joint training and enforcement activities. The catch documentation scheme and IUU list of vessels have been identified by the participating organizations as critical resources for CCAMLR (Figure 4, see also ref. 17). One of the key benefits of these innovations is that they make collaboration easier. Governments, NGOs, and the licensed fishing industry can use these devices to follow-up and easily report suspected activities, contributing to compliance monitoring at sea and in the market (Figure 2). The CCAMLR secretariat has been empowered with these tools and function as an important coordinating node in the network by facilitating this collaboration.17

There is frequent cooperation between countries, and between governments and non-state actors (Figure 3), illustrating the diverse competencies required to address such a complicated and international issue as IUU fishing. The organizations have different agenda and priorities, but they also have a common interest in combatting IUU fishing. The combination of the tools developed by CCAMLR and the coordination of the secretariat has made it easier for diverse organizations to collaborate globally for the sustainable management of Antarctic marine living resources. Indeed, collaboration expressed as government agency coordination was identified as the second most important issue after political will for combatting IUU fishing (Figure 4).

A Core of Key Actors with Distinct Qualities Takes the Lead As research on international environmental regimes shows, the existence of a coalition of influential actors willing and able to act for the benefit of the regime seems crucial for effectiveness.19 This finding aligns well with the case of CCAMLR —although collaboration in CCAMLR encompasses many organizations, not all are perceived as equally important for enforcement and compliance. Insights and recent research from the fields of common-pool resource management and international environmental regimes have demonstrated that organizations that stand out for accomplishing regime effectiveness in CCAMLR are engaged in certain combinations of activities and have access

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to certain combinations of resources.20 An individual organization does not necessarily have to be engaged in all activities and have access to all resources to be of importance. Being active in the field and politically well-connected stand out as important factors that collectively explain the perceived importance of an organization, irrespective of whether they are government agencies, international governance organizations, or NGOs. Collaboration with flag states and/ or access to advanced technology are factors that the most important government agencies often share, whereas engagement in public campaigns, thereby contributing to more informal ways of applying pressure against fishing companies or member states, is typically attributed to environmental NGOs and the fishing industry. Although there appears to be a distinct division of labor between governmental agencies and non-state actors, there is some overlap among them.20 Several organizations contribute to each combination of factors, which results not only in a redundancy in organizations, but also that some organizations can fill these functions if others are faltering. All of this suggests that the capacity of CCAMLRs to adapt to and address novel challenges has benefitted from a consistently high diversity of engaged actors.20 These findings might provide some suggestions on how to develop the necessary capacity to initiate and maintain critical coalitions of organizations with sufficient resources to effectively address the problem of illegal fishing. In such a coalition, each organization is carrying out certain combinations of activities and is equipped with certain resources, which together positively affects the effectiveness of CCAMLR.

Outlook The CCAMLR has demonstrated a good ability to effectively deal with the governance challenges characterizing high-seas fisheries and has suppressed

PAF

IMCS

MU FAO

ASOC NA. US ZA

CCAMLR NZ NO

AU UY

JP CAPFISH

MRAG

COLTO

ARGOS

FR AR

DG.MARE

Figure 3. Networks of cooperation aimed at improving information sharing from monitoring activities at sea and aimed at reducing IUU fishing in the Southern Ocean. Collaborative monitoring at sea17 include the following countries (squares): Argentina (AR), Australia (AU), Chile (CL), France (FR), Japan (JP), Korea (KR), Mauritius (MU), Mozambique (MZ), Namibia (NA), New Zealand (NZ) Norway (NO), Spain (ES), South Africa (ZA), United Kingdom (UK), United States (US), Uruguay (UY); international organizations (diamonds) such as the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources Secretariat (CCAMLR), Directorate General for Marine Affairs and Fisheries (DG Mare), Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), International Monitoring Control and Surveillance Network (IMCS), Partnership for African Fisheries (PAF), the fishing industry (Upward pointing triangles) Argos Froyanes Ltd (ARGOS), and Coalition of Legal Toothfish Operators (COLTO); and environmental NGOs (circles) include the Antarctic Southern Ocean Coalition (ASOC) and other organizations (downward pointing triangles) such CapFish and Marine Resources Assessment Group (MRAG).

IUU fishing to just a small percent of its peak value a couple of decades ago. The current major challenge for CCAMLR is to establish large areas of marine protected areas (MPAs) in the Southern Ocean.21 In spite of significant public awareness and widespread support among many powerful member states, CCAMLR has failed several times to reach an agreement on the issue (see http://antarcticocean.org). Our example above shows that it is possible to achieve substantial progress with international and contested management issues. The CCAMLR has illustrated that the

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international community is able to collaborate in innovative ways and that the government, the fishing industry, and environmental NGOs can fill complementary functions in complex problem solving. To achieve this aim requires social trust among key individuals and perceived shared interests.12 It also requires a shared perception of the problem,17 actors that can perform complementary functions,20 and a coordinating function that facilitates collaboration.17 The future will tell if CCAMLR will be able to overcome existing collaborative barriers for establishing MPAs as they

PLoS ONE 5, e15143 (2010).

Political will

7. Pauly, D et al. The future for fisheries. Science 302,

Government agency coordination

8. Miller, DD & Sumaila, UR. Flag use behavior and

1359–1361 (2003). IUU activity within the international fishing

Catch Documentation Scheme (CDS)

fleet: refining definitions and identifying areas of concern. Marine Policy 44, 204–211 (2014). 9. Constable, AJ et al. Managing fisheries to conserve

IMCS Network

the Antarctic marine ecosystem: practical implementation of the Convention on the

Financial resources

Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR). ICES Journal of Marine Science 57, 778–

Permanent staff

791 (2000). 10. Miller, DGM et al. in Law, Technology and Science for

Vessel list

Oceans in Globalisation (ed. Vidas, D.) (Brill Academic Publishers, Leiden, 2010). 11. Agnew, DJ. The illegal and unregulated fishery for

Access to technology

toothfish in the southern Ocean, and the CCAMLR catch documentation scheme. Marine Policy 24,

Public support and recognition

361–374 (2000). 12. Österblom, H & Sumaila, UR. Toothfish crises,

Inclusiveness of the fishing industry

actor diversity and the emergence of compliance

mechanisms in the Southern Ocean. Global Environmental Change 21, 972–982 (2011). 13. Robertson, G et al. Black-browed albatross numbers in Chile increase in response to reduced mortality

'Critical' [%]

in fisheries. Biological Conservation 169, 319–333 (2014).

Figure 4. This diagram presents how nearly 50 organizations actively involved in addressing IUU fishing responded to the question “Assess the following resources in terms of how important they are for effectively addressing IUU fishing for toothfish in the Southern Ocean.” They could choose between ‘Critical,’ ‘Important, ‘ ‘Useful,’ and ‘Not important.’ The graph shows the percentage that responded ‘Critical.’

14. Österblom, H et al. Adapting to regional enforcement: fishing down the governance index. PLoS ONE 5, e12832 (2010). 15. Fallon, LD & Kriwoken, LK. International influence of an Australian nongovernment organization in the protection of Patagonian toothfish. Ocean

once did when combating IUU fishing or if the establishment of MPAs is a question of whether different viewpoints and interests are impossible to align. The CCAMLR has served as a source of inspiration for other regional fisheries management organizations through its international leadership in addressing IUU fishing and is in a unique position to further develop this leadership also in other areas. Acknowledgement H.Ö. was funded by the Baltic Ecosystem Adaptive Management Program, Formas, and the Nippon Foundation. Ö.B. and H.Ö. were supported by MISTRA through a core grant to Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University, and Ö.B. also received support from the strategic research program Ekoklim at Stockholm University. U.R.S. thanks

the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada for supporting the OceanCanada Partnership.

Development and International Law 35, 221–226 (2004). 16. Österblom, H & Folke, C. Emergence of global adaptive governance for stewardship of regional marine resources. Ecology and Society (in press). 17. Österblom, H & Bodin, O. Global cooperation

References

among diverse organizations to reduce illegal

1. UNGA Res. 65/38 - Sustainable fisheries,

fishing in the Southern Ocean. Conservation Biology

including through the 1995 agreement for the Implementation of the provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea of 10 December 1982 relating to the conservation and management of straddling fish stocks and highly migratory fish stocks, and related instruments

26, 638–648 (2012). 18. Jacquet, J et al. Shame and honour drive cooperation. Biology Letters 7, 899–901 (2011). 19. Young, OR. Effectiveness of international environmental regimes: Existing knowledge, cutting-edge themes, and research strategies.

(United Nations, New York, 2011). 2. Sumaila, UR et al. Global scope and economics of illegal fishing. Marine Policy 30, 696–703 (2006). 3. Agnew, DJ et al. Estimating the worldwide extent of illegal fishing. PloS ONE 4, e4570 (2009). 4. Christensen, V et al. Hundred-year decline of North Atlantic predatory fishes. Fish and Fisheries 4, 1–24 (2003).

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 108, 19853–19860 (2011). 20. Bodin, Ö & Österblom, H. International fisheries regime effectiveness—activities and resources of key actors in the Southern Ocean. Global Environmental Change 5, 948-956 (2013) 21. Christian, C & Ainley, D. Can good governance save the Antarctic? Solutions 2, 38–45 (2011).

5. Pauly, D et al. Global trends in world fisheries: impacts on marine ecosystems and food security. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B:

22. Report of the Twenty-First Meeting of the Scientific Committee (SC-CCAMLR, Hobart, 2002). 23. Report of the Twenty-Eight Meeting of the Scientific

Biological Sciences 360, 5–12 (2005).

Committee (SC-CCAMLR, Hobart, 2009).

6. Swartz, W et al. The spatial expansion and ecological footprint of fisheries (1950 to present).

24. Knecht, B. Hooked: Pirates, Poaching and the Perfect Fish. (Rodale, Emmaus, 2006).

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Keeley, F. (2014). Who Should Govern, Cities or Nation-States? A False Choice. Solutions 5(4): 80-83. https://thesolutionsjournal.com/article/who-should-govern-cities-or-nation-states-a-false-choice/

Reviews Book Review

Who Should Govern, Cities or Nation-States? A False Choice by Fred Keeley REVIEWING If Mayors Ruled the World: Dysfunctional Nations, Rising Cities Benjamin Barber (Yale University Press)

et’s get two things straight from the beginning: First, Benjamin Barber is one smart fellow. Second, his prescription for saving democracy is wildly off base. In his most recent book, If Mayors Ruled the World: Dysfunctional Nations, Rising Cities (Yale University Press), Professor Barber produces another of his wonderfully intense pieces of writing, this time taking on the twin issues of whether or not nations can effectively self govern in the modern world (he thinks not), and whether or not cities can become their successors (he thinks that they can). To get there, If Mayors Ruled the World takes readers through a Whitman’s Sampler of inspiring mayoral achievements, while offering blistering criticism of nations and international bodies who he claims have failed humanity’s biggest tests. Former Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kollek is singled out for praise because of his often quoted admonition to the city’s eternally squabbling religious leaders that “I’ll fix your sewers if you knock off the sermons.” Michael Bloomberg, immediate past Mayor of New York City, is a particular favorite of Professor Barber. Citing an unnamed “senior advisor” to Bloomberg, we learn the following, “you look at the way Mike has operated [and] he’s used mayors around the world and his network

of philanthropy to produce what I would say are the beginnings of an international infrastructure that can promote a level of change that is hard to fathom.” The “network of philanthropy” tool in “Mike’s” toolbox may seem just a bit out of reach for virtually any other mayor in the world, yet it is a key to whatever metric of success one can attribute to the former mayor. Certainly, Teddy Kollek, Michael Bloomberg, Sheila Dikshit of Delhi, and Ayodele Adewale of Lagos have a lot to be proud of regarding service to their respective constituencies. It is equally as certain that New York, Delhi, and Lagos have vast stretches of dilapidated housing and huge populations living in grinding poverty, for whom there appears to be no municipal relief. In contrast to Professor Barber’s claim, what relief there may be is shaped and managed by national governments. When it comes to America, think about Food Stamps, federal funds for affordable transportation, and access to quality health care via Medicaid operated by the states and delivered by county governments. Professor Barber’s careful selection of cities and mayors, designed to make his argument plausible, leaves out the cities and mayors who are anything but models of “from the bottom up” democracy. (Perhaps the reader can insert here their favorite

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Yale University Press

fallen mayor. To prompt your thinking, consider Mayor Rob Ford of Toronto, Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick of Detroit, or Mayor Marion Barry of Washington, DC). While there are many creative and honorable mayors around the world, there are similarly state legislators, members of congresses or parliaments, and heads of state who are equally creative and effective. Can you really argue that Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, is a policy or political failure? Is it possible to overlook former Costa Rican president Oscar Arias as a model of effective governance? As Professor Barber marches on toward his proposed “Global Parliament of Mayors,” he first must either disparage or ignore the existing international entities that are in existence to deal with massive-scale issues, such as atomic energy, famine, and disease. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has a very substantial track record of success.

Reviews Book Review While far from perfect, the IAEA can can hold its organizational head high regarding management of the belligerent use of nuclear power. Can mayors really put together an equally good or better entity that can do that particular job as well as mayors can collect garbage? The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, while also imperfect, can lay claim to relieving millions from starvation. Can mayors do a better job? If so, why are they not already feeding their poor and undernourished? Where Professor Barber is spot on is identifying cities as incubators of very creative problem solving. He

provides numerous well-documented case statements in this regard, and they should not be dismissed simply because his premise is exaggerated. Similarly, neither the reader nor Professor Barber should dismiss the creative work done every day in the United States by governors and state legislatures. For a large scale example, it is the State of California, working in a bi-partisan manner, that has taken the most bold and effective steps on large scale solutions to global climate change (clearly prodded into action by a federal congress and executive branch that cannot bring themselves to act in concert

on this clear and present danger to humanity). The false choice that Professor Barber seems to be presenting is this: national and international entities are failing, and untested theories of united mayors will succeed. Perhaps Professor Barber would do better to simply argue that mayors getting together in formal and informal leagues can add positive and effective solutions to vexing urban problems. It does not do his argument any good to say that such association is preferable to nations and their inherent powers for change and progress.

Media Reviews Looking Beyond Conflict by Eloise Harnett While modern media is filled with stories of violence, conflict, and strife around the world, we rarely hear stories of peaceful endings, reconciliation and hope for the future. The Boston-based organization, Beyond Conflict, offers some hope to our bookshelves with its first book, simply titled Beyond Conflict. Beyond Conflict is an organization that assists leaders in countries transitioning from conflict to peace. Its approach is simple but effective: Beyond Conflict brings experienced leaders who have successfully transitioned from periods of conflict and civil war, together with leaders currently struggling with conflict. Its new book, written by Co-Founder Tim Phillips, draws from 20 years of experience in peace negotiations in some of our world’s most conflict-torn areas. Throughout its 20 years, Beyond Conflict has led over 70 initiatives

involving hundreds of leaders from 50 countries worldwide. These initiatives have ranged from assisting leaders in South Africa faced with the realities of a post-Apartheid society, to working with leaders in Northern Ireland negotiating the Good Friday Peace Agreement. Its new book draws from six of Beyond Conflict’s numerous initiatives, focusing on key leaders the organization has worked with. In Northern Ireland, where decades of tension and violence led to an overwhelming lack of trust between parties, Jeffrey Donaldson explains how Beyond Conflict’s initiatives had impacted him: “For the first time I recognized that although we were political opponents, although in the conflict we were enemies, we also had suffered loss, each of us. We needed to reach beyond the sense of being opponents and enemies to recognize that on both sides there had been suffering, on both sides there had been loss.”

Beyond Conflict & Brideswell Books

With a successful history of bringing together leaders and practitioners in hopes of creating lasting peace, Beyond Conflict’s current initiatives bring great hope for our future. Today the focus of this organization lies within Bahrain, Cuba, Kosovo and Turkey.

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Reviews Media Reviews

World Economic Forum / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Céline Cousteau, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of CauseCentric Productions speaking at the 2012 World Economic Forum Summit on the Global Agenda.

Filmmaking for the Greater Good by Rachel DuShey For non-profit organizations focused on advancing their causes, communicating their work to the public may not be a priority. A media organization led by the granddaughter of French marine scientist Jacques Cousteau is trying to help, by producing stunning, powerful video shorts about the work of environmental organizations, and donating them to the groups.

CauseCentric Productions (CCP), a a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, helps other charitable groups and individuals all over the world promote their cause by providing them with professional multi-media coverage. Founded and led by Celine Cousteau, documentarian and explorer, CCP travels to remote parts of the world to bring important stories to the forefront. The 3–10 minute “Short Films” cover topics from agricultural training in Uganda to environmental conservation in Chilean Patagonia. One film features a mission to Papua New Guinea with “Healing

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Seekers”, a non-profit based in North Carolina, that studies tribal medicine. The group works with local communities to preserve their knowledge of medicinal plants and discover healing cures. CCP also produces “Minutes”, which feature inspiring individuals that the organization meets during its travels, and a documentary project called People and the Sea, which includes a mini-series and short films about non-profits that work in the water. PR is a valuable tool that can help non-profits better communicate their message and thus advance their cause.

Reviews Media Reviews America’s Healthiest Cities by Sam Whitefield It’s not at all controversial to say that people want to be healthy. But health priorities can differ between individuals. The just-married 30-somethings want a healthy environment in which to raise children, but the just-retired 60-somethings want one in which they can have rewarding and fulfilling post-retirement lives. A new book from TIME Books identifies places that are among America’s healthiest by some definition of that word. The best place to raise a healthy

kid, reportedly, is Burlington, VT. The best place for those retirees to age well is Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN. Other categories include healthiest food (San Francisco Bay, CA), best healthcare (Boston, MA), keeping fit (Denver and Boulder, CO), healthy environment (Portland, OR), and more. The book is divided into ten sections, each focused on one of the winning cities. For each city, a local author was hired to write about, for example, the fitness and outdoors culture that results in denizens of Denver and Boulder taking 2,000 more steps per day than those in other areas,

or the wealth of organic and local markets that make the San Francisco Bay Area such a healthy place to eat. Accompanying these essays are beautiful, full-color photographs illustrating the attraction of the area. While each city chosen as a category winner deserves congratulations, the book also selected an overall winner in the “lifelong health” category. Honolulu, HI was chosen as the winner, both because of its “incredible year-long access to outdoor activity” and its “cultural attitudes like ohana— a sense of being deeply connected to one another.”

Wally Gobetz / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Time’s new book, Healthiest Places to Live, names Honolulu as the winner of the “lifelong health” category. www.thesolutionsjournal.org | July-August 2014 | Solutions | 83

Davis, M.T. (2014). China’s Democratic Future? Lessons from Britain during the Long Eighteenth Century. Solutions 5(4): 84-90. https://thesolutionsjournal.com/article/chinas-democratic-future-lessons-from-britain-during-the-long-eighteenth-century/

Solutions in History

China’s Democratic Future? Lessons from Britain during the Long Eighteenth Century by Michael T. Davis

ere is one of the most intriguing questions of our time—what is China’s political destiny? For some, the answer seems self-evident: world domination. Martin Jacques and many other China-watchers say it is not ‘if’, but ‘when China rules the world.’1 But the burning question is, how will China rule itself? How will it survive as a stable and centralized state through its economic and global make-over as a superpower? What will the political future of this vast and rapidly evolving nation look like? Perhaps the answers to these questions can be found in another time and place: in Britain during the so-called ‘long 18th century’ (1688–1832), where we can see parallels between the forces that helped transform Britain into the global superpower of the 19th century and those that underpin China’s modern-day transformation. As a result of the agents of change that took place during the long 18th century, Britain laid the foundations for the progressive democratization of British society, especially after the Great Reform Act of 1832.2 Interestingly, one of the discussion points about China is whether or not the nation and its people will be put on the path of democracy. Many Western observers inappropriately approach this topic, one way or another, with a normative stance that places Western-style democracy as the highest form of political evolution. But to argue that China will have a democratic future should not imply any level of Western superiority. In fact, it is reasonable to accept that ‘democracy with Chinese characteristics’ will

continue to unfold into reality, just as democracy in its own distinctive ways emerged in Russia and Japan.3 It is also important to acknowledge that we are comparing diversely distinct countries in different historical periods. Britain during the long 18th century and modern-day China are socially, politically, and culturally unique. However, despite these dissimilarities, the comparison is not lost for at least some Chinese. Li Daokui, Professor of Economics at Tsinghua University and former adviser to China’s central bank, is reported as saying: “We want to learn from the British model… Today’s leaders in China are looking carefully at the British style of political change over the last 400 years.”4 For Li, Britain during the 18th century provides a map for charting the waters of reform and avoiding the hazards of revolution. Just as the forces of change in 18th century Britain paved the way for democracy, so too will those similar agencies help determine and shape the political future of China. As Jacques notes, “In the long run it seems rather unlikely, given the underlying pressures for democracy that exist within increasingly sophisticated, diverse and prosperous societies, that China will be able to resist the process of democratization.”1 This process will undoubtedly be a significant turning point in the sweeping narrative of Chinese history, in which China is seen as having no democratic heritage from its foundation some 5,000 years ago to the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1911.

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It is true that the country’s dynastic political traditions were underpinned by notions of state sovereignty rather than popular sovereignty, but this political template cannot be entirely superimposed on China’s past and its Confucian foundations. While Confucianism can support an authoritarian government, it also has aspects that could cushion democratic ideas. Sun Yat-sen—the leader of the 1911 overthrow of the Qing Dynasty— looked back to the ancient Confucian philosopher, Mencius, as “the ancestor of our democratic ideas.”5 This is an important reflection given the renaissance of Confucianism and decline of Marxism in contemporary China.6 But it might be argued that Britain in the long 18th century—unlike modern-day China—at least had some semblance of grassroots democratic practices, not just philosophical musings. While democracy was not a word used for most of the 18th century, by the mid-19th century it was an expectation for many. The right to vote in 18th century Britain was one based upon property qualifications, which meant only about 10 percent of the adult population had the franchise. However, the common people—those who did not meet the property requirements to cast a vote at an election—can still be seen as active citizens. Elections “were an opportunity for the populace to turn the world upside down, if only for a short period” and crowd actions like election riots were integral to Hanoverian politics, forming “a vital part of the legitimacy of the electoral process.”7 We also

Solutions in History find actual democratic practices in the 18th century that would have given some people a familiarity with democracy. The London members of the livery companies, which were basically trade guilds, elected the City’s four members of Parliament and nominated candidates for Lord Mayor and Sheriff.8 The working classes also had their own taste of democracy when the London Corresponding Society (LCS) was formed in 1792. The Society was Britain’s first truly working class political club and its primary objective was electoral reform, including an extension of the franchise. Importantly, the LCS had its own internal system of democracy that “anticipated the reformed constitutional government they advocated” and “demonstrated that members of the LCS—those tradesmen, mechanics and shopkeepers excluded from the British polity—had the faculties and propensities for active citizenship and political virtue.”9 These experiences of democracy—however illusionary or tenuous—would have whetted the political appetites of Britons. Interestingly, there have also been tokens of democracy in China that have given the masses a taste for enfranchisement. We can look as far back as February 1913, when China held its first (and only) national election after the fall of the Qing Dynasty. Following victory at this election of the Kuomintang, a party founded by Sun Yat-sen and Song Jiaoren, provincial elections became so common that the Republican period has been described as “politically more democratic than many comparable regimes in Europe at the time,” and by 1944, some Western observers looked to China as the “nation which will carry the light of democracy to the millions of East Asia.”10 More recently, democratization has occurred through

James Gillray (1975)

“Copenhagen House”—Calls for democracy in Britain during the 1790s.

elected villagers’ committees in provincial China. These elections have been contested by multiple candidates, with ballots held in secret and on the basis of one person, one vote. And it is democratization on a grand scale, with much of China’s largest sector of the population—villagers—now familiar with the practice of democracy and Chinese leaders pointing to the village elections as an outward commitment to democratization.11,12,13 Irrespective of any Western cynicism or criticism of Communist visions for democracy in China, it seems apparent the leaders of China know that an expansion of political rights is an inevitable and even a desirable eventuality. The historical forces that once helped shape the long 18th century in Britain are also present in modern-day China and are forces that cannot be ignored or resisted. One of the main markers of both 18th century Britain and modern China is the shift away from subsistence

agriculture and the development of an industrial economy. Economists who follow Rostow’s model of economic growth, would identify both countries in their respective historical periods as moving through the stage of ‘take-off’ to a ‘drive to maturity.’14 And these are moves of resounding proportions and uncanny parallels. Britain moved from a predominantly agrarian society to become the world’s industrial powerhouse as the 18th century progressed into the 19th century. Today, China has been remodelled in a similar way, shifting from an agricultural backwater to a booming industrial giant. Just as some historians question if Britain underwent an industrial ‘revolution’ or industrial ‘evolution,’15 we can also point to China’s industrial growth as a process that evolved over the last four decades since Deng Xiaoping initiated a series of economic reforms that captured the Chinese desire to modernize.16 With its seemingly unlimited supply of cheap labor, China is now

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Solutions in History the world leader in many areas of manufacturing and the label ‘made in China’—whether applied pejoratively or not—is a phrase that captures the dominant reality of the present and the future. Industrialization in both countries was underpinned by almost insatiable demands for natural resources. After James Watt patented a steam engine in 1781, steam became the moving force behind the increasing number of factories in Britain. With steam engines needing heated water from coalfuelled fires, coal mines were barely able to keep up with the demand from British industries during the long 18th century. But China has taken this consumption to another level, with its use of fossil fuels about four times that of the world’s second largest user, the United States. According to a report from the United Nations Environment Program, “China’s dramatic economic growth over the past few decades has increased demands for natural resources within and beyond the country in ways that are unprecedented in human history.”17 Not surprisingly, environmental degradation is one of the most significant problems that is symptomatic of industrialization. Historians generally acknowledge that the Industrial Revolution in Britain was one of the negative turning points in environmental history and was the beginning for some of the key issues we face today, such as water and air pollution.18,19 By the end of the long 18th century, the environmental conditions in Britain’s cities were horrendous: “And what cities! It was not merely that smoke hung over them and filth impregnated them, that the elementary public services - watersupply, sanitation, street-cleaning, open spaces etc—could not keep pace with the mass migration of men into the cities.”20 This could be a description of many cities in modern-day

China, where waste management is often unable to cope with the growth in urban population and where air pollution is implicated in significant loss of life expectancy.21,22 Worryingly, it is not just China’s urban population that faces the dangers from environmental damage. Some small rural communities near polluting factories have even been dubbed ‘cancer villages’ due to the extraordinarily high rates of cancer among their residents.23

generally recognized, and these demonstrations are motivated by concerns that range from the environment and social problems to religion and political justice. China is experiencing its own ‘age of riot’, in which “socially motivated urban and rural protests have steadily increased in frequency, expanded in size, diversified in terms of their participants’ backgrounds, enlarged in geographical coverage, last longer and displayed higher levels of violence.”25

More recently, democratization has occurred through elected villagers’ committees in provincial China. As concerns about the environment and other social issues increase among the Chinese population, there is a growing awareness of the power to protest against government decisions. Despite the immense forces of law and order to deal with protests at the disposal of the Chinese Communist Party, there have been instances of popular resistance winning concessions from the government. In July 2012, thousands of residents in Qidong took to the streets to protest against an industrial waste pipeline project that they feared would pollute the city’s water—and they won.24 But, just as in 18th century Britain, there are far more protests in China that lose rather than win. But popular unrest is a barometer to measure the level of grassroots pressure in a society as well as to witness the critical discontent among the common people to their government’s practices. The 18th century in Britain can be properly described as “an age of riot”7—it seemed that nearly everyone in Britain was protesting against just about everything and the same reflection is true of modern-day China. In fact, China experiences far more protests than is

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One key area of contention common to both urban and rural Chinese in recent years has been domestic land grabbing to continue the nation’s economic and industrial leaps. Under the pursuit of development, domestic land expropriation in China has become one of the defining features of industrialization and urbanization.26,27 This is particularly true in provincial China, where vast tracts of land are being seized by local authorities driven by the revenue imperative. Peasants are often given insufficient compensation while significant profits are reaped by local governments from commercial and industrial developments. This is a somewhat familiar story in the pages of British history. Between 1750 and 1830, common lands were privatized to enhance agricultural productivity under more than 4000 Enclosure Acts passed by the British Parliament. With approximately 6.8 million acres of land across England alone subjected to enclosure, there was extensive displacement of peasants from rural areas into the industrial cities.28 This

Solutions in History

Guo, X (2014)

A peasant in a village in Henan province surrounded by building rubble of houses that had been demolished for a commercial development.

experience often stirred discontent among the peasantry and rural protests became a familiar way of pushing back against the government.29 And there are some strikingly similar protests going on in China today, all of which have the Chinese Communist Party worried about the potential for revolt by dispossessed peasants.30 Interestingly, recent research has shown that Chinese citizens tend to express the highest levels of satisfaction with the central government and are least content with local authorities.31 This is far from surprising given the ‘local’ world view that many villagers still maintain and their protests

are to a certain extent de-politicized. In one Henan village, a local peasant whom I met in February 2014 has seen most of his village reduced to rubble during the previous year to make way for a new commercial development. In protest against the sum of compensation being offered to him, he remains defiantly in the house he called home for the previous 15 years. When asked if he cared about politics, the answer was a resounding ‘no’. Yet—perhaps without knowing it—this peasant is asserting his political rights against what is seen as the arbitrary powers of authority, in a way similar to that exerted by

the common people in Britain during the long 18th century. However, social unrest is unlikely to ripen into a sustained political movement unless connections between disaffected individuals and groups are forged. Urbanization—that dominant, enduring symbol of both British and Chinese industrialization—plays a pivotal role in crystallizing discontents. By the time the long 18th century was drawing to a close, about 40% of Britain’s population was living in urban areas and London was the world’s largest city with a population of around 1.5 million.32 China is now taking what Britain did 200 years ago to a whole

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Solutions in History

Gustav Dore (1870)

“Over London by Rail”—An impression of the crowded and polluted cities of industrial Britain, indicative of the large scale urbanization of the time period.

new level, at a much faster pace and on a much larger scale. Historically, familiarity with urban life has deep roots in China’s past - stretching back to the great ancient cities of Kaifeng and Luoyang and the flourishing capitals of Beijing and Nanjing during the Ming dynasty.33 But for the first time in Chinese history, it was announced that the majority of its population lived in cities rather than rural areas in 2012— about 690 million people who are now considered to be city dwellers.34 In the long 18th century, the essence of urbanization was the townscapes of

London and the northern industrial cities like Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester. Today, China has redefined the essence of urbanization with extraordinary urban developments, from ‘ghost cities’ such as Dongguan and Tianducheng to the booming metropolises of Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou. We know that British urbanization went hand in hand with economic growth as the domestic economy quadrupled over the course of the long 18th century.35 Although the impoverished megacities of Latin

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America are proof that urbanization and economic expansion are not necessarily complementary, China envisages its cities will be the drivers behind dominating the global economy. But, just as urbanization brought significant social challenges to the British in the long 18th century, so too will the Chinese be faced with increasingly difficult issues to address such as urban housing, sanitation, pollution and public health. Amidst these challenges will emerge a political opportunity that will foster calls for political reform. Cities bring people

Solutions in History together to discuss, to congregate and to share common interests. The long 18th century was an ‘associational world’, where people joined clubs and societies that catered for their tastes whether it was bee-keeping or religion, science or politics.36,37 Importantly, political reform societies like the LCS were made viable in part because they could attract sufficient members from the expanding city populations. They also benefited from improved communications and transport during the long 18th century. Better roads, a more efficient postal system, and expansion of the press were all features of Britain at this time, and they were features that political groups used to connect with like-minded citizens and distribute ideas of democracy. If such a connection of likeminded citizens is to take place anywhere in the world today, it is China that has the platform laid. Superfast trains and impressive highway systems are bringing people together more easily. There is also the rapid increase in private car ownership in the last two decades in China, transforming it from the so-called ‘country of bikes’ to a nation with more than 51 million automobile drivers.38 The environmental impact of this huge rise in car ownership is well accounted but the potential political implications are not as immediately recognizable. The building of roads and the driving of cars is not a phenomenon confined just to the cities—everywhere in China is experiencing this transport revolution. In rural areas, it once could take days to traipse from one village to the next. Today, the transport revolution is creating a communications revolution as one-time isolated villages and villagers are now able to connect and communicate more efficiently. Importantly, Chinese youth are better informed and able to

communicate with each other faster than ever before, with the widespread use of mobile phones, the internet and social media facilitating an unprecedented level of connectedness in China. As the communications revolution in all its facets continues to unfold in China, one of the most important facilitators of political change will be fostered: the spread of ideas. In the 18th century, the ideas of freedom that came out of America following independence in 1783 and the concepts of ‘liberty, equality and fraternity’ that emanated from the French Revolution then travelled to Britain and beyond.39

be added the many Chinese tourists who travel overseas as well as the huge numbers who study abroad. Research has shown that Chinese students studying in the West actually change their practices as they inherit Western learning cultures.41 Similarly, some of those Chinese will return home infused with notions of political rights and freedoms. But notions will only go so far towards making a change and time remains the greatest of all transformative forces. It took the long 18th century for the making a politically-conscious working class in Britain, as told in the seminal

Urbanization—that dominant, enduring symbol of both British and Chinese industrialization—plays a pivotal role in crystallizing discontents. The global entanglement of the period made the spread of ideas impossible to control, but the British government tried. It recognized that the scattering of ideas was often a greater threat to the status quo than those who created the ideas, and so it went about prosecuting the booksellers and printers of radical writers. Ironically, in trying to stamp out the circulation of radical thoughts, prosecution tended to highlight and promote the very ideas that the government tried to suppress.40 China will inevitably face a similar challenge from ideas critical of government practices. Although the 21st century is earmarked as the ‘Asia Century’ and China is at the helm, the economic future of the Chinese will be inextricably linked to the West—a contemporary global entanglement that will encourage popular interest in Western ideas. Into this net must

work of E.P. Thompson.42 Slowly but progressively they became aware of their rights, expressed their discontents, and in the end they won. As China moves away from its peasant past to its urban working-class and middle-class future, we will also witness the making of political consciousness. The structural changes to China’s society that accompany industrialization and urbanization will result in the disappearance of the once dominant world of the peasant. As that world vanishes from view, there will not only be a loss of villages but also ‘village mentalities’. More and more Chinese will have the capacity to devote the time once spent on subsistence and survival to issues beyond the local, such as the environment and politics. This new cultural mindset will be an evolution—just as economic

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Solutions in History maturity can take 50 to 100 years, so too will political maturity. It will take generations; but even the current generation of Chinese youth are showing a fresh, open-eyed view of the future.43 You can see in some of China’s airports the high-end Western fashion stores, which are obviously catering for more than just international visitors. You can see in the clothes and latest electronic gadgetry owned by some Chinese youth their middle-class attainments or at least their aspirations to be socially mobile. But will economic freedom and upward mobility be enough for this generation and those that follow? Or, will they be like the English working classes of the long 18th century and demand more of a say in the political present and future of their nation? Perhaps this is a dream but Xi Jinping is basing China’s future around the so-called ‘Chinese Dream’, an ideology intended to rejuvenate the nation and improve the livelihoods of people. Xi wants Chinese youth “to dare to dream, work assiduously to fulfill the dreams and contribute to the revitalization of the nation.”44 Some are dreaming of democracy but will that dream become a reality? The lessons from Britain in the long 18th century tell us it will, but only time will tell. Acknowledgement I would like to thank Professor Harry Dickinson of the University of Edinburgh for his thoughts and guidance on this article. References 1. Jacques, M. When China Rules the World: The End of

3. Cho, YN. Democracy with Chinese Characteristics?

Governance in China: Surveying Collective

Perspective. Issues and Studies 45, 71–106 (2009).

Protestors, Religious Sects and Criminal

4. Evans-Pritchard, A. China Embraces ‘British Model’, Ditching Mao for Edmund Burke. The Telegraph (8 September 2013). 5. Bell, DA & Chaibong, H, eds. Confucianism for the Modern World 9 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2003). 6. Fan, R, ed. The Renaissance of Confucianism in Contemporary China (Springer, Dordrecht, 2011). 7. Randall, A. Riotous Assemblies: Popular Protest in Hanoverian England 185, 303 (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2006). 8. Doolittle, I. The City of London and its Livery Companies (Gavin, Dorchester, 1982). 9. Davis, MT in Unrespectable Radicals? Popular Politics in the Age of Reform (Davis, MT, ed), 30 (Ashgate, Aldershot, 2008). 10. Dikötter, F. The Age of Openness: China Before Mao 7, 20–23 (Hong Kong University Press, Hong Kong, 2008). 11. Brown, K. Ballot Box China: Grassroots Democracy in

of Urbanization Strategies and Domestic Land Grabbing in China: The Case of Chongming Island. (The Land Deal Politics Initiative, The Hague, 2013). 28. Neeson, JM. Commoners: Common Right, Enclosure and Social Change in England, 1700–1820 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1993). 29. Hammond, JL & Hammond, B. The Village Labourer 1760–1832 71–96 (Allan Sutton, Stroud, 1987). 30. Davis, B. World Bank Presses China on Urbanization Plan. The Wall Street Journal (18 September 2013). 31. Saich, T. Chinese Governance Seen Through the People’s Eyes. East Asia Forum [online] (24 July 2011). http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2011/07/24/chinesegovernance-seen-through-the-people-s-eyes/ 32. Bairoch, P & Goertz, G. Factors of Urbanisation A Descriptive and Econometric Analysis. Urban

12. Zhou, S. Trends in China’s Political Reform 13–17 (Griffith Asia Institute, Brisbane, 2012). 13. Jakobson, L. in Governance in China (Howell, J, ed), 113–115 (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Lanham, 2004). 14. Rostow, WW. The Stages of Economic Growth. (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1960). 15. Crafts, NFR. British Economic Growth during the Industrial Revolution. (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1985). 16. Tisdell, C. Economic Reform and Openness in China: China’s Development Policies in the Last 30 Years. Economic Analysis & Policy 39, 271–294 (2009). 17. Li, J. China’s Industrial Growth a ‘Threat to Resources’. South China Morning Post (3 August 2013). 18. Clapp, BW. An Environmental History of Britain since the Industrial Revolution. (Longman, London, 1994). 19. Simmons, IG. An Environmental History of Great Britain. (Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2001). 20. Hobsbawm, EJ. Industry and Empire: An Economic History of Britain since 1750 67–68 (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1968). 21. Wang, H & Wang, C. Municipal Solid Waste Management in Beijing: Characteristics and Challenges. Waste Management & Research 31, 67–72 (2013). 22. Pope, CA & Dockery, DW. Air Pollution and Life Expectancy in China and Beyond. Proceedings of the America 110, 12861–62 (2013).

1000–1022 (2010).

Studies 48, 529–551 (2011). 27. Siciliano, G. The Social and Environmental Implications

in the Nineteenth Century Developed Countries:

National Academy of Sciences of the United States of

Democratization. Comparative Political Studies 43,

Enrichment in China’s Suburban Villages. Urban

the Final Major One-Party State. (Zed Books, London

11–12, 272 (2nd ed, Penguin, New York and London, 2. Ertman, T. The Great Reform Act of 1832 and British

Organizations. China Journal 56, 3 (2006). 26. Zhao, Y & Webster, C. Land Dispossession and

and New York, 2011).

the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order 2012).

25. Chung, JH et al. Mounting Challenges to

A Critical Review from a Developmental State

23. Kaiman, J. Inside China’s ‘Cancer Villages’. The Guardian (5 June 2013). 24. Macleod, C. China’s Rapid Industrialization Fuels More Protests. USA Today (29 July 2012).

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Studies 23, 285–305 (1986). 33. Lincoln, T. China: Revolution in the Streets. History Today 62, 44-46 (August 2012). 34. Page, J et al. China Turns Predominantly Urban. The Wall Street Journal (18 January 2012). 35. Maddison, A. The World Economy (Development Centre Studies, Paris, 2007). 36. Clark, P. British Clubs and Societies 1580–1800 (Oxford University press, Oxford, 2000). 37. Black, EC. The Association: British Extraparliamentary Political Organization 1769–1793 (Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA, 1963). 38. Huang, X. Car Ownership Modeling and Forecasts for China. MSc Thesis, Michigan Technology University (2011). 39. Armitage, D & Subrahmanyam, S, eds. The Age of Revolutions in Global Context c. 1760–1840 (Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2010). 40. Davis, MT. Prosecution and Radical Discourse during the 1790s: The Case of the Scottish Sedition Trials. International Journal of the Sociology of Law 33, 148–58 (2005). 41. Jin, L & Cortazzi, M. Changing Practices in Chinese Cultures of Learning. Language, Culture & Curriculum 19, 5–20 (2006). 42. Thompson, EP. The Making of the English Working Class (Penguin, London, 1991). 43. Werbel, A. Lessons from China: America in the Hearts and Minds of the World’s Most Important Rising Generation (Creatspace, North Charleston,2013). 44. Yang, Y. Youth Urged to Contribute to Realization of ‘Chinese Dream’[online] (4 May 2013). http:// news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/201305/04/c_132359537.htm

Beech, A. and M. Brody. (2014). Restoring the Balance between People and Nature. Solutions 5(4): 91-99. https://thesolutionsjournal.com/article/restoring-the-balance-between-people-and-nature/

On The Ground

Restoring the Balance between People and Nature by Anna Beech and Marc Brody

iant pandas have lost vast areas of their natural habitat. The loss is because of rapid economic development in China, a nation that is making the fastest transition in human history from an agrarian to industrialized society. Only 1,600 giant pandas remain in the wild, with just more than 300 in zoos and captive breeding programs. The goal is shifting to moving pandas from captive breeding programs into native habitats.

A Symbol of Hope and Opportunity to Conserve Habitat Over the last few decades, “panda diplomacy” has been used in China to

foster positive relations with foreign countries—an innovative program that loans giant pandas to zoos across the world. The policy allows millions of people to experience pandas firsthand, and this program earns significant revenues to support panda conservation in China. At the end of 2012, there were approximately 330 giant pandas in captivity, demonstrating the Chinese government’s commitment and ability to breed pandas in captivity. Years of work at the Wolong Nature Reserve in Sichuan Province— located in the heart of the native habitat for pandas—was necessary to understand the basic science of

panda reproduction. Important lessons learned include methods for improving breeding success, increasing cub survival at birth, and raising cubs. The new panda conservation chapter has begun with a reintroduction program: to release captive born pandas into the wild. The reintroduction training teaches pandas necessary skills for survival in the wild, including how to mark territory, forage for food, build “nests” for sleeping, recognize and escape predators (such as leopards), and how to cope with parasites. The pandas have little contact with humans, so that they are fully prepared for life in the wild.

Panda Mountain

The current range of panda habitat is a remnant of the historic range. www.thesolutionsjournal.org | July-August 2014 | Solutions | 91

On The Ground Reintroduction training was originally trialed in the Wolong Nature Reserve in Sichuan Province in 2005. Starting in 2014, the China Conservation and Research Center for the giant panda, headquartered in the Wolong Nature Reserve, will start to reintroduce a few pandas per year for the next few years. Panda Mountain—a program under the Environmental Alliance-US China Environmental Fund—is working to integrate planning, conservation, education, training, community engagement, and sustainable development into the work being done in Wolong. Panda Mountain believes the expanding reintroduction program will create a new opportunity and catalyst for habitat conservation. When the public reflects on what these young pandas will need to survive, there will be growing awareness and commitment to give these reintroduced pandas a home—and thus a game-changing, historic opportunity to promote the restoration of panda habitat. Yet, a captive breeding program and a reintroduction program—however successful—are not enough in isolation. Active conservation of giant panda habitat is fundamentally vital to ensure the survival of the species. Panda Mountain’s focus in Wolong Nature Reserve is promoting ecological restoration to restore and conserve the giant panda’s habitat and biodiversity in the mountain ecosystems in which pandas live. But currently, restoration is underfunded and under-researched. Panda Mountain is establishing a model forest restoration program at Wolong to raise awareness and demonstrate how to ecologically restore degraded habitat in China, and throughout the world.

Panda Mountain

A human dressed in a “panda suit”—pandas being trained to live in the wild benefit from as little as possible exposure to humans.

Sichuan Giant Panda Sanctuaries—a World Heritage Site encompassing approximately 10,000 square kilometers (3,600 square miles)—is the world’s largest remaining contiguous block of giant panda habitat. The Wolong Nature Reserve

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is the lead protected area within the Sanctuaries, and covers 2,000 square kilometers (772 square miles) west of Chengdu, the nearest big city and a popular tourist destination because of the giant pandas. Wolong Nature Reserve was established in 1963.

On The Ground

Panda Mountain

The Wolong Preserve is located near the city of Chengdu, in Sichuan Province, China.

Changing China— Threats and Opportunities Over time, the growth of agrarian societies and human population reduced the range of giant pandas. In the 20th century, pandas were forced to retreat to a narrow crescent of land surrounding the north and western edges of the Sichuan Basin. Given the panda’s reliance on bamboo as its primary food source, this endangered animal has no place to go—lands either side of this sliver of habitat cannot sustain giant pandas. East of the current range are densely populated areas of China where panda habitat is being continually fragmented and reduced. Further west of the Sichuan Basin, the winters on

the Tibetan Himalayan plateau are too severe for bamboo to survive. West of Qinling, the mountains of Shanxi are vast, arid areas that are not able to support the bamboo and temperate vegetation required for panda habitat. Since the panda has nowhere to go, their survival depends on conserving this precious piece of habitat, restoring the degraded lands, and stopping the process of habitat fragmentation. Giant pandas are among the most captivating animals on the planet, particularly because of their distinctive appearance and markings and their easy-going, calm manner. China is taking action to save the species, which is so closely related

to its own identity and global face. The survival of pandas in the wild depends entirely on the ability to save its habitat. As an emerging global power, China is providing leadership and business models that embrace sustainability—models that balance and integrate development and conservation—and by so doing, preserving what remains of China’s wild places and wildlife, as well as restoring the degraded land. Without proper planning to mitigate the affects of rapid industrialization and to address the affects of climate change, the preservation of critically endangered species such as the giant panda will be put in serious jeopardy.

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On The Ground

Panda Mountain

Panda mother and cub.

Climate change poses additional threats to pandas as recent research indicates that climate change can directly threaten bamboo forests. Even the most optimistic scenarios show that bamboo die-offs would effectively cause prime panda habitat to become inhospitable by the end of the 21st century. Beyond applicability to conserve habitat, ecological restoration has

significant value for ecosystem services. In China, restoring natural capital through well-planned ecological programs serves both people and wildlife. As Jonathan Hughes, Program Director & Councillor for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Natural Capital Program said, “by valuing natural capital in a similar way to financial, manufactured, social, and

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human capital, we can make decisions on the stewardship of the natural environment based on hard-nosed economics, and not just on the vitally important moral case for saving nature for nature’s sake.” The importance of natural capital is now seen as part of a new wave of environmentalism that is especially applicable to China where a growing economy has a rapidly increasing middle class to support.1

On The Ground The Importance of Sichuan Sichuan is home to over 75 percent of the world’s wild giant pandas and also home to the China Conservation and Research Center for the giant panda, China’s leading captive panda center, caring for 187 pandas. Outside of the world’s tropical rainforests, the protected areas within the Sichuan Giant Panda Sanctuaries are among the most biologically diverse lands in the world, supporting up to 6,000 plant species. Sichuan as a whole is China’s province with the most animal species, and a highly diverse land area that provides refuge for a handful of critically endangered species, including red pandas, snow leopards, clouded leopards, and the giant panda. For over two decades, Sichuan Province has increased the institutional capacity for protected area management (assisted by many international programs). Comparatively, the field of ecological restoration is under-developed due to a lack of training and practical field experience. Panda Mountain’s programs for ecological restoration are working to change this. Challenges facing people and conservation in China and the need to re-focus efforts in the 21st century In comparison to the tremendous success of China’s captive breeding programs, less has been accomplished to protect China’s wild pandas over the last 30 years. The giant panda is listed as an endangered species under the IUCN’s Red List of Threatened Species, and is a Class 1 Protected Animal in China. Under the Law of the People’s Republic of China on the Protection of Wildlife (1989), Class 1 species are protected by the Central Government. With the effects of

climate change already being felt, plus ongoing environmental degradation from economic growth, wild giant pandas remain at great risk of extinction. Fundamentally, captive breeding—with all those fuzzy little black and white cubs—is much easier to sell to the public, governments, and NGOs than the long-term task

of the largest natural disasters in modern China—was just a few kilometers from the Wolong Nature Reserve. In the aftermath of the earthquake, impoverished villagers have turned to grazing livestock in order to survive. Livestock grazing degrades habitat, and if it persists, it will prevent land from being able to restore itself.

Panda Mountain is establishing a model forest restoration program at Wolong to raise awareness and demonstrate how to ecologically restore degraded habitat in China, and throughout the world. of habitat conservation. There is a reassuring and well-defined sense of success when dealing with the breeding of captive pandas; comparatively there are numerous complexities and uncertainties for long-term preservation of forests to sustain wild pandas. Institutions and government officials tend to be more supportive of breeding programs that carry tangible results than they are of hard-to-quantify, long-term habitat protection. Consequently, land conservation is understaffed and underfunded. Looking forward, progress in critical conservation efforts for the pandas require habitat conservation and restoration—this is necessary for the pandas to survive as a species. Other threats to vital panda habitat are unsustainable livelihoods by local villagers, mass tourism, and highway development in the absence of sufficient wildlife corridors. Further complicating conservation efforts, the devastating May 2008 Sichuan earthquake—the epicenter

Furthermore, Wolong is ill-prepared to manage the expected influx of hundreds of thousands of tourists who wish to see the reserve’s captive pandas and mountain landscapes. Upon completion of Wolong’s new highway—which has been severely affected by landslides during and since the earthquake—mass tourism of hundreds of thousands of visitors each year will put a massive pressure on Wolong’s infrastructure—roads, power, water, waste management systems, etc. The next generation of leaders at Wolong and other protected areas will face growing challenges to maintain the integrity of wild lands. And, like other developing nations, China walks a tightrope between economic development and conservation. There is still reason for optimism, since the Chinese government is taking steps to protect natural areas. In the last 50 years, more than 50 protected areas have been set-aside for giant pandas, largely focused on Sichuan Province.

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On The Ground The Solutions A promising panda habitat conservation program is unfolding in the Wolong Nature Reserve. Panda Mountain’s main objective is the conservation and restoration of giant panda habitat. This work is achieved through a forest landscape restoration program with training, education, and local eco-economic development activities. Panda Mountain’s three primary objectives are: • To follow best ecological restoration practices • To integrate ecological, social, and economic programs (promoting China’s historical focus on “Harmonious Development”) • To build partnerships with the Chinese Government and international organizations

eco-volunteers) will form collaborative teams at restoration sites in Wolong and the region surrounding the Sanctuaries World Heritage Site. The activity at the Training and Learning Center requires funding, which Panda Mountain is working to secure. Already, Panda Mountain has developed successful student and fellowship programmes, attracting experts and enthusiastic volunteers to work in Wolong. The organization will establish a restoration demonstration at Wolong to show the potential for improving the effectiveness of practitioners working in habitat restoration efforts.

managed; establish species recovery programmes; adopt measures to restore and rehabilitate habitat; and provide decision makers with the tools for effective landscape and seascape management, which conserves nature and sustains people’s livelihoods. Panda Mountain is planning activities in Wolong that will engage ecologists, villagers, students, and eco-volunteers in hands-on native forest restoration and in native plant nurseries. This restoration initiative will promote “scaling-up conservation” by demonstrating how resource management policy can evolve

The following three activities form part of the panda habitat restoration program:

Today, Wolong Nature Reserve is at the heart of the “largest and most significant remaining area of panda habitat in the world.”—IUCN report to the World Heritage Committee

A Training and Learning Center We are creating and developing a national-level “Training and Learning Center” that will certify restoration practitioners and guide science-based field programs. Government facilities are now secured to establish a national-level base for ecological restoration training within Wolong. This base will be a high-profile platform to engage international expertise on best restoration management practices. Government agencies and academic and research institutions (in China and internationally) will collaborate to coordinate research and demonstration sites. Certified restoration training programs for a diverse groups of stakeholders (government resource managers, ecologists/scientists, advanced students, indigenous villagers, area protected personnel, and trained

Scaling-Up Conservation A vital activity is to engage public participation, including indigenous communities and protected area visitors through activities including geotourism, mountain camps, and sustainable product production (e.g., making honey and growing medicinal plants to bring to market). At the IUCN World Conservation Congress in Jeju in 2012, the declaration by the IUCN President emphasized the vital importance of scaling-up conservation. “All parts of society must take determined measures to scale up the conservation of biological diversity to halt its continued and rapid decline.” The loss of biodiversity (species, ecosystems, and genes) has grim consequences for humanity. In particular, we must ensure that protected areas are well

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from restricting human activity to fostering engagement and long-term stewardship. Moving away from restriction and toward promoting restoration can help inspire people to become positive ecological change agents. One example is volunteers coming to Wolong and giving time to support restoration projects. To help indigenous communities, Panda Mountain aims to establish a community cooperative which would be an independently operating entity—run by local people, for local people—managing various ‘green enterprises’, value-added processing for agricultural products, producing honey, growing medicinal plants, etc. Panda Mountain believes that geotourism will do two things in Wolong—protect the environment and provide the local community with

On The Ground a sustainable income. Geotourism is defined by National Geographic as “tourism that sustains or enhances the geographical character of a place—its environment, culture, aesthetics, heritage, and the well-being of its residents. Geotourism incorporates the concept of sustainable tourism— that destinations should remain unspoiled for future generations— while allowing for ways to protect a place’s character. Like National Geographic and many other agencies around the world, Panda Mountain believes geotourism is the future of destination travel and the organization is working with partners to promote best geotourism practices in Wolong. Panda Mountain aims to establish restoration-based tourism programs through the construction and promotion of Mountain Restoration Camps—attracting tourists and corporate training groups to come and experience wild and wonderful China. The Camps will provide places for restoration experts to guide the work of local villagers, students, and ecological volunteers to restore native forests and panda habitat. They will also provide opportunities for team building exercises and for students to learn wilderness survival skills. Once the road to Wolong— damaged by the earthquake—is fully reconstructed, there will be a massive influx of tourists, which can be sustainable and support conservation if well planned and managed. There is a danger the environment will simply be further degraded if the tourism is not managed properly. A sustainable tourism— or geotourism—model that demonstrates how to engage visitors in the restoration of degraded natural areas could provide a business model for use across China.

Panda Mountain

The local people near the Wolong Reserve are critical to the success of the Panda Mountain project.

Manage Introduced, Non-Native Species Forty years ago, Sichuan foresters planted Japanese larch (Larix kaempferi), a fast growing, exotic, non-native tree to provide forest cover for Wolong lands that had been logged. Decades later, Sichuan scientists realized that these non-native

monoculture stands inhibit natural forest regeneration—the extremely dense larch aggressively competes against all other vegetation. Furthermore, these trees dump a thick layer of needles on the forest floor each fall, causing an adverse effect on soil structure and chemistry, preventing the germination of native seeds.

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On The Ground With the support of the Wolong Nature Reserve Administration, Panda Mountain is building a team of Sichuan foresters, ecologists, scientists—and engaging local communities—to enhance and expand giant panda habitat. Beginning with a focus on restoring biodiversity in the mono-culture larch stands, this ecological restoration project will train and contract local farmers to grow native plants, especially trees, while helping support local communities through the optimal use of the larch timber. According to the Wolong Nature Reserve Administration, there are approximately 90,000 million units (or 6,000 hectares) of the Japanese larch in Wolong. An important case study area is located within and surrounding Zhuan Jin Lou village, which is situated between a historic field research station at Wuyipeng and Wolong’s first captive giant panda center at Hetaoping. Hetaoping is also the site where Panda Mountain will establish a restoration training center. Around the Zhuan Jin Lou area, the negative affect of the Japanese larch is very clear—these monoculture stands have no value or benefit for the nature reserve’s biodiversity, nor the villager’s economic development. The solution to managing the Japanese larch plantations is to successfully integrate forest restoration for giant pandas and economic development for local farmers. The forest restoration process includes work that will: • Restore degraded Japanese larch forests with native vegetation, thereby increasing the local biodiversity of the mountain ecosystems that support giant pandas in Wolong Nature Reserve; • Increase Sichuan’s implemen tation capacity to conserve biodiversity through the

demonstration of ecological restoration of degraded habitats in Wolong; • Improve economic conditions of local villagers by provide training and employment for “green” livelihoods such as growing native plants/trees and harvesting and using the larch; • Develop training and educational materials on the project’s objectives, methods, and outcomes for protected area resource managers, conservation researchers, students, and tourists. The project’s reference models, restoration sites, and native plant nurseries are to serve as outdoor classrooms to promote training and learning on ecological restoration principles and practices;

employ local villagers as much as possible once the villagers have sufficient training and management from the project manager or team. If needed, forms of compensation will be part of the project, to ensure local stakeholders are not negatively impacted by project activities if they are no longer able to utilize resources upon which they depend (for example, restrictions on livestock grazing). The scheduling of various project activities at numerous project plots (such as production and procurement of planting materials, monitoring of treatments and vegetation) is complex and requires the services of restoration practitioners. Panda Mountain welcomes volunteers (experienced “fellows”) to come to the Reserve and help continue and guide our work on the ground.

China is taking action to save the species, which is so closely related to its own identity and global face.

• Help Wolong establish a community cooperative to train and employ indigenous villagers, enabling them to become stewards of the protected area in which they live. The project will actively engage and inform local stakeholders (villagers and others) who can benefit from project results. We will consult local villagers regarding project activities, and local input will be considered to give stakeholders a sense of “ownership” in the program, so that they support successful outcomes and so that the project avoids potential conflicts on land use changes. Additionally, the project should

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Conclusion The best way to save the giant panda from extinction is the road less traveled: habitat restoration on a landscape scale. This is no easy task, especially in the upper Yangtze watershed where logging is forbidden. Panda Mountain has started a long-term forest landscape restoration in Wolong with demonstration projects, hoping to expand to larger scale areas. While the program needs additional support, the organization is committed to working in Wolong on a long-term basis to ensure successful outcomes. The groundwork is done, the needs of nature and local people are identified, and the solutions are clear. Panda Mountain welcomes more partners

On The Ground

Panda Mountain

Andre Clewell, Ann Busche, and Liu Ming Chong play vital roles in supporting restoration efforts at Wolong.

in its effort to restore to restore the giant panda’s home. Success is sure and requires working together, across cultures and disciplines. Perhaps the desperate plight of China’s black and white bear will provide the impetus which is seemingly required in order to take the necessary steps to heal our relationship with the world around us. If we act now, maybe we can save giant pandas and their highaltitude ecosystems. Not only China is

affected: environmental degradation is a global problem—as seen in recent news articles about how China’s air pollution is affecting weather patterns in other parts of the world, including the United States. We all have the ability to become global change agents. Scaling-Up Conservation, including all parts of society, is needed. The plight of the giant panda, one species of many currently endangered all across the globe, is our call to action to restore degraded lands.

For more information, please contact Anna Beech at Panda Mountain (abeech@pandamountain.org) or visit our website: www.pandamountain.org. References 1 Hughes, Jonathan. “The natural capital debt bubble.” International Union for Conservation of Nature. August 5, 2013. http://www.iucn.org/ involved/opinion/?13497/The-Natural-Capital-DebtBubble

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EARTHACTION

Gund Institute

for Ecological

Economics

University of Vermont

The Alliance for Appalachia

National Council for Science and the Environment Improving the scientific basis for environmental decisionmaking

Associated Â Socie0es Â International Society for Ecological Economics

Roswelle Barleta and Roseda Lo / www.roswellebarleta.com / Green Patriot Posters

Uneaten food is more than simply wasteful. The production of such food generates harmful greenhouse gas emissions whose negative impact remain well after “bad” food stuffs are discarded. Finding creative ways to use or prepare “damaged” or expired food items will reduce waste and decrease demand for excess food production.