Originally Posted by Shaun 84 Targa
Several caveats are needed to put these striking results into context. First, any study is only as good as the available data. Globally robust data sets on environmental externalities are incomplete, and therefore the results are indicative, not absolute.
If they are incomplete, they are not indicative of anything other than a potential trend. No valid results can come from incomplete data sets.
Some significant environmental changes have been omitted: the destruction of coral reefs, the dispersal of persistent pollutants and the costs of biodiversity loss.
The highlighted portion is the most interesting to me and I am looking for more data on the cost of biodiversity loss. I have no idea how a baseline value would be assigned to BD, how it is measured and more so how calculate what or who is responsible for the BD loss.
The authors are up-front about these limitations. But they justly suggest that the omissions indicate that their estimates of ecological debts are conservative.
Not sure how the authors went from incomplete data sets, omission of data to a posit that their estimates of ecological debts are conservative.
Furthermore, the study does not look at the benefits of increased trade to material wealth and human health.
But they do in the final paragraph: "and how such changes both create and alleviate poverty."
But it is unlikely that this would change the balance of the results: the available, albeit partial, evidence indicates that, despite some gains by poorer countries through the liberalization of trade and finance, the number of people living in poverty has increased or stayed the same during the past 25 years, and the gains of economic globalization have been heavily skewed towards wealthy nations2 (Fig. 1). One of the most detailed studies on global inequality concludes9 that income divergence between rich and poor nations has "at best ... decelerated after 1950, but [has] not reversed". Large areas of Central and South America, and almost all of sub-Saharan Africa, have been left behind.
Again, now discussion on the underlying causes. This is where I thought they would make the leap to China, the sacrifice of the environment to creation of wealth, etc. Then compare it to the US where environmental regulations have arguably stifled growth.
I am also interested if they delve into the political aspects of poverty, the geographic limitation facing many countries, etc.
Srinivasan and colleagues' work1 should raise the scientific profile of issues vital to human well-being, including research into ecosystem services and the effects of large-scale ecosystem conversion, and how such changes both create and alleviate poverty. We must better understand the complex interactions between our economic, social and ecological systems, and the biological diversity that supports them. Scientists and society as a whole need to ask of our current economic paradigms in an era of globalization: why do they produce such inequities; who pays the costs; and are they ecologically and socially sustainable?
Agreed with everything as written.
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