Posts in Conservation

Laura Huggins Friday, 10/01/2010

by Laura Huggins

Writing in today's National Review Online, Jonathan Adler describes why traditional environmentalists are experiencing a reckoning of sorts, building upon Walter Russell Mead's recent criticism of the environmental movement:

Mead argues that the environmental movement has become a victim of its own success. Environmentalists began as progressive Davids taking on industrial Goliaths. Now, however, the established environmental movement is a Goliath all its own. In Mead’s formulation, Bambi had become Godzilla: “The greens didn’t fail because they were too loyal to their ideals; they failed because they lost touch with the core impetus and values of the environmental movement. Bambi wasn’t crushed by Godzilla; Bambi turned into Godzilla, and the same kind of public skepticism and populism that once fueled environmentalism have turned against it.”
There are elements of truth in Mead’s thesis. Washington’s environmentalist lobby has indeed become “the voice of the establishment.” But the environmental movement’s problems run even deeper than its detachment from its grass-roots origins. All too often, the professional environmental lobby puts left-wing ideology and partisanship ahead of ecological protection.

Adler suggests that the environmental movement's answer to any environmental problem is always the same: increase the size of government. But while this approach has often been the source of much environmental harm, environmentalists still neglect to denounce more regulation.

Two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, leading environmental thinkers have yet to learn the lessons of Communism’s fall. The dominant green fantasy remains that ecological central planning can succeed where economic central planning failed. This is madness. If central planners lack the information and ability to manage economic concerns, how could they ever account for ecological concerns? Economic central planning is impossible; ecological central planning is harder still.
The environmentalist love affair with big government leads to counterproductive policies and alienates large portions of the electorate. Americans may support environmental protection, but they don’t support a massive, overweening regulatory state. If the only Green answer to ecological concerns is yet more government control of private economic activity, many Americans will turn away.

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Growing Trees for Health Care

Shawn Regan Friday, 10/01/2010

by Shawn Regan

More than 60 million acres of family forest land is owned by people who intend to sell or transfer their land in the near future. Many of these owners want to pass their land on to the next generation but often liquidate their timber out of fear and uncertainty surrounding health care costs, according to a study by the Pinchot Institute for Conservation.

In response, the Pinchot Institute partnered with a health care provider to kickstart a program to assuage landowners' concerns over health care costs. The pilot program, located in Vernonia, Oregon, is based on the notion that "though money may not grow on trees, it is stored in them."

It would allow landowners to use the carbon stored in their trees as a sort of all-purpose health savings account. The money would come from companies and individuals interested in purchasing carbon credits to offset their own carbon footprints, thus creating an incentive among landowners to hold onto their land. The money would go directly to Regence BlueCross BlueShield, which would in turn provide different levels of health coverage to the landowners, depending on what they wanted.

...Sharon Bernal, a real estate agent in Vernonia, said she believed the program would create much-needed incentives for landowners because so many are struggling under the weight of the current economic recession.
This problem has only compounded over years, as there have become fewer and fewer financial incentives for forest landowners to hold onto their property, according to Amy Grotta, a forestry faculty member at Oregon State University’s extension services in Columbia and Washington counties. “(Without insurance), people might otherwise sell their forest land,” Grotta said. “It’s something we continue to see.”

The program also plans to pool about 20 percent of funds to contribute towards a new health care clinic. They hope to have 300 landowners signed up by the end of the year.

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Banking for Water on the Colorado

Reed Watson Wednesday, 09/29/2010

by Reed Watson

The second case study in PERC's Water as a Crop^TM series features the Colorado River Water Bank, a market-based policy proposal that could improve Colorado's long-term water security. As the case study explains, the Colorado River Compact obligates the state of Colorado and other Upper Basin states to leave a certain amount of water in the Colorado River for Lower Basin states. As Colorado's growing population demands more and more water, the state risks violating that agreement. The proposed water bank stands to alleviate that risk -- and to reduce the cost should a curtailment occur -- by allowing water users throughout Colorado to trade consumption rights.

Click here to read the case study. For more on the series, see Cheney Lake Watershed: Farming Water Quality in Kansas.

Reed Watson is a research fellow and the coordinator of applied programs at PERC.

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Turning Water Into a Crop: Lessons from Cheney Lake

Brandon Scarborough Tuesday, 09/21/2010

by Brandon Scarborough

Increasing water scarcity and decreasing water quality have become two of the leading environmental and economic challenges we now face. In a recent nationwide survey of water quality, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reported that roughly 42 percent of stream miles and 23 percent of lakes are in poor condition and no longer support their intended uses. Additionally, changing precipitation and water withdrawal patterns have reduced stream flows in many locations below the level required to maintain habitat for fish and wildlife.

Given these challenges, it is crucial that public policy recognizes the importance of water as an asset. So doing requires understanding the institutions that govern water ownership and allocation and the ways in which these institutions encourage or discourage conservation. Given such an understanding of the institutions, it is then possible to recognize that water can be both an input as well as an output in production processes.

PERC’s new Water as a Crop^TM case studies exemplify free market environmentalism by describing profitable strategies for marketing agricultural water to non-agricultural water quantity and quality demanders. As the value of clean water and free flowing streams continues to increase, farmers and ranchers are reevaluating the way they use water and land resources to produce outputs. When landowners can profit from improvements to environmental quality, outputs such as clean water, wildlife habitat, and improved stream flows become additional “crops” in a landowner’s production function. From apple growers in Washington to irrigators in Georgia, the agriculturalists identified in the case studies practice water conservation not only because it can be profitable but also because it is the right thing to do.

The first in a series of case studies highlights the efforts of farmers in south central Kansas that are now managing their land and water resources not only for agricultural production, but for improved water quality and enhanced habitat for fish and wildlife. Partnering with the City of Wichita, a local conservation district, and state and federal agencies, area farmers have developed a watershed-wide plan to improve water quality by putting environmental outputs in the hands of the farmers. In the end, farmers improve their land use practices and their economic returns and the city reduces its water treatment costs, while reduced sediment and pollution increase the production of environmental services.

Brandon Scarborough is a research fellow at PERC and coauthor of Saving our Streams: Harnessing Water Markets, available at perc.org.

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