Pricing Ourselves out of Survival?
“You just need to get the price right and then it will be fine”. It’s 2008 and my economically trained colleague and I were discussing water supply for the urban and rural poor in Africa. He is utterly convinced that the solution to this challenge lies in getting the numbers to line up. As a trained engineer, I like numbers and it makes sense - if you can count something and make the equations balance you can get things to work. Yet something inside me is deeply uncomfortable and disagrees completely with this notion. I try to articulate it, but facing the might of classical economics I become a gibbering wreck.
Recently this discussion and my experience of discomfort came back to mind following the publication of the Dasgupta review. This review is properly titled “The Economics of Biodiversity” and sought to put a price on ecosystems, to show how they could be integrated into our economic analysis and thinking. Interestingly, the author determined that it was not economics itself that was a problem but that we just hadn’t extended it far enough to include these other issues. If only we could put a number on our ecosystems, we’d be fine. Once again there was that pain in the pit of my stomach.
So why do I find this inflammatory? Let me caveat what comes by saying that I love numbers, I am an engineer by training and I have been a mathematics teacher. Having spent a long time thinking about this, I think there are three reasons I have such a strong reaction to this:
Personal experience that numbers help me disconnect from reality.
The evidence that it is our numbers-obsessed society that is the one that is crippling ecosystems.
That I detect a strong whiff of arrogance from our use of numbers to try and control ecosystems.
This blog explores each of these, and why they are sound grounds for questioning the use of economics to solve our ecological woes.
Personal Experience
My lived experience is that numbers remove us from reality. I have found that when I count numbers I forget the full reality of what these numbers are meant to represent.
In my home city I have seen first hand how land is paved over in one place, because the numbers say that ‘improving’ land somewhere else gives a better overall outcome. Can we really use numbers to fully comprehend the social, cultural, habitat and ecosystem implications of these decisions? The answer is clearly ‘no’ - no matter how clever we get, we will never fully capture the webs of life in a set of numbers - there is just too much dynamic complexity to achieve that. We know instinctively that there is no way that we can put numbers on feelings, on community and on the intangibles that create wellbeing.
Closer to home, when I am feeling the pinch financially it is easy to look at the cost of the food we buy and see how it can be reduced. Suddenly I find savings everywhere. Eventually I stop and ask myself whether I am making a saving, or whether I am just asking somebody else to take the strain for me. Is it that the land is being damaged by unsustainable farming techniques? Is someone involved in getting this food to me being paid less than a fair price? When I stop to consider the wider issues my decision making can change completely. Yet it is so very difficult to keep from focussing on the numbers, and only the numbers.
Boiling everything down to numbers leads to a narrow, simplified view of the world. We see only what we can count, and then we make decisions on only what we can count. This is a disastrous way to make decisions as it is often far removed from reality. It is bad enough when contemplating my shopping or planning decisions. It is particularly disastrous if you are going to apply it to something as complex as our ecosystems.
Photo by Ömer Haktan Bulut on Unsplash
History
Taking a step back, I would ask how much the evidence points to numbers being a good way to engage with the more than human world. So far, the cultures that have been most damaging to our ecosystems are those that are most ruled by numbers. Our Western European model of thought has been exported across the globe. It has roots in the Enlightenment when rationalist analysis began to underpin research and, eventually, decision making. It was highly successful in creating more material wealth, and it therefore was successfully spread across the globe. The visible success of this approach has led our society to focus ever more on the measurable - more so than any other society in history.
It is not the only thing that marks Western society out, but it strikes me that one of the most powerful tools used by our society to make decisions has led to decisions (often unintentional) that have had a cataclysmic impact on ecosystems. It is, after all, Western Society that has created the bulk of the ecological destruction we see today - whether directly or by other societies emulating our lead.
Should we then be using the same tools to try and save these ecosystems? Using the tool that caused such harm to now try to heal should be considered with great caution. Unless there is a very strong case that it can be used in a way that cures, would it not be best to at least refrain whilst other approaches are explored?
Arrogance
Yet, neither of these things are the true root of my sense of anger at this approach. For me the thing that really touches a nerve is that I experience the use of numbers to try and control ecosystems as arrogant. For humans to believe that we could regulate ecosystems better than they self-regulate is an astonishing act of arrogance. The Earth has maintained stable conditions for life for billions of years and didn’t need our help to do it. There was no analysis needed to sustain life.
It shows just how much we need to step back from a mindset of human analytical superiority. If we approach a problem with arrogance, it is almost impossible that the outcome will be as we hope. Indeed, we are likely to just make a bigger mess, faster.
Solving the equation
The reason this matters is that I believe that using an economic approach will result in ever more mess, rather than less. We cannot afford this. We will price ourselves, and many other beings, out of survival as the numbers just won’t add up to the reality.
Instead, we need to ask why the numerical approaches have led us to this mess in the first place and learn lessons from this. I think the big lesson is that humans cannot understand or analyse complex dynamics well enough to make big decisions. Instead we need to recognise that much of the success of complex dynamics comes from their self-regulation. We can make space for that by letting go of control - we can leave land to do what it wishes and make space for the wild. It might not look pretty or deliver maximum numerical value, but it is much more likely to lead to healthy, self-regulating ecosystems. We can give a helping hand by undoing the worst of our damage, but a helping hand is very different from full control.
The crisis is urgent and ever more pressing. Our urge is to choreograph ever more of the world. Instead we need to stop trying to control the outcome through analysis, and trust to the most wise and proven decision-makers: the astonishing and self-regulating ecosystems of the Earth.
Banner Photo by Zbynek Burival on Unsplash