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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

Pre-palaeolithic policies in development and diplomacy

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Rant

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.

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.

The hunger games, the Paris agenda and political sciences.

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I read the 3 parts of the Hunger Games trilogy in only a few weeks. A book that captivates so well its readers cannot be all bad.

What amazes me most  is how “fantasy”writers seems to be better at captivating the realities of the power relations, social interactions and power impact analysis than the drafters of international agreements, like the Busan outcome document. What is real and what is fantasy?

David Brooks and the Art of Linear Thinking

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In The New York Times, David Brookstackles the Fertility Implosion, the fact that , when women have access to reproductive rights and reproductive health services (like general health services but also anticonception) on average, they don’t like to spend their life as baby factories. This seems to lead in every country to a fall in the number of babies, which in the long run (when the last babies of the fertile years become pensioners, so in some 60, in the future probably rather 70 years) leads to a shrinking workforce.

His starting point is the falling fertility in the Arab countries.

Then he moves further to lament the cost of and aging population, the Grey Tsunami coming over us, with as notorious examples the Chinese, European and Indian.

As a final warning he talks about the declining fertility in the US.

I don’t want to write a long post on this, but as this reasoning combines top down planning of the most cherished choices of individuals with a lack of scientific knowledge, I would like to call immediately Godwin’s law and eugenetics. Talking about diminishing fertility rates while only showing it as an issue, not an opportunity is for me an important misrepresentation:

  1. Being the master of your own fertility is a basic human right. Writing, talking about fertility without referring to this right in a tone of “we are in danger” incites to social engineering without respect for this right.
  2. It is not the fertility of women going down, it is the average fertility rate: the number of children they choose on average to have. Biology stops being destiny. Is it ethical to start manipulating the wishes of people?
  3. The major cause and effect of this decline is the empowerment of women. Is there a misogynist agenda here? Instead of having 8 children from the age of 16, woman do sometimes chose to study, take a few years off for children, and with all respect, do with their life what they want including raising children. The women with a good degree will be way more productive than the unschooled from before the empowerment.
  4. Some 16 years after the fertility declines there is a window of opportunity for a booming growth: young people enter the workforce, and there is no need to scale up a lot of services like health and education anymore, just to keep up with population growth. It takes another 40 years or more before they reach retirement. The Asian Tigers fully enjoyed this window. The Arab countries might be there in only a few years. Please include this fact also in your reasoning.
  5. Retirement financing is indeed a problem of adaptation, but not a problem that cannot be tackled. It is rather a problem of planning and saving for a rainy day, than a substantive problem. Indeed, David, planning for it is a good idea.
  6. Linear thinking does not come close to predict the future. The population is not a mass of people all doing exactly the same. Women abused and raped by their husband would have a fighting chance of not bearing child after child in the new world, but the same reproductive health services help loving couples to get the children they want or single women to fulfil their wish to be a mother. Subcultures that are more child friendly, like loving parents, back to earth ecologists or orthodox faiths (not a scientific list), will out-breed the others. Without going into details: when looking into the population in detail, some groups will show a rising fertility, while others a declining fertility rate. Over time this leads to the numbers inching up again, problem solved. Why doesn’t Brooks refer to Sweden?
  7. Perhaps one of the major concerns is how society changes if children are really wanted. When looking at the countries who are further up the curve, like Sweden and other Scandinavian countries, this might not be bad at all. Societies like this seem to attach more importance to the quality of life. The parents want their children to grow up in a nice world. However, this might be due to other factors than only demographics.just think about it: people who don’t like children in a society die out in a society where you get children only when you wan them.

There must be more, but hey, I am angry.

Geo-engineering: ready or not, here we go

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Climate change is a reality, and it means humans are in charge of the climate now.

Putting carbon in the air used yo be a simple process called cooking, now it is geo engineering, as we know it changes the climate.

Fine tuning our energy use and milk consumption to diminish global warming, is geo-engineering.

Painting mountains white, is the same process of geo-engineering, but using more parameters.

The genie is out of the box. We have to take responsibility.

If only it was so simple that we needed only to look at our carbon consumption. It is a very wide field, with lots of hard choices to make.

We can cut carbon by making heating for the poor more expensive, or we can paint our roads or roofs white. Some choices will have consequences for the most vulnerable, others are untested and might have unintended results. What balance do we want between moral outcomes, environmental risks and social impact?

In the end, these choices should be made as a policy choice, and should not be forced upon us by events.

The last thing we need is a principled stance on what instruments to use while ignoring the moral consequences of the other choices.

Development: The dictator’s handmaiden; Is bad aid almost always good politics?

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I have just finished reading the Dictator’s Handbook, by Bruce Bueno de Mequita and Alastair Smith. I immediately reread some chapters. The book gives you an insight you feel you have known all along, but you just could not act upon it because you don’t want to be seen as a spoil sport, cynic and nutcase.

From reading the book, I think adding a power impact assessment (PIA) before committing to development interventions is necessary.

The book makes a very convincing case that political economy, driven by personal interest, is the major motivation for leaders and potential leaders (surprise). The main objective of a leader is to get and keep power. Good public policy is not more than a distraction in this pursuit.  Leaders ignoring their main objective, will have only a short stint at the top.  So the leader will try to get as much loot from the state and its subjects as possible, and pay just enough to his essential backers for them to stay loyal to him. The rest is preferably stashed away for bad times. She must try to rely on as few possible backers as possible, who should each always need to scramble to keep her favor. The formula is really quite simple, but please, just read the book, I will limit myself to ponder some consequences of this reality of power ( “the world like it is, and not how we would like it to be”) on development assistance.

Easterly is an optimist
The Handbook gives a very black view of the world. We all know a politician or leader who would never act this way. The book however comes close to predict the real choices made by most of the world leaders who manage to stay in power (unlike the gullible friends of ours).

This means that development money that is embezzled by the leader and its cronies is not a bug, it is the main feature of cunning leadership. The whole government ownership agenda is very misguided in this light. It is probably true that the local government knows best what can work and what not. However this is not very relevant if the interest of the local leader in development funding is limited to the use of these funds to help her to stay in power.
Indeed: if the objective of the able leader is to keep the money and distribute it only to his essential backers,  anybody who is not an essential backer will not get anything.

It is also a positive message: understanding this mechanism makes it possible to use strategies to change the incentive structure and change the system.

Forget Paris.

Some types  of development assistance will be very much in demand by autocratic leaders.

  • Infrastructure leads to  excellent corruption and patronage possibilities. Moreover, in the form of big dams, it gives the dictator absolute power on who gets power and who does not.
  • Military support is even better. You can pay your essential generals and distribute bribes. Paying the rank and file is optional: they can “harvest” their own salary from the population.
  • Basic services are necessary to keep the population just intelligent enough to work hard. This is only important in countries without natural resources or without big aid flows. Anything beyond primary education will only lead to emancipation and other trouble. The leaders love basic services provided by NGOs: it authorizes the leader to spend less on the poor and more on themselves. Moreover, it transforms education from a right that the government is accountable for, to a gift from a foreign benefactor.
  • Disaster relief provided through the government services. It authorizes the dictator to embezzle most of it, while giving the rest only to the essential coalition.
  • Dept cancellation will only lead to the dictator strengthening her hold. Dept cancellation should be more conditional to democratic reform, or even better, used after democratic reform happened.  Apparently dept cancellation only works in democracies anyway.

The writers seem to have written the Handbook from a very serious concern to improve the effects of development assistance for the real world, not for the world we would all love to live in.

Their main piece of advice on development is to go for “cash on delivery”. Pay a non-inclusive government only for goods and services it has delivered, not for the process. Indeed even simple processes as capturing a terrorist bring in more loot for the cronies if they are dragged on eternally.

From poverty to power

The main lesson  I take from the book is the need to expand the coalition in power. If the leader has to rely on a wider coalition to stay in power, the kleptocracy deludes into a state delivering public services for most of the people. Indeed by growing the coalition needed to reign, there is a tipping point when it is cheaper for the leader to provide public services than to pay a bribe to the ever-growing number of essential backers.

The book goes in detail on the issue of inclusive governance structures, and ways that are used to limit the power of the public to hold leaders accountable. It proves that the nuts and bolts of the democratic system we use matters, and this as well for governing a country as for a public company or even a club.
While in a democracy a Government theoretically needs the backing of more than half of the voters, in reality this is often much less. The writer explores how the leader can find innovative ways to limit the number of people with actual power in different systems. In a multiparty first past the post-system a group can grab power with as little as 10 % of the total population backing them, just by gaming the system.

All this means that we need a radical emancipation strategy to deliver on development, where expanding the essential coalition in a country is seen as the main goal of interventions. Delivering services in non-democratic countries will not lead to a long-term development agenda; widening the coalition to include the middle class and the poor does. If some services must be delivered, theoretically the cash on delivery system should work.

To take home
Power and incentives matter. In the real world, they might matter more than the moral high ground. However, just like the rational choice is too simple to explain all economics, rational dictators are probably too simple to explain power. It is a start, and it would help us to be less gullible.
This is why I propose to add to each intervention a Power Impact Assessment (PIA), just like an environmental impact assessment.

CSR and Public – Private partnership: before, we used to call this propaganda, corruption or tender procedures.

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This my contribution to the first Aid Blog Forum on Corporate Social Responsibility.

When I look at the different contributions on CSR, the negativity of the academia and practitioners oozes from my screen. For good reason. Who pays the piper calls the tune. And the tune  set by a private partner is seldom purely “needs based”. There will be need for visibility and publicity (CSR is mostly about signallingand branding, Marc Bellemare). The moneyshark will come with his own ideas of what is important and what not (please add at least a micro credit chapter). And you will have to say yes.

What annoys me most is the blurring of the lines. How fast does CSR become single sourcing? How much of what we call CSR can be classified as propaganda, how much are the lines of good procurement procedures blurred by it?

Corporations have an identity, with different concentric circles. In the outer segment, we see branding and marketing. These signal the view of the corporation as they want us to see them. At the core, there is the real identity: cutting corners or maintaining quality even if business is slow. Some companies treat their employees well, some don’t. I could well imagine that CSR fits in the core of a company. When a soccer club sponsors UNICEF, I might believe it is. When a clothing giant campaigns on HIV/AIDS, it looks like marketing to me. It degrades the Cause and puts everything at the service of the bottom line.

Just like developing countries are victim to fickle donors looking for visibility,  CSR campaigns that are aimed to be marketing will sell the soul of their partners, and run off with the next posse.

humanitarian action should act like an insurance including preventive care. It should not depend on the media when aid comes, it should be send when you hit rock bottom. Of course, this kind of assistance acts before children are dying. Very seldom star-based initiatives support flexible funding to UN-bureaucracies. However, this is what we probably need. Prevention is more efficient. Needs based allocation is better than media based allocation. We have standards for servicing the affected populations we can be held accountable to.

Institutional philanthropists and some CSR companies do support such an approach. Most private donors however, don’t. In humanitarian assistance, most CSR seems to follow the flow, and create political incentives against Good humanitarian Donorship. Bono criticized countries for not giving “as much as IKEA” to the Horn of Africa. As far as I know, Ikea does not contribute to the Central Emergency Response Fund.

Somewhere, we must draw the line.