Interdisciplinary Seminar On Environmental Issues

1. Profs. Urs Luterbacher and Dr. Ellen Wiegandt Interdisciplinary Seminar On Environmental Issues

2. What Are Environmental Problems? • Man made environmental problems originate from the overuse of natural resources: Open Access Problem • Why are environmental problems complex? • They create distortions and inequalities • These might lead to conflicts

3. Scope of the problems • At the International level they appear in 3 ways: • Transboundary Bilateral • Transboundary Regional • Global

4. Reasons to Study Environmental Problems at The International Level • Transboundary and Global Nature of Environmental Problems • Environmentally Related Conflicts • Existence of a Global Environmental Governance: International Environmental Accords

5. Environment-Society Issues • Level of resource use • Population size • Even with constant level of use, attain limits as population increases

6. Focus on Society-Environment Interactions • What behavioral and institutional factors mediate relations with natural system? • What features create vulnerability or resistance to certain natural events or processes? • What mechanisms are available to different types of society to adapt or mitigate change.

7. Overview of Syllabus • October 2: Introduction to Environment and Society Interactions: A Problem of Managing Risks and Uncertainties • October 9: The Physical System; Guest Lecturer: Professor Martin Beniston, University of Geneva

8. Syllabus • October 16: Property Rights Theories and the Tragedy of the Commons Debate • October 23: Efficiency and the Environment • October 30: Exhaustible, Renewable and Sustainable Resources

9. Syllabus • November 6: Population and Migration • November 13: Trade and Environment: Production and Processing Methods, Guest Lecturer: Prof. Joost Pauwelyn (HEI)

10. Syllabus • November 27: International Cooperation and Conflict • December 4: International Environmental Negotiations • December 11: The Kyoto Protocol • December 18: Exam

11. General Issue: Environmental Influences and Human Control • Immediate environmental influences high in past: very high risks for humans, examples of collapse • Less important with technological progress: cushioning of risks • Some troubling aspects remain: mastering Climate change

12. Environment and Risk: The Problem of Risk Assessment

13. Nature always presented risks to mankind and to all life • Living beings have adapted to those by developing survival strategies • These are not conscious but have been acquired in an evolutionary way • Human beings have done the same over the ages except that conscious strategies have replaced unconscious ones • What is new is that humans can modify significantly and quickly their environment • This is not new

14. Environment and Society. A Critical Issue for our Future? • At issue is relation between natural processes and human populations • To what extent does human agency matter? • If human choices affect natural processes, can we identify some problems crucial enough to address now? • How can cooperation about environmental issues be organized?

15. General Issue: Environmental Influences and Human Control • Immediate environmental influences high in past: very high risks for humans, examples of collapse • Less important with technological progress: cushioning and spreading of risks but trade-off with information becoming more difficult to assess • Therefore some troubling aspects remain: mastering Climate change

16. The Assessment of Environmental Risks • The studies of society collapse show the importance of knowing the environment in order to assess the risks it presents: knowledge of two aspects are important: 1) The evolutionary dynamics of the crucial resource 2) The initial resource stock (ex. climate change) • It also shows the importance of social responses to the problems involved in terms of a) control of access b) charging for use in proportion • 3 Types of risk management have therefore to be considered:

17. Risk management types • 1. Risks due to nature • 2. Risks due to the consequences of uncoordinated and non-cooperative human activities, present and future • 3. Risks due to problems of coordination and cooperation of social institutions present and future

18. Risks due to nature can be assessed in terms of expected utility • 2 elements: uncertainty measure p (probability) of an outcome and its subjective value or utility U: • P(o)U(o) • This formulation suggests a cost benefit analysis. Suppose there are only 2 outcomes, o1 and o2: Total value is: • P(o1) U(o1) + (1 –P) U(o2) • Present value: [P(o1) U(o1) + (1 –P) U(o2)]/r where r is a discount rate (interest rate)

19. Risk analysis • Suppose we have several other outcomes resulting from different plans of action

20. Risk analysis

21. Risk analysis continued

22. Solution of the minimization of expected losses: Min L(a) =Min (aij p + aij (1 –p)) • Expected losses of a1 are inferior to all others: 3400 instead of 4000 and 3800 • This conclusion holds only if one cannot update information

23. Cost Benefit Analysis • Previously take the SPiUj which is largest (or smallest if the U’s represent costs) • Climate change: Choose where Marginal Damage of CC = Marginal Cost of Abatement

24. Risks from Nature, Risks from Society • As seen from the Stephens text in Cashdan, risk analysis can help us understand animal behavior and thus raise our knowledge about nature • This is necessary for estimating stocks of natural resources and their evolution • Risks from Society involve the positive or negative influences (externalities) people can exert on each other: Strategies interfere with each other

25. Risk, uncertainty, sustainability: Major issues • Stock and flow of resources • Management of what we do know to assure optimal use • Absence of cooperation can lead to unsustainable use • Introduction of resiliency to confront our lack of information that could lead to exposure to natural hazards or to problems of exhaustion of critical resources

26. The debate • We are depleting resources at rate that will lead to their exhaustion: societal collapse or • Market or other institutions will signal scarcity, especially through price and either consumption will decrease or new technological solution will emerge

27. An illustration: Easter Island • Upon its discovery by Westerners in 1722, was poor and had smaller population than vestiges indicated • Stone Age culture created monumental statues but had ceased to do so by time of European discovery • Why did system collapse? Reference: Jared Diamond (2005) Collapse, New York: Viking Press

28. Easter Island

29. Population • Archaeological evidence suggests settlement by small group of Polynesians around 400 AD, but perhaps as late as 900 AD • Population grew rapidly and probably peaked at about 7,000-10.000 around 1400-1500 AD • By arrival of first Europeans in 1722, population stood at around 3,000

30. Easter Island statues

31. Production system • Farming: sweet potatoes, yams, taro, bananas, sugar cane • Chicken as only domestic animal • Fish and shellfish but smaller contribution to diet than elsewhere in Polynesia because of absence of coral reef • Evidence of intensification of production

32. Social organization • Hierarchical chiefdom • Evidence from very different house types • Oral tradition talks about clans and lineages who had demarcated territories but nevertheless integrated as transport of statues and raw materials from one part of island to another indicate

33. Evidence of decline • Labor no longer organized to undertake big projects like statue carving and their movement across the island • Island exchange and cooperation declined • No major ceremonial relations • Chiefs lost power, especially their access to surplus production Skeletal evidence of conflict, warfare and even cannibalism

34. Why decline? • Deforestation: severe already by 1400 • Crucial dependence on palm tree • Palm nut provided food • Fronds for thatch roofs, baskets, mats, boat sails • Trunks for transport and raising of statues • But, this palm tree variety was very slow growing: 40-60 years. This is beyond a generation • If population overshoots, and overuses resources the recuperation time of palm is too long and population will crash

35. Consequences of deforestation • Soil erosion: negative effects on agriculture • Lack of wood for canoes, then affects fishing ability

36. Absence of effective response • Institutional failure based on inability to learn from environment in sufficient time • Lack of knowledge: had not put in place controls over rate of use and over population