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An Ecological Stimulus

by Stacy Small(Conservation Scientist from Environmental Defense Fund) (from Bioscience)

Washington, DC, is abuzz with economic stimulus. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 invests $787 billion in the domestic US economy, giving priority to “shovelready” infrastructure projects, mostly in transportation and energy. Conventional definitions of infrastructure emphasize manufactured systems that route the flow of water, energy, traffic, and information. But federal infrastructure investment in today’s climate-change context ought to also emphasize restoration of resilient natural systems (wetlands, forests, and river floodplains, e.g.) that deliver valuable ecosystem services such as clean water and carbon sequestration, while buffering against storm surges, catastrophic
floods, drought, wildfire, and biodiversity loss. Investment in a national green infrastructure initiative that restores functional ecosystems and mitigates for past infrastructure projects would combine the near-term economic benefits of job creation with longer-term economic and ecological benefits.

These are perilous times, but in the rush to fix damage done on Wall Street, there needn’t be a trade-off between the economy and the environment. Quick cash infusions to the financial industry have not delivered a new banking system. Cash infusions to the automobile industry may or may not result in a restructured, revitalized domestic manufacturing industry. When developing economic stimulus plans around infrastructure, the new administration should apply a systems perspective, seeking longterm return on investment, not just cosmetic repairs and short-term fixes. Achieving the long-term return may entail expanding the term “infrastructure” beyond poured concrete structures to include natural infrastructure that, when managed properly, sustains resilient fish and wildlife populations; yields food, fiber, and wood; and protects cities and farmlands against the effects of climate change. For instance, floodplains and wetlands buffer against floods and storm surges by slowing erosion of coastlines and riverbanks and absorbing the volume and hydraulic impact of floodwaters.
Simultaneously, these systems produce valuable or rare fish and wildlife resources that generate revenue through recreation or commercial harvest and add value in the agricultural economy through ecosystem services such as pollination and pest control.

A national green infrastructure initiative should cover activities like large-scale floodplain restoration and levee setbacks for nonstructural flood control; shoreline protection through coastal wetland
restoration; coral reef and natural beach protection; small-dam removal where
appropriate; implementation of prescribed fire plans; cleanup of abandoned
mines; road maintenance on public lands to reduce erosion; public and private
native landscaping projects; and restoration of riparian and freshwater wetland
buffers on agricultural lands to capture sediment and nutrient runoff, slow erosion, retain groundwater, and ameliorate the effects of drought and higher
*temperatures on terrestrial and aquatic communities.

Some of these practices were included in the recent economic stimulus package, as a fraction of overall expenditures. Of the $787 billion total, roughly $1.5 billion is available for some form of habitat restoration or potentially beneficial land management practices, depending on how agency managers choose to spend the funds. Additionally, an unspecified portion of $4.4 billion and $1.4 billion will go to the Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation, respectively, for ecosystem restoration as well as for other water resource development projects that could be less beneficial to fish and wildlife. Another $4 billion was granted to the Environmental Protection Agency for the Clean Water State Revolving Funds; “not less than” $600 million of those funds is designated for “green infrastructure” and environmentally innovative water projects. Also, $27 billion for surface transportation programs is eligible for stormwater mitigation or remediation, although in the past, states have rarely seized similar opportunities.

A fully funded green infrastructure initiative that includes private lands would ensure that biodiversity protection is not marginalized in efforts to restore the economy, and would provide an opportunity to reframe biodiversity and ecosystem services as important economic drivers rather than burdensome or incidental costs. In October 2008, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission convened the first statewide summit on climate change and wildlife, bringing together representatives from agencies and nongovernmental organizations to engage in focused dialogue. The response of human and wildlife populations to the effects of climate change may be critical to sustaining Florida’s future economy, which derives significant income—estimated to be more than $25 billion annually—from fish- and wildlife-related revenue. It became clear at the summit that managing across private and publicly owned landscapes will be necessary to avoid human-wildlife conflicts as ecological conditions change.

Proactive planning and management for the shifts in habitat and human and wildlife populations that will occur in response to climate change necessitate investment in both the public and private sectors; no longer can managers continue to operate in reactive mode and assume the increasingly expensive burden of climate change impacts. As a jobs creation package, a green infrastructure initiative would support land-based projects that sustain local economies and create jobs that are hard to outsource. The National Wildlife Refuge Association estimated that 20,000 people could be put to work on shovel-ready habitat restoration jobs on refuges within 90 days of the recently signed funding package. Public lands projects like these typically also support private contractors and local economies. Additionally, these jobs numbers could be adjusted upward to include implementation of farm bill conservation programs on private lands.

In California’s Central Valley, floodplain habitat restoration work by nonprofit organizations and private consultants on public and private lands already employs skilled and manual labor in a broad array of disciplines, including the biological sciences, engineering, hydrology, horticulture, agricultural technology and farm labor, geography, landscape architecture, heavy equipment operation, recreation planning, wildlife management, graphic design, computer science, and accounting, and also provides a laboratory of academic research and educational opportunities. These interdisciplinary, land-based projects also secondarily support local service and supply chain industries that sustain rural and small urban economies and create meaningful work across class and cultural boundaries. Finally, by attracting and retaining graduates of state school systems, large-scale ecosystem restoration projects can potentially counteract “brain drain” in rural agricultural communities, providing an excellent return on public education investment.

Within my own lifetime, I can think of a major missed opportunity for regional ecological stimulus. In the 1980s, the collapse of the steel industry in southwestern Pennsylvania, my native state, left the Ohio River valley downstream from Pittsburgh both economically and environmentally devastated, with tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs lost.

Starting in the late 19th century, the Army Corps of Engineers had methodically drowned the Ohio River, which originates at Pittsburgh, by constructing a series of locks and dams along its mainstem and fully transforming this once vibrant river ecosystem into an industrial transportation corridor, enabling riverbank manufacturing development on a massive scale. In 2000, more than a decade after a major industrial decline had begun in the region, Congress authorized the Corps of Engineers to spend $307 million for the Ohio River Ecosystem Restoration Program. However, the program was challenged and killed by environmental groups for not having a financially viable, comprehensive, ecosystem-based approach.

The Ohio River Foundation reported, “What should have been yesterday’s mitigation program is today’s restoration program.” In the wake of the program, a multiagency, nongovernmental collaborative—the Ohio River Basin Habitat Partnership— formed to examine ecosystem restoration options, this time with agency leadership from the US Fish and Wildlife Service. The Ohio River valley of southwestern Pennsylvania is one regional example where swifter investment in transportation infrastructure mitigation, environmental remediation, and ecological restoration following industrial decline could have sustained local working-class communities: damaged ecosystems could have undergone repair, putting workers back to work and getting cash flowing into the regional economy during the transition from big steel production to new industries. Instead, families dispersed and local businesses folded so that, by 1990, a walk down Main Street in many of these manufacturing towns felt more like a desolate stroll through an industrial ghost town. Not coincidentally, this region became a focal point of political and media attention during the 2008 general election. In public speaking stops, President Obama has spoken of opportunities to transition the region’s economy to alterative energy manufacturing—a good idea, but interim investment in the repair and re vitalization of this badly damaged river system could have eased that transition over the past two decades, with long-term environmental benefits.

In these times of climate change and economic crises, we can’t afford to repeat past mistakes by ignoring the forces and complexities of the natural world while devising short-term economic solutions. Pending another spurt of federal stimulus spending, it would be advisable for the conservation science community to put forth a continental scale proposal for an ecological infrastructure initiative that cuts across urban and rural and public and private boundaries, with a cost-benefit analysis attached. While we invest in shovel-ready engineering projects today, we must also seek opportunities to build resilience into the natural infrastructure that protects society and preserves biodiversity for tomorrow.

Why I hope the EWG is wrong

Posted by Lynn Miller in Legislation on August 1, 2009

No one makes a habit of displaying the inside of their medicine cabinet. But I’m doing it to make a point.

The other night I took my skeptical husband to watch the filming of what’s being billed as “ ‘Inconvenient Truth’ for environmental health.” The Environmental Working Group’s President, Ken Cook, has presented “10 Americans” to countless groups across the country, and it’s even available on the web. But at this filming at DC’s Source Theatre, the EWG captured the reaction of a group of Washingtonians who gathered to hear that:

* 82,000 chemicals were declared safe for use in household and personal care products with little or no data to support their safety;
* the US has the highest cancer rate in the industrialized world;
* industrial chemicals are showing up in the womb. In other words, embryos are being exposed to chemicals in the mother’s body before birth;
* chemical exposures in people are increasingly associated with a range of serious diseases and conditions from childhood cancer, to autism, ADHD, learning deficits, infertility, and birth defects.

So why am I showing you my medicine cabinet? I’m like most Moms – my heart is “deep green,” but my buying patterns are a lighter shade of green. The items I buy organic and green are those that my family consumes most often, particularly those items that are most often used by my children. But we still buy plenty of conventional products (although we try to use them sparingly).

When I first learned about the linkages between probable human carcinogens and everyday personal care and household products, I was shocked. That’s why I reached out to industry representatives to get some reassurances, as you can read here. And their reaction? While they spend hundreds of thousands to court Mom bloggers at BlogHer and other conferences and launch fancy viral advertising campaigns, they still haven’t answered these three simple questions I posed here.

* What is your stance on the Kid Safe Chemical Act?
* What do you think about the adverse affects of long term exposure to the thousands of chemicals used in personal care products?
* Is this issue even being discussed at the industry level, through groups like the Personal Products Council?

In fact, as I blogged here, the Industry reps did everything they could to discredit the Moms asking these questions. So now you know why I hope the EWG is wrong. Because like so many of you, I still use a lot of these products.

And as for my skeptical husband? As he put it after watching Ken Cook in action, “DDT used to be called safe too.”

Watch the video yourself and tell me what you think.

Kid-Safe Chemicals Act: 10 Americans @ Yahoo! Video

If you want to do something now that you’ve seen this video, visit EWG’s Kid-Safe action page.

Lynn Miller’s consulting firm, 4GreenPs, advises companies on green marketing strategies. She founded the Green Moms Carnival blog and also blogs on OrganicMania.com.

Human Activity Driving Earth’s “Sixth Great Extinction Event”

By Tom Schueneman from EcoWorldy

According to research recently published in the journal Conservation Biology, Earth is now experiencing its “sixth great extinction event” with disease and human activity as the major driver, leaving a devastating toll on vulnerable species, particulary in the South Pacific and southern hemisphere.

* » See also: Madagascar: A Biodiversity “Hot Spot” for Amphibians
* » Get EcoWorldly by RSS or sign up by email.

The “great extinction event” is on par with those caused by asteroid strikes or massive lava floods, says the report, but it is unrelenting human expansion and overreach, not giant boulders from the sky or a surging tide of fire, that is at the center of the current mass extinction.

Pouring through 24,000 published reports, researchers in New Zealand and Australia determined that extinctions will continue to rise in coming years, with the South Pacific experiencing the most biodiveristy loss. The region in the Pacific has been particularly devastated by the introduction of invasive species, where more than 2,500 invasive plants have put enormous stress on natives plants in New Zealand and Australia.

Along with the introduction of invasive species, the researchers identified five other principal causes of global extinction:

* habitat loss and degradation
* climate change
* overfishing or unsustainable hunting
* pollution
* wildlife disease

Richard Kingsford, the report’s lead author and an environmental scientist from the University New South Wales, attributes all six causes to human activity, with habitat loss behind three-quarters of all threatened species. The forest habitat in Australia, for instance, has been damaged or lost entirely through logging or agriculture.

The study sets forth a number of recommendations that are hoped will slow the decline of species extinction. Among them are laws to limit land clearing, mining, and logging; restricting the intentional introduction of invasive species; reducing pollution, carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions; and getting a handle on sustainable fisheries, citing specific concerns over bottom-trawling and the use of cyanide and dynamite - sometimes known as fishbombing. The report also suggests setting up early-warning systems to identify diseases in the wild.

“The burden on the environment is going to get worse unless we are a lot smarter about reducing our footprint,” said Kingsford. “Unless we get this right, future generations will surely be paying more in quality of life and the environment. And our region will continue its terrible reputation of leading the world in the extinction of plants and animals.”

Source:
Greenwire (subscription)

Photo credit: iStockPhoto

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Tags: endangered species, fishery collapse, habitat loss, invasive species, mass extinction

Wal-Mart plans green ratings for its products

July 17, 2009
By Andrea Chang from The Los Angeles Times

If they green it, will we shop?

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. officially unveiled its widely rumored plan Thursday to slap "eco-ratings" on the hundreds of thousands of products in its stores. The world's largest retailer is betting that shoppers increasingly will care how green their purchases are -- and maybe even pay more for environmentally friendly merchandise.

The green ratings will take years to show up on the chain's shelves.

In the first phase of its three-part initiative, the Bentonville, Ark., retail giant will ask its more than 100,000 suppliers questions about their business practices, such as the amount of water they use in producing items and the locations of their factories. The goal is to develop a green index for Wal-Mart products similar to the nutrition label found on the packaging for food products.

"Customers want products that are more efficient, that last longer and perform better," Wal-Mart Chief Executive Mike Duke said in a statement. "And increasingly they want information about the entire life cycle of a product so they can feel good about buying it. . . . We do not see this as a trend that will fade."
Experts have said the ambitious program, details of which had been trickling out for days on the Web, probably will spur suppliers to redesign products to reduce their environmental impact and improve their scores. And that could cause broad changes in manufacturing.

Many of Wal-Mart's suppliers already have taken their own steps to become more eco-friendly.

At Levi Strauss & Co., Michael Kobori, vice president of social and environmental sustainability, said the jeans maker has set water-quality standards for its suppliers and now recommends that its jeans be washed in cold water to save energy.

Kobori said the San Francisco company was pleased with Wal-Mart's new initiative and called it the next logical step to improve the industry.

"It sends the right signal to the marketplace and the right signal to the supply chain that sustainability is important," he said. "We hope it changes the game."

Nature's 10 simple rules for survival - a look at Adam Werbach's Strategy for Sustainability

From Examiner.com by Christa Avampato

Adam Werbach recently published Strategy for Sustainability: A Business Manifesto. He's had an interesting, tumultuous career in the environmental space. At age 23, he was elected as the youngest president of the Sierra Club ever to serve. In 2006, he began to work with Walmart, at the time one of the biggest offenders when it comes to environmental issues. The move created a great deal of controversy for Werbach, with some environmental activists declaring him a traitor. Werbach reasoned that if Walmart is one of the biggest causes of environmental damage, he should use his knowledge in the field of environmental conservation to get Walmart to change their ways.

Werbach wrote a short piece for this month's issue of Fast Company. In the article he outlines nature's ten simple rules for survival. They apply not only to nature, but companies as well. I've listed the principles below and added some commentary on how each applies to our day-to-day working lives, specifically focusing on entrepreneurship.

1. Diversify across generations.
It's important to have a variety of perspectives in a business, and in a network for that matter. Some of my very best network contacts belong to generations different from mine. Their views of the world are a critical lens for me when evaluating professional opportunities.

2. Adapt to the changing environment - and specialize.
I absolutely agree that adaptation is the key to survival. Darwin had it right. The specialize part I'm not so sure about. Certainly, people who are winning in the marketplace now are people who are general managers in the purest sense of the word - people with a wide variety of skill sets who can juggle multiple, simultaneous roles.

3. Celebrate transparency. Every scientist knows which species will eat it and which will not.
Clear, concise communication to the market and to a company from its leaders are critical in a time of uncertainty. While "know your competition" may sound like a no-brainer, it's amazing how many companies don't recognize non-traditional competitors. Take a look at this article in Fast Company about Apple versus Amazon. On the surface, they don't appear to be rivals. Dig a little deeper and it's easy to see how they are trying to supplant one another.

4. Plan and execute systematically, not compartmentally. Every part of a plant contributes to its growth.
This goes back to the idea of excess is rarely if ever a good idea. Getting distracted with issues that are not core to a businesses growth are wasteful and dangerous.

5. Form groups and protect the young. Most animals travel in flocks, gaggles, and prides. Packs offer strength and efficacy.
Networks are very powerful tools. A company's network is comprised of customers, suppliers, complimentary businesses, and even rivals on occasion. Consider the National Retail Federation. While many member companies are rivals in the marketplace, they can, should, and do band together on a number of issues that will improve the industry as a whole.

6. Integrate metrics. Nature brings the right information to the right place at the right time. When a tree needs water, the leaves curl; when there is rain the curled leaves move more water to the root system.
Knowing what an organization needs when is critical to its survival. For example, there's no point spending money on recruiting new talent when a company needs to restructure the talent it already has. It's also critical for a business to be able to prioritize effectively, particularly in tough times when investment dollars are tight. While getting bright new offices might be a nice-to-have, a company may really need to pour investment into its online presence to grow sales to finance those new offices. Distinguishing between short-term and long-term needs is a key talent that many organizations lack.

7. Improve with each cycle. Evolution is a strategy for long-term survival.
While it's important to get a new product or service correct right out of the gate, it's also important to recognize that "good enough" and continuous improvement are part of the development process. Perfect is the enemy of good.

8. Right-size regularly, rather than downsize occasionally. If an organism grows too big to support itself, it collapses. If it withers, it is eaten.
It's best to never need a right-sizing effort. Thoughtful, purposeful growth, not based on projects but on long-term objectives is the key to keeping a company's expansion under control. A few years ago, I had the opportunity to visit Amazon's offices. The company still makes their desktops from old doors, and many of the offices are an open floor plan. While they are out-performing every other retailer right now, they still know how to operate on a shoe-string, and that trait is baked into their culture.

9. Foster longevity, not immediate gratification. Nature does not buy on credit and uses resources only to the level that they can be renewed.
The whole phenomenon of Green Business is very confusing. Why is it so hard for companies to understand that if they use up all of their resources, they won't be able to operate? As communities if we don't replenish the resources we use, our communities cannot survive. It's not a complicated theory; it's just common courtesy to leave things better than we found them - the planet included.

10. Waste nothing, recycle everything. Some of the greatest opportunities in the 21st century will be turning waste - including inefficiency and under-utilization - into profit.

Adam Werbach explains the example of Xerox, one of the best turnaround stories of our time. They utilized remanufacturing, reuse, and upcycling as main tenants in their turnaround strategy. Their goal was to become a zero-waste company, and that goal lead them t re-think the way they built every machine. A changed point-of-view on their current situation, led to a business transformation.

We have so much to learn from nature that we must consider the possibility that every answer we need is virtually at our fingertips. All we need to do is be aware and open-minded enough to see the solutions that sit right in front of us every day.

Five Tips for A Greener 4th

By Sarah F. Kessler frojm The Green Life

What for many Americans is the highlight of summer—the picnics, parades, and fireworks of the 4th of July—can be less than ideal for the planet. Let Earth in on the celebration this year by making these simple green choices:

1. Grill intelligently: An estimated 60 million people fire up their grills on Independence Day, spewing about 225,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide into the air. While there’s no way to grill without pollution, electric and propane grills are cleaner than charcoal. If you can’t part with the charcoal taste, choose coal made from invasive tree species or from sustainably managed forest trees. And before you sprinkle lighter fluid on the grill, consider investing in a chemical-free chimney charcoal starter instead.

2. Shrink your food’s footprint: Buying mostly fruits and vegetables, and buying them locally, can save the energy used to transport and package processed foods. But if potato chips are a picnic must, opt for the bigger bag. Buying in bulk can save the waste involved in the production and disposal of individually wrapped snacks.

3. Decorate with class, not cash: Instead of buying new decorations, use what you already have. White Christmas lights, flowers from your garden, or a bowl of bright-red strawberries, blueberries, and apples all look great. Save any decorations you do buy for next year.

4. Reduce picnic waste: Ask each guest to bring his or her own dishware. If reusable dishes aren’t a viable option, use compostable flatware made from corn or bamboo.

5. Nix the fireworks: Instead of setting up your own fireworks display—which explodes a personal contribution of smoke and dangerous chemicals into the air—attend a community display. Ask your local firework coordinators to consider using biodegradable fireworks or the gunpowder-free fireworks that Disney launches using compressed air.

Climate Change & Wildlife Ecology 101

By Stacy L. Small, Ph.D. - Environmental Defense Fund Conservation Scientist

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported in 2007 that global air and ocean temperatures over the past 50 years are higher than any other 50 year period in the last 500 years; likely the highest they've been in the past 1300 years.

Furthermore, global temperatures will continue to rise over time as a result of heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions – like carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide – that human activities have released into the atmosphere in the past half century.

This will have profound effects on virtually all of the physical phenomena of the world.

Change is Afoot

Human-induced global warming is already changing the world in many observable ways: altering wind patterns that influence tropical storms and drive ocean currents; increasing precipitation in some regions, drought in others; melting snowpack, glaciers, ice caps, and polar sea ice; and changing the timing and intensity of spring snowmelt runoff and floods.

Sea levels are rising because of thermal expansion of ocean waters and melting ice. In fact, some scientists believe that even the more dire predictions of sea level rise in the IPCC report appear to be conservative, when glacial melt is factored in.

These changes will visibly impact our most fragile, living ecosystems within our lifetimes and alter many current wildlife habitats beyond recognition. This could have fatal consequences for some of our most beloved and vulnerable species, especially those that have already become endangered from other human impacts.

Species at Risk

The IPCC predicts that up to 30% of all species are at risk of extinction at a global temperature increase of 1.5-2.5 degrees C. The IUCN has named three groups -- birds, amphibians, and warm-water reef-building corals -- as the most threatened species globally.

The North American ecosystems most immediately vulnerable to these radical environmental changes include coastal and marine zones and cold climates at high altitudes and northern latitudes, as well as arid western regions that depend upon snowmelt runoff for water.

However, all habitats and species on the planet will eventually be affected in one way or another by global warming, either directly or indirectly, in combination with other impacts, like development and pollution.

In addition, the timing of plant and animal life cycles ("phenology") is changing and in some cases, interdependent species are falling out of synch with one another. This is a special risk to migratory species that have evolved intricate migration behaviors timed with seasonal events across multiple locations.

Such precise migratory strategies enable these species to survive the winter elements, breed, and feed themselves and their young in synchrony with seasonal light, temperatures, weather patterns, and the life cycles of plants, insects and other animals.

Dire predictions are emerging daily for species that depend upon our most climate change-vulnerable habitats: especially those adapted to cold climates and coastal life and those that are highly specialized. Time is of the essence for all of these species; without action, we could lose many of them within our lifetimes.

Sources

• http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr_spm.pdf
• http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/321/5894/1340
• http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7193/abs/nature06937.html
• http://cmsdata.iucn.org/downloads/climate_change_and_species.pdf
• http://www.jstor.org/pss/2641830
• http://www.pnas.org/content/100/21/12219.full.pdf

Agriculture Holds the Key to Solving Global Warming

By Barbara Kessler from Green Right Now ABC7, June 2, 2009

Agriculture, so often cited as a factor in global decline - for claiming natural grasslands that store carbon, soil erosion and pesticide runoff - could become a big part of the solution to global warming, according to a hopeful report by Worldwatch Institute released today.

Innovations in food production and land use that are ready to be put to work could reduce greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to roughly 25 percent of global fossil fuel emissions and be managed to reduce carbon already in the atmosphere as well, according to WWI and Ecoagriculture Partners.

Carbon capture technology remains unproven and will take a decade at least to put into operation. By contrast, agricultural and land use management practices that are ready today could be employed to sequester carbon through photosynthesis by growing and sustaining more plants.

To understand how and why the agricultural approach to climate change must be a part of the solution, the public first needs to recognize that the world must "go negative" with carbon emissions - producing fewer than it churns out to reach the necessary reductions by 2050, said Sara Scherr, co-author with Sajal Sthapit of the report, Mitigating Climate Change Through Food and Land Use.

Policymakers must go beyond improving energy efficiency and scaling up renewables and add ways to pull down emissions from forestry and agriculture operations.

More than 30 percent of all human-caused greenhouse gases are linked to agriculture and land use, notes the report, which rivals the combined emissions of the transportation and industry sectors.

The report outlines five ways to reduce and sequester carbon using farming strategies:

* Enriching soil carbon. Soil, the third largest carbon pool on Earth's surface, can be managed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by minimizing tillage, cutting use of nitrogen fertilizers, and preventing erosion. Soils can store a vast amount of additional carbon by building up organic matter and by burying carbon in the form of biochar (biomass burned in a low-oxygen environment).

* Farming with perennials. Two-thirds of all arable land is used to grow annual grains, but there is large potential to substitute these with perennial trees, shrubs, palms, and grasses that produce food, livestock feed, and fuel. These perennials maintain and develop their roots and branches over many years, storing carbon in the vegetation and soil.

* Climate-friendly livestock production. Livestock accounts for nearly half of all greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture and land use. Innovations such as rotational grazing, manure management, methane capture for biogas production, and improved feeds and feed additives can reduce livestock-related emissions.

* Protecting natural habitat. Deforestation, land clearing, and forest and grassland fires are major sources of greenhouse gas emissions. Incentives are needed to encourage farmers, ranchers, and foresters to maintain natural forest and grassland habitats through product certification, payments for climate services, securing tenure rights, and community fire control.

* Restoring degraded watersheds and range lands. Restoring vegetation on vast areas of degraded land can reduce greenhouse gas emissions while making land productive again, protecting critical watersheds, and alleviating rural poverty.

With green home venture, Sierra Club mixes profits with passion

By Todd Woody from Grist

It’s not unusual these days for big green groups to get in bed with business, but one of the oldest and most-respected environmental organizations—the Sierra Club—is going them one better by getting into business itself.

The San Francisco-based Sierra Club has launched a for-profit online venture called Sierra Club Green Home as a one-stop shop for information and services to green up your lifestyle and decarbonize your abode.

Sierra Club Green Home is a joint venture between the 117-year-old institution and a group of individual investors—or “donors” as they like to call themselves. “It’s the social entrepreneurship model,” says Gordon Wangers, the company’s marketing chief and one of the donor/investors. “A non-profit finds some enterprising business types who are committed to a cause but bring business savvy to a venture and have the skills and wherewithal to run it.”

Wangers thinks it’s a model for other green groups as the economic collapse zaps the fortunes of their well-heeled donors.

He says the Sierra Club holds a “very significant equity stake” in the San Diego-based startup (he wouldn’t reveal the how much) and will reap most of any profits that are generated through advertising, corporate sponsorships and a green business database.

Sierra Club Green Home was born of Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope’s frustration at trying to green his own home. Some high net-worth Sierra Club donors had a similar experience and were commiserating with Pope when Gary Rappeport, CEO of Chicago-based automotive leasing company Donlen Corp., suggested the solution was to start a business that could tap the Sierra Club’s century-old green brand. Wangers, who served on Donlen’s board and had sold his automotive marketing agency to advertising conglomerate Omnicom, subsequently joined the venture

“To duplicate the recognition and integrity of the Sierra Club brand would take many years and cost many millions of dollars in marketing,” he says. “To start right out of the gate with the Sierra Club brand is a huge advantage.” The company also starts out with a potential customer base among the Sierra Club’s 1.3 million members.

But this isn’t a licensing deal. Sierra Club experts have created an extensive library of information—on everything from “eco-friendly furniture” to geothermal heat pumps—in a smartly designed package of articles, interactive widgets and video.

For instance, start with the “Home CO2 Calculator” to get a handle on how many pounds of greenhouse gases your residence emits a year and compare your ranking to other Sierra Club Green Homers

I’m not doing too bad; my circa-1928 Berkeley house is responsible for an estimated 10,014 pounds of CO2 a year, producing 43 percent fewer emissions than the average Sierra Club Green Home user and 21 percent less carbon than houses of a similar size. But I need to do some energy efficiency retrofit work. If the numbers are accurate, my home is cranking out 23 percent more emissions than the average home of the California Sierra Club Green Home owner. (Clearly, McMansion owners have not been flocking to the site.)

The carbon calculator pinpoints weatherization as one way to cut my home’s carbon footprint. Click on the related link and up pops a page of six how-to videos as well as a plethora of information about weatherizing and tips on hiring a contractor. Punch in your zip code into the site’s Green Pages and list of local energy efficiency businesses appears. Slick.

Sierra Club Green Home’s homepageAt the Solar Center, enter your zip code, electricity usage and local utility and a widget estimates the cost of a solar array after any applicable rebates. (Though it’s unclear if the 30 percent federal tax credit available for such systems is included in the calculation.) You then can review a list of solar installers in your area, including those vetted by a Sierra Club partner, and click on a button to request a price quote on a solar system.

A couple of other widgets caught my eye: The Low Carbon Diet Calculator widget—from Palo Alto-based sustainable food service company Bon Appétit Management—converts your meals into “CO2 Points” to represent their carbon content. (Hint: Go for the steel-cut oats to save the planet.) Another widget, from Earth911.com, tells you the nearest place to recycle everything from batteries to motor oil.

Wangers says Sierra Club Green Home will make money primarily from the $25 monthly fee it will start charging businesses to be listed in the site’s green service provider database. Sustainability director Jennifer Schwab screens businesses to ensure they meet the site’s standards for green businesses.

While the Sierra Club Green Home execs regularly shuttle from San Diego to San Francisco to meet with their non-profit majority owners, who must approve major decisions, Schwab notes that the site is “being run as a business.”

But the B-word seems to unnerve the Sierra Club. When I ask if this is the organization’s first adventure in capitalism, I received this reply via email: “The Sierra Club is a non-profit organization and all the revenue that we bring in goes to our non-profit work, so this is not a for-profit venture for us.”

Huh? Semantics aside, that may explain why, on a site chock-a-block with data, Sierra Club Green Home’s for-profit status is one piece of information that’s hard to find.

Read past Green State columns by Todd Woody.

Ecological Intelligence

By Brian Walsh from Time, 10 Ideas Changing the World Right Now

When it comes to going green, intention can be easier than action. Case in point: you decide to buy a T shirt made from 100% organic cotton, because everyone knows that organic is better for Earth. And in some ways it is; in conventional cotton-farming, pesticides strip the soil of life. But that green label doesn't tell the whole story — like the fact that even organic cotton requires more than 2,640 gal. (10,000 L) of water to grow enough fiber for one T shirt. Or the possibility that the T shirt may have been dyed using harsh industrial chemicals, which can pollute local groundwater. If you knew all that, would you still consider the T shirt green? Would you still buy it?

It's a question that most of us are ill equipped to answer, even as the debate over what is and isn't green becomes all-important in a hot and crowded world. That's because as the global economy has grown, our ability to make complex products with complex supply chains has outpaced our ability to comprehend the consequences — for ourselves and the planet. We evolved to respond to threats that were clear and present. That's why, when we eat spoiled food, we get nauseated and when we see a bright light, we shut our eyes. But nothing in evolution has prepared us to understand the cumulative impact that imperceptible amounts of industrial chemicals may have on our children's health or the slow-moving, long-term danger of climate change. Scanning the supermarket aisles, we lack the data to understand the full impact of what we choose — and probably couldn't make sense of the information even if we had it.

But what if we could seamlessly calculate the full lifetime effect of our actions on the earth and on our bodies? Not just carbon footprints but social and biological footprints as well? What if we could think ecologically? That's what psychologist Daniel Goleman describes in his forthcoming book, Ecological Intelligence. Using a young science called industrial ecology, businesses and green activists alike are beginning to compile the environmental and biological impact of our every decision — and delivering that information to consumers in a user-friendly way. That's thinking ecologically — understanding the global environmental consequences of our local choices. "We can know the causes of what we're doing, and we can know the impact of what we're doing," says Goleman, who wrote the 1995 best seller Emotional Intelligence. "It's going to have a radical impact on the way we do business."

Over the past couple of decades, industrial ecologists have been using a method called life-cycle assessment (LCA) to break down that web of connection. The concept of the carbon footprint comes from LCA, but a deep analysis looks at far more. The manufacture and sale of a simple glass bottle requires input from dozens of suppliers; for high-tech items, it can include many times more.

The good news is that industrial ecologists can now crunch those data, and smart companies like Coca-Cola are using the information to clean up their corporate ecology. Working with the World Wildlife Fund, Coke analyzed its globe-spanning supply chain—the company uses 5% of the world's total sugar crop—to see where it could minimize its impact; today Coke is on target to improve its water efficiency 20% by 2012.

Below the megacorporate level, start-ups like the website Good Guide are sifting through rivers of data for ordinary consumers, providing easy-to-understand ratings you can use to instantly gauge the full environmental and health impact of that T shirt. Even better, they'll get the information to you when you need it: Good Guide has an iPhone app that can deliver verdicts on tens of thousands of products. Good Guide and services like it "let us align our dollars with our values easily," says Goleman.

But ecological intelligence is ultimately about more than what we buy. It's also about our ability to accept that we live in an infinitely connected world with finite resources. Goleman highlights the Tibetan community of Sher, where for millenniums, villagers have survived harsh conditions by carefully conserving every resource available to them. The Tibetans think ecologically because they have no other choice. Neither do we. "We once had the luxury to ignore our impacts," says Goleman. "Not anymore."

Adverse Health Effects of Plastics

From The Ecology Center

In addition to creating safety problems during production, many chemical additives that give plastic products desirable performance properties also have negative environmental and human health effects. These effects include

• Direct toxicity, as in the cases of lead, cadmium, and mercury
• Carcinogens, as in the case of diethylhexyl phthalate (DEHP)
• Endocrine disruption, which can lead to cancers, birth defects, immune system supression and developmental problems in children.

See the Adverse Health Effects Grid for a list of commonly used plastics and their known health effects.

Chemical Migration from Plastic Packaging into Contents

People are exposed to these chemicals not only during manufacturing, but also by using plastic packages, because some chemicals migrate from the plastic packaging to the foods they contain. Examples of plastics contaminating food have been reported with most plastic types, including Styrene from polystyrene, plasticizers from PVC, antioxidants from polyethylene, and Acetaldehyde from PET.

Among the factors controlling migration are the chemical structure of the migrants and the nature of the packaged food. In studies cited in Food Additives and Contaminants, LDPE, HDPE, and polypropylene bottles released measurable levels of BHT, Chimassorb 81, Irganox PS 800, Irganix 1076, and Irganox 1010 into their contents of vegetable oil and ethanol. Evidence was also found that acetaldehyde migrated out of PET and into water.

Recommendations
Find alternatives to plastic products whenever possible. Some specific suggestions:
* Buy food in glass or metal containers; avoid polycarbonate drinking bottles with Bisphenol A
* Avoid heating food in plastic containers, or storing fatty foods in plastic containers or plastic wrap.
* Do not give young children plastic teethers or toys
* Use natural fiber clothing, bedding and furniture
* Avoid all PVC and Styrene products

• Buy food in glass or metal containers
• Avoid heating food in plastic containers, or storing fatty foods in plastic containers or plastic wrap
• Do not give young children plastic teethers or toys
• Use natural fiber clothing, bedding and furniture
• Avoid all PVC and Styrene products

Plastic	Common Uses	Adverse Health Effects
Polyvinyl chloride (#3PVC)	Food packaging, plastic wrap, containers for toiletries, cosmetics, crib bumpers, floor tiles, pacifiers, shower curtains, toys, water pipes, garden hoses, auto upholstery, inflatable swimming pools	Can cause cancer, birth defects, genetic changes, chronic bronchitis, ulcers, skin diseases, deafness, vision failure, indigestion, and liver dysfunction
Phthalates (DEHP, DINP, and others)	Softened vinyl products manufactured with phthalates include vinyl clothing, emulsion paint, footwear, printing inks, non-mouthing toys and children’s products, product packaging and food wrap, vinyl flooring, blood bags and tubing, IV containers and components, surgical gloves, breathing tubes, general purpose labware, inhalation masks, many other medical devices	Endocrine disruption, linked to asthma, developmental and reporoductive effects. Medical waste with PVC and pthalates is regularly incinerated causing public health effects from the relese of dioxins and mercury, including cancer, birth defects, hormonal changes, declining sperm counts, infertility, endometriosis, and immune system impairment.
Polycarbonate, with Bisphenol A (#7)	Water bottles	Scientists have linked very low doses of bisphenol A exposure to cancers, impaired immune function, early onset of puberty, obesity, diabetes, and hyperactivity, among other problems (Environment California)
Polystyrene	Many food containers for meats, fish, cheeses, yogurt, foam and clear clamshell containers, foam and rigid plates, clear bakery containers, packaging "peanuts", foam packaging, audio cassette housings, CD cases, disposable cutlery, building insulation, flotation devices, ice buckets, wall tile, paints, serving trays, throw-away hot drink cups, toys	Can irritate eyes, nose and throat and can cause dizziness and unconsciousness. Migrates into food and stores in body fat. Elevated rates of lymphatic and hematopoietic cancers for workers.
Polyethelyne (#1 PET)	Water and soda bottles, carpet fiber, chewing gum, coffee stirrers, drinking glasses, food containers and wrappers, heat-sealed plastic packaging, kitchenware, plastic bags, squeeze bottles, toys	Suspected human carcinogen
Polyester	Bedding, clothing, disposable diapers, food packaging, tampons, upholstery	Can cause eye and respiratory-tract irritation and acute skin rashes
Urea- formaldehyde	Particle board, plywood, building insulation, fabric finishes	Formaldehyde is a suspected carcinogen and has been shown to cause birth defects and genetic changes. Inhaling formaldehyde can cause cough, swelling of the throat, watery eyes, breathing problems, headaches, rashes, tiredness
Polyurethane Foam	Cushions, mattresses, pillows	Bronchitis, coughing, skin and eye problems. Can release toluene diisocyanate which can produce severe lung problems
Acrylic	Clothing, blankets, carpets made from acrylic fibers, adhesives, contact lenses, dentures, floor waxes, food preparation equipment, disposable diapers, sanitary napkins, paints	Can cause breathing difficulties, vomiting, diarrhea, nausea, weakness, headache and fatigue
Tetrafluoro- ethelyne	Non-stick coating on cookware, clothes irons, ironing board covers, plumbing and tools	Can irritate eyes, nose and throat and can cause breathing difficulties

Sources:

• Centers for Disease Control Report, "National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals," 2001.
• Dadd, Debra, Home Safe Home, Penguin Putnam, New York, 1997.
• Ecology Center Plastic Task Force Report, Berkeley, CA, 1996.
• Goettlich, Paul, "What are Endocrine Disruptors?," 2001
• National Resources Defense Council website, "Endocrine Disruptors FAQ," 2001.

Power from the People: The developing world generates innovative strategies for renewable energy

From Utne Reader, May/June 2009 by Elizabeth Ryan

At a time when phrases like “climate crisis” and “global warming” are bandied about to the point of fatigue and sustainable energy is becoming a necessity rather than a talking point, perhaps it’s time we took a cue from the developing world, where solutions to dire energy shortages are readily emerging.

Over the past four years, for instance, residents of the Indian village of Kinchlingi (population 75) have used a boxy, bicycle-like apparatus that generates enough energy to supply their village with water for drinking and washing. According to Alternatives Journal (Jan.-Feb. 2009), just three hours of pedaling produces enough biodiesel for a month’s worth of water. The human-powered pedals act as a stirring mechanism that converts seed oil into biodiesel to fuel the water supply pumps. Villagers are also exploring ways to use the fuel for farm machinery and electric lighting.

Bike parts found their way into a very different energy project in Malawi, as part of a hodgepodge windmill built by an innovative teenager. At 14, William Kamkwamba was inspired by a fifth-grade-level U.S. textbook, Using Energy, that he found in the library. He taught himself how to build a windmill that generated enough power for his family’s house, which was previously lit by toxic paraffin candles. Positive Living (Autumn 2008) reports that friends and neighbors expressed little faith in his project, but Kamkwamba believed that “if it was written in the book, then it was true and possible.”

He had to improvise a bit to assemble the parts—gathering broken pipes, old shoes, his father’s bicycle, an oil barrel, and a car’s fan belt, among other things—but the effort paid off. His family switched to lightbulbs, and additional windmills produced enough electricity to power a television. William has since been named a fellow at TEDGlobal and hopes to build a large windmill to power his entire village.

On the other side of the continent, West African leaders recently gathered in Ghana to consider proposals capitalizing on the area’s “solar riches,” according to Reuters (Sept. 24, 2008). It seems obvious that the sunniest land on the planet—a swath of the Sahara Desert—should use its natural renewable source, which is why one project calls for the construction of a solar-thermal energy plant in northern Niger. The pollution-free power generator would use a combination of mirrors, boiling water, and turbines to harness sunlight, and would transmit that power to the coasts to provide electricity for residents. While initial expenses are high, the plant would help combat the strains of rising fuel costs. Similar technology has already been proven to work in Spain and the United States.

Off the West African coast on the Cape Verde Islands, reports the IRIN (Integrated Regional Information Networks) news service (Jan. 9, 2009), the Serra Malagueta community of Santiago Island is pioneering a technique called “fog harvesting,” which uses giant double-sided netting to collect fog and filter it into the water supply. The area boasts three times as much rain as the country’s annual average, making it an ideal location for the 15 nets. One local water engineer estimates that on a day with ample wind and fog the 200 square meters of netting can capture some 4,000 liters of water—invaluable for a country that’s faced mass emigration and death due to drought conditions.

Beyond targeting specific renewable resources to mine, one community has focused on a model for managing them. Lucia Ortiz writes for New Internationalist (Jan.-Feb. 2009) that some 6,000 people in southern Brazil resisted the region’s mid-1990s shift toward energy privatization and have successfully managed their own energy cooperative for more than a decade. The group holds open assemblies to discuss key decisions, generates its own electricity—mostly from two small hydro dams—and uses sugar­cane to produce ethanol fuel. To determine their bills, community members track their own energy use and report it via an honor system—which eliminates the cost of monthly meter readings (staff members read meters annually for verification).

The group’s move toward independence has inspired other co-ops in the area to localize their energy economies. In Porto Alegre, Ortiz and other residents have formed a movement called “How to live in the city in times of climate crisis and peak oil.” The group’s monthly gatherings cultivate an exchange of ideas about urban and rural living. “Everybody is learning more,” Ortiz writes, “and rethinking the way that we can be organized to be less energy demanding.”

Climate Change in Pictures

By Laura Shin from Green Inc.

In a recently published book, Gavin Schmidt, founder of RealClimate.org, attempts to tell the story of climate change in pictures.

Gavin Schmidt, a NASA climatologist, has in many ways become the news media’s conscience on climate science, exposing exaggeration and opinion in climate coverage on the blog he founded, RealClimate.org.

In a recently published book, “Climate Change: Picturing the Science,” Mr. Schmidt and his co-author, the photographer Joshua Wolfe, attempt to tell the story of global warming with the same no-nonsense approach — albeit this time with photographs.

“There is this tendency in the media to go for the dramatic shots with a very limited palate,” Mr. Schmidt said in a recent conversation with Green Inc. “So any time someone talks about storms, there’s a picture of a wave breaking against a beach, or a picture of a palm tree bending over in the middle of a hurricane, and if you’re talking about the Arctic, then you have to drag out a polar bear.

“In the book, we really tried to expand the range of the imagery,” Mr. Schmidt continued. “We brought in scientists and images of their work, and that humanizes the process enormously. And we also were able to bring out more clearly that the issue about hurricanes or the issue about climate change is that these things are not intrinsically good or bad, but that it is our vulnerability to change that is the real issue.”

Excerpts from our brief chat with the self-deprecating, British-born scentist follow.

•

Why did you decide to do a photographic book about climate change?

It came about by accident. The photographers had put together a gallery show related to climate change, and they asked me to check their captions. That spiraled out of control until we had a book. But the reason we went ahead with it is that people have limited attention spans, and they need to know something is interesting before they invest time in it — and great imagery is a good way to show that.

How did you choose the photographs?

We looked for photographs that stood on their own as photographs. It’s not a textbook where you just pick images just to illustrate a point, sort of, “Well, we’re going to talk about this now, so let’s get an image of that” – where the pictures are subservient to the text.

You founded RealClimate to add context that you found lacking in climate stories by the mainstream media. In the five years since you started RealClimate, have you seen any improvements in media coverage of climate change?

You still see terrible stories and you still see over-sensationalized headlines and unfortunately, you still see completely mendacious Op-Eds, but overall, I think the answer is yes. You can have an article now that’s talking about the cap-and-trade bill going through Congress, or the latest science, without a bunch of quotes by a contrarian who says, “Oh no, carbon dioxide isn’t a greenhouse gas,” or something like that.

However, a lot of the imagery used to illustrate climate change stories is not always appropriate.

We had a paper in Nature a few years ago that was talking about changing wind patterns in the Northern Hemisphere, possibly because of increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. That was illustrated in a couple of newspapers by a woman battling her umbrella in the midst of a huge storm, because our results indicated that winds were getting slightly stronger. But we weren’t talking about storms at all.

Human Nature

by Mark Dowie from Guernica

Is modern conservation linked with ethnic cleansing? In an excerpt from his new book, the investigative historian explores the concepts of wilderness and nature, and argues that the removal of aboriginal people from their homeland to create wilderness is a charade.


One way to guarantee a conversation without a conclusion is to ask a group of people what nature is.
—Rebecca Solnit, University of California

In the course of “preserving the commons for all of the people,” a frequently stated mission of national parks and protected areas, one class or culture of people, one philosophy of nature, one worldview, and one creation myth has almost always been preferred over all others. These favored ideas and impressions are at some point expressed in art. And it is through art that our earliest preconceptions and fantasies about nature are formed.

The mystique of Yosemite, for example, was largely created by photographers like Charles Leander Weed, Carleton Watkins, Ansel Adams, and Edward Weston, all of whose magnificent images of the place are completely bereft of humanity or any sign of it having been there. Here, they said (and they all knew better) is an untrammeled landscape, virgin and pristine, not a bootprint to be seen, not a hogan or teepee in sight.

Here in this wild place one may seek and find complete peace. They and their friends who sought to preserve an idealized version of nature called it “wilderness,” a place that humans had explored but never altered, exalted but never touched. It was the beginning of a myth, a fiction that would gradually spread around the world, and for a century or more drive the conservation agenda of mankind.

They all knew better, the portrayers of wilderness; in fact, Adams assiduously avoided photographing any of the local Miwok who were rarely out of his sight as he worked Yosemite Valley. He filled thousands of human-free negatives with land he knew the Miwok had tended for at least four thousand years. And he knew that the Miwok had been forcibly evicted from Yosemite Valley, as other natives would later be from national parks yet to be created, all in the putative interest of protecting nature from human disturbance.

One can be fairly certain that Weed, Watkins, Adams, and Weston had all at one time in their lives read George Perkins Marsh’s 1864 classic Man and Nature and recalled Marsh arguing passionately for the preservation of wild virgin nature, which he said was justified as much for artistic reasons as for any other. Marsh also believed that the destruction of the natural world threatened the very existence of humanity. We know that naturalist John Muir read Marsh and so did Teddy Roosevelt. They both say so in their journals and memoirs. So when the topic of a park in Yosemite came up, Muir and Roosevelt were, so to speak, on the same page.


Dueling Sciences
Natural science is just one way of understanding nature.
—Bill Adams, Cambridge University

The Yosemite model of conservation, which still expresses itself in a fairly consistent form, has sparked a worldwide conflict between two powerful scientific disciplines: anthropology and conservation biology.

These two august sciences remain at odds with one another over how best to conserve and protect biological and cultural diversity, and perhaps more perplexing, how best to define two of the most semantically tortured terms in both their fields—nature and wilderness.

Cultural anthropologists spend years living in what many of us would call “the wild,” studying the languages, mores, and traditions of what many of us would call “primitive peoples.” Eventually the anthropologists come to understand the complex native cultures that keep remote communities thriving without importing much from outside their immediate homeland.

“We do not ask if indigenous peoples are allies of conservation or what sort of nature they protect,” write Paige West and Dan Brockington, two anthropologists who have spent most of their careers researching the impact of protected areas on indigenous cultures; “instead we draw attention to the ways in which protected areas become instrumental in shaping battles over identity, residence and resource use.”¹ Their experience has convinced them that the best way to protect a thriving natural ecosystem is to leave those communities pretty much alone, where and as they are, doing what they’ve done so well for so many generations—culturing a healthy landscape, or what development experts would call “living sustainably.”

Wildlife biologists also spend much of their careers in remote natural settings, but tend to prefer landscapes void of human hunters, gatherers, pastoral nomadics, or rotational farmers. They find anthropologists somewhat “romantic” about indigenous cultures, particularly tribes that have become partly assimilated and modernized; which generally means the tribes are in possession of environmentally destructive technologies such as shotguns, chainsaws, and motorized vehicles, conveniences that Western naturalists know from their own civilization’s experience can wreak havoc on healthy ecosystems.

These two disciplines are also at odds over what they mean by nature and the degree to which humanity is part of it. And they have a different sense of wildness and wilderness. It is in this regard that one is more likely to hear anthropologists calling naturalists “romantic.” Listening to this exchange of insults one might conclude one is witnessing a clash of romantic tendencies.

William Cronon, an environmental historian at the University of Wisconsin, has spent much of his intellectual career grappling with these conflicts. His thinking on the subject eventually came together in 1995 with publication of a widely read and controversial essay titled “The Trouble with Wilderness, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature.”

“The time has come to rethink wilderness,” Cronon begins his essay. He goes on to challenge the widely held and decidedly romantic notion of environmentalists that “wilderness stands as the last remaining place where civilization, that all too human disease, has not fully infected the earth.” That concept, Cronon believes, gives credence to “the illusion that we can somehow wipe clean the slate of our past and return to the tabula rasa that supposedly existed before we began to leave our marks on the world.” That fiction, which Cronon believes is based on a profound misunderstanding of nature, and our place in it, creates a force that is antagonistic to conservation. “The myth of wilderness,” he writes, “is that we can somehow leave nature untouched by our passage.” He goes on to challenge the shopworn and often misunderstood shibboleth of Henry David Thoreau that “in wildness is the preservation of the world.”

The removal of aboriginal human beings from their homeland to create a commodified wilderness is a deliberate charade.

Cronon concludes: “The more one knows of its peculiar history, the more one realizes that wilderness is not quite what it seems. Far from being one place on earth that stands apart from humanity, it is quite profoundly a human creation—indeed, the creation of very particular human cultures at very particular moments in human history. It is not a pristine sanctuary where the last remnant of an untouched, endangered, but still transcendent nature can for at least a little while longer be encountered without the contaminating taint of civilization. Instead, it is a product of that civilization.”

These are fighting words to a “civilization” that has set millions of square miles of valuable land aside as “wilderness,” passed a national law—the 1964 Wilderness Act—to both define and protect wilderness, and still supports a dozen or so well-heeled national organizations to lobby for more wilderness set-asides and convince the public that figuratively walling off large expanses of unoccupied land is the only way to preserve nature and biological diversity. But how natural is wilderness? To Cronon, not as natural as it seems.

“Wilderness hides its unnaturalness behind a mask that is all the more beguiling because it seems so natural,” he says. By glorifying pristine landscapes, which exist only in the imagination of romantics, Western conservationists divert attention from the places where people live and the choices they make every day that do true damage to the natural world of which they are part.

So the removal of aboriginal human beings from their homeland to create a commodified wilderness is a deliberate charade, a culturally constructed neo-Edenic narrative played out for the enchantment of weary human urbanites yearning for the open frontier that their ancestors “discovered,” then tamed, a place to absorb the sounds and images of virgin nature and forget for a moment the thoroughly unnatural lives they lead.


So What is Wild?

What counts as wilderness is not determined by the absence of people, but by the relationship between people and place.
—Jack Turner, philosopher

On several occasions during my research, an interview would be brought to a dead stop after I included the word wild or wilderness in a question. The word simply didn’t exist in the dialect of the person I was interviewing. My interpreter would stare at me and wait for a better question.

When I tried to explain what I meant by wild to Bertha Petiquan, an Ojibway woman in northern Canada whose daughter was interpreting, she burst out laughing and said the only place she had ever seen what she thought I was describing as wild was a street corner outside the bus station in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

The Tarahumara of Mexico have no word or concept meaning wilderness. Land is granted the same love and affection as family.

In Alaska, Patricia Cochran, a Yupik native scientist, told me “we have no word for ‘wilderness.’ What you call ‘wilderness’ we call our back yard. To us none of Alaska is wilderness as defined by the 1964 Wilderness Act—a place without people. We are deeply insulted by that concept, as we are by the whole idea of ‘wilderness designation’ that too often excludes native Alaskans from ancestral lands.” Yupiks also have no word for biodiversity. Its closest approximation means food. And the O’odham (Pima) word for wilderness is etymologically related to their terms for health, wholeness, and liveliness.²

Jakob Malas, a Khomani hunter from a section of the Kalahari that is now Gemsbok National Park, shares Cochran’s perspective on wilderness. “The Kalahari is like a big farmyard,” he says, “It is not wilderness to us. We know every plant, animal, and insect, and know how to use them. No other people could ever know and love this farm like us.”

“I never thought of the Stein Valley as a wilderness,” remarks Ruby Dunstan, a Nl’aka’pamux from Alberta. “My Dad used to say ‘That’s our pantry.’ Then some environmentalists declared it a wilderness and said no one was allowed inside because it was so fragile. So they put a fence around it, or maybe around themselves.”³

The Tarahumara of Mexico also have no word or concept meaning wilderness. Land is granted the same love and affection as family. Ethnoecologist Enrique Salmon, himself a Tarahumara, calls it “kincentric ecology.” “We are immersed in an environment where we are at equal standing with the rest of the world,” he says. “They are all kindred relations—the trees and rocks and bugs and everything is in equal standing with the rest.”⁴

When wildness is conflated with wilderness, and wilderness with nature, and nature is seen as something separate and uninfluenced by human activity, perhaps it’s time to examine real situations and test them against the semantics of modern conservation. Are Maasai cattle part of nature? Perhaps not today, but when they wandered through the open range by the thousands, tended by a few human herdsman whose primary interest was to keep the biota healthy for their livestock and other wildlife, one might say they were “wild,” certainly as wild as the springbok, eland, elephant, and buffalo that daily leave the open pasture to ravage Maasai farms for fodder.


And Who Is Nature?

We forget the reciprocity between the wild in nature and the wild in us.
—Jack Turner, philosopher

In one of the many conversations about nature I have been part of over the past three years, I said to a man—an educated, erudite, and generous supporter of international conservation, whose view of nature differed considerably from my own—“You are nature.” He looked at me and laughed nervously. I had not insulted him, he assured me. He just didn’t appreciate the notion that he was part or product of a system that also created “snails, kudzo, mules, earthquakes, grizzly bears, viruses, wildfires, and poison oak.” It turned out also that his younger sister had, years before, been badly mauled by a mountain lion.

Well, how do you convince someone with that experience that he is kin with the lion? Perhaps you can’t, I thought, but he seemed interested in continuing the conversation. Others joined in, and by the end of the evening he had accepted himself as an equal in the same creation with the lion that mauled his sister, a creation he was willing to call “nature,” a creation of which he was not apart, but a part.

When one perceives humanity to be something separate from nature, it becomes easier to regard landscapes in their “natural state” as landscapes without human inhabitants and aspire to preserve wilderness by encouraging the existence and survival in landscape of as many species as possible, minus one—humans.

The valuable contribution anthropology has made to conservation is perhaps best expressed by Paige West and Dan Brockington, who advise conservationists to be more aware of “local ways of seeing,” and that the practice of conservation will be more successful “if practitioners learn local idioms for understanding people’s surroundings before they begin to think about things in terms of nature and culture.” There is a need, they say, for conservationists “to grasp the complicated ways that people interact with what they rely on for food, shelter, as well as spiritual, social and economic needs.”⁵

Enrique Salmon believes that “language and thought works together. So when a people’s language includes a word like ‘wilderness,’ that shapes their thoughts about their relationship to the natural world. The notion of wilderness then carries the notion that humans are bad for the environment.”⁶

Certainly someone who regards the forest as his “pantry” is going to see the flora, fauna, soil, and water in a somewhat different light than the tourist, biologist, miner, or logger. But is there not something that can be seen by all of them, some common ground on which the forest’s intrinsic value can be considered and agreed upon?

One example of a very different local idiom that Western naturalists have difficulty understanding is that of the Gimi, one of the hundreds of remote, Stone Age cultures in central Papua New Guinea. The Gimi “have no notion of nature or culture,” say West and Brockington. “They see themselves in an ongoing set of exchanges with their ancestors [who they believe are] animating and residing in their forests, infusing animals, plants, rivers, and the land itself with life. When people die their spirits go back to the forest and infuse themselves into plants, animals and rivers. When the living use these natural resources they do not see it as a depletion but rather as an ongoing exchange” of energy and spirit.

The final arbiters in this scientific conflict should be indigenous peoples themselves.

When the Gimi kill and eat an animal, “they understand it to be generated by their ancestors’ life forces and it will work to make their life force during this lifetime. When they die that force will go back to the forest and replenish it.”⁷ This is an admittedly difficult cosmology for the Western mind to contemplate or accept. But the fact that every atom in every living thing has existed since the beginning of time gives some scientific grounding to the Gimis’ belief that spirit is simply reorganized force and matter. That said, their understanding “of the relationship between humans and their surroundings [remains] extremely difficult to reconcile with arguments about the decline and loss of biological diversity.”⁸

However, if Western conservationists in central Papua New Guinea know that the Gimi believe all matter is here for eternity, that it simply changes form over time, they will be better equipped to work with local communities in the preservation of biodiversity. But if they dismiss that cosmology as primitive animism and seek to impose Western science and religion on the Gimi people, their conservation initiative will almost certainly fail.

Of course, the final arbiters in this scientific conflict should be indigenous peoples themselves, the very people that early advocates for Yellowstone Park said had no interest in raw nature or the park area.

They were alleged to be afraid of the geysers and fumaroles. (Not true. They cooked over them.) The truth is that much of what the rest of us know about nature and have incorporated into the various sciences we use to protect it—ecology, zoology, botany, ethnobotany—we learned from the very people we have expelled from the areas we have sought to protect.

Mark Dowie is an investigative historian living in Point Reyes Station, California. His last piece for Guernica, Harm Subsidies, appeared in March. The above is excerpted from Conservation Refugees: The Hundred-Year Conflict between Global Conservation and Native Peoples by Mark Dowie, to be published by The MIT Press on May 8. ©2009, Mark Dowie. All rights reserved.

Editors’ Recommendations:

Conservation Refugees: The Hundred-Year Conflict between Global Conservation and Native Peoples by Mark Dowie

Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature by William Cronon

Yosemite and the High Sierra by Ansel Adams

To contact Guernica or Mark Dowie, please write here.

Notes
¹ P. West and D. Brockington, “An Anthropological Perspective on Some Unexpected Consequences of Protected Areas,” Conservation Biology 20, no. 3 (2006): 609-616.
² Gary Nabhan, Cultures of Habit (Counterpoint Press, 1997).
³ World Rainforest Movement, Protected Areas, Protected Against Whom?, p. 14.
⁴ John Roach, “Indigenous Group Keeps Ecology All in the Family,” National Geographic, June 29, 2006.
⁵ Ibid.
⁶ World Rainforest Movement, Protected Areas, Protected Against Whom?, p. 14.
⁷ Ibid.
⁸ Ibid.

Illustration by Emily Hunt