Worldwide, governments subsidize agriculture at the rate of approximately 1 billion dollars per day. This figure rises to about twice that when export and biofuels production subsidies and state financing for dams and river basin engineering are included. These policies guide land use in numerous ways, including growers’ choices of crop and buyers’ demand for commodities. The three types of state subsidies that shape land use and the environment are land settlement programs, price and income supports, and energy and emissions initiatives. Together these subsidies have created perennial surpluses in global stores of cereal grains, cotton, and dairy, with production increases outstripping population growth. Subsidies to land settlement, to crop prices, and to processing and refining of cereals and fiber, therefore, can be shown to have independent and largely deleterious effect on soil fertility, fresh water supplies, biodiversity, and atmospheric carbon.
Article
Agricultural Subsidies and the Environment
Heather Williams
Article
Environmental Economic Ethics
Roldan Muradian
Environmental economic ethics refers to the moral philosophy underlying the interaction between economic processes and the natural environment. The ethical foundations shaping the way the economy interacts with nature vary greatly, depending on culture and the historical period. Nonetheless, current economic thinking and practice is dominated by utilitarianism, a philosophical stream consolidated in Western culture in the late 18th century. A utilitarian way to conceive and deal with the natural world and other humans can be identified as the ultimate cause of the current global environmental crisis. Even though ecological economics, as a field, has tried to overcome some of the drawbacks of utilitarianism when applied to the study of sustainability problems from an economic perspective, this school of thought remains essentially within the utilitarian paradigm. However, recent changes in social values, moving away from utilitarianism, are creating new opportunities for changing the philosophical and ethical foundations of ecological economics thinking and practice. The global movement for the rights of nature is an example of such a societal shift. An overhaul of the current allocation of rights can be a first step toward less suffering among humans, as well as a more peaceful relationship between humans and the natural environment. The economic implications of adopting the rights of nature paradigm are vast and wide. They include the thriving of new forms of property rights, new ways of allocating responsibilities and liabilities among social groups, and the acknowledgement of the territory as a key dimension for caring about in human economic development.
Article
The Environmental History of the Antarctic
Sebastian Grevsmühl
The environmental history of the polar regions, and in particular of Antarctica, is a rather recent area of inquiry that is in many ways still in its infancy. As a truly multidisciplinary research field, environmental history draws much inspiration from a large diversity of fields of historical and social research, including economic history, diplomatic history, cultural history, the history of explorations, and science and technology studies. Although overarching book-length studies on the environmental history of Antarctica are still rare, historical scholars have already conducted many in-depth case studies related mostly to three major interrelated research topics: Antarctic governance, natural resource exploitation, and tourism. These recent historical efforts, carried out mostly by a new generation of historians, have thus far allowed the proposal of several powerful counternarratives, challenging the frequent yet erroneous assertion that environmental protection and conservation were completely absent from Antarctic affairs before the 1970s. In so doing, environmental historians started offering a much more complex and nuanced account of what is frequently referred to as the “greening” of Antarctica, going well beyond “declensionist” narratives and conservation success stories that commonly pervade not only environmental histories but also public discourse. Indeed, all recent historical studies agree that there is nothing inevitable about the “greening” of Antarctica, nor are conservation and environmental protection its natural destiny. Science, politics, imperialism, capitalism, and imaginaries all have played their part in this important history, a history that remains still largely to be written.
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Environmental Humanities and Italy
Enrico Cesaretti, Roberta Biasillo, and Damiano Benvegnú
Does something like “Italian environmental humanities” exist? If so, what makes an Italian approach to this multifaceted field of inquiry so different from the more consolidated Anglo-American tradition?
At least until the early 21st century, Italian academic institutions have maintained established disciplinary boundaries and have continued to produce siloed forms of knowledge. New and more flexible forms of scholarly collaboration have also not been traditionally supported at the national level, as political decisions regarding curricular updates and funding opportunities have been unable to foster interdisciplinarity and innovative approaches to knowledge production.
However, an underlying current of environmental awareness and action has a strong and long-standing presence in Italy. After all, Italy is where St. Francis wrote The Canticle of Creatures, with its non-hierarchical vision of the world, which then inspired the papal encyclical Laudato si (2015). Italy is also where Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s fresco The Allegory and the Effects of Good Government in the City and in the Country (1337–1339) already “pre-ecologically” reflected on the relationship between nature and culture, on the effect of political decisions on our surroundings, and on the impact of local environments on the well-being (as well as the malaise) of their inhabitants. Additionally, Italy is among the few countries in the world whose constitution lists specific laws aimed at protecting its landscapes, biodiversity, and ecosystems in addition to its cultural heritage, as stated in a recent addendum to articles 9 and 41.
However, Italy also experienced an abrupt, violent process of development, modernization, and industrialization that radically transformed its urban, rural, and coastal territories after World War II. Many of its landscapes, once iconic and picturesque, have become polluted, toxic, or the outcome of contested, violent histories. And the effects of globalization are materially affecting its ecologies, meaning that Italy is also exposed to constant risks (earthquakes, floods, landslides, volcanic eruptions) and presents geo-morphological features that situate it at the very center of planetary climate change (both atmospheric and sociopolitical) and migration patterns. Considering this, thinking about Italy from an environmental humanities (EH) perspective and, in turn, about the EH in the context of Italy, highlights the interconnections between the local and the global and, in the process, enriches the EH debate.
Article
Ethics of the Zoo
Jozef Keulartz
The animal world is under increasing pressure, given the magnitude of anthropogenic environmental stress, especially from human-caused rapid climate change together with habitat conversion, fragmentation, and destruction. There is a global wave of species extinctions and decline in local species abundance. To stop or even reverse this so-called defaunation process, in situ conservation (in the wild) is no longer effective without ex situ conservation (in captivity). Consequently, zoos could play an ever-greater role in the conservation of endangered species and wildlife—hence the slogan Captivity for Conservation.
However, the integration of zoo-based tools and techniques in species conservation has led to many conflicts between wildlife conservationists and animal protectionists. Many wildlife conservationists agree with Michael Soulé, the widely acclaimed doyen of the relatively new discipline of conservation biology, that conservation and animal welfare are conceptually distinct, and that they should remain politically separate. Animal protectionists, on the other hand, draw support from existing leading accounts of animal ethics that oppose the idea of captivity for conservation, either because infringing an individual’s right to freedom for the preservation of the species is considered as morally wrong, or because the benefits of species conservation are not seen as significant enough to overcome the presumption against depriving an animal of its liberty.
Both sides view animals through different lenses and address different concerns. Whereas animal ethicists focus on individual organisms, and are concerned about the welfare and liberty of animals, wildlife conservationists perceive animals as parts of greater wholes such as species or ecosystems, and consider biodiversity and ecological integrity as key topics. This seemingly intractable controversy can be overcome by transcending both perspectives, and developing a bifocal view in which zoo animals are perceived as individuals in need of specific care and, at the same time, as members of a species in need of protection.
Based on such a bifocal approach that has lately been adopted by a growing international movement of “Compassionate Conservation,” the modern zoo can only achieve its conservation mission if it finds a morally acceptable balance between animal welfare concerns and species conservation commitments. The prospects for the zoo to achieve such a balance are promising. Over the past decade or so, zoos have made serious and sustained efforts to ensure and enhance animal welfare. At the same time, the zoo’s contribution to species conservation has also improved considerably.
Article
Where Is Equity in Integrated Approaches for Water Resources Management?
Jeremy Allouche
The challenges of integrated approaches and equity in water resources management have been well researched. However, a clear division exists between scholars working on equity and those working on integration, and there is remarkably little systematic analysis available that addresses their interlinkages. The divide between these two fields of inquiry has increased over time, and equity is assumed rather than explicitly considered in integrated approaches for water resources management. Historically, global debates on water resources management have focused on questions of distributional equity in canal irrigation systems and access to water. This limited focus on distributional equity was side-lined by neoliberal approaches and subsequent integrated approaches around water resources management tend to emphasize the synergistic aspects and ignore the political trade-offs between equity and efficiency. The interlinkages among equity, sustainability, and integration need deeper and broader interdisciplinary analysis and understanding, as well as new concepts, approaches, and agendas that are better suited to the intertwined complexity of resource degradation.
