The city and the bug: Dragonflies and treefrogs on the roof.

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If you think nature is doing better, you probably live in the city 

This document attempts to build a narrative—a story about living in a city and a way to connect to nature in the city. This story takes place in Montréal but can be applied to any city. 

I argue that we should move from the defensive position of protecting every last “virgin” nature reserve at the margins towards an offensive promotion of biodiversity, from bug to bird, everywhere. And the city is a good place to start. 

I also aim to empower each person in the city to know and care for the bugs and plants around them. 

Many people can try this in their own space: gardeners leave a leaf pile for more biodiversity, build small ponds in the garden, keep some fish on the roof, feed birds, open bee hotels and make nest boxes. These small interventions create microreserves of loosely interconnected nature. This in contrast to the dominant model of large nature reserves segregated from the environment we daily live in. By going on the offensive everywhere, we can break down the dichotomy between nature “reserves” and economically valuable land.  

And than you ask yourself : How did we get here?  

At the Rio de Janeiro “Earth Summit” in 1992, 150 governments signed the Convention on Biological Diversity. The Framework Convention on Climate Change entered into force on 21 March 1994, ratified by  197 countries. Nevertheless, this convention has not made much difference in the sixth extinction or Climate crises. 

Will the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) make the difference? If the past is a guide for the future, this will only happen when, at the local level, biodiversity is defended fiercely.  

Indeed, Insectagaddon is evident not only on agricultural land but also in the nature reserves that were set up to preserve biodiversity for future generations. All over the world, insect populations are imploding. 

Draining the land for agriculture, construction, and industry also dried up nature next door. Overfertilization leads to a loss of species in the vegetation that depend on the same groundwater. Pesticides kill indiscriminately. Fences around a reserve do not stop insects or birds from going into the treated areas, don’t stop the polluted water to seep in the environment.

For a species to flourish, nature reserves would need to be interlinked so the species can migrate and link up to other populations of the same species. However, in the current approach, the wild has no “formal” place outside of conservation areas. It is at the mercy of the owner and of economic forces. 

Consequently, outside of the reserves, there is little left of nature: drainage, overfertilization, and pesticides lead to a very narrow ecosystem with little biodiversity. Even well-meaning efforts, such as the rewilding of roadsides, become monotonous overfertilized strips. 

Moreover, as there is no nature to see outside the reserves, there is also little to love. Alienation from nature leads to less mental stability and less activism. Then, when  conservationists visit nature reserves, they plead for more and more extensive parks. But on the way to those reserves there is no exciting wildlife to see: visitors’ excursions bypass the countryside and what used to be the beauty of the land. 

Human activities are increasingly delinked from nature. The wild is increasingly banned to reserves and removed from the city, farm, and daily life.  

A rural brook in an agricultural zone. Too much fertiliser leads to algae blooms, killing most water life

Everything is a bit sacred 

In his essay Good, wild, sacred (1990), Gary Snyder explained how, when he visited Japan, nature in temples and sacred mountains was exceptionally well cared for, but outside of these sacred places, he saw little respect for the beauty and diversity of nature. 

The past decades of nature conservation in the west have gone in the same direction. While nature reserves are better managed and increasingly closed off to guarantee unspoiled wildlife, the rest of the land is commodified into large, monoculture farms and forests. On a giant cornfield, there is very little wildlife, and the soil has lost much of its microbic ecosystem. Weeds have been successfully eliminated and with them the bees and caterpillars living on them. Birds have no business in the cornfield. There is no biodiversity. Successful monoculture: Corn. This is counterintuitive, wasn’t the countryside supposed to be the place to enjoy nature? Yes, we can still enjoy nature, even quite unspoiled, but limited to the reserve separate from the farmland. Or we can try to equal green with nature, and the fields are still green, no? 

The alternative to the prevailing dichotomy is to see everything as – a bit – sacred. All soil, all land should be respected and the biodiversity on it should be promoted, also where we grow corn. 

Meanwhile,  in the city the formal spaces are increasingly interwoven with spontaneous growth and regrowth, with carefully gardened micro-wilds.  An ivy grows on a brick wall. The Ivy is teeming with life: wild bees flourish, a cardinal finds its nest, spiders build their web, sparrows come and go.  It is now easier to find a lovely wildflower between the cobblestones in the city than in a field of wheat. 

A tree in the city has its uses – like shade and air purification – but its primary value is its inherent value as a tree. Every year the tree is more valuable. Its value is also in relation to its surroundings: the neighbourhood, the names carved in its stem, the birds, the insects, lichen on the stem. The tree becomes more sacred for the neighbourhood with every memory attached to it. 

Moreover, public works in the city are increasingly including  a space for biodiversity. 

The mindful city dweller sees the rewilding from season to season, and is invited to participate in the process. 

Karen Armstrong advocates the same in her book Sacred Nature. She explains: “There is also nature in the city, like that tree behind my house. That tree is full of life, birds fly off and on, you see squirrels running into the tree, and the leaves discolour with the seasons. I look at that tree a lot. That’s a small town in itself. I always feel crazy without a book in my hand, but while writing my book, I started sitting in my garden for ten minutes every day without a book. I watch and listen.”

An old tree, a tree frog on a spring day, and a dragonfly are priceless. The monetary value of the Mona Lisa is irrelevant. This makes her more valuable. The same can be said of a tree in the city. 

But, sometimes, if the urban ecosystem needs it, the tree has to go. The tree is only a bit sacred. The urban ecosystem, including humans, is more important than the individual tree. But you need a very good reason to cut it.  

It is only natural, as a city dweller, to focus on the biodiversity where you are, where you can make a difference: in the city. 

Microreserves everywhere

The antidote to the dichotomy of nature reserves or economic use of land is a more offensive approach. We have to take a strong stance: No more. The onslaught must stop. Defend every tree, every bird, every bug, wherever they live. Win some fights, lose most. Nurture nature, wherever it is, or can be. 

This is also more pragmatic than classic conservationism: it is not (only) about creating fenced reserves with total control. Every little step towards more biodiversity is worth fighting for, cherished. 

As with every major crisis, we need to cast a wide net. Yes, reserves must be preserved and expanded, there must be actions to restore biodiversity in agricultural zones. 

And we need action in the city. This is important because it is where most of us live. If we want to love nature, we must be in contact with it. Not like a museum we visit once in a while, but more like clothes we wear and that “give joy”. 

Moreover, as we discussed before, the city is a place where many functions are interwoven: public, private, abandoned and manicured. This chequeredness is ideal for interlinked spaces for wildlife. 

So let us garden the Urban jungle for biodiversity. We can create microwilds, small natural spaces,  and one-species microreserves everywhere we find them and then expand on them. Even just a sparrow is better than no sparrow. Every wall has the potential to be an ivy microreserve for bugs.  The city is a fertile ground for biodiversity activism. 

 Just a lush Montréal street with trees.

A tree is a nature reserve.  

As a child, I loved the Maple tree. I played for hours with the helicopter seeds, throwing them up and watching them spin and fly. The leaf litter was also a source of delight, with all kinds of critters fleeing: from the scary centipedes to the dull woodlice and the sneaky slugs.  

The Maple tree is also an anchor for the broader ecosystem: the silk moth, the rosy maple moth, finches, woodpeckers, and squirrels. It is a species present in mature forests. This means that in the city, a mature tree can be a foundation for anchoring biodiversity, one bird or insect at a time.

In Montreal, where I live,  tree cover is dense and very diverse:  Ash trees, Elms, spruces, Nordic maple, poplar, and so on. The combinations of trees in the streets are endless. And the possibilities to build diverse ecosystems around them are also unlimited.
There is a good stock of old mature trees, 50 years old and counting (forestry is a long-term process, directed to the seven-generation future, which brings us to 400 years). 

The Montreal environment has elements that are similar to an old-growth forest. For example, some trees are old and provide a perch for birds of prey and nesting opportunities for woodpeckers .There is a broken canopy structure:  there is an uneven canopy and treefall gaps. There are smaller trees in the front yards and the alleys in the back, there may be a missing tree after an accident. Rooftops and gardens have a role as a clearing in the forest. 

With minimal effort, additional elements can be created to make Montreal’s urban environment more like an old-growth forest, such as:  

  • Creating nesting opportunities for birds typical for the tree type: warblers, owls, cardinals with bird houses, Ivy on the wall, planting specific shrubs or trees. ,…
  • Using logs from the same trees as outdoor furniture and to border gardens, providing shelter for arthropods and food for the birds and insects that prey upon them. 
  • Installing leaf composters on the roof or in the street creates, in a small way, a forest soil ecosystem, with all the bacteria, mushrooms and bugs it entails.  
  • Temporary ponds, permanent ponds and wet areas greatly increase biodiversity and are especially synergetic with trees, as the combination opens a space for bugs, amphibians, birds and mammals who need both trees and water. The natural landscape in the region alternates wet patches with forest. Many indigenous species need to have both access to water and woodland.  

Interventions can be directed for specific ecosystem outcomes, strengthening the distinct natural identity of the neighbourhood: 

  • Birdhouses for species of birds that would be expected in the tree mix in a particular area. 
  • The right flowers go with the butterflies that, as a caterpillar, eat from the leaves of particular tree species. 
  • Bee hotels for the unique solitary bees that pollinate these flowers. 
  • Leaf composter crates, litterboxes create an environment to breed arthropods, predatory insects or centipedes, and the bugs that feed the birds that nest in the trees.   

This is a vast field of study and an extensive prospect for citizen science. These ideas are not new and are already applied by bird lovers and tree lovers alike, but there is rarely a coherent effort. In the following, I’ll go through some of the basic steps to make this possible, with the goal of showing how an interconnected system can create urban biodiversity. 

Just soms sparrows feeding

Bugs for birds

Insects are not the only ones disappearing in North America. Birds are too. There are now some 30 % fewer birds than 50 years ago. Endangered birds are disappearing, and the more common birds are struggling. So we need to try anything we can to get the numbers up. 

Avifauna is used as an indicator of biodiversity. Often, conservation efforts focus on threatened bird species. These rare birds are not only the object for preservation; they are also an indicator of the state of their ecosystem. But these birds are an indicator of the result but don’t tell the tale of the process leading to it. Protection efforts sometimes fall short as efforts directed at the birds themselves don’t provide the food, nesting, space, interactions, they need. 

To support endangered birds, it is necessary to improve the underlying ecosystem: the soil must have a suitable composition and moisture content. With the right soil microbiome, the right flora can take root (depending on the soil), supporting a community of plants and bugs that then have birds as their apex predator. 

The value of ecosystems lies not only in the vulnerability of some endangered species. The backbone of ecosystems is very pedestrian: it is mostly the ordinary and ugly critters and plants. But who gives money to preserve bugs?

There will be no woodpecker without enough dead wood infested with bugs. No cardinals without caterpillars and butterflies. No wren without brush piles. The early bird gets the worm, but also: without worms, there are way fewer birds, no matter how early or late they are. 

For each biotope in the city, we can identify the birds already present and support them by empowering the neighborhood and creating better environments for these specific species. This means to embrace the existing biodiversity and to tinker with it, adding complementary plants and bugs, so it becomes more stable and supports more diversity. Eventually, attracting more endangered species. 

Small permanent pondlets

Every time I see a dragonfly, I feel wonder and admiration. A mix of art and science. Mechanic, magic, and eerie. 

To have dragonflies, there must be permanent ponds with enough biodiversity to feed the voracious carnivores that these creatures are. They need to be permanent as dragonflies have a multiannual life cycle. 

Natural ecosystems in north-eastern United States and eastern Canada are built around water. Rivers and lakes, ponds and brooks. Small brooks, with water that does not freeze to the bottom in winter, are where a lot of species thrive. The ponds complement the trees and create a more diverse ecosystem. 

However both the countryside and the city are more and more drained. 

When establishing a pond, it is crucial to keep the neighbours happy and start with a healthy population of carnivorous creatures to eat the mosquitos. Indeed, the number of mosquito-devouring creatures in permanent ponds is enormous.  A pondlet stocked with dragonfly larvae will be low with mosquitos.

Fish, dragonflies, salamander larvae and pygmy backswimmers are very effective. Damselfly and firefly also devour mosquito larvae. It is not rocket science to breed fish and carnivorous arthropods like backswimmers. They could be bought commercially or just shared amongst pond custodians. 

When a microwild pondlet is managed to breed dragonflies, this means the food pyramid below the dragonfly is supported, as are the birds eating them. But that’s not all ponds are good for. Dragonflies are just epic. We need more of them. Just like the maple tree helicopter seeds, dragonflies are priceless. 

Frog puddles

When the snow melts, it leaves puddles behind. They dry in summer. But it is in these fishless summer ponds where frogs and salamanders spawn. Mosquitos breed in these puddles as well, feeding birds, insects, amphibians and dragonflies.

Everybody who knows them likes them: toads, frogs, salamanders. Tree frogs (rainette) are creatures from heaven.  

The story of the protection of the chorus frogs (rainette faux-grillon) is telling. “Loss of habitat” is the primary reason tree frogs like the spring peeper, the wood frog, the chorus frog, and the grey tree frog are in danger. 

What is the habitat they need? : 

The gray treefrog may be found in many tree and shrub communities near permanent water. The species usually lives in woodlands but may also frequent orchards. The gray treefrog is a true “tree frog”: it can be found at the top of even the tallest trees. These frogs are rarely seen outside the breeding season. When they are not active, they hide in tree holes, under bark, in rotten logs, and under leaves and tree roots. Gray treefrogs hibernate under leaf litter and snow cover. Their eggs and larvae develop in shallow woodland ponds and marshes, puddles, ponds in forest clearings, swamps, bogs and many other kinds of permanent or temporary water bodies with no significant current, including ponds that humans have excavated.

Wood Frogs breed in shallow (less than 1 m deep), fish-free temporary wetlands within forested areas. They may also breed in flooded ditches, road ruts, ponds and shallow bays of lakes. Wood Frogs primarily forage in forest habitats and hibernate under leaf litter on the forest floor

.

This environment could easily describe the city if we had more ephemeral and permanent ponds. It is surprising how scarce small ponds and frogs are in this city. But every neighbourhood could have at least one dedicated frog pond—a pond without tadpole-eating fish. 

Perhaps the absence of frogs in Montreal and most cities, is because the measures that eliminate mosquitoes also kill the frogs: treating water with insecticide and eliminating stagnant water. It is however possible to support the frogs and eliminate the mosquitos with natural means (see below). 

Sustainable roofs

Everywhere you look, people are already at work on the weekend: tending the balcony-garden, rooftop farm, tending a bird feeder, repotting flowers, you name it. The neighborhood wants more green and is prepared to put in the work.

Every gardener can assemble, grow, and farm their own paradise. Small rooftop interventions can lead to significant increases in the biodiversity of the system: 

  • Having an open water reservoir (if the roof holds) with mosquito-fighting critters, this reservoir can be in the backyard too. 
  • Some summer ponds, or just gullies, can be seeded with carnivores from the reservoir.
  • Vertical solar panels can be used as a railing for the roof, flat ones as a shade for the compost, the ponds or some chairs. 
  • A compost heap and a litterbox give shelter to bug-eating beetles. 
  • An extensive green roof, even if mostly succulents, adds to the diversity, is home to soil organisms and provides nectar for butterflies, bees and hummingbirds. 
  • You can use some fun engineering using solar power and pumps to bring rainwater up for fountains, waterfalls or irrigation. 
  • Nest boxes for the common and less common birds, that live in the tree species lining the streets. 
  • Bee hotels 
  • Some rabbits to ravage the vegetables. 

The objective of rooftop farming is not only food production. Gardening is often an objective on its own. To garden dragonflies and cardinals can be as rewarding as squirrel-ravaged tomatoes. 

An interconnected approach:  an ecological identity for the neighbourhood 

A wildflower patch in the city, with a bee hotel in the middle. 

An interconnected approach is important to go beyond one species. A red cardinal nests in the ivy on the school playground, forages in the trees, and eats on my birdfeeder.  

For a species to flourish, the habitats need to be interlinked so the species can migrate and link up to other populations of the same species. 

The neighbourhood school can bring the different initiatives together. Have a puddle, line the schoolyard with trees, have ivy on the wall, build birdhouses with the pupils, learn how to manage them and bring them home. 

Based on the existing plants and animals in a neighbourhood surrounding a school, some iconic creatures can be selected to focus on the improvement of the ecosystem: some insects, some plants, some macro vertebrates, and some macroinvertebrates.
The idea is to build on existing wonder and expand it. Birds that are already present, seen by everybody, cherished and pampered. The actions that improve the environment for this critical bird also enhance the environment for less known birds and bugs from the same ecosystem. 

Small interventions, like science projects in class,  improve the environment step by step. The residents can see the results quite quickly. 

The trick is to use interventions that impact both the birds and the biotope they live in. Parents get involved and pay attention to biodiversity when making their roofs winterproof. Biodiversity gets introduced into the urban agriculture of the neighbourhood.  

The big picture

To make this vision a reality, the city must provide backbone biodiversity interventions: microwilds with dedicated frog and dragonfly ponds, little wild spaces where plants and insects can multiply to spread in the neighbourhoods, and provide resources for public institutions like schools and hospitals to play a part in this vision.

Yet, an overall plan is not needed. The schools and parents have to come up with their own programs. The urban farmers can document how to grow vegetables and also the effect of the dragonflies on the most common pests. 

Still, a supportive team or organization would make a big difference.  . This team would service the neighbourhood school with scientific knowledge on how to impact with small, marginal interventions and investments. It would study the underlying ecological realities, the interactions and opportunities, so the ecosystem can be tweaked for maximum diversity.This team must also link up to include social support for helping the neighbourhoods to organize.  

But for everyone, there is already a  toolbox of interventions available, from very simple to elaborate, such as bird houses, bird feeders, litterboxes, and microwild pondlets. Interventions that can engage a community with options for everybody, in line with their own levels of engagement. This is something that everyone can take part in. 

Biodiversity is a daily wonder and everywhere. We can nurture it, each one of us, and make it better. Step by step. If we do it collectively, strategically, it can take off exponentially. The city will harbour more biodiversity and be more beautiful for it.  We can use the existing trees and spaces, our knowledge of local wild ecosystems, and the motivation of the communities neighbors and individuals to develop more diverse and beautiful urban wildlife. 

A patch of goldenrod, waiting for wild bees

Annexes

Three garden improvement projects: litterbox, temporary pond and the small permanent pond

The litterbox

Another name is the wire compost bin: just a square, rectangular or round box made of wire. 

The leaves go in, and nothing much ever comes out except for bugs and biodiversity. Add also the composting material from the roof garden. Just have some litterboxes on the ground level and on the roofs. 

It just works. It shelters the beetles, centipedes, and woodlice a biodiverse and balanced forest needs. 

A permanent pond. 

Permanent ponds present challenges, but they are vital to biodiversity in the city. They breed dragonflies! Growing dragonflies is a 2-3 year commitment. Aquatic creatures with a multiannual cycle need permanent water bodies. Most ponds in the city are immediately big, dominated by large fish, eating all the biodiversity and tadpoles. Small, diverse pools rule. They are small ecosystems that need careful gardening, though. 

They belong on the ground: most roofs will not support a pond like this. This also means that they can shelter land frogs, like the wood frog. Or toads. 

The pool needs to be deep enough to have a good multiannual survival rate. Sixty cm is often mentioned. There is a balance between the optimal depth for wildlife and the safety of the pool. The by-laws might mention some restrictions too. The size is easy: every pool counts; the bigger,  the better. A pool of 1-2 m2 will already be teaming with life. 

It is best to shelter the pond from the midday sun to limit algae growth. Plants will not come by themselves. It is necessary to plant some, balancing green growth with keeping some open water: duckweed, arrowhead, water buttercup, endless options. Keep it simple. If there is too much green, just put it on the compost. 

Some cleaning will be necessary annually, in mid-September. Otherwise, leaves and debris will fill it up fast. 

It would be a good idea to add from the start some mosquito-devouring species (see below).  

If there are enough permanent ponds in a neighbourhood (every 500 m?), frogs are an option too. It is surprising how frogs can survive in some cities. It is remarkable how few frogs there are in Montréal. 

It is heartening how many of the water insects will manage to colonize from other locations. Many of the water bugs, like dragonflies, backswimmers and water beetles have wings for part of their life cycle. 

The gully, summer pond or ephemeral pond

The ephemeral or temporary pond, is a water body of 15-30 cm deep, left behind by the melting snow and drying up after 4-5 months. It is one of the most typical elements of the ecosystem of Québec. Meanwhile, they are very rare in the city. Probably fear of mosquitos. It is in temporary ponds where most frogs in Quebec breed. 

A gully is all you need if you don’t want fish or are happy with only visiting dragonflies. 

The gully is also the preferred breeding ground for tree frogs and wood frogs because they don’t contain fish. By mid-summer, they could be repurposed for growing vegetables or just for a fun water fountain in the garden. 

To keep the mosquitos in check, it will be necessary to seed the gully with carnivores. The easiest way is to seed the gully with bugs in spring, and they take flight when the gully dries up. Just some water and water plants from a permanent pond often contain enough of them. 

In full management, you could put carnivores in for spring, and take them out for fall. Small local fish (brook stickleback) or even alien fish (like mosquitofish) come to mind. The gully can also be a part of a more elaborated system, with urban agriculture or water features.  Brook stickleback could be somewhat compatible with frogs. 

Controlling mosquitos

To control mosquitos, insecticides and BT are the “normal “way to go. Spraying insecticide or BT seems to satisfy most of the demand. And eliminating stagnant water of course.

Research on biological control, through predators, is limited. Just enough to get a general idea of what works. There is also lots of experience from people observing their own pond. 

A stable, permanent pond, with diverse wildlife (even with only invertebrates), experiences few “mosquito blooms”. Dragonfly larvae, backswimmers, and water beetles come by air and stay. Do their job. 

It is necessary to ramp up predatory capacity fast in spring. Insects breed faster and more than vertebrates. 

A fish pond or a frog pond? Choose!

A pond with goldfish will always be nearly mosquito-free. But there will also be very few tadpoles and biodiversity.

Small fish, like brook stickleback, attack tadpoles too, but much less so. Mosquito fish could be added in summer. They control mosquitos and eat tadpoles too 

The best control is probably with Salamander larvae, but they eliminate tadpoles too. 

Water insects 

Dragonflies and Damselflies need years to multiply, but the larvae in the water are active from early spring. Breeding and seeding backswimmers would be an elegant option. The Pygmy backswimmer seems to limit itself mostly to mosquitos, leaving the tadpoles in peace. 

More experimentation is needed. This could be a field for citizen science too. 

The knowledge about predator-prey relations is sufficient to manage any pool for controlling mosquitos. And if things go wrong, it is always possible to add a goldfish. 

Concluding : The power of language and the beauty of naming

Human language is also a part of the urban ecosystem. Only when we use the right words we can talk with precision about what is happening, what is important and what not. How we talk about our environment defines how we relate to it, and integrate in it. 

Where better to learn this language than at the same schools. 

In his book Landmarks, Robert Macfarlane remarks how important it is to be able to name something even to see a difference. If a forest can only be described as “a bunch of trees”, it is different from a forest with birches, beech, oak, and maple. You can paint a fuller picture if you know more about each tree’s needs, lifecycle, problems, and which birds and insects live on the tree. Black and white, gray, becomes a rainbow.  

When the Oxford Junior Dictionary dropped 40 nature related words, he wrote a book for school children specifically about these Lost Words:   acorn, adder,, dandelion, fern, heron, kingfisher, newt, otter, willow,… 

The city ecosystem is already quite diverse, but this diversity is often accepted as a blank canvas. It is difficult to paint with our words a bird on the canvas if I don’t know their name, where they live, and what they do for a living. When every bird is just a bird, the birdfeeder is boring. If every lane is lined with “trees”, they are “just” green. Not 50 shades of green. Not  50 different biotopes. 

It is not too far-fetched to learn to name the wild in the city: the ten most common species or families of any class on an urban sidewalk will be close to 90 % of the individuals of the class encountered.

Indeed: recognizing maple, elm, ash, spruce, oak, poplar, and linden will identify most trees along the street. So, first, learning to recognize the ladybug, and later we can learn about the 11 species of ladybug in Montreal.

A new server and a new approach, in an evolved environment

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Dear reader,

Entering a new phase in life means equally a new approach to blogging. Much happened and my interests and views have shifted somehow. In line with this, I moved the blog to a new server (WordPress itself). Moreover, the focus will be more on observation and nature, and less opinion.

I plan also to post more regularly, at least once every two months.

I hope you will enjoy it.

Sam Gardner

My dog, COVID-19 and me

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I have been working from home since the lockdown. So I wake up, tend my milk kefir (and drink a glass of it), walk my dog briefly in the countryside behind my house where she tries to chase some ducks, and where I make a wide circle around other humans, I feed the chicken (the shed also has some bats living in the roof) and prepare breakfast with some bacon and sourdough bread.

Chicken fleeing human and dog, afraid to catch a bug.


While eating breakfast and scanning the news, I am distracted by articles from people who see their existing opinions confirmed. Biologists talk about the danger of zoonosis (illnesses jumping from animals to humans): the cause of this zoonosis is an encroachment on natural habitats, forcing animals to live amongst people. For others, the wet markets are the cause of the disaster: wild animals should not be hunted or mixed with farm animals. Meat-eating and industrial meat production are blamed, but also globalization, global trade and tourism. Others blame small-scale, unregulated mixed farming for mixing people with animals too closely.  Anti-globalists, Marxists, nationalists and racists have a field day: Coronavirus confirms all opinions. And indeed, all opinions have seeds of truth. A very partial truth.

Me as an ecosystem

As I eat my breakfast and distract myself from having to start work, I think about how I myself am an ecosystem of lifeforms. The symbionts and parasites living in my gut, in, and on my body make me what I am. So far this morning, I interacted with my gut, dog, chicken, kefir, cow, sourdough bread, a bat, and pigs. Each one of them are diverse ecosystems on their own, but also part of the ecosystem that I am.

The ecosystem in my body is in a dynamic balance, and therefore it can fight off intruders quite well. Because there are so many good bacteria, the bad ones have little chance. 

Viruses evolve everywhere, but humans transmit them to me. 

The bacteria in my gut and their viruses can exchange genetic material, making harmless bacteria suddenly lethal. I remember my professor in Animal Health, years ago, referred to E. coli as “mostly harmless”. This was before nasty, virulent, antibiotic-resistant strains evolved. Evolution can also make bugs more useful, better for us, better at fighting off lethal bugs, better cheese, bread, cider. 


I cough in my hand, my dog licks me, and afterwards, I touch my face again. This is what people do. I was more afraid of the humans during the walk than of my dog. I was not afraid of the bat in the shed. While Covid-19 might have started as a zoonosis, now transmission happens mostly from human to human. 

If you get sick from a transmittable disease, you probably caught it from a human. Normally transmission is easier the more similar animals are. The line between zoonosis and transmittable disease is in some way just a classification. Where do you draw the boundary? When tuberculosis evolves within our human community to a multi-resistant strain, savaging the third world, we don’t give it a new name.   

We co-evolve 

When I look at some past zoonosis—Swine flu (pig), SARS (bat), bird flu (chicken, duck), smallpox (cow)—my dog (rabies) and I were having a dangerous adventure this morning. It was Mad Max just to prepare breakfast. 

When I walk in the countryside, there is fresh slurry on the fields, from the pig farm nearby. It creates a primeval soup where all kinds of microbes can grow, interact, and exchange genetic material.

However, I felt safe. I was safe. I am in a shell formed by my own biome, surrounded by protecting shells of increasingly bigger, biodiverse shells. 

Humans co-evolve with zoonotic parasites. Some of these parasites, such as liver fluke, have a life cycle that is just too cool, as long as you are not part of it yourself. Snails in the water contaminate vegetables we eat. In our gut, the parasite moves to the liver and eats it, and the eggs go back to the gut, to the water, to the snail. Toxoplasmosis is a cat-mouse-human story, rumoured to lead to risk-seeking behaviour in mice so cats can catch them—but also in humans, with perhaps half of the global population of humans infected.   

Most zoonoses are mostly dealt with by our standards of ecosystem management.  Wash hands, slaughter with clean material, cook meat, cook veggies, spray against mosquitoes, don’t swim where there are snails. Most of the time, people don’t die. Often, people do die, and then we mourn but have no choice to keep going. 

Our health systems are co-evolving with the bacteria and germs. As long as evolution is gradual, we don’t even notice. But sudden jumps take our health systems by surprise. 

Burning the bat cave. 

Attention goes to where the news is.  Today, we focus on this new viral zoonosis. This one comes from faraway dark places, where unknown wild animals and strange customs combine to frightening and foreign diseases. Humans (them, not us) should stop encroaching on “nature’ and abandon their evil ways. Industrial agriculture, with its massive factories full of monogenetic pigs, fowl, is spawning new and terrible disease. If close contact between pigs and humans gives us the flu, we would be expected to respond by building more hygienic, impersonal meat factories, not family farms with farmers in harmony with cute and cuddly animals. Health and safety regulations are drafted. 

Likewise, if wild animals give us deadly viruses, the expected response is to exterminate them. If we don’t, if we simply put them away in a nature reserve, the danger would always be lurking, dark and ominous. Similarly, before long, we’ll start burning bats in their caves. 

These responses are, of course, based on some truth. The more animals live together, the more chance there is that a virus develops. The more humans live in close quarters, the faster a virus will mutate. And when you mix animals and humans, there are more chances something new will jump.

We live in a world with bugs and bats and pigs and dogs and humans. And all of them bring their own risks and benefits. Benefits for the whole of the system risks for everyone else too.  And all of them also bring a seed of something that can destroy humanity. 

And yet, to have this worldview requires looking at nature as foreign, harmful and dangerous, something we should control and fix. But there’s another way of looking at the same issue, and that is as nature being part of us. And that kind of perspective starts with our own microbiome. 

Lines of defence: Our own biome is the first step, but not enough 

A new pandemic, out of the blue, transmitted from an animal, is not something you care about as an individual. If you look at the important ones: Covid-19, Spanish Flu, HIV-AIDS, Smallpox, The Plague… The chance that they happen is perhaps one in a billion. Nothing for my dog, nor me, to worry about for ourselves. But humanity should worry. The chances are slim that the bug jumps from this bat to me, here, now. A Chance in a billion, but we humans are billions, and there are a lot of animals, so regularly  a jump of a virus from an animal to a human is bound to happen. And once adapted to humans, transmission from human to human is easy.  Yes, there is a low probability, but a pandemic is can be fatal. It is not a relevant problem to me as an individual, but it is an existential risk for humans as a species. So we need lines of defence, as individuals, and as a community. 

Our first line of defence is our biome. Taking care of a diverse ecosystem in my body and around it. This helps us resist disease and build a tolerance. So we should not put nature in reserves and make our homes and the barn totally aseptic. Because, if there is no diversity, and our guards are down, the bad bug will come in roaring like a dragon. Nothing can stop it. 

Knowledge

But there are still risks. We have to know how to keep the sty, stable, and home relatively clean, and we learn to wash our hands. So we start managing our environment, mindful of keeping the biodiversity while limiting the pathogens. 

Homo sapiens is the knowing one. Knowledge is our strength to work with the environment. Stupid approaches are simple: one bug, one drug. Ecosystem gardening can only happen when we know a lot about the bug, a lot about the environment, and a lot about ourselves. Driven by knowledge, we can change our behaviour as a social group. We learn that washing your hands after going into the garden or the farm prevents diarrhea, not only for ourselves but also for our friends and family. We learn that eating enough fibre leads to more stable gut flora. We learn that we can bring down the probabilities, but that we never have iron-clad security. 

So, the human approach for defence is based on the knowledge leveraged by the different interwoven ways humans interact with each other and the environment.

Community action is a second line of defence. The knowledge that we need to stay at home, wash our hands and to keep the social distance is useless if we don’t apply this as a community. We act as a community and wash our hands even if we are not old and frail because communities take care of all their members. 

People keep an eye out and step in when they see newspapers are not picked up, garbage forgotten. Scouts volunteer to do the shopping for the elderly, we organize the bear hunt for the children. The village doctor/health center gives primary care and refers people to hospitals when needed. Community, experience, research and education is the basis of how we can respond to the crisis. 

Collective action at scale

But things can still go wrong. Sometimes a virus still jumps, or something happens that we previously knew little about—a cholera epidemic, for instance. And our community institutions are totally unprepared. Elderly care homes are unable to keep seniors from getting infected, we don’t have the infrastructure to prevent cholera from spreading in the water system. 

As a last line of defence, we need an organized network from the local level to the global level for observation of trends, rapid reaction, research, local, national, and global response. Like a Tsunami warning system, this network must be kept on its toes, even if nothing happens in a hundred years. This is difficult. In the East, the response to SARS led to preparedness for COVID19. In the West, the preparations for SARS were forgotten and abandoned. Do these lines of defence work perfectly? No. But as we did not go extinct yet, they did the job.  

Luckily, globally, the WHO exists, but it should be expanded, given a bigger mandate, and be more accountable. In so many countries all the necessary institutions are in place—they just don’t have the support and safeguards needed to react in time to a pandemic. In some countries, they were curtailed, and a lot of countries cannot afford them. In the pandemic, we help each other, as an individual, and as a country, because we cannot afford to have one going down and affect the others. But also, because we share our humanity. To fight the pandemic there needs to be sufficient trust that we will not be left behind if we do what is right for the global cause, but hurts us today.   

The pandemic is a good example of how society works: humans are individuals and have agency, but they are also part of a community. For every level of risk in this pandemic personal agency is important, but as an outbreak leads to a pandemic and has increasingly more impact, we need to be organized with common purpose at every level of community: the neighbourhood, transparent global research networks, and governments that can promote and impose legitimate collective action, on health care, economy, social distancing and safety nets.    

For those who can’t bother with the messy politics of collective action, escape is the solution: some plan on moving to Mars. It might be a good idea for some, but not for me.

I like to walk my dog in the morning, and I take the risk.

Links I liked

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Principled Aid Index: From ODI. The title is very promising. However, the Index is based on the use of proxy indicators that not always very relevant, and more often questionable than they should. Use with care as an instrument. Could it be used for improving our own cooperation? I hope to invite them to have this discussion.

Have Children’s Rights Campaigners lost their Courage?

Form Poverty to Power, the blog managed by Duncan Green of Oxfam, is one of the places to go to think about development. Children’s rights used to be central to much of what Belgium did. Twitterstorms have washed away much of the public support for the foundations itself of this engagement.

Understanding How DFID Makes Decisions – Landscape Report on the Role of Data :

Even at DFID the use of data to make better decisions is often neglected or even absent.  This report focuses on mapping what actually happens in reality, and can inform DGD to look into priorities where the use of data should be feasible, as it was done by others. Programme design, annual review and portfolio strategy could be done with high use of our data systems. Remarkable how higher level learning is less based on data analysis. +

Closing Civic Space: Trends, Drivers and what Donors can do about it

Again From Poverty to Power: the closing civic space. This might be one of the defining issues for the coming years in development. On the space of civil society hinges also the legitimacy for government to government aid, as promotes by the advocates of aid. I mean, the people who push for more aid are those who want more solidarity. They are less enthusiastic about funding autocrats.

Directed Improvisation: The China Model that Other Countries Can Learn From  

The article explaining the governance lessons from the landmark publication “How China escaped the poverty trap” by Yuen Yean Ang. It is valuable to experiment with as an approach to reform governance from within. The article advocates for goal oriented approach, with little micro-management on technical details and being realistic about the capacities: it is the current staff, with the current capacities that will do the trick.

Bill Gates says poverty is decreasing. He couldn’t be more wrong

Now and then there is an article which changes the whole picture of what is the reality. This article, and the subsequent discussion about it in the blogosphere is such an article. Look beyond the readily available numbers, and think about what they really mean.  Do a reality check.

GDP is rising: Why increase economic growth if you can manipulate the GDP?

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Some measures to stimulate “economic growth” don’t address underlying economic strengths and weaknesses. Instead they are skewed in order to manipulate – or “game” – the GDP indicator. The focus on GDP becomes a perverse incentive for short term bubble growth that benefits rent-seekers. Public debate on economic growth should focus on the underlying aspects of growth (ie. jobs, education, production) instead of doctoring the overarching measurement.

Economic growth is widely seen as a necessity for improving society, and GDP (Gross Domestic Product)  growth is taken as the main indicator for measuring economic growth. This article will focus on the abuse of   GDP, NGDP (Nominal GDP), and GNP (Gross National Product) as a perverse indicator and argue that it is not a useful as an indicator for economic growth beyond theoretical academic purposes. Indeed, when GDP growth is used as the measure of economic growth it transforms from being “just an indicator” to a goal. The goal of economic policy becomes an increase in GDP growth, as a proxy for “economic growth”, or even “economic development”. As a result, governments game the indicator, taking measures that lead to the GDP number to grow, without actual sustainable economic improvement. In this way GDP creates a perverse incentive to develop policies that lead to short term GDP growth, while undermining the long term perspectives for the economy and sustainable welfare.

Is gaming of the GDP a policy choice, or just driven by perverse incentives?

1. Indicators and goals

1.1. Briefings and media releases concerning the economic forecasts

I just read the economic forecasts for South-East Asia over the next few years from some major banks and multilateral institutions.

The organizations responsible for these documents have done a deep analysis, but the media and mainstream publications do not consider the details of these reports. The takeaways for the public are a focus on GDP it is forecast to go up by extrapolating from current GDP growth, adjusted to longer term trends.. The vital underlying economic analysis is deemed less important than the uphill tick of the GDP fetish.

Little media attention goes to whether China is getting out of the crisis or taking policy measures that make it worse in the long run. No comments are made on the reliability of the statistics for China. Little is said about how the 2 major growth countries in the region – Vietnam and the Philippines – increasingly build their GDP growth on remittances. When the GDP rises because of the remittances, it can lead to complacency, as everything seems fine. .

All eyes are fixed on the GDP numbers. As trust in a country depends on the expectations of the business community in that country, much is at stake. If GDP grows, business confidence goes up, leading to more Foreign Direct Investment, better conditions for trade, cheaper loans, etc.

A government is represented by its GDP grade in the world. The GDP is the indicator, the report card of a government and a country.

1.2. Perverse incentives: driving change in unexpected ways

Indicators work. Well chosen indicators are useful to get results . Measuring the number of children vaccinated against polio leads to fewer cases of polio, and eventually to the eradication of the disease. However, statistics can be falsified. Nurses can lie about the numbers of children vaccinated and doctors can fail to report cases. In the health system, the collection and use of quality statistics is of capital importance.

A perverse incentive is an incentive that has an unintended and undesirable result which is contrary to the interests of the incentive makers. The targets set on indicators used for measuring performance are easier reached by “gaming” the indicator than by doing what was intended.

Performance indicators in the banking sector rewarded risky behaviour by linking risky behavior to pay. Selling mortgages to people who could not afford them looked good on paper, but it led to the banking crisis of 2008. Performance measurement in the private sector seems so often gamed by management and staff, that HR experts question its usefulness.

More often than not, performance indicators are invitations to cheat, by employees but equally by companies and institutions,  especially when financial consequences are attached to the Key Performance Indicator

Do performance indicators in the economy have the same effect? Could they be gamed?

1.3. Goodhart’s Law: When indicators become goals

Goodhart’s law is named after the economist who originated it, Charles Goodhart. Its most popular formulation is: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”

The original formulation by Goodhart, a former advisor to the Bank of England and Emeritus Professor at the London School of Economics, is this:

“As soon as the government attempts to regulate any particular set of financial assets, these become unreliable as indicators of economic trends.”

Goodhart’s Law is specifically written for economic policy making: an indicator used for steering policy stops to be useful for steering the policy built on it, as people find ways to aim for the indicator without any positive effect for the underlying goal.

A very good take on Goodhart’s Law and GDP can be found on Phil Ebersole’s blog:

The aim is evidence-based policy. The result is policy-based evidence.

1.4. Aggregate indicators or disaggregated data

GDP is a typical aggregate indicator. It brings together information from all sectors, all layers of the population, all markets in an economy. This means that for policy purposes, the number is useless. Indeed, the different movements in each layer can mean different things: cutting 100 year old trees is GDP growth, taking a reusable bag to the shop shrinks it. Policy will seldom be general, so the underlying data should be used instead of the general number. However, if the aggregate indicator becomes the target itself, policy will be directed to move the general number. It will be aimed at the sectors in order to move the aggregate indicator, not specifically to have a sound policy for the specific sector. An aggregate indicator strengthens the effect of Goodharts’ law.

Due to the complex nature of economic growth it is impossible to attribute exactly the cause and effect of policy measure in the short-term. The effect on GDP is easier to measure. One of the underlying problems is the use of a composite indicator: Using one parameter with many degrees of freedom is not conducive to an informed public, policy, learning and steering. It leads to choosing the policy with maximum effect on the indicator rather than on economic development, which should be the real goal. Using disaggregated data on aspects of economic growth is more useful for measuring economic growth, and leads to less perverse policy incentives.

Confronted with the inadequacy of GDP to catch sustainable economic growth, former French President Sarkozy created a commission to study the question of indicators of economic growth. The report of this  Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, the “Stiglitz commission”, proposed to ditch the GDP and replace it with a dashboard approach, with a set of indicators instead of just one number.  

2. The GDP as a goal

2.1. GDP is a black box economical model

GDP is an economical model on its own. The model takes the different data from different sources, and spits out one number. The higher the number the better. It is based on a lot of assumptions and estimations. These assumptions give weight to some activities, and not to others, they are judgment calls. Estimating and including the rising quality of computers gives a seal of approval to digital progres but other improvements – like better schools results – are not included. So, when GDP is used as a target, the components that lead to the outcome are hidden. A growing GDP does not advertise the underlying assumptions and the improvement or deterioration of the non-measured aspects of the economy, nor whether this growth was sustainable or not. Growth coming from investment in residential housing, might mean the prices are driven up by speculative markets, or might mean that valuable additional houses are being build. In fact, for little elastic markets, adding infrastructure might lead to lower total market value, lower GDP when selling and buying. 

As the GDP number hides the underlying realities for everybody except the data crunching experts, it acts as a black box. The public does not really knows what caused the growth, except maybe after a crash, with hindsight. This makes it very tempting for policymakers to game the indicator and introduce policies that promote specific interests and balloon the GDP while not contributing to a sustainable economy nor social welfare.

2.2. Perverse incentives for gaming the GDP indicator

Geoff Edwards, in “Political Arithmetick: Problems with GDP as an indicator of economic progress” concludes:

GDP does not detect symptoms of fundamental economic malaise such as an unbalanced penetration of imports into strategic industries; the sinking of household and public savings into economically terminal consumption rather than infrastructure and asset regeneration; starvation of research or sunrise industries; rising defensive expenditure on remediating pollution or social decay; rampant speculation on asset prices such as real estate or the stock market; the accumulation of private or public debt; or the transfer of assets to foreign investors.

He concludes: “By misleading those responsible for public policy about the nature of desirable economic activity, GDP drives perverse economic policies throughout the industrialised and developing world.

By using GDP growth as the goal of economic policy, the policy makers have options. They can pursue policies that will lead to long-term sustainable growth, such as widening and deepening education. They can promote productive investment and infrastructure investment with long-term growth effects, such as the building of railways, ports or social housing. All these policies are known to promote GDP growth in the long-term, probably with the first effects during the legislature of the successor.

In order to grow GDP fast, and getting re-elected, other measures work faster, while benefitting only a subgroup of the society, a subgroup with a lot of lobbying power: stimulating a real estate bubble or a stock market bubble; giving a free rein to extractive industries, leading to the Dutch disease and less competitive industries.

The real estate market is a prime example: residential investment alone is generally around 5 % of GDP, while housing services average around 12 to 13 %. This is a 6th of total GDP. During the bubble years (2005-2006) the residential fixed investment in housing was 6% of the GDP, During the crisis (2008-2009) this fell back to 3-3.5 %. When “normal” growth of the economy is around 1.5-2.5 %, the role of the bubble in the growth of GDP is important.

The crisis of the seventies was about gaming GDP on the demand side. The crisis of 2008 was about gaming the supply side:

  • The post war governments created one of the major post war crisis by applying increasingly the Keynesian stimulus to generate growth during recession and boom. The initial stimulus in creating valuable infrastructure, was escalated to ever less efficient deficit spending. The infrastructure stimulus  raised the GDP, created employment, and made the developers filthy rich. 
  • The neo-liberal supply side economics since the Reagan years escalated in gaming the GDP with ever more irresponsible banking deregulation and risk appetite, until the crash followed. “Only the bonuses were real money”

There are clearly options for “gaming” the GDP instead of taking measures for sustainable economic growth. And it is clear that some groups have an interest to push for this kind of measures as it benefits them directly.

It is more difficult to prove whether this gaming is a policy choice, or just driven by the perverse incentives

3. Why bad behaviour is almost always good politics*: The hijacking of the policy agenda through GDP growth.

The measures that form the basis for long-term economic growth are known: efficient and maintained infrastructure, generalised education of good quality up to university level, rule of law and antitrust legislation, an inclusive society, so all talents can be used in the economy and consumption does not dry up.

In a time when interest rates are negative, investments in infrastructure, maintenance, education, all of these investments have a very high return on capital.

This is not the policy we see around us. Instead we see austerity measures.

On April 15th, I read two blogs, One by Brad DeLong, the other by Tyler Cowen. Both refer to the gaming of the GDP by the elites for short-term rent seeking:  

Brad De Long:

” […]

One way of looking at it is that two things went wrong in 2008-9:

Asset prices collapsed.

And so spending collapsed and unemployment rose.

The collapse in asset prices impoverished the plutocracy. The collapse in spending and the rise in unemployment impoverished the working class. Central banks responded by reducing interest rates. That restored asset prices, so making the plutocracy whole. But while that helped, that did not do enough to restore the working class.

Then the plutocracy had a complaint: although their asset values and their wealth had been restored, the return on their assets and so their incomes had not been. And so they called for austerity: cut government spending so that governments can then cut our taxes and so restore our incomes as well as our wealth.

But, of course, cutting government spending further impoverished the working class, and put still more downward pressure on the Wicksellian neutral interest rate r* consistent with full employment and potential output.

And here we sit.”

Tylor Cowen:

 

“[…]

The simplest China model for 2016 is this.  Due to the prevalence of SOEs and state influence in the economy, the country can in fact (for now) achieve almost any gdp target it wishes, at least within reason.  But it trades off the quantity of gdp for the quality of gdp, and this time — again — the Party opted for the relatively high growth figure.  That is bad news, not good news.

[…]”

GDP growth is apparently being gamed as a matter of course. It has become a silly goal and a bad indicator for real life economic growth.

From the examples it seems some groups are proposing the short-sighted policies for gaming the GDP on purpose, because they benefit from it directly. This gaming is facilitated by the fact that the GDP-indicator contains perverse incentives for the policy makers to choose the bad policy, leading to easy, instant GDP rise, inequality and bubbles, above the better policy, which would require a real political and economical strategy and would lead to rising economic welfare, but only in the long-term.

Does it really matter if it is a conspiracy?

The policy makers and the elites can claim to the public and themselves that they are doing it for the good of all, and they can prove it:  The GDP is rising.

 

Going for Zero

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This is a repost from Uneven Earth, a conversation about environmental justice.

 

The current approach to COP21 is not realist or moderate, but quite extremist as it postpones effective action. If we consider the real facts of climate change, moderation means fighting the fossil fuel economy on every level, everywhere, now.

by Sam Gardner

The multilateral approach to climate change: denial and delay

The intergovernmental process to fight climate change leads up to COP 21, the upcoming meeting in Paris. This time, unlike all the last times, hopes are high that an agreement will be reached. It should limit the greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere to an amount that would cause a global warming to 1.5-2 degrees Celsius. Nobody knows if this is a safe level, but the intergovernmental process concluded it might be safe enough.

The negotiations follow a pattern you might expect in a negotiation game where everybody wants to bargain a good deal for themselves: poor countries want to maximize support, the rich want commitments from all the others, and there’s as little commitment on funding as possible.

National Contributions would only start in 2020. Another 5 years lost. Most participants agree with what is in the documents of the International Panel on Climate Change. Yet this knowledge does not translate into drastic measures. Action is limited to long-term negotiations on the international level and prudent changes on the national policy level. In the day-to-day choices we make to frame our lives, the urgency isn’t there – it’s not even on the radar. Roads for diesel or gasoline cars are still being built, public transport suffers from budget cuts, and coal power plant construction permits are still legal. Investments in sustainable energy and alternative transport are not guided by the climate change imperative but by economic, strategic, and political arguments. Fossil fuel is still subsidized in most countries. Natural gas is a midway investment to make the shift to fossil free more gradual. These investments will be guzzling gas for the next 30 years.

The current approach is seen as the reasonable and moderate pathway. Everything else is deemed unrealistic. As a result, emissions will continue rising above current levels for some time to come. But the total level of emissions required to stop heating the climate is less than zero.

Redefining moderation

If we keep going along this route, we will be in crisis mode within decades. The situation will be so urgent that all use of fossil fuel will have to be taxed at prohibitive levels or banned. Denial will be impossible. Major powers will consider climate change as an existential, military threat, and may be ready to respond to it militarily if need be. After all, a country’s carbon footprint goes down after being bombed.

In an environment of strict rationing, massive use of private fossil fuel-powered cars will be unacceptable. The new highways that are planned now will be redundant before they are fully operational. Even those that are built right now will depreciate faster than calculated. Coal power plants and buildings needing heating or air conditioning will be considered extravagant in a strictly rationed world. Waiting until the crisis is acute is irresponsible. We need to redefine what is realistic. Realistic planning is to go as quickly as possible – right now – to zero emissions. Every delay is irresponsible. In every part of the society, on every level of the administration, there are already people who fully realize what the crisis entails and have internalized it in their actions. However in general they are marginal: their “moderate”colleagues implore them to be “reasonable”. What we need is a mainstream acceptance that “There Is No Alternative” . Remember the Thatcherite revolution? Her – ruinous – thinking on economics was accepted as mainstream and labelled as the only option in only a couple of years. The same must happen with “going for zero” climate change thinking. Unfortunately, this time there really is no viable alternative to going for zero asap. It is at this point that we should redefine “moderation” and “realism”:

Moderation is to accept reality and what has to be done to avoid a global humanitarian crisis. Realism is to accept that any additional investment in a carbon world is a waste and a crime, and act accordingly.

The course we’re on now is the true extremism.

All current long-term fossil fuel-based investments (power plants, roads, ships, house heating) should be considered unacceptable, and should not happen. There are millions of options of how we could get to zero carbon, but There Is No Alternative to the fact that we need to go to zero now.

So we should redefine “moderation” and “reasonable” as: going to zero now.

Turning the tables

Are the engineers who design, the bosses who approve, the politicians supporting policy changes, the person buying a car, the family buying a house in the suburbs, consciously choosing to make the wrong decision? Greenhouse gas emission growth is not the fruit of a big evil master plan. It involves millions of individual decisions, an environment of decisions. To roll back emissions it will be these decisions that make the difference. The current approach to climate change is a negotiation where individual countries try to limit change for themselves and maximize it for the others. The incentive structure of these negotiations encourages minimizing change, rather than maximizing it. It does not create an environment that leads to exponential change beyond the agreed-upon indicators. The complicated interrelations of the economy, the climate, political power and society cannot be managed simply with top-down international agreements. Under the new definition of moderation, this is an extremist tactic, putting lives and livelihoods at risk. These are incapable of the imagination and flexibility needed to go to zero fast enough. The real change will be the result of the political economy at the local level.

The strategy: going for zero

We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender. (Churchill)

Every single decision matters. Like in wartime, the theater is everywhere. The battle against a coal power plant investment is never lost: construction could be planned, but the municipal permit can be revoked. The permit is given but the imminent domain procedure is not successful, it can be started and never finished as investors disinvest. It can be built and never used over environmental concerns. It can be taken out of production early. As every investment is composed of a chain of decisions that need to be taken one after the other, by tackling the individual decisions, accumulatively, change can happen faster, as changes are exponential rather than linear. Within a moral and long-term economical timeframe, every person anywhere must stop any investment in fossil fuel-heavy products now. Realism makes every person who has internalised climate change an ally. Office workers, like myself, will have to find alliances with politicians, communities, and action groups. Like-minded groups will need to work together bringing down the traditional barriers and creating a new normal. The objective is to stop every single individual investment in fossil fuel use. Most struggles will initially be lost. It is the war that counts. With every resistance it becomes more difficult to present business as usual as an option, as “moderation”.

Individuals will need the backing of a mass movement to find the strength to resist and to have access to the knowledge to make a case. As the powers that be in the energy sector will resist, other instruments, like manifestations, petitions, civil disobedience and boycotts will be necessary.

Every decision already taken can still be stopped, overturned, or postponed at every level. Losing a struggle is only a step in winning the war, and losing the war is beyond imagination.

Every person who is asked to sign, to design, to propose, to make concrete, to breathe the air, will need to act on the knowledge that it is not worth it to continue with the old model. Recognize that for the world, the children, votes and for their career, it is better not to do this.

The action plan for the Paris Agreement

Chances are there will be binding agreement concluded at COP 21. The agreement will confirm the climate crisis, and the commitment to keep the temperature rise to only 1.5-2 degrees. Attached to the agreement there will be Nationally Determined Commitments (NDCs) that will be insufficient. These NDCs will be irresponsible and amount to climate terrorism. The proposed measures should happen now, not in 2020.

The going for zero strategy should be the legitimate implementation of the Paris agreement. The agreed principles in the agreement should be strong and binding enough to form the legal basis to reject every unacceptable investment and go directly for zero. If the going for zero strategy is implemented, investments in alternatives have a future and fossil fuel-based infrastructure has none.

‘Going now for zero on every decision possible, will lead fast to tipping points where fossil fuel investments become less attractive economically, environmentally, and politically. An exponential change happens.

Postscript

As emissions plummet immediately, every cap and trade system would implode too.

Sam Gardner is a development and humanitarian professional with field experience in Central and South Africa, Central America and Asia.

Pre-palaeolithic policies in development and diplomacy

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A more aggressive approach to defend a division of labour based on comparative advantages against the belief in holistic approaches is necessary. I propose to refer to policies who are negating the benefits of division of labour, and praise a holistic consensus approach, as pre-palaeolithic as it is the kind of thinking about productivity that was common before the Palaeolithic.

Adam Smith described the mechanism of division of labour brilliantly, but division of labour predates by far the enlightenment. Simple things as maintaining and catching fire, making simple stone tools are only possible when there is division of labour in society. Division of labour is necessary to make a well crafted stone tool. Only a craftsman, someone fully dedicated to it, and provided for by the others, could make a good stone tool. The craftsman has the comparative advantage on making stone tools: he needs the least work (and food) to make a good stone tool, and the tool will be better. Compared to the toolmaker, the others have a comparative advantage to offer food. Their tools would suck anyway, and it takes them way longer to make even one tool. Only with division of labour a fire could be maintained. Without division of labour, we could not enter the paleolithic, we could not even get into the caves. We would still be pre-paleolithic. To make even simple modern goods, like a toaster,  there is a need for a staggering amount of contributions from people from all over the world. Productivity is mainly the fruit of increased division of labour (and of course also other elements such as innovation).  Division of labour is the result of expertise and competition. It is based on the comparative advantage. Real division of labour does not work if it is imposed top down. It is the invisible hand compared to the planned economy.

However, in politics, diplomacy, development and administration, flexibility, coördination, integration and holistic approaches are often valued more than the efficiency gains that can come from division of labour. Meetings and joint programming are seen as good in itself, while it is a failure of division of labour. Coordination is believed to be more important than competition. Overlap is regarded as the highest form of waste, while in industry and governance redundancy opens op more efficient pathways for innovation and keeps abuses in check. The multidisciplinary team tries to arrive at a consensus view to impose a top down division of labour encased in grant strategies, instead of letting the battle of interests run transparently leading to a more dynamic and iterative balance.

One of the examples of this thinking is the 3-D approach: Defence, Development and Diplomacy one policy, rightfully considered by Easterly for the price of the worst development idea ever. Lumping all objectives together, all indicators together to one big meaningful mess until practical results are not relevant anymore. Or like in the case of Afghanistan, claim all objectives are important, but in reality the military objective trumps everything. Ranting about the failure of the Afghan war seems like flogging a dead horse; but why do donors repeat the 3D-approach in the Sahel when it worked so badly?

I admit, coördination is often necessary and subpar. However, the root of efficiency is more often than not a lack of division of labour, rooted in competition. It is not the lack of meetings among top brass or top down planning amongst generalists that holds back the world. Why do we organise development aid based on “best practices”or “international standards” and seldom as  a competition of bottom up approaches and ideas in a localised context, based on localised expertise, with advice of external ressource persons? In developed countries, we see well honed silo’s in the form of one-sector ministries divided in well separated departments. However, donors promote in the developing world comprehensive, integrated, over the board approaches.

My praise for division of labour based on comparative advantage is just another lens looking at the world of complex systems approach as discussed by Owen Barder, Tim Harford, and William Easterly with his “seekers” versus “planners”approach. Taking it one step further, we see the arrogance of modernism, where leaders believe expert top down planning with micromanagement of the underlings is the way forward (James C. Scott, Seeing like a state).

I would like to launch the term of pre-palaeolithic policy for a policy that values the benefits of generalist approaches (buzzwords: generalist, holistic, joint strategies, joint programming, consensus, coördination, cartels, monopolies, corporatism, 3d approach, public private partnerships, Ujamaa, ubuntu, Buzan, Paris agenda, participation) higher than the benefits coming from competition and division of labour (buzzword: competition on basis of comparative advantage, selection, expertise, tender procedures, protest, emancipation).

Pre-palaeolithic policies make us play development like small children playing soccer: everybody chasing the ball.

The dream of doing everything together as one big family, with one vision, everybody the same skills and capacities, and everybody doing the same in unison, was a good idea while it lasted, let us say for the first few 100.000 years, but most people value at least some of the luxuries form the palaeolithic and beyond, and don’t want to go back.

Tesla : all your patents are belong to us

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Tesla will open up all its patents, free to use with only one condition: ” Tesla will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology.” I would argue that this is a first shot in a technological war – litigation by other means – and not a nice act of altruism by Tesla. This opens up an exciting chapter in technological innovation.
The companies that use Tesla its patents are not allowed to?sue Tesla when it uses their patents.
However, the car makers who use Tesla’s patents could still sue each other. As Tesla is the technology leader and has a “wall of patents” on electric car making, low-cost carmakers wanting to go electric can adapt Tesla technology at low-cost in R&D.
However, Tesla does not compete with low-cost?carmakers. Tesla is market leader in the technologically fast-moving sector of high-tech luxury cars with a clear brand recognition. By pooling patents with other innovative technology driven brand car makers (such as BMW) the speed of innovation is?stepped up. By pooling R&D and division of labour, the cost of innovation goes down. So when the cars come to the market, the innovation is for the market leaders already yesterdays’ news. Tesla is confident they have technology the others will want to adapt as a standard, so they are the king of the hill. A market is created where the technology leaders pooling with Tesla compete on the knife’s edge, pre-patent, while the?car makers who don’t contribute much R&D compete on price, driving prices of cars down and acceptance of the electric car up in large segments of the market.
What with the car makers who don’t pool their patents with Tesla? Being part of a smaller ecosystem, their relative R&D costs will rise. They might even choose to stay carbon based. They still could licence Tesla technology though. In the fast developing market for innovative technology driven luxury brand cars, the Tesla effort is a declaration of war to other luxury brands: innovate fast on electric cars, or be a has been. For car makers aiming for mass production cars, they get access to a goldmine of innovation, on condition they accept to live in the Tesla world. A world where Tesla is not only a car maker, but also the market leader in standards for charging, battery replacement technology, etc. Just like Google is the search company giving away Android for free, Tesla is the car company entering the market of service standards. It is like Bill Gates said: open source is like a virus, making all IP open source it touches.

The citizens and cities craving for better air quality can only be happy about this.

The Olympics I don’t watch

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Although I have a  TV, with lots of channels including sports channels , I don’t watch the 2014 winter olympics in Sochi .

Some of my reasons:

  1. I cannot see the athletes I know and I see a lot of coverage to no interest to me
  2. So I lost interest in winter games some time ago, especially as I come from a country with little winter.
  3. The blatant, competitive nationalism it embodies is repulsive to me. Especially because it is not my countries’ nationalism.
  4. The wasteful spending irritates me. The money flows baffle me.
  5. I find the presence of presidents who don’t respect the basic human values abhorrent, and they get airtime before, during and between events as if they had legitimacy
  6. The choices being made on the Olympic games prove that sport is not foremost on their mind.
  7. I did not start yet on the moral reasons why I should not look.

Some additional information on the points

  1. The Olympic Committee is soaked in Stupendous wealth because they sell exclusive broadcasting rights to national broadcasters. In this country, only the national rights holder will have the right to broadcast on internet, cable and air. This means also that they show only the sports and series that are of national interest. As I lived in a number of small countries all over the world, and I am now in another small country, the chances are slim that I see anybody I know. The broadcasting does not incite to internationalism, to the contrary, it narrows the view of the public to only its own athletes, while pretending they look at the “Olympic Games” as they are. As an American you can live with it (most events have Americans).
  2. So every four years, my interest waned a bit more, until it arrived on the current level.
  3. The Olympic games don’t preach a “this land is your land” nationalism. The Olympics, the setup, the presidents and politicians attending, even the publicity, all preach an exclusive, competitive nationalism. An approach of  “us against them”.  It is what researchers call an imagined community. There is nothing that really binds you with those athletes. You don’t know them personally. You don’t know whether they merit to win. You don’t know the story of their competitors. Why, you are probably not even from the same city, so you don’t have a real link with the places where this athlete lives. It is the sort of romanticising of imagined common identities that brought us some very dark moments in our history. Why don’t we compete on other aspects of our identity? Height? Blood group? first letter of our last name?
  4. The wasteful spending irritates me. The main cost of the Olympics falls on countries who are tricked to think it is important (nationalism, investment for future? who knows) to build an oversized infrastructure for sports nearly nobody plays. This is not at all innocent. The economical estimations are questionable. They are also rather financial estimations (looking at cost and benefit) , than economical  (what alternative investments could be made?).
  5. Apart from the athletes, there are also VIPs. Presidents, prime ministers, kings, princes. Apart from the problems with nationalism, I notice some unsavoury figures, who are known for doing “bad” things.  These people distract me from the sports. Did we not create an international criminal court? What baffles me even more is that these people are presented on the same level as the elected leaders of democratic countries that respect human rights. Does this mean that our leaders feel they belong to the same group as these other people? Or do our leaders just bestow legitimacy on them? If you live under one of those thugs, seeing this will make you doubt your future.
  6. In “The Dictator’s’ Handbook” they use the Olympic Committee as an example of an institution gone awry. The way the institution selects its members and leaders, you cannot expect clean governance.  This was so before Sochi. Sochi just brought it to a new level.
  7. This brings us to the moral reasons. These have been quite well covered: according to the Olympic Committee the universal values are subservient to having a spectacular sporting event. Olympics can support leaders, but other leaders should not use the event to criticise, Homosexuality, Chechnya, Pussy Riot, etc.

Any more reasons?

 

Thinking fast and slow about disaster preparedness

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Book: Thinking, Fast and Slow Author: Daniel Kahneman

Getting back to my notes from “Thinking Fast and slow” by Daniel Kahneman, I am still amazed by the diversity of new insights the book provides on how (most) humans think .

Some findings are also relevant for the current thinking in humanitarian assistance on disaster risk reduction (D.R.R. for the incrowd): an important part of the book is dedicated to the human approach to risk, which is not in line with statistical analysis nor economical reasoning.

When talking about risks, the greatest risk seem to be a disaster with a huge humanitarian impact. The book deals specifically with the approach to catastrophic risk by humans, in contrast to the Homo economicus or the statistician. As the political agenda of the humanitarian sector moves towards more investment and more attention to disaster risk reduction and disaster preparedness it might be good to look at his insights. I will heavily rely on quotes from the book.

Humans tend to be very bad at estimating risks and probabilities. We make decisions based on stories, not on a balanced analysis.

“ We pay more attention to the content of messages than to information about their reliability, and as a result end up with a view of the world around us that is simpler and more coherent than the data justify.”

“ Many facts of the world are due to chance, including accidents of sampling. Causal explanations of chance events are inevitably wrong.”

When working in Humanitarian assistance, your mandate is to save lives, alleviate suffering and maintain dignity when the local government is unable or unwilling to act or is overwhelmed. Roughly 80 % of the work will be in complex crises, the crises that are caused mostly by human interaction, like civil war, usually exacerbated by some bad luck on the side of the natural causes. However, it is the big natural disasters, giant floods or tsunamis and earthquakes that catch the imagination. Within the natural catastrophes, there is a rise in small disasters, with a limited number of victims, that is passing mostly under the radar. DRR is in the first place aimed at these 20 % of the investments, as we do now how to prevent natural disasters to become human catastrophes, but do not really know how to prevent civil war.

As humanitarians, we are tempted to argue that you will save more lives by preventing the catastrophes, and so it might be within our mandate after all. But are we sure of this? The question Kahneman asks is: will humanitarians be the right people to judge the importance of investments on disaster risk reduction compared to other priorities for the society (such as the army, education, etc.)

When you do not ignore the very rare events, you will certainly overweigh them.

The humanitarians are focused exactly on the very rare events and it is their explicit job to advocate for increased attention on these rare events. But what happens when we manage to put a risk squarely on the agenda? Some quotes picture a scenario with ever increasing importance to DRR:

Your judgment of probability was ultimately determined by the cognitive ease, or fluency, with which a plausible scenario came to mind. (Disaster risk reduction seems very plausible just after a catastrophe)

Adding irrelevant but vivid details to a monetary outcome also disrupts calculation.(The figures on the risk are intermingled with media pictures of the human suffering during the catastrophe)

The work of disaster prevention is more complicated by the human approach to “worry” and “regret” :

Reducing or mitigating the risk is not adequate; to eliminate the worry the probability must be brought down to zero.

Here again, people buy more than protection against an unlikely disaster; they eliminate a worry and purchase peace of mind.

So how to go about deciding on the importance of risk reduction within the complete spectrum of priorities?

The dilemma between intensely loss-averse moral attitudes and efficient risk management does not have a simple and compelling solution.

Especially just after there was a disaster or a near disaster:

The typical short-term reaction to bad news is increased loss aversion.
The taboo tradeoff against accepting any increase in risk is not an efficient way to use the safety budget.

There is an important risk of overinvestment in disaster risk reduction, leading to a framework that is just not affordable for the country:

The intense aversion to trading increased risk for some other advantage plays out on a grand scale in the laws and regulations governing risk.

Perhaps the humanitarian sector should see themselves just as one actor with a set of specific skills: humanitarian action, perhaps statistics on probabilities and risk analysis. As an inside actor they might be badly placed to take multiple roles and study, plan and finance the DRR approach:

Nothing in life is as important as you think it is when you are thinking about it.

Because as humanitarians we always think about disasters, we are not the best judges when it concerns the allocation of the scarce resources of partner governments or partner communities to DRR. A more humble approach, where the humanitarians leave the planning explicitly to the local partners and only add some seed money and knowledge might be indicated. The world is always risky for the poor, even when there is no disaster: illness, unemployment, accidents, land loss, localized weather phenomena, can be higher on the agenda of the poor family than well known disaster risk.

In summary:

Nothing in life is as important as you think it is when you are thinking about it.

This is also a stark warning for the humanitarian community to keep full attention to the core mandate of saving lives when governments are unable to act. For the moment a lot of the attention is drawn towards DRR away from access, Humanitarian Law and humanitarian delivery to everybody in need. It might be necessary to pay attention to DRR, but it is sure that the focus on it by the humanitarian community has negative effects for the core mandate, as the most scarce resource in humanitarian action is management attention. Is DRR really worth it? It seems to me that this is a political question that should be answered by the local communities, and not by external humanitarian actors.