A tribute to our selfish needs: Conservation in the Anthropocene

Conservation is a selfish human need. It serves us to promote conservation. We, humans, need to conserve biodiversity for our own survival. However, the fallout from this argument is another rider—the present and future development paradigms cannot afford to be oblivious to the traditional trade-off between development and conservation goals; rather conservation needs to be an integral component of the development process, thereby, reversing the trade-off. History bears ample testimony of the progress of human civilisation by exploiting nature. Construction of massive engineering structures modifying the flow regimes of streams and rivers, and extensive land-use change from natural vegetation to agriculture and urbanisation were treated as hallmarks of development. The unwavering faith that economic growth was supreme and can come at any cost ruled the roost, leading to the costs of growth. The long-term cost of growth were especially being treated as either non-existent or imperceptible. Rather, there was a prevailing belief that conservation goals stood against development.

Construction of massive engineering structures modifying the flow regimes of streams and rivers, and extensive land-use change from natural vegetation to agriculture and urbanisation were treated as hallmarks of development.

However, this perception began to shift in the 1970s as knowledge and scientific understanding of the intersection between nature, economy, and society improved. The significant advancements in this field of science led to the realisation that there is a mutual cause-and-effect relationship between ecosystems and the economy. The Club of Rome's The Limits to Growth thesis in 1972, which predicted an impending apocalypse, triggered extensive research, global assessments, and conventions in response to the approaching crisis. In 1992, the Earth Summit embraced the concept of “sustainable development”, as defined in the Brundtland Commission Report, Our Common Future. The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), for the first time, recognised the conservation of biological diversity as an integral part of the development process under international law. On the other hand, the term “Circular Economy”, introduced by David Pearce and Kerry Turner in 1989, gained popularity rapidly in discussions around the interplay between the environment and development. The Circular Economy represented a departure from the linear growth mindset of “take, make, dispose” and embraced a more holistic approach, considering the economy to be embedded within the ecosystem. Consequently, the bi-directional causalities between the economy and ecology were better acknowledged. In 1997, two major scientific publications stood out: One was Gretchen Daily’s Nature’s Services and Bob Costanza’s seminal paper in Nature. While the former talked about human dependence on ecosystem services, i.e., services rendered by the natural ecosystem free of cost to the human society through its organic processes; the latter was the first study to estimate the monetary value of the ecosystem services to be three times the global domestic product. In 2005, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) further enhanced our understanding of the ecosystem's unique functions in providing essential ecosystem services to human society. These services included provisioning services (e.g., food, raw materials, water, energy), regulating services (e.g., climate control, pest management), cultural services (e.g., tourism, spiritual value), and supporting services (e.g., nutrient cycling, soil formation)—all of which are necessary for the production of other ecosystem services. With a clearer delineation for ecosystem services, the link between the economy and the ecosystem became more apparent.

The Circular Economy represented a departure from the linear growth mindset of “take, make, dispose” and embraced a more holistic approach, considering the economy to be embedded within the ecosystem.

The concerns of the Global South

Despite such global recognition, there still remain substantial doubts in the Global South on linking conservation goals with developmental goals by reversing the existing trade-off. Rather, the inverse relation between conservation and development goals still exists, with economic growth being treated as the supreme goal that is slated to be effected at the cost of nature. The emerging economies led by the BRICS nations bear examples of this phenomenon. UNEP’s publication,  Inclusive Wealth, talks of the changes in the social values of three capital assets, namely, natural capital (or biodiversity), human capital, and produced or physical capital over the period from 1990 to 2014. As per this report, between 1990 and 2014, physical capital and health- and education-induced human capital grew at 3.8 percent and 2.1 percent per annum respectively globally—both at the cost of natural capital that declined at 0.7 percent per annum. The “inclusive wealth” (IW) of India increased at 1.6 percent per annum during this period driven by growth in human (HC) and physical capital (NC). Similarly, for Brazil, the inclusive wealth has increased at the rate of 0.7 percent triggered largely by human and physical capital (both increasing at 0.5 percent annually), but a decline in natural capital by 0.3 percent. In China, we see a similar picture: IW has increased by 2.4 percent (the highest among the BRICS nations) driven by HC (1.4 percent) and PC (1.1 percent), but at the cost of NC (-0.2 percent). South Africa witnesses an increase in IW by 1.6 percent and a consequent decline in NC by 0.1 percent during the same period. If inclusive wealth is taken as the factor or fundamental basis for development, then such a decline raises serious questions about the sustainability of the development process. It is only in the Russian Federation that one finds a nominal 0.2 percent annual growth in IW, and a consequent growth rate of NC by 0.1 percent thereby reversing this trade-off.

South Africa witnesses an increase in IW by 1.6 percent and a consequent decline in NC by 0.1 percent during the same period.

Why does biodiversity conservation hold a special significance for the Global South as compared to the Global North? This is because of the inextricable ecosystems-livelihoods linkage, especially for the poor of the underdeveloped regions of the Global South. Pawan Sukhdev’s paper Costing the Nature in 2009 interpreted ecosystem services as the “GDP of the poor”. The author’s own assessments in South Asia, where he developed the notion of Ecosystem Dependency Index (EDI)—with EDI being defined as the ratio of the income of the human community and the value of the ecosystem services—reveal that the ecosystem dependency of the poor is not only significantly higher than average per capita income-earning household, but the poor earn more from the natural ecosystem than from their formal and informal engagements in the economy. This is exhibited by the fact that in many cases, the EDI has been more than one. Therefore, land-use change that destroys the natural ecosystem or development of physical and manufactured capital at the cost of natural capital simply diminishes the capacity of the ecosystem to provide its services thereby diminishing the GDP of the poor. 

Conservation in the Anthropocene

At the same time, land-use change from forests to linear infrastructure has inhibited the natural carbon sequestration and the carbon stocking capacity of the ecosystem. These are important regulating services of the ecosystem helping the cause of combating climate change. As such, climate change is largely a developmental problem emerging from humanity’s unbridled developmental ambitions defined through an unabated penchant for short-term economic growth. While the biggest victim of this process is nature, the impacts are channelised through the environmental avenues, and go on to affect humanity’s long-term developmental concerns. For  example, the construction of the Farakka barrage in West Bengal in India over the Ganges River for navigation purposes has not only led to streamflow decline but has also led to a decline in sediment flows to the delta. This has consequently resulted in the shrinkage of the Indian Sundarbans Delta (ISD), which was fed by the sediments flowing from upstream. On the other hand, global warming has led to a rise in sea-surface temperatures and sea levels in the Bay of Bengal, thereby leading to ingression of saline waters into the delta making agriculture unviable. This has also affected the poor fishing community due to a decline in fish catch due to declining draught. An almost similar phenomenon has also been observed in the Colorado Delta in Mexico ever since the upstream constructions for ensuring water security in the US West. Therefore, short-term ambitions impeded long-term development due to a lack of consideration of the ecosystem-development linkage.

Climate change is largely a developmental problem emerging from humanity’s unbridled developmental ambitions defined through an unabated penchant for short-term economic growth.

This shows that conservation should not be treated as a normative ethical statement emerging out of the books of morality. In this era of Anthropocene, i.e., the present epoch when anthropogenic activities are the prime drivers and stressors of the climate and the natural ecosystem, long-run human development and livelihoods are intertwined with conservation goals. It is the lens through which we look at development that needs to change: We, the humans, need to look at development more holistically on a spatial scale, and at a longer term on a temporal scale. Only with this integration over time and space would we realise that conservation is necessary for development, and there is no trade-off between them. In other words, conservation is a selfish human need in the Anthropocene.

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Nilanjan Ghosh is Director of the Centre for New Economic Diplomacy at the Observer Research Foundation.

• Developing and Emerging Economies
• Climate Change
• India
• Anthropocene
• biodiversity
• conservation
• Development
• economic growth
• Ecosystem Services
• Global South
• NATURAL CAPITAL
• trade-off

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