Compensating Nature for Loss of Land and Water Resources
Michael Robertson, August 2004
Over the last two centuries, more and more land and water has been diverted from natural ecosystems for human use. But can humans compensate for this? Without simply returning to nature all land and water currently diverted, can we make up for the loss by maximising the value to nature of the land and water that remain to its use?
Funding and Restoration
Use of natural resources such as land and water for human use - agriculture, industry, transport, housing, etc - diverts these resources away from use by natural ecosystems. If the economic enterprises that diverted these resources were to pay for those resources, eg through levies on water and land use, the money raised could be used to restore natural habitats.
A restoration authority could use the funds:
(1) To buy back land currently occupied by natural habitats, to protect them from being cleared.
(2) To buy back cleared land in order to replant it with native species and so re-establish natural habitats, eg to create "wildlife" corridors to connect habitat remnants.
(3) To fence off or otherwise isolate existing or newly created natural habitat from incursions by invasive species such as weeds or livestock.
(4) To purchase water to return it as "environmental flows" to wetlands and other natural habitats.
(5) To employ people to tend existing (remant or newly re-established) natural habitats, in order to maximise valued environmental outcomes given limited land and water resources.
Proposal (5) raises the following questions:
(a) What environmental outcomes should, or could we work to maximise?
(b) Can human labour effectively substitute for loss of natural resources?
Environmental Outcomes
When we speak of the effects of European settlement on the Australian environment, we often speak of degraded environments, loss of habitat, loss of species, loss of biodiversity. An "undegraded" environment, we shall say, supports a large number of physically and behaviourally diverse species in a highly complex system of physical interactions between individual organisms. As the environment is degraded, the capacity of the environment to support such biodiversity is lost.
Biodiversity, then, is what we value in a natural environment. Moreover, we might consider that biodiversity is what nature values. Natural ecosystems, while constantly changing over thousands or millions of years, tend toward species diversity and ecosystem complexity. From time to time there is some outside shock such as a sudden release of methane, or a huge meteor strike, that causes a massive species extinction event. This for a time reduces biodiversity, but as ecosystems are allowed to recover - to get on with what they tend to do, absent outside interference - biodiversity returns.
Can Human Efforts Increase Environmental Outcomes?
It may be possible for human intervention to improve a natural ecosystem from it's point of view. That is, to improve its biodiversity in the short term, and its resilience over the longer term - its capacity to maintain biodiversity despite fluctuations in climate, disruption by invading species, or internal instability in species composition and interactions.
Moreover, it may be possible to approach an up-to-now (relatively) untouched, natural environment and begin to improve it - begin to increase its biodiversity and resilience through human intervention (planting, fertilising, culling, transplanting, etc).
Alternatively, perhaps the best thing we can do for natural ecosystems is simply leave them alone. Either restore them as best we can to some original condition, eg to (some semblance of) what they were like before European settlement, and then leave them alone. Or to start leaving them alone now - create more conservation areas in which human interference is minimised, ensure that they have adequate water flows (eg in the case of wetlands) and let them recover as they will, without active restoration (without removing introduced species, restocking with original species, etc).
Substituting for Loss of Natural Resources
You might not accept that human intervention is effective in restoring environments for use by natural ecosystems, that environments are best left alone.
Or you might accept that human intervention is beneficial in restoring degraded environments, but not accept that human intervention in a pristine environment could improve its biodiversity and capacity to maintain biodiversity.
Or you might accept that human intervention could improve a pristine environment as well as degraded environment, but that no amount of improvement available environment could fully make up for the loss of land and resources to nature.
Perhaps, at best, we can only minimise the damage to nature due to human incursion. At best return as much land and water to nature as possible given human needs, and our ability to use land and water to satisfy them, and ensure that desired environmental outcomes - biodiversity and resilience - is maximised given the land and water we do make available for nature. And accept that human prosperity and numbers is a good thing, so long as the demands on nature are not allowed to exceed a certain level, or that natural resources are used to most benefit, not wastefully.
How Best to Spend the Money
There remains the question: would (appropriately skilled) human labour, funded by levies on water and land diversion, be better for environmental outcomes than simply using the money to buy back as much water and land as possible? This of course depends on what is the going rate - for human labour on the one hand, and land and water on the other. As well as on how much benefit you think you can get from applying available labour to available restoration projects.
Regional Development
Given that unemployment in rural areas is high, using funds to employ local people to work on restoration projects is a way of compensating regions for loss of income to farmers in the region due to the imposition of land and water levies.
The levy would increase farm-gate prices and so lead to reduced demand for farm products. Even if Australian consumers rallied to the cause, this would not be enough to balance decreased demand for our agricultural exports, at least for agricultural exports with minimal, pre-export value-adding to diminish the contribution of farm-gate price to export price.
If habitat restoration can be linked to ecotourism, and if more value can be added to agricultural products before they leave rural areas, then rural areas may prosper economically, even if many farmers may have to change their business.
Thus the local economic and social benefits of employing local people may sway a restoration project versus land or water purchase decision towards restoration. Even if buying more land and water and employing less local people would be better for the environment, you still need political support for land and water levies, and linking them to regional development is one way of getting that support.
Which Regions?
The same considerations apply when considering which regions to fund the money.
A water levy on water use by (eg) rice farmers in the Murrumbidgee district should be used, to be fair to nature, to fund restoration projects in other districts deprived of water by the rice irrigation, not just in the Murrumbidgee region, whose economy would be directly affected by that levy.
Meanwhile, at least we can use the funds raised by land levies to fund restoration projects in the immediate area, for it is after-all local natural ecosystems that are affected by land diversion - they would have the benefit of the land were it not used for agriculture, etc.
Habitat Restoration Funds - Global Portability?
Just to make things more complicated, consider the following.
If we were free from political constraints, we might not limit ourselves to spending such funds in Australia at all. Insofar as labour or land is cheap in another country, and damage to natural habitats there is extensive, we may find that a given million-dollar packet may get more environmental bang-for-the-buck protecting and restoring a highly valued, highly endangered ecosystem in that country, rather than a less highly valued, less highly endangered ecosystem in Australia, local economic and social benefits not withstanding.
I'll let you decide.
2007.2.8