Moral Economy Project Symposium and Outreach

DISCUSSION PAPER

Hi folks,

Here is the discussion I prepared for the symposium.

QIF/MEP Symposium – May 15-16, 2009 – Discussion Paper

Submitted by Geoffrey Garver

March 31, 2009

When the total appropriation of Earth’s life support capacity (net primary productivity) by humans and other living beings exceeds the amount available, the Earth runs an ecological deficit. This is the current situation on Earth.  Human economic development is, for the first time, colliding with global ecological limits, resulting in global warming, rapid loss of species and habitats, acidification of the oceans, loss of fisheries, diminishing freshwater, and more, along with human distress and social destabilization. This situation calls for new regulatory means for maintaining economic development within the Earth’s ecological limits.

Science-based means for assessing human appropriation of the Earth’s ecological capacity are emerging, such as ecological footprint. Measures of human appropriation of the Earth’s life support capacity provide a potential basis for developing a cap-based regulatory system for use of the Earth’s ecological capacity, similar to global regulatory mechanisms posited for addressing global warming.  Just as climate science is yielding information on limits on atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases that must be met to sustain human societies and other life systems, scientific research is yielding information on the maximum total human appropriation of life support capacity at which an adequate ecological capacity to support human societies and other life systems can be maintained.  These maxima for greenhouse gases and total ecological impact provide the basis for establishing the cap in a cap-based regulatory system, such as a cap-and-trade system.

Implementation of a cap-based regulatory system using measures of human appropriation of ecological capacity could take several forms.  This paper highlights two.  The first, analogous to a global regulatory system for greenhouse gases, would be to establish and enforce a fair international distribution of the total available ecological capacity using a cap-and-trade approach.  The second would target international trade, using a modification of the International Clearing Union proposed by John Maynard Keynes in the Bretton Woods talks.  This proposal involved adjusting an international trade currency, called the bancor, against national currencies so as to prevent both trade surpluses and trade deficits of individual nations from exceeding established limits. Right Relationship: Building a Whole Earth Economy proposes a modification of the bancor called the ecor.  The ecor would be established to reflect a global cap on appropriation of ecological capacity (e.g., ecological footprint), and adjusted against national ecological accounts, rather than monetary accounts.  Its main purpose would be to prevent countries from running ecological deficits, consistent with the view that maximizing domestic production for internal markets, with international trade as a backstop, is ecologically preferable.

Developing a regulatory mechanism based on ecological footprint or other similar measures would raise important questions that fall into two basic categories.  First, what indicators of ecological decline are suitable for use in such a regulatory system? Second, what regulatory structures and mechanisms would be most promising for addressing anthropogenic degradation of the ecosphere?

1) The problem of the indicators 

An initial set of questions surrounds criticisms of ecological footprint as both underestimating (for example, insufficient consideration of toxicity of pollutants) and overestimating (for example, the footprint attributable to productive land needed to compensate for greenhouse gas emissions) impact.  However, ecological footprint is but one in a range of possible measures of the use of ecological capacity.  For example, a May 2008 European Commission report entitled Potential of the Ecological Footprint for monitoring environmental impacts from natural resource use (EC 2008) recommended use of four related resource indicators: Ecological Footprint (EF), Environmentally-weighted Material Consumption (EMC), Human Appropriation of Net Primary Production (HANPP) and Land and Ecosystem Accounts (LEAC).  The status of ecological footprint and other measures of human appropriation of ecological capacity must be assessed, and proposals explored for addressing shortcomings such as the overestimation and underestimate of impact in ecological footprint calculations.

2) The problem of appropriate regulatory structures and mechanisms

Analytical capacity.  A system to regulate total human ecological impact would have significant data and research demands.  In Right Relationship: Building a Whole Earth Economy, we propose a Global Reserve as an institutional mechanism for gathering and analyzing information necessary for allocating, distributing and stabilizing shares of access to the Earth’s limited ecological capacity, using ecors or some other means.  The concept of a Global Reserve warrants further development. 

Regulatory challenges in applying ecological impact indicators.  Use of measures of total human ecological impact poses several significant regulatory challenges. For example, the time lag involved in gathering information relevant to ecological footprint and other similar measures has implications for its suitability to regulatory applications.  Thus, ecological footprint is often described as primarily an accounting and planning tool, suitable for use in long-range planning and as an alternative or supplement to societal indicators such as GDP.  As well, analysis is needed on whether a readily-measurable surrogate, like CO₂ in the case of climate change, can be developed for a regulatory system based on total human ecological impact. Additional lessons can be gleaned from studying more conventional examples, such as the Total Maximum Daily Load program under the U.S. Clean Water Act.  Questions also would have to be addressed regarding treatment in a regulatory scheme of the uncertainty involved in measuring human use of ecological capacity.

Distinguishing aggregate and per capita impact.  Another series of questions involves an assessment of whether and how consideration of per-capita ecological impact measurements, in addition to or as an alternative to total national ecological accounts, should be included in regulatory systems.  A country like Canada, for example, is by some measures considered an ecological creditor, because its total productive acreage using ecological footprint methodology exceeds the total ecological footprint of Canadians.  However, Canada’s per capita ecological footprint is among the highest in the world.  An assessment is needed of whether the goals of a cap-based regulatory system for human appropriation of ecological capacity can be met without consideration of per-capita impact.

Integrating global restrictions into national regulatory structures.  A review of options for implementing a global cap-based system based on human ecological impact at the national level is required.  Several challenges to instituting new restrictions consistent with a national cap on appropriation of ecological capacity could arise.  How, for example, could such restrictions be imposed in a country built on strong private property rights, such as the United States?  This set of questions can be examined by assessing the possibilities for regulating with respect to key variables, derived from Paul Ehrlich and John Holdren’s I=f(PAT) formula, that effect human ecological impact:  population, technology, affluence and (a post-Ehrlich-and-Holdren addition) ethics. 

Hi Robin,

If you look just below the discussion threads, you'll see a section called "File Library" - I believe you can upload PDFs to that.

Grace

Thanks Grace,

Please kind our attached symposium papers attached to the File Library.

Don't hesitate to contact me if you have difficulties downloading them.

Robin

Looks like they've uploaded successfully. I'm going to go ahead and post a bunch of other people's papers to the File Library too. Happy reading, everyone!

Grace