PeopleSystems and Sustainability

PeopleSystems and Sustainability: This Week in the Global Environment

Economists, those responsible for the “nomos” side of the “ekologos/ekonomos” dichotomy remain devoted to sophisticated mathematical methods that are in fact primitive and blunt-force when applied to the real world. Environmental economics has gone essentially nowhere since the initial realization that the fundamental problem is that nonmarket goods and services are the important ones. Since economists deal with markets, the best they’ve done in recent years is to find ways to monetize that nonmarket stuff—to bring it into the realm of quantitative prediction, understanding, and manipulation. 

Many non-market-to-market transitions are success stories, although most are at relatively small scales. Whale watching replaces the harpoon. The Galapagos become a tourist destination instead of providing plunder for seagoing merchant ships. Same for many African and some Asian and Australian landscapes. In some places, market produce causes clashes in the transition. Giant pandas, for example. Attempts at in situ ecotourism are shaky, and the quantity of money that comes with “leasing” pandas to zoos around the world brings in far more than the non-market struggle in their natural habitat. 

In the U.S., the National Park and National Forest systems provide many nonmarket goods and services in places that might otherwise have been dumped into the market mixmaster of forestry, damming, beachfront housing and farming. But there are more specifics coming into play. 

The Washington Post for 22 March ran a story under the byline of Juliet Eilperin discussing the plight of the shrinking populations of galliform prairie birds, particularly the greater and lesser prairie chickens. It turns out that some ranchers in parts of Nebraska, with some slowly developing support from other organizations, are realizing the ecotourist potential of the spectacular lek breeding event that the birds go through every spring. In territorial battles, pre-mating rituals, and various other behavioral activities, there is at least potential tourist gold in them thar hills. In other words, amateur ornithologists and wildlife enthusiasts are willing to pay for the opportunity to view the several-days-rituals that get the birds into nesting production every year. 

As both tallgrass and shortgrass prairie disappear, heading under the plow for maize and soybean production, here may be a way to save some. Ecotourist dollars can compete for agriculture dollars, and preserve many more nonmarket goods and services that would otherwise vanish with the native grasses.

It is too late for the ecotourism model to save the east-coast maritime subspecies of prairie chicken, the heath hen. But the lesson is here to be learned. Let’s get out our intellectual duct tape and make sure the ekologos and the ekonomos hang together. It’s important for our future, and even more important for our children’s future!