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Sustainable Development Update Issue 1, Volume 8, 2008 The Sustainable Development Update (SDU) focuses on the links between ecology, society and the economy. It is produced by Albaeco, an independent non-profit organisation. SDU is produced with support from Sida, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, Environment Policy Division. Dr. Fredrik Moberg, Editor Click the miniature below to download in pdf-format: 
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| Editorial | ||
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Ecosystems as the bottom line for business and human development Climate change has sparked publicity and scary headlines around the world for quite a while now. A growing number of companies have responded and are now moving rapidly to measure and cut their greenhouse gas emissions. Ecosystem degradation is likely to have a similar effect tomorrow, says the organisations behind a recently launched new tool for companies called the Corporate Ecosystem Services Review (ESR). It is a set of guidelines designed to help companies develop strategies for managing risks and opportunities arising from their dependence and impact on ecosystems. The organisation I work for was recently involved in the Swedish launch of this tool. Craig Hanson from World Re- sources Institute who presented the ESR at the seminar in Stockholm is one of the authors behind the new report introducing the methodology. He asked the audience: “Why should business care? Because ecosystem health goes straight to the bottom line”. When a company talks about increasing the bottom line, they mean doing things to increase the company’s income. The new thing about the ESR compared to already existing environmental tools is that it focuses on opportunities rather than risks and impacts. As such the guidelines help make the connection between ecosystem health and the bottom line much clearer. The ESR is based on the global UN-study the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA). It found that ecosystems have declined rapidly over the past 50 years and that this degradation not only put the world’s biodiversity at risk, but also its busi- nesses. This is because healthy ecosystems provide companies (as well as people and communities) with a wide variety of benefits or services. The supply of clean freshwater is critical to the beverage industry, insurance companies benefit from the coastal protection of coral reefs and mangrove forests and the agribusi- ness relies heavily on pollination, pest control and erosion control provided by natural ecosystems, to name a few. Another positive thing is that the MA clearly shows many new opportunities for business to do good and do good business at once. The future can be no other thing than bright for busi- nesses that address developing countries’ needs for food, fiber, and fresh water, and especially if they can enhance and build local capacities for provisioning services in sustainable ways. In this newsletter we have for long persistently repeated the insights from the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment that clearly shows that ecosystems are fundamental for alleviating poverty and achieving sustainable development. The new Corporate Ecosystem Services Review translates the MA-findings and speaks a language every CEO will understand. Companies who use the Earth’s ecosystems more wisely are not only likely to see bigger profits and enjoy more stable business in the future. In doing so they will also help securing the life supporting ecosystems upon which human development depends and provide new income flows to overcome poverty. Ecology is indeed everybody’s business! /Fredrik Moberg, Editor, Albaeco
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| SDU - Feature | ||
 It is already clear that climate change will have profound physical, biological and economic consequences. Even though the last Nobel Peace Prize highlighted the increased danger of violent conflicts and wars, the broader societal effects of climate change are nearly uncharted territory. A recent report identifies three plausible scenarios that illustrate how the cascading consequences of unchecked climate change include a range of security problems that could have dire global consequences. “In August 2007, a Russian adventurer descended 4,300 meters under the thinning ice of the North Pole to plant a titanium flag, claiming some 1.2 million square kilometers of the Arctic for Russia. Not to be outdone, the Prime Minister of Canada stated his intention to boost his nation’s military presence in the Arctic, with the stakes raised by the recent discovery that the icy Northwest Passage has become navigable for the first time in recorded history. On the other side of the globe, the spreading desertification in the Darfur region has been compounding the tensions between nomadic herders and agrarian farmers, providing the environmental backdrop for genocide. In Bangladesh, one of the most densely populated countries in the world, the risk of coastal flooding is growing and could leave some 30 million people searching for higher ground in a nation already plagued by political violence and a growing trend toward religious extremism. Neighboring India is already building a wall along its border with Bangladesh. Such examples serve to illustrate the ever-present, but poorly understood, links between the consequences of climate change and the geopolitical arena.” The above quote is the synopsis of a recent report compiled during the course of the past year by a high-level working group of US foreign policy experts, climate scientists, historians, and other specialists. They met regularly to bring the social sciences, in particular history, geography, and political science, into the forecast of climate change in the coming century. Many of the key findings of this group, which was directed by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Center for a New American Security, are presented in a new report entitled “The Age of Consequences: The foreign policy and national security implications of climate change”. The report is organized around three possible climate change scenarios (see box) that were developed by Pew Center Senior Climate Scientist Dr. Jay Gulledge, in consultation with other leading experts in the field. The report quickly points out that although these scenarios are not forecasts, since forecasting societal trajectories is even harder than forecasting climate, they are all plausible possibilities, based on current scientific consensus and expert opinion. Lessons from the past Images of the future can be constructed based on the lessons of history. With this in mind, it is sobering to note that the potential horsemen of climate change – floods, droughts, and epidemics – all top the list of natural disasters with highest recorded human death tolls. And while there is no historical precedent for the type of global challenges that a changing climate may bring, many of the physical impacts will be regional in scope rather than global. The report reflects on historical disasters ranging from the plagues in the Middle Ages to hurricane Katrina and highlights the common elements in societal responses to them. An emerging pattern seems to be that people tend to return to religion in times of crises, and to display hostility towards outsiders. Moreover, people seem to have a tendency to develop ways of coping with environmental vulnerability, by altering individual living strategies such as the ability to migrate, or by societal measures, such as engineered flood control or mobilizing assistance from outside areas. The report suggests that it generally takes people a few generations to learn how to operate within the limits of their natural environment. As an example of this kind of environmental inexperience the report highlights the inaccurate response to the droughts in the dust bowl years (a series of dust storms causing major ecological and agricultural damage to the North American prairie from 1930 to 1936) of a population who had only recently migrated from more humid regions. Likewise, the combination of our recent increased mobility and the ongoing climate changes might lead to a situation where we increasingly find ourselves losing this buffer of experience and understanding.
Unequal consequences The report further highlights that the term “global climate change” is in fact misleading; many of the impacts will vary dramatically from region to region. However, one common conclusion transcends all three presented scenarios. Poor and underdeveloped areas are likely to have fewer resources and less stamina to deal with the national security and geopolitical consequences of climate change, even in its very modest and early manifestations. The impact of rainfall, desertification and storm intensity has already been felt in much of Africa, Central Asia, and throughout Central and South America. The report raises a warning finger, however, in assuming that climate change will not be a problem for affluent countries. Even these nations may face dire conditions such as permanent agricultural disruptions, endemic disease, ferocious storm patterns, deep droughts, the disappearance of vast tracks of coastal land, and the collapse of ocean fisheries. Perhaps the most worrying problems associated with the projected rise in temperatures and sea levels are from migrations of people, both inside nations and across existing national borders. In all the report’s three scenarios it is projected that rising sea levels in Central America, South Asia, and Southeast Asia could lead to massive migrations, potentially involving hundreds of millions of people. These dramatic movements of people and the possible disruptions involved could easily spike regional tensions. In some scenarios, the number of people forced to move in the coming decades could dwarf previous historical migrations. The more severe scenarios even suggest the prospect of perhaps billions of people over the medium or longer term being forced to relocate. The possibility of such a significant portion of humanity on the move poses an enormous challenge even if played out over the course of decades. Age of consequences The report concludes that we are already living in an age of consequences with regards to climate change and its influence on society, although there is still a short window of opportunity for the international community to plan and implement a response to mitigate and, where possible, adapt to global climate change. The award of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize to Al Gore and the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is a clear recognition that global warming is much more than only an environmental problem, but also a serious geopolitical issue. Building on this momentum will hopefully lead to a faster reception of intellectual, financial and diplomatic resources to tackle the momentous climate challenge. /Albert Norström
More at: The report “The Age of Consequences: The Foreign Policy and National Security Implications of Global Climate Change” can be downloaded at: www.csis.org/component/option,com_csis_pubs/ task,view/id,4154/type,1/ | ||
| Sustainability School | ||
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"Social-ecological systems": inter-disciplinary research focuses on integrated systems of people and nature  Social-ecological systems are linked systems of people and nature. The term stems from research that emphasizes that humans must be seen as a part of, not apart from, nature — that the delineation between social and ecological systems is artificial and arbitrary. Social-ecological systems is an emerging term more and more often heard in the debate on sustainable development to emphasise the close interdependencies between people and ecosystems. Scholars have also used concepts like ‘coupled human-environment systems´, ‘ecosocial systems´ and ‘socioecological systems´ to illustrate the interplay between social and ecological systems. The term social-ecological system was coined by Fikret Berkes and Carl Folke in 1998 because they did not want to treat the social or ecological dimension as a prefix, but rather give the two same weight during their analysis. The more integrated focus on people and nature has its basis in a new way of systems thinking that is needed more than ever because we are becoming overwhelmed by change, complexity and information. It is about realising that our societies and economies are integrated parts of the global life supporting ecosystem called the biosphere. Nature and humanity as one system Considering the growing human influence on the Earth’s climate and ecosystems, nature cannot be understood without accounting for the influence of humanity. Moreover, in spite of the immense technological development, our economies and societies still depend on life-supporting ecosystems that provide us with clothes, fibres, building material, clean water, food and so on. A worldview that considers nature and humanity as one system is central to resilience theory. Resilience is the capacity of a system to withstand shocks and surprises and then rebuild itself. Resilience theory represents a shift in how we view the relationship between environmental issues, economic development, and the health and well-being of human populations. It provides a new perspective on managing coupled systems of people and nature through building resilience and adaptive capacity within the system, rather than attempting to control for stable optimal production and short-term economic gain. More at: www.resalliance.org www.stockholmresilience.org | ||
| SDU Interview | ||
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Unique science and policy conference in Stockholm this April: "resilience needed to cope with climate change and the loss of ecosystem services" ‘Resilience 2008’ is the first high-level conference ever on the concept of resilience, says Professor Carl Folke, head of the steering committee. It is about what kinds of knowledge, incentives and governance that is required to deal with climate change, poverty and the ongoing erosion of our life-supporting ecosystems. What is this conference all about? 
– It is about the global issues we are facing,
and what kinds of knowledge, incentives and
governance systems that will be required to
deal with both the climate challenges and the
ongoing erosion of our life-supporting ecosystems in a globally interconnected world. Not
surprisingly, the conference revolves around resilience – the capacity to deal with change, often unexpected and
surprising change, and renew, innovate and continue to develop.
A central aspect of the conference is the focus on management
and governance of integrated systems of people and nature, what
we call social-ecological systems. Humans must be viewed as
part of, not apart from, nature!
Who are attending? – The conference brings together leading scientists from all over the world, people who work to integrate the natural and social sciences to better understand the global challenges and develop innovative solutions to complex problems. I firmly believe in transdisciplinary research for improved policy. Ecologists, economists, political scientists, historians, sociologist and others, must collaborate and learn together to get a deeper understanding of the resilience of complex social-ecological systems undergoing change. Representatives from government, business and other major actors also participate in the conference. They will, together with the scientists, discuss how prosperous pathways of societal development can be stimulated to emerge in the light of global challenges like climate change, poverty, vulnerability and the world-wide loss of ecosystem services. What’s the unique thing about this conference? – Resilience 2008 strives to be much more than a regular science conference, with new ways for discussing, presenting and interacting. Every afternoon during the conference we arrange a Science Fair, a ‘smorgasbord’ of different activities, including panels on central topics, working groups, poster pubs, speed talks, speakers’ corners and music. There are also opportunities for self-organised informal meetings and workshops. And we have a unique Art Exhibition during the conference, with jury-selected works. It is a joint project with the Royal Academy of Fine Arts where invited artists interpret the notion of resilience. Another unique feature is the last day’s high level Policy Forum on the implications of resilience science for development and policy. The Forum is organised by Stockholm Resilience Centre in collaboration with the International Commission on Climate Change and Development, recently launched by the Swedish Government. /Fredrik Moberg
More at: www.resilience2008.org | ||
| SDU Interview | ||
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Greening the Sahel: a success story from the world’s poorest country Former dry unproductive land is now scattered with trees. In 20 years 5 million hectares have been transformed by farmers in three regions of Niger. And the changes have come about more through social changes than through technological development, says Chris Reij, human geographer from Vrije University in Amsterdam. He has more than 30 years experience from research in Africa’s drylands. SDU asked him four questions about the greening of Sahel.  What triggered the change; what made the
farmers start caring and managing on-farm
trees?It was several factors working together. After serious droughts in the 70’s and the 80’s there was a general feeling among farmers that something had to be done. They were almost literally with their backs against the wall. There was also a growing population in need of more resources. The death of highly-appreciated President Kountche in 1987 marks the beginning of a long period of political crisis and a weakening of the State. Until then natural resources belonged to the State, but slowly farmers began consid- ering themselves the de facto owners of their on-farm trees and began investing in their protection and management. But is it not just an effect of increased rainfall? You can actually see the border between Niger and Nigeria on satellite images. Despite slightly higher rainfall, tree densities in Northern Nigeria are much lower than in Southern Niger. This implies that rainfall cannot be the only explanation for the regreening that has occurred in the densely populated parts of Niger. The rainfall has increased in the region since the middle of the 1990's but rainfall has become more unpredictable and more and longer drought periods occur within the rainy season. What are the benefits for the farmers? On the whole, farmers in villages with many trees are better to cope with drought than farmers with few trees. This increased resilience to drought has to do with more complex and more productive agricultural systems characterized by a stronger integration between agriculture, livestock and forestry. Manure that used to be burned in the kitchen is now used on the fields, which has a positive local impact on soil fertility. Lack of fodder is much less a constraint to the development of livestock than in the past. Tree leaves can be used as fodder, but some leaves and pods can also be consumed as famine food. The pruning of trees produces firewood which can be sold on markets. Trees are also beneficial to the microclimate, lowering soil temperatures which are important in adapting to climate change. Trees reduce wind speeds helping seedlings to survive, and now the farmers only need to sow once, allowing the crops a longer growing season and an increased yield. The social impacts are large. Women need to spend less time in the search for firewood. There are more possibilities for people to live on the land; more young men stay in the villages instead of leaving on labor migration. One of the findings is also a reduction in conflicts between farmers and herders, which is most likely related to a growing resource base. How about selling carbon credits to the fossil fuel-dependent parts of the world? Selling the carbon sequestered in the trees managed by the farmers in Niger to polluting industries is not an option. It would require from farmers that they would conserve their on-farm trees for many years, which would reduce the flexibility they require to survive in a dry environment. In case of drought they must have the right to cut some of their trees and to sell the wood on the market to generate cash. /Louise Hård af Segerstad
More at: www.dea.org.au/node/220 | ||
| In Brief | ||
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"Rich nations grow at the ecological expense of the poor"  The costs of environmental degradation caused by rich countries are disproportionately falling on the world’s poorest nations, claims a group of scientists in a recent issue of the science journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The US and Canadian researchers show that envi- ronmental damages have been “overwhelmingly driven” by emissions from middle- and high-in- come groups, but also that the impacts are dispro- portionately borne by low-income nations. Surprised anyone? This might not sound like anything new, but this time the researchers have come up with concrete economic numbers de- scribing the unfairness. Adding together the costs of e.g. climate change, stratospheric ozone deple- tion, agricultural intensification, deforestation, and overfishing during the period 1961-2000 the new study found that the total damages ranged up to $47 trillion. In total, this is much more than the combined foreign debt of these poor countries. “With pressure on ecosystem services expected to intensify in the next half-century, the frame- work and results described here may contribute to an emerging discussion of the distribution of eco- logical drivers and impacts, and the relationship of these issues with the responsibilities and debts between nations”, the authors write. Controversial study The new study is based upon years of assessments by environmental economists together with data from reports like the UN Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. However, economic valuations of en- vironmental costs tend to be criticised. There will be a lot of controversy about whether it is even appropriate to do this kind of a study and whether the authors did it right, admits co-author Richard B. Norgaard: – A lot of that will just be trying to blindside the study, to not think about it. What we really want to do is challenge people to think about it. And if anything, if you don’t believe it, do it yourself and do it better. /Fredrik Moberg
More at:Srinivasan, U.T. and others. 2008. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS): http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/105/5/1768 Crops of central importance to the worlds poor threatened by climate change In a recent edition of Science researchers warn of coming climate change impacts on production of staple crops and the need to focus on adaptation to climate change, particularly in food-insecure regions of the developing countries.  Southern Africa could lose more than 30% of its main crop, maize, in the next two decades. Photo: Jerker Lokrantz, azote.se David Lobell from Stanford University and his colleagues show that there will be varying impacts among staple crops – some will benefit, others will suffer – and that there is varying uncertainty for each crop in each region that they have modelled. Their results illustrate the need for relevant and diverse data on which to base measures for adapting to climate change. The data used must be adapted to the region in question, for example, rice, wheat and maize account for about half of the calorie intake by the poor globally, but less than 30% of calorie intake in the Sahel region. Furthermore, while climate change will impact production of many of the poor’s staple crops, there are additional barriers to escaping these impacts. Brown and Funk point out that rising commodity prices, declining per capita cultivated area and disease all have a negative impact on food production. At the field-level there are often solutions to climate change – such as switching from corn to sorghum in areas with reduced water availability, but these alternatives are not necessarily viable at other levels – such as if there is a lack of a market for sorghum in corn-consuming areas. Science and policy have the challenge of taking into account these multiple factors when addressing the adaptive capacity of regions or countries to climate change. /Miriam Huitric Sources:DB Lobell and others (2008): Prioritizing Climate Change Adaptation Needs for Food Security in 2030. Science 319: 607-610. ME Brown and CC Funk (2008): Food Security Under Climate Change. Science 319: 580-581. You can access both articles at: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/319/5863/580 "UN climate mitigation pays too little attention to biodiversity and the world’s poor" Efforts to address climate change, conserve biodiversity and fight poverty could cancel each other out unless the close links between these global challenges are given more attention. This is the conclusion of a recent paper published by the International Institute for Environment and Development, IIED. One example pointed out in the paper is the production of biofuels, which has led to “widespread conversion of biodiverse forests, savannas and peatlands, causing the release of large quantities of greenhouse gases”. – Governments, businesses, donor agencies and individuals need to do more joined up thinking to ensure that the aims of the UN Millennium Development Goals, the Convention on Biological Diversity and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change are met, says Hannah Reid author of the paper together with Krystyna Swiderska. The two authors argue that while large projects have political appeal and provide an ‘easy fix’, the biodiversity, climate change and poverty benefits of small-scale activities may be many times greater. – Policymakers have focused on mitigating greenhouse gas emissions but biodiversity is also key to adaptation to climate change, particularly as it enhances the resilience of farming systems and other ecosystems. For centuries, traditional farmers have used the diversity within both domesticated and wild species to adapt to changing conditions, says Swiderska. http://www.iied.org/pubs/display.php?o=17034IIED "Worst natural catastrophes of 2007 occurred in developing countries" Natural catastrophes in 2007 were 950, one hundred more than the year before. “The worst human catastrophes of 2007 occurred, as so often is the case, in developing and emerging countries. Storms, floods and landslides in various parts in Asia caused more than 11 000 deaths, around 3 300 attributable to Cyclone Sidr alone, which struck Bangladesh in November”, says a press release from the Munich Re Group. Higher insurance premiums and taxes to repair infrastructure due to future natural catastrophes will occur in developed countries according to Munich Re. What will happen in developing countries where people can not afford insurance and the infrastructure, ecosystems and health situation are already in bad shape? Munich Re stresses that it is important to take climate change serious as it is likely to intensify natural catastrophes in the future. Munich Re’s perspective is economic and directed to developed countries. But their call for action to mitigate and adapt to climate change will still benefit developing countries: “…speedy international action is needed. In addition, climate protection can bring huge economic opportunities, thanks to new technology and increased energy efficiency”. www.munichre.com/en/press/press_releases/2007/ 2007_12_27_press_release.aspx Three quarters of the globe’s key fishing grounds threatened by climate changes The focus of the climate change discussion seems to be focused on land. Granted, there is discussion of the impacts of sealevel rise, but on land. Nevertheless, the flows and foodchains in the great blues of the world are just as impacted by climate change as those on land.  ”In Dead Water” is an alarming new report from UNEP on the
state of global fisheries, where researchers have mapped the
multiple and combined impacts of pollution, invasive species,
over-exploitation and climate change on the seas and oceans. We
are burning the fisheries’ candle at both ends: over-fishing 80% of
the world’s primary fish catches and potentially reducing the base
of the oceanic foodchains, the plankton by reduced calcification
due to acidification of the oceans by increased levels of CO2 in
the atmosphere. Additional changes to take into consideration are
changing patterns of the global circulation of the oceans’ waters
and the impacts of rising sea surface temperatures. The latter is
predicted to increase the frequency
of bleaching events on coral reefs,
and could kill up to 80% of the
world’s coral reefs in a matter of
decades.
With 2.6 billion people depend- ing on seafood for their protein in- take, these changes have not only environmental, but also economic, social and political impacts. The good news is that addressing existing stresses, such as pollution, helps increase resilience in stocks and ecosystems to climate change impacts – for example coral reefs recover faster from bleaching when in low pollution waters. /Miriam Huitric
More at:http://www.unep.org/pdf/InDeadWater_LR.pdf Water shortages fueling conflicts, says UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon 
At the same time as researchers warn of
upcoming challenges to food security,
often directly related to water shortages,
in light of climate change, UN Secretary-
General Ban Ki-Moon recently warned the
Assembly that water shortages and other
basic human needs are fuelling conflicts.
Giving the crises in Darfur, Kenya
and Chad as poignant examples, Mr
Ban highlighted water’s central role to
many of the world’s key challenges to meeting the Millennium
Development Goals – food security, sanitation, health – as well
as the need for novel approaches and efforts to managing this
common resource.
With only seven years left for reaching the Millennium Development Goal of halving the number of people without safe access to water by 2015, novel approaches are indeed needed. As is immediate action given the additional loss and costs conflict incur. Again a reminder that addressing climate change is of direct relevance to peace. http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=25527
The quote: "If we accept the UN’s projection, the global population will grow by roughly 50% and then stop. This means it will become 50% harder to stop runaway climate change, 50% harder to feed the world, 50% harder to prevent the overuse of resources. But compare this rate of increase with the rate of economic growth." George Monbiot concludes that Population growth is a threat, but pales against the greed of the rich. http://www.guardian.co.uk |