Rational Agriculture

So reads the headline for a recent piece on the SciDev website. This covers the publication on 19th May by the biodiversity working group of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment of a new report: Ecosystems and Human Wellbeing: A biodiversity synthesis.

This report commits the sin (for environmentalists) of suggesting that there may be trade-offs to be made between the needs of poor people and conservation targets. It then compounds this by suggesting that the various targets will not be fully met. Heresy indeed.

But, if we try to look at the situation objectively, it seems to be pretty generally accepted that the initial goal of any concerted effort to lift people out of absolute poverty is to enable them to grow or buy sufficient food. It is also clear that agriculture has a major impact on the environment, eliminating some ecological niches and creating others. So, it's not entirely surprising that there may be some conflicts between the Millennium Development goals and some conservation targets. Not only that, but the evidence of our own eyes is that richer societies provide higher quality, less polluted environments for their citizens. It also seems self-evident that more productive, more intensive agriculture actually protects biodiversity by reducing the need to encroach on marginal lands to grow food.

This, however, does not please many in the environmentalist movement, who are reluctant to compromise their absolute beliefs and certainties. Hamdallah Zedan, executive director of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, for example, is quoted thus "What they are forgetting is that biological diversity is the source for our current and future food supplies. We will destroy this if we expand our current agricultural system." While there are many who would subscribe to this view, and few who would have no qualms at all about wanton destruction of species, the fact remains that Humankind ultimately depends on the productivity of a handful of domesticated crop species: not much biodiversity there.

My concerns about the absolutist position of some in the Green movement were reinforced when we read later in the article that there is good evidence that the rate of ecosystem degradation is slowing, but that such positive news is not seen as worthy of a high profile in the MEA report.

It looks like the propaganda must continue for the forces of good to triumph (excuse my cynicism)...