Joint implementation: Biodiversity and greenhouse gas offsets

One of the most pressing environmental issues today is the possibility that projected increases in global emissions of greenhouse gases from increased deforestation, development, and fossil-fuel combustion could significantly alter global climate patterns. Under the terms of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, signed in Rio de Janeiro during the June 1992 Earth Summit, the United States and other industrialized countries committed to balancing greenhouse gas emissions at 1990 levels in the year 2000. Included in the treaty is a provision titled Joint Implementation, whereby industrialized countries assist developing countries in jointly modifying long-term emission trends, either through emission reductions or by protecting and enhancing greenhouse gas sinks (carbon sequestration). The US Climate Action Plan, signed by President Clinton in 1993, calls for voluntary climate change mitigation measures by various sectors, and the action plan included a new program, the US Initiative on Joint Implementation. Wisconsin Electric decided to invest in a Jl project because its concept encourages creative, cost-effective solutions to environmental problems through partnering, international cooperation, and innovation. The project chosen, a forest preservation and management effort in Belize, will sequester more than five million tons of carbon dioxide over a 40-year period, will become economically selfsustaining after ten years, and will have substantial biodiversity benefits.     

The evolution of sustainability

Six separate but related strains of thought have emerged prominently since 1950 in discussions of such phenomena as the interrelationships among rates of population growth, resource use, and pressure on the environment. They are the ecological/carrying capacity root, the resources/environment root, the biosphere root, the critique of technology root, the no growth/slow growth root, and the ecodevelopment root.Each of these strains of thought was fully developed before the word sustainable itself was used. Many of the roots are based on fundamentally opposing assessments of the future of mankind. Many of the roots, such as the ecology/carrying capacity root, are based on physical concepts, and they exclude normative values. Others, such as the ecodevelopment root, include such values as equity, broad participation in governance, and decentralized government.When the word sustainability was first used in 1972 in the context of man's future, in a British book,Blueprint for Survival, normative concepts were prominent. This continued to be the case when the word was first used in 1974 in the United States to justify a no growth economy.Sustainability was first used in a United Nations document in 1978. Normative concepts, encapsulated in the term ecodevelopment, were prominent in the United Nations publications.After about 1978, the term sustainability began to be used not only in technological articles and reports but also in policy documents culminating in the use of the term in the report of the summit meeting of the Group of Seven in 1989.The roots of the term sustainability are so deeply embedded in fundamentally different concepts, each of which has valid claims to validity, that a search for a single definition seems futile. The existence of multiple meaning is tolerable if each analyst describes clearly what he means by sustainability.     

An Approach for Estimating Soil Carbon Using the National Nutrient Loss Database

Agricultural lands have the potential to contribute to greenhouse gas mitigation by sequestering organic carbon within the soil. Credible and consistent estimates will be necessary to design programs and policies to encourage management practices that increase carbon sequestration. Because a nationwide survey of soil carbon by the wide range of natural resources and management conditions of the United States is prohibitively expensive, a simulation modeling approach must be used. The National Nutrient Loss Database (NNLD) is a modeling and database system designed and built jointly by the USDA– Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and Texas A&M University to provide science-based inferences on environmental impacts from changes in agricultural management practices and programs at the regional and national level. Currently, the NNLD simulates 16 crops and covers 1.35 × 10⁸ ha. For estimating soil carbon sequestration, the database will be populated with 1.5 × 10⁶ field-level model runs using the EPIC (Environmental Policy Impact Calculator) model, which includes newly incorporated carbon equations consistent with those in the Century model. Each run will represent a unique situation defined by state, crop, climate, soil, irrigation type, conservation practice, tillage system, and nutrient management treatment (nutrient rate, application frequency, application timing, and manure category). Results are to be assigned to specific National Resource Inventory points (NRI) to simulate regional and national baselines. In this article we present the modeling approach and discuss the strengths and limitations. Published online     

Crisis,argument, and agriculture

Scholarly critics such as Wendell Berry, as well as the popular media, frequently refer to problems associated with agriculture as the agricultural crisis or the farm crisis. Despite the identification of a problem or problems as symptomatic of this crisis, scant attention is paid to why the situation is a social crisis as opposed to a problem, tragedy, trend, or simple change in the structure of agriculture. This paper analyzes the use of social crisis as applied to the state of modern agriculture and, by extension, other crises such as those in legitimation and morality. It concludes that, although important social values associated with farming as a way of life may be in danger of being lost, the crisis we may be facing with respect to agriculture is more properly understood as a sociopolitical crisis that has broader implications than simply the loss of farms or traditional farming values. Indeed, what is in danger of being lost is our ability to affect a secure and sustainable political-economic system.     

Trade-Based Carbon Sequestration Accounting

This article describes and illustrates an accounting method to assess and compare early carbon sequestration investments and trades on the basis of the number of standardized CO₂ emission offset credits they will provide. The gold standard for such credits is assumed to be a relatively riskless credit based on a CO₂ emission reduction that provides offsets against CO₂ emissions on a one-for-one basis. The number of credits associated with carbon sequestration needs to account for time, risk, durability, permanence, additionality, and other factors that future trade regulators will most certainly use to assign official credits to sequestration projects. The method that is presented here uses established principles of natural resource accounting and conventional rules of asset valuation to score projects. A review of 20 early voluntary United States based CO₂ offset trades that involve carbon sequestration reveals that the assumptions that buyers, sellers, brokers, and traders are using to characterize the economic potential of their investments and trades vary enormously. The article develops a universal carbon sequestration credit scoring equation and uses two of these trades to illustrate the sensitivity of trade outcomes to various assumptions about how future trade auditors are likely to score carbon sequestration projects in terms of their equivalency with CO₂ emission reductions. The article emphasizes the importance of using a standard credit scoring method that accounts for time and risk to assess and compare even unofficial prototype carbon sequestration trades. The scoring method illustrated in this article is a tool that can protect the integrity of carbon sequestration credit trading and can assist buyers and sellers in evaluating the real economic potential of prospective trades. Published online     

Environmental problem-solving and land-use management: A proposed structure for Australia

A three-tiered structure of land-use and environmental management is here proposed for Australia. The structure is based on the idea that environment means the environment of people, and that environmental problems arise when a change in the interaction between people and their environment leads to conflicts about the use of land and resources. The heterogeneity of society means that a range of human aspirations and value systems must be satisfied by environmental managers. Existing methods of environmental management fail to achieve these objectives, due to inadequate perception of environmental problems by decision-makers, and the inability of currently available impact assessment techniques to resolve human conflicts associated with the use of land and resources. The main work of planning and managing land use and the environment would be carried out by regional authorities, supported by federal and state policy. Examples are given of moves towards regional administration in England and Wales, Western Australia, Australia and New Zealand. Community participation in the decision-making process is essential and can be achieved by electoral representation to the authoritative bodies and through procedures that ensure informed public comment on planning proposals.     

Who can be morally obligated to be a vegetarian?

Kathryn Paxton George has recently argued that vegetarianism cannot be a moral obligation for most human beings, even if Tom Regan is correct in arguing that humans and certain nonhuman animals are equally inherently valuable. She holds that Regan's liberty principle permits humans to kill and eat innocent others who have a right to life, provided that doing so prevents humans from being made worse off. George maintains that obstaining from meat and dairy products would in fact make most humans worse off. I argue that Regan's liberty principle either contradicts his equal rights view or does not permit the slaughter of another for food. I show that a different view recognizing the moral rights of nonhumans but according them less value than normal adult humans, the unequal rights view, would permit such action if human survival or health depended upon it. However, it would also permit the slaughter of innocent humans in the same circumstances. Finally, I argue that current nutritional research does not support George's contention that most humans would suffer if they ceased eating other animals and their products.     

Ecological principles,biodiversity, and the electric utility industry

The synthetic field of conservation biology uses principles derived from many different disciplines to address biodiversity issues. Many of these principles have come from ecology, and two simple ones that seem to relate to many issues involving the utility industry are: (1) Everything is interconnected (and should usually stay that way), and (2) We can never do merely one thing. The first principle can be applied to both the biotic and physical environments that are impacted by industrial activities. Habitat fragmentation and the loss of physical and biotic connectedness that results are frequently associated with transmission rights-of-way. These problems can be reduced—or even turned into conservation benefits—by careful planning and creative management. The second principle applies to the utility industry's programs to deal with carbon released by burning fossil fuels. Ecological knowledge can allow these programs to contribute to the preservation of biodiversity in addition to addressing a pollution problem. Without careful ecological analyses, industry could easily create new problems while implementing solutions to old ones.     

Naturalness In Biological Conservation

Conservation scientists are arguing whether naturalness provides a reasonable imperative for conservation. To clarify this debate and the interpretation of the term natural, I analyze three management strategies – ecosystem preservation, ecosystem restoration, and ecosystem engineering – with respect to the naturalness of their outcomes. This analysis consists in two parts. First, the ambiguous term natural is defined in a variety of ways, including (1) naturalness as that which is part of nature, (2) naturalness as a contrast to artifactuality, (3) naturalness as an historical independence from human actions, and (4) naturalness as possession of certain properties. After that, I analyze the different conceptions with respect to their implications for the three management strategies. The main conclusion is that there exists no single conception of naturalness that could distinguish between the outcomes of the three management methods. Therefore, as long as the outcomes of the different methods are regarded as being of a different value in conservation, we should either abandon the idea of naturalness as the guiding concept in conservation or use the term natural only in the ways that take both its historical and feature dependent meanings into consideration.     

Two paradigms of professional development in environmental education

Summary In environmental education in this information age, it is particularly important to adopt the approach of enquiring critically into the environmental, educational and social values informing environmental, educational and social actions when and where required, rather than to simply adopt the approach of emphasising the acquisition and retention of information of an alleged universal type — information drawn from the stockpile of objective knowledge collected by others. This paper argues that to achieve this aim, environmental education in an information age requires aparadigm shift in the areas of professional development — a shift from a paradigm of information technology to a paradigm of information critique. A perspective on the form of this paradigm shift in the particular field of professional development in environmental education is the subject of this paper.Dr Ian Robottom is Senior Lecturer in the Curriculum Studies Centre of the School of Education, at Deakin University, Australia. His main interests lie in teacher education, educational enquiry, and environmental education. He conducts an off-campus environmental education course (B.Ed level) for practising teachers studying at a distance, is a member of the Council of the Australian Association for Environmental Education., and Editor of theAustralian Journal of Environmental Education.     

On the moral acceptability of killing animals

According to a rights view it is acceptable to kill animals if they are innocent threats or shields or are in a lifeboat situation. However, according to advocates of such a view, our practices of killing animals for food or scientific research may be morally unacceptable. In this paper we argue that, even if we grant the basic assumptions of a rights view, a good deal of killing of animals for food and scientific research continues to be morally acceptable.     

Attitudes Toward Wilderness Study Areas: A Survey of Six Southeastern Utah Counties

Southeastern Utah is a region of world-renowned red-rock sandstone formations, large tracts of federal public land, rural communities centered on agriculture and extractive industries, and is often at the epicenter of environmental protection efforts in the western United States. Environmental groups have proposed formal Wilderness designations for much of the regions public land—proposals that have been actively fought by rural community leaders who do not want large areas locked-up from traditional livelihood and recreational uses. The debate over wilderness designation in the region has been characterized in the media as one that is particularly contentious and polarizing. A survey of southeastern Utah residents was conducted in order to better understand this conflict. The survey focused on attitudes toward wilderness designation and management. We found that residents of southeastern Utah have negative attitudes towards the designation and management of Wilderness Study Areas. We propose that these attitudes should be carefully considered and engaged in future policy and management decisions. We suggest that negative opinions expressed by residents of southeastern Utah are not directed primarily at the concept of environmental protection but rather at the strong perception that these programs and initiatives have been carried out in a heavy-handed manner and dominated by outside influences that have overwhelmed local voices.     

Options and limitations in fisheries management

Conclusion As a final thought, I want to conclude with the cliche that a problem recognized is half solved. Certainly, I cannot be accused of laying out a solution to solving the major fisheries management problems, but it is hoped that the problems managers face are now clearer. The complexity of fisheries assystems to be managed is clear to even the most casual observer. The second point, a broad theory of fisheries management, should provide a framework to categorize all of the disjointed activities that we associate with management of our fisheries resources.     

Collective action and the traditional village

This article considers the dispute between moral economy and rational peasant theories of agrarian societies in application to problems of collective action. The moral-economy theory holds that traditional peasant society is organized cooperatively through shared moral values and communal institutions; while the rational-peasant theory maintains that peasant society shows the mark of rational individual calculation, leading to free-rider problems that undermine successful collective action. This article offers an abstract model of a traditional village and assesses the applicability of recent qualifications of the collective action argument to this model. It will emerge that the social characteristics of the traditional village embody features that facilitate collective action by rational peasants.     

The object of environmental ethics

Since the term environmental ethics began to be used a generation ago, it has covered many different kinds of environmental notions, problems, ethical systems, and forms of behavior. A variety of cases are presented and examined under two terms,environmental ethics andecological morality, in an effort to illustrate different kinds of ethical objectives. In order to understand the connections between various strands of environmental ethics, personal and social values and subcultural norms of environmental ethics are examined under Christopher Stone's concept of moral pluralism. G. J. Warnock's notion of the general object of morality is proposed to integrate the variegated purposes of environmental ethics.     

Carbon isotope ratios in logged and unlogged boreal forests: Examination of the potential for determining wildlife habitat use

Due to assimilation of recycled CO₂ from litter decomposition and photosynthetic changes in carbon fractionation at low light levels, the foliage at the base of a forest is often more depleted in¹³C compared to that exposed to the atmosphere in either the canopy or in open clearings. This is referred to as the canopy effect. African research has indicated that these habitat differences in foliar ¹³C can be substantial enough to affect the carbon isotope ratios of resident fauna. Previous work documenting a 30-year chronology on moose teeth from Isle Royale National Park indicated a progressive depletion in¹³C and suggested that this could be due to forest regrowth following extensive burning. The present study examined the assumption implicit in this hypothesis that foliar ¹³C varies between open and closed boreal forest sites. I found a marginal canopy effect of 2 ¹³C difference between upper canopy and ground flora for a forest in northwestern Ontario and an average difference of 1.2 in under- and mid-story vegetation between closed forests and open clear-cuts. Because of these small differences, the utility of carbon isotope analysis in quantifying temporally integrated exploitation of deforested habitats will be low for northern boreal locations. In denser forests, such as those in the tropics or western North American where the canopy effect can be expected to be much greater, ¹³C analysis may still offer some promise for determining selection by wildlife of disturbed habitats.     

Uncertainties associated with the assessment of vegetation

The Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) attempts to portray the current character of a given ecosystem. This provides a Baseline against which future possible changes can be assessed. Ecosystems, however, are dynamic and in a constant state of change. Consequently, data representing a single year reflect conditions only for that year and can be misleading if compared against any other year. In addition to this temporal variation, considerable spacial variation exists in species composition and cover. Ample sampling is required to compensate for this heterogeneity. Variation, or background noise, can be minimized by the use of similarity indexes and sampling over a period of at least two years.     

The readability of federal land management plans

Regulations to implement the National Environmental Policy Act state that environmental impact statements shall be written in plain language. Federal land management agencies operate under this guideline when they prepare plans for their lands. We examined 23 agency plans, using the Flesch Reading Ease Scale, to determine if they met this criterion. The scores show that the plans are written for people with three to six years of college education, far beyond the reading ability of the average person. The results suggest that the plans may limit or bias who participates in agency planning. National policy on the readability of the plans needs to be clarified, and agencies need to evaluate, and defend or revise, their writing programs.     

Use and abuse revisited: Response to Pluhar and Varner

In her recent Counter-Reply to my views, Evelyn Pluhar defends her use of literature on nutrition and restates her argument for moral vegetarianism. In his Vegan Ideal article, Gary Varner claims that the nutrition literature does not show sufficient differences among women, men, and children to warrant concern about discrimination. In this response I show how Professor Pluhar continues to draw fallacious inferences: she begs the question on equality, avoids the main issue in my ethical arguments, argues from irrelevancies, misquotes her sources, equivocates on context, confuses safety with morality, appeals to fear, confuses correlation with cause, fails to evaluate scientific studies, draws hasty conclusions from insufficient data, ignores a large amount of data which would call her views into question, does not follow good scientific or moral argumentation, objectionably exceeds the limits of her expertise, and resorts to scapegoating. I also argue that Professor Varner fails to make his case because he offers virtually no evidence from scientific studies on nutrition, relies on outdated and fallacious sources, makes unsupported claims, ignores evidence that would contravene his claims, draws hasty conclusions based on weakly supported hypotheses rather than facts, employs a double standard, appeals to ignorance, does not evaluate arguments from his sources, and makes anad hominem attack on a respected nutritionist when his focus should be on evaluating the evidence and arguments from the scientific studies themselves. Neither Varner nor Pluhar have responded sufficiently to the real issue in my arguments, that of discrimination and bias in the vegan ideal.     

The Colorado,USA, Joint Review Process: an initial evaluation of its success as a permit reform by key participants

Colorado, USA, developed the Joint Review Process (CJRP) in 1978 to coordinate the application and review of permits required for major development projects. Since then, the state has used the process on over 20 projects. This study examined whether the CJRP has achieved its primary goals—enhanced coordination of agencies, enhanced public participation, and strengthened communication between agencies and project sponsors— and several related secondary goals. The success of the process was measured through a survey of 54 key people who had been directly involved with the process. Those surveyed included federal and state agency staff, local agency managers, corporate officers, private consultants, and environmental leaders. All groups, with one exception, agreed that the process achieved its primary goals and that it should be retained. Environmental leaders were neutral about whether the process enhanced public participation and about retaining the process. The report concludes with a review of recommended improvements to and applications of the CJRP.