It looks to me that the way the global warming agenda is about to be implemented, as an economy-environment only friendly strategy without much social concern, will lead to a process of agricultural land concentration in few hands and in few industries, disrupting the ability of local pupulations of meeting their basis needs of producing goods of high social value and affecting this way their food security and income security and other sustainable development goals if green markets are left alone or without regulation….
Remember what happens when pure economic markets are left alone or without regulation?. Will agriculture soon need protection from global warming friendly policies? What do you think?
Lucio You are certainly on to something. As we phase out coal burning we will be losing the effect of Sulfur in the air. Most bad for materials and health it is also a critical plant nutrient which is important in methionine amino acid and plays roles in defensive metabolism in plants and animals. The role of Sulfur is one of reflecting radiation so it effect is somewhat counteracting of warming. Sulfur from global volcanism is attributed to the ending of warming and the ushering in of ice ages. People have suggested that fertilization of oceans with iron will take massive amounts of Carbon out of the air and deposit them into the ocean detritus as deposit of phytoplantons. But are we willing to bet our house on a theory that might work too well. We should always understand that everything we do will have unforeseen consequences. Some Thoughts Paul
I agree Paul, everything has risks and if doint that is the right thing to do, then it is our duty to take steps to minimize known riks....
We know or should know that in the current eco-economy(you can see this from its market structure), social issues are exogenous issues so without regulation green markets will move to jointly maximize eco-economic profits...and the green economic man will be working hard to make sure that eco-economic profits are go up, so up will go the land value associated with eco-economic growth creatidng a process of converting chearper land in social use into more profitable eco-economic uses....driving the problem of social inequality and poverty to even worse levels directly leading to food insecurity and income in security and to sure social conflict if there is not regulation....we need to minize these known risks...
The UN people implementing the global warming agenda just agreed and implementing the new 17 goals wide sustainable development agenda should follow if not the precausionary principle, the social responsibility principle...they seem not to be doing that....
I will share the following articule with you as food for thoughts an article published in 2008:
Agriculture and Global Warming: Should the Biofuel Route Be Expected to Be a Socially Friendly Agricultural Policy?
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281276235_Agriculture_and_Global_Warming_Should_the_Biofuel_Route_Be_Expected_to_Be_a_Socially_Friendly_Agricultural_Policy
Have a nice day
Article Agriculture and Global Warming: Should the Biofuel Route Be ...
Hello Lucio-
From where I sit here in southeast Mexico, I see several processes related to your concerns. First, most of these issues are seen through the lens of "development" here- in the name of development, many people who are practically self sustaining for food are being pushed off their lands. The assumption is that they will become wage laborers in planned tourism and export production factories, alternatives which push them to the market for food and diminishes the quality of their diets because of the low wages (this is not even to mention the violence and destruction involved in the erasure of traditional livelihoods). Second, under the rubric of increasing the incomes of farmers, several government programs have promoted the development of biofuels, such as the cultivation of jatropha curcus. The program, begun in 2006 in Chiapas, never realized any benefits, and despite a closed circle that included promise to buy at the farm gate, the processing facility and the refinery, and large investments by the state and national governments. the program is currently not producing biofuel (it is likely that political factors and lack of expertise were primary in this failure).
I agree with you about the "green" economy- like "corporate social responsibility" it is another obfuscating term that makes it seem like meaningful actions are being taken when it is only those that benefit transnational corporations that are promoted.
Hello Andrea, when you have time read my paper above.... The situation you described there on the ground and the consequences is consistent with what my paper argues to call attention to the need to be careful when supporting global warming friendly policies that we know will wake up the monster of land concentration in few hands and in few, in these case global warming friendly industries....without regulation my paper suggest in those areas there will be surely social conflict....when local populations are unable to even produce goods of high social value....
I assume the UN group planning and implementing these global warming friendly agenda and the sustainable develolpment agenda have economists who will advise them to avoid environmentally friendly policies that are expected to be socially unfriendly.....otherwise how are you going to meet all the sustainable development goals out those 17 that require development to be socially friendly or at least pro-poor?
Thank you for your comment Andrea
I recommend to read this entry
http://blog.nature.org/conservancy/2014/09/25/can-technology-get-agriculture-out-of-its-climate-hole/
I recommend to read this entry
http://blog.nature.org/conservancy/2014/09/25/can-technology-get-agriculture-out-of-its-climate-hole/
Dear Ivan and Caser, can you please share here in your own words your thoughts as they relate to the question or your own views or concerns related to the question so that we can exchange ideas?. Then after you share your own views you can share material to back up or expand your views....that way we all learn something....
There are so many ways this conversation can go.
Conventional agriculture is in the process of failing, in part due to soil and water loss and degradation (6 GT of soil loss per year, mostly from agricultural areas, 1 GT of soil gain per year, mostly not in agricultural areas), and to a lesser extent, climate change. As we don't have a good way to grow food commercially without massive investments of fossil energy, a low-carbon future will automatically mean the end of conventional agriculture. That is not to say there won't be food - think of the collapse of open ocean fisheries, and the rise of fish farming. There will be a shift, as the simplest resource to use declines, the next simplest will be exploited. But that generally means that we shouldn't be thinking of 'protecting' existing forms of agriculture, but rather transitioning to a new form that will be able to be used in the future.
So we don't protect conventional agriculture - we let it die with our high-carbon past, and become something else. It wouldn't take a lot of imagination to figure out what the parameters would have to be: low invested carbon means nutrient recycling, so urban sewage treatment has to not try to eliminate everything possible to the atmosphere, and the remainder to the receiving stream; soil loss means recovering farmland that washes down rivers into estuaries and deltas, and moving it back to the farmland - pumping mud; it means cities will be designed differently to maximize the urban agriculture opportunities; needs have to be met at a local scale, so every community must be able to be supported by the agriculture (and aquaculture) that can come from their immediate environs; which then suggests that crop yield density has to be high, so it means much more labour to grow the food than current approaches - that eliminates unemployment within a community, but does not add to trade in foreign goods and services. And so on.
For some regions, these transitions will be simple. For others, it will be painful, socially disruptive, and economically damaging, so they will attempt to avoid it for as long as possible. Unfortunately, that's not very long.
Douglas, good day.
Just in case you made those comments without reading my paper, I will summarize it here:
The paper made the case that without regulation and with rational decision makers there will be a process of land conversion from socially friendly agricultural uses to global warming friendly agricultural uses as rational decision makers will shift to the most profitable use of land….and that this approach will lead sooner or later to social conflict….
Without regulation and profit seeking rational decision makers you should expect global warming friendly agricultural uses to take over land under socially friendly uses completely…..
For people who can not see this, that is fine. They can not see it, they can not see the problem. But for people who can see this or should be able to see this, it should be of concern…who lives in land under socially friendly agriculture?...the poor, if not the poorest, how are you going to meet this sustainable development goal of poverty(income security) and hunger(food security)….if they are left out without access to land…
I wrote the paper to help people who can not see it to see this....
At the end of the paper, I share the following food for thoughts
--------------------
VIII. Food for thoughts
The situations presented in Figure 8 and Figure 9 above pose the following policy questions:
Should local governments, donor countries; and international organizations such as FAO, WB, IMF and environmental NGOs continue to promote the implementation of this general or component based global warming agenda as currently proposed or should they take a second more careful look at it to ensure social friendliness?.
Should current and future land reform processes be implemented without a clearly defined social sustainability requirement or should they be left too under the spell of the free market and move in the end towards where \the profits are, the bioenergy/biofuel producing market?.
Should we abolish the use of agricultural production to support renewable energy programs that are socially unfriendly and remove once and for all this source of social unsustainability?.
If higher agricultural profits are expected to be in the bioenergy/biofuel production market, then land use concentration to produce for this end will take place, from where will food then come from?.
--------------------------------
Knowing that do you still think that we should let the markets alone?...
Have a nice day Douglas
You're right, I didn't read the paper first. But really, growing biofuels instead of food crops is just dumb.
England looked at this 100+ years ago, and decided they could either feed their horses, or feed their people. So they switched from horse power to ICE power, as a way of avoiding an agricultural crisis. Course, that has lead to a new crisis, but that tends to be the way of things.
If we are using crop residues as biofuel, that's fine - it doesn't mean more farmland, just getting more out of the farmland you have. Nutrients are still a problem, but small steps...
If we are growing crops for something else, because the value of food is lower than the value of the something else, then we better be damn sure that we have a surplus of crop production. Else, we'll have lots of cotton clothes, or gasoline, or whatever, but no food. I can wear my jeans for another 3 weeks, if that's what it takes, but I can't go hungry for 3 weeks. I get grumpy on day 2.
I would suggest that the 'unconventional agriculture' that you are describing, Lucio, is really an exaggerated form of conventional agriculture, and is doomed for the dust bin in pretty short order. Hungry people make poor slaves/servants/employees, so if food production in an area isn't high enough, there won't be workers available to convert resources into goods.
If I was making a manifesto about it, I would say a) all countries must be able to grow or gather enough food (based on macronutrients and maybe micronutrients) to feed their population a minimum healthy amount to be considered to have food security, using the land (and water) area that they manage directly b) that solar energy collection, be that biomass or direct or indirect solar, must occur only on lands that can not reasonably used for agriculture c) carbon sequestering in soils will significantly improve yields over the long term, and so should be credited regardless of the paperwork that tracks it.
Oh, and a couple of years back, I added up the total solar energy stored in food on the planet at a value of $0.12/kWh (the value of electricity locally), and I came up with the same dollar figure as the world GNP. That supports the idea of 'will work for food', but also suggests the value of energy is directly related to the value of food. I'd love to hear the thoughts of an economist about this (non-)coincidence. If it is a Law, then as food production declines, the GWP must also decline, and the relative value of energy will remain constant.
Good day Douglas, it seems you agree, protection may be needed.
Markets left alone are heartless whether it is a pure economic market or a green economic market because they will follow what matters, profits . If that is what the global warming friendly agenda wants, to save the environment at the expense of social stakeholders, then they should leave the market without social protection/regulation.......
But that will create the conditions given current levels of poverty a kind of fast in which social forces will bring down the whole green market as the stability of the social sustainability gap tends towards full unsustainability....And do forget, countries with socially friendly capitalism do not have a social sustainabiliy gap this could change the dynamics of the next cold war: red capitalism vrs green capitalism.
I will leave it here Dougals and have a nice day.
YES, social protection is needed. Disrupting the ability of local populations to produce food according to their perceived social value runs counter to the essence of the "right to food," as stipulated in UN's International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR).
I agree that the current global warming agenda puts too much emphasis on the economy-environment linkage, without due consideration afforded to the social aspect. In that sense, we can not exactly say that it is pro-sustainable development. Remember that sustainable development has three pillars - economic, social and environment. For the global warming agenda to be truly responsive and acceptable, let us go back to the ideals of three pillars.
Some references: Right to food, ICESCR
http://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CESCR.aspx
http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Food/Pages/FoodIndex.aspx
Dear Rory, thank you for your comment.
The bruntland commision called for fixing the traditional market to make it socially and environmentally friendly....if the request would have been fully implemented and the social and einvironmental sustainability gaps would have been closed at the same time we would have had a paradigm shift towards sustainabiliyt markets, but they decided to partially implement the Bruntland request and made the tradiional market environmentally frindly creating a paradigm shift toward the eco-economy or green markets together with a steep eco-economic or green market knowledge gap as the green economic man is different than the old economic man...If they were to make the green market socially friendly as you said it would creat a paradigm shfit from the green market to the sustainability market together with a deep sustainainability market knowledge gap.....In the coming days I will be sharing a paper highlighting these aspects and I will share it with you here....
In the mean time I am sharing here as food for thoughts the sustainabillity theory required to do what you said...linking the three pillars with sustainability rules....and under one market, the sustainability market:...
Have a nice day
Beyond traditional sustainable development: Stating specific and general sustainability theory and sustainability indices using ideal present-absent qualitative comparative conditions
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281276522_Beyond_traditional_sustainable_development_Stating_specific_and_general_sustainability_theory_and_sustainability_indices_using_ideal_present-absent_qualitative_comparative_conditions
Article Beyond traditional sustainable development: Stating specific...
Dear Douglas, It is really heartening to see that scientific community is seeing the big picture of producing bio-fuel which will be "expensive" in the long-run considering the social and economic costs. I would emphatically agree with your notion that "growing biofuels instead of food crops is just dumb". We oftentimes see the calculations in a narrow framework that lead to even more expensive solution. A holistic approach is needed for the purpose. In this backdrop, many countries are planning for second-generation biofuel that would take non-food inputs in the production. EU has already capped the production of bio-fuel produced from food/feed inputs. However, it would open another research front to see whether the switching to non-food sources would be less "expensive" from a holisitc sense. Here is a contradictory statistics: 90% of France's energy production is from non-carbon sources, whereas France is also the second largest consumer of bio-fuels! That means sector-wise consumers are different. It would be something to see where the ultimate "net benefit" in the equation is.
Dear Lucio, in response to whether agriculture needs protection from global warming friendly policies, the answer might be an emphatic yess. The situation is frustrating if you ponder on what has been happening under global agricultural context. I was hoping that COP21 in 2015 (Paris conference) would talk about agricultural aspect of global warming. Instead, it mostly dealt with countrys' commitment towards emission, which was, of course very important. But how about GMO impact on global warming? GMO crops, in many instances, require intensive irrigation (use more power), requires pesticides for non-target pests, contaminate environment that will need expensive cleaning or increasing social cost though health hazards if not cleaned. It seems that if we fail to protect agriculture (and every other sector) from global warming friendly policies, we will be inundating the world with so much visible and invisible junk only for our next generation to clean it up. I believe human race has not been so selfish in its entire history of existence.
Dear Khandocker, good day. My apologies for not following up, I agree with you, I was expecting a more socially friendly framework from that COPE21/2015/Paris too, but they could not see perhaps that minimizing emission using socially unfriendly global warming friendly policies/programs is not the way to go as it will make social issues more volatile very quick...the smart thing to do would have been to plan a socially friendly global warming mitigation program....
Have a nice day;
Sharing here my most recent publications as food for thoughts:
Adam Smith and Karl Marx Under the Sustainability Eye: Pointing Out and Comparing the Sustainability Gaps Behind these Two Great Simplification Failures
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/299885202_Adam_Smith_and_Karl_Marx_Under_the_Sustainability_Eye_Pointing_Out_and_Comparing_the_Sustainability_Gaps_Behind_these_Two_Great_Simplification_Failures
Understanding the Death and Paradigm Shift of Adam Smith’s model: Was Going Green the Only Option? If not, Is This Option the Most Sustainable One?
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/299882613_Understanding_the_Death_and_Paradigm_Shift_of_Adam_Smith%27s_model_Was_Going_Green_the_Only_Option_If_not_Is_This_Option_the_Most_Sustainable_One
The Unintended Consequences of Paradigm Death and Shift: Was the Arrow Impossibility Theorem Left Behind?
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/299879934_The_Unintended_Consequences_of_Paradigm_Death_and_Shift_Was_the_Arrow_Impossibility_Theorem_Left_Behind
Paradigm Evolution and Sustainability Thinking: Using a Sustainability Inversegram to State Paradigm Death and Shift Expectations under Win-Win and No Win-Win Situations
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/298353982_Paradigm_Evolution_and_Sustainability_Thinking_Using_a_Sustainability_Inversegram_to_State_Paradigm_Death_and_Shift_Expectations_under_Win-Win_and_No_Win-Win_Situations
Article Adam Smith and Karl Marx Under the Sustainability Eye: Point...
Article Understanding the Death and Paradigm Shift of Adam Smith’s m...
Article The Unintended Consequences of Paradigm Death and Shift: Was...
Data Paradigm Evolution and Sustainability Thinking: Using a Sust...
Dear friends, here sharing my most recent article which I trust you may find interesting in terms of food for thoughts:
If Going From Free Markets to Non-Free Markets is the Way to Go: Does This Means the End of Rational Decision Making Thinking or Is This Just a Temporary Block of a Perfect Paradigm Shift to Green Markets?
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/312092336_If_Going_From_Free_Markets_to_Non-Free_Markets_is_the_Way_to_Go_Does_This_Means_the_End_of_Rational_Decision_Making_Thinking_or_Is_This_Just_a_Temporary_Block_of_a_Perfect_Paradigm_Shift_to_Green_Mark
Article If Going From Free Markets to Non-Free Markets is the Way to...
yes. Agriculture activities of world soon need protection from global warming friendly policies to recover eco systems well as living enviroment of human beings and other lives. But how do we involve for that? are there world geopolitics, capitalism economic system ready for that? problem is there. increasing human population, materialism, enviroment pollution, poverty, and many other factors have associated with that issue. But as I think, whiteout change world political system and economic system we cannot address such an issues by introducing new polices
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