Why are natural environments often degraded in the name of economic progress even when this invites disaster, and how can this be overcome?

This was one of discussion questions of the Disasters and Ecosystems MOOC.

Actually the answer is simple. The formula for successful environmental degradation consists of 2 variables – overpopulation and capitalism.

When there are a lot of people – most of them a poor, uneducated and hungry. When you are hungry you will do everything to become less hungry today even if it can potentially lead to negative consequences tomorrow, which you may not even foresee if you are uneducated.

Humans are good in adaptation. When the adaptation is strong enough it leads to abuse (for example, if you are well adopted at the stock market you start abusing it to increase your profit even if it will cost dearly to the other stakeholders – people value their own well-being much more than the other’s and of course much more than the well-being of environment especially when they know that their own impact seems negligible compared to impact of the entire population).  When you live in condition of free market of capitalistic world – you are your only hope for not being hungry (or being more wealthy) now. And as you know from the economic theory – the capitalist economy needs a constant grows of consumption and production – so you need more and more resources to just sustain the economy. In conditions of capitalist market people value today’s profit much more than losses of tomorrow

You see – the capitalist economy needs people to consume more and more; more people – more consumption; more people – more poverty and lack of education; more hungry uneducated people people – more people willing to do anything to survive now and don’t even bother themselves about the future.

Overpopulation and a consumption society (created by capitalist economy) inter-stimulate each other and destroy the environment for the today’s profits or food and doesn’t care much of the consequences of tomorrow because most are either uneducated or doesn’t care at all plus you have to live through today to face consequences of your actions tomorrow (a day-by-day living).

Obviously there are 3 steps to improve the situation:

• Decrease the population.
• Educate people.
• Create new sustainable economy model that would equally value tomorrow’s losses and today’s profits, and would not rely on constantly increasing consumption.

About GDP flaws

Here you can find some short and clear insights about GDP flaws in prosperity measuring and about The Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) implementation instead.

• GDP TREATS CRIME, DIVORCE AND NATURAL DISASTERS AS ECONOMIC GAIN
• GDP IGNORES THE NON-MARKET ECONOMY OF HOUSEHOLD AND COMMUNITY
• GDP TREATS THE DEPLETION OF NATURAL CAPITAL AS INCOME
• GDP INCREASES WITH POLLUTING ACTIVITIES AND THEN AGAIN WITH CLEAN-UPS
• GDP TAKES NO ACCOUNT OF INCOME DISTRIBUTION
• GDP IGNORES THE DRAWBACKS OF LIVING ON FOREIGN ASSETS

Despiceble ESRI’s competition

There a lot of contemptible actions around environmental issues. Infamous permission for pollution of the Baikal lake sighed by Putin is an example. But what is your opinion on this “International Conservation Mapping Competition” organised by ESRI and the Society for Conservation GIS? They offer some money really miserable amount of money for NGO in several nominations:

$5,000 — Grand Prize
$1,000 — Best Cartography
$1,000 — Best Web Map
$1,000 — Best Use of Science
$1,000 — Best Societal Impact
$1,000 — Best Innovative Map

The main condition is: “Entries must be created using Esri GIS as a primary tool”. Go ahead and ask for a prising list: there is no way you will pay less than $1,000 for the cheapest license.

Prizes of this competition do not worth a try until you already purchased a license for ESRI’s software. And if some NGO purchased software from ESRI, than this NGO doesn’t worth support of community, because there are plenty of free and open-source GIS software, which is even better than ESRI’s, ESTI’s, Intergraph’s, etc. The money that NGO would spend for proprietary GIS software would find better implementation in hands of professionals who will get the job done with free and open-source GIS software! It is even cost-effective to pay for job, not for the software!

There is a trust. A trust of volunteers or sympathizer in particular NGO. Would someone donate money to NGO who spend it ineffectively? I don’t even need to search for example. I was used to donate to the Russian department of WWF. But one day I received a call from WWF and had a conversation with a young man on a subject of WWF’s activity and (the main point of the conversation) the possibility of donating more… I was disappointed. The money I gave them were used to pay for the phone bills to talk to me about the money instead of being used for nature protection. Since that conversation I do not donate WWF – they’ve lost my trust. It is clear that a professional (who contribute to NGO’s activity) would use an open-source GIS software, not proprietary, so NGOs which finds it acceptable to pay for proprietary GIS software do not have professionals, which means they don’t worth trust.

So the point of so called ESRI’s competition (or grants for NGOs for ESRI’s licenses) is a sales promotion and nothing else. But the sale promotion, which might be acceptable in general, is discussing when NGOs are involved. Shame on ESRI, shame on Society for Conservation GIS! If they would want to help NGOs – prizes would be at least 10 times higher and money would be granted despite software used.

Civil war presentment

There is a news story – interview with a leader of antifascists which made a mess with the building of Himki administration.  For better understanding of causes of this mess you should read digest of events for Himkinsky forest rescuing (you may read only red colored text) – the conflict between common people and the capitalistic Power (government, local administration, criminals and even church).

Not the interview with the Antifa leader is interesting by itself but the following video-interview with the correspondent of the paper. In the end of the video he said that he has a civil war presentment… 

I have that presentment too… And what about you?

http://www.kommersant.ru/media/00007083.swf

Idea 2017

Recently I thought on a subject “how to create a better life in Russia”. I was riding on my bicycle at that moment. Riding at the beautiful Lahti town in Southeastern part of Finland – one of the Northern Europe counties as Sweden, Norway and Danemark for example. And for a long time Finland was a part of Sweden. This 4 countries are well known for its high quality level of life and economic development as for environmental preservation and strong social support system. On the picture below we’ll compare the most important social and economic aspects of development for Russia (red), Norway (green) and Finland (blue).

Finland, Norway and Russia comparison (click to enlarge) – Nuff said / facepalm (source: Legatum Prosperity Index)

Actually we can see from this picture, that Russian government do not give a fuck about the population – only about the money (no, it is not about wellbeing of common people – it’s about wellbeing of corporations and bureaucrats).

So I thought what if we can place some smart people from Norway for example (‘couse they know how to use natural resources in the wright way) in charge in Russia to let them develop the country in the way it should be?! Sounds crazy, isn’t it?

But I’m even not original! This idea is like 12 hundreds years old! And the most unbelievable is that it was realized with Nordic guy named Rurik! And even the name “Russia” is after Nordic people.

So let MedvePut (yes Medvedev and Putin are one being with Gazprom as holy spirit) to have a rest. And we’ll invite some people who knows how to create a better world.

It is hard to take public control over government, so let’s not get hurry but state the deadline to change Russia for good. To my mind 2017 is a reasonable deadline. Which month? October is a wright month for such things, isn’t it?

Where are oligarchs?

marker.ru (site that I mentioned in the previous post) provide us with incredible opportunity to watch over trails of yachts of Russian oligarchs. Here you can find a name, owner, cost, image, location and speed of yachts that belongs to robbers of the ex-great country.

Comments are so friendly:

“Does these coordinates precise enough for rocket launchers?”

P.S. Spatial source for the service is here (it is interesting to see too – you can find information about lot of ships).

P.P.S. I assume that marker.ru specialized in economical corruption-revealing news. This is uncommon and strange… but cool!

Africa exploitation

I like maps and GIS. But I want to show you something that is neither one nor another, but quite similar. It is very nice flash animation for information about export from Africa to developed countries – exploitation in other words. You can play with it here and I will just provide a couple of screen-shots.

Here you can chose country of your interest and click to see stats

Example of the stats

The Yes Men Fix The World

“If we let the free-market cult  keep running the world, there wouldn’t be a world left to fix.”  [“The Yes Men Fix The World”]

 I strongly recommend you to see “TheYesMenFixTheWorld” p2p edition movie. It’s a very funny documentary film: you will laugh a lot watching it even if revealed subjects are not funny at all. 

“THE YES MEN FIX THE WORLD is a screwball true story about two gonzo political activists who, posing as top executives of giant corporations, lie their way into big business conferences and pull off the world’s most outrageous pranks. This peer-to-peer special edition of the film is unique: it is preceded by an EXCLUSIVE VIDEO of the Yes Men impersonating the United States Chamber of Commerce. Because the Yes Men are being sued for this stunt, p2p is the only way that this film will get seen. Please spread the word!”

You can find official site of the project here.

Special thanks (from me of course) to thepiratebay.org which puts info about this film on its home page!