This is not a punishment....

At this time New Zealand is in the grip of our biggest natural disaster in many, many decades. A powerful earthquake shook the major southern city of Christchurch just two days ago and flung the entire country into turmoil. A substantial relief effort is running against the clock to rescue well over two hundred people still believed to be missing, and we have sadly already lost 98. It is a disaster on a scale unprecedented in living memory, and there is not a kiwi in the world not feeling the weight of the tragedy.

Most of us sit glued, resolute, to news footage and radio broadcasts and general conversations about the magnitude of what we are in the midst of. Knowing that we'll recount the events of this week for generations to come, the emotion is palpable whenever it is mentioned. For the people (nearly 400,000) in Christchurch, their battles are immediate, life-threatening and in some cases, virtually insurmountable. May they stay as strong as strong can be and know we are all with them.

Many radio stations have taken on the admirable task of fielding calls from those in and outside the city. Some hysterically trying to locate loved ones still unaccounted for. Others ring to vent at the indiscretions of a nameless few that loot and vandalise in the worst of times. Others call using the radio network as a vital organisational tool for the distribution of donated food, water and goods. Still others call with tales of hope and strength that boost the audience, some of which will be sitting, exhausted and miserable in the debris they once called home. It is addictive broadcasting. But some calls have irked me.....

One chap rang today and said that Christchurch was feeling God's wrath (didnt say why?). Another said we are 'asking for it' building on a fault line. And yet another insightful individual attested that natures fury was upon us and we ought to just walk away. All three spiked my blood pressure due to their sheer insensitivity and timing, but the last one hurt. First because we have world class rescuers working around the clock to have to do anything but walk away. But second because it implied that nature has an intention....a maligned purpose to destroy humans.

The truth is, despite in some instances of it probably being wholly justified, nature does not act in such ways. It does not regard entities as enemies and friends. It is a complex system of interacting parts, processes and transformations of each that carries on whether we are there or not. Of course many of our actions cause great change to those elements, but nature is not a force to be angered. It is not a God that deals out punishment. And it certainly did not target the people of Christchurch. It is ridiculous to suggest so, barely 48 hours on and amid so much fear and misery that it is anything of the sort.

Nature is as nature does and the beautiful Garden City is not being punished. Two plates slid against each other....a sudden movement...a burst of energy....and a quake rocked our world. That simple...mindless rants ought to stay off the airwaves....most unhelpful

to fight and fade or engage and trade...

Those of the conservation persuasion are often idealists. Those that contend that a small amount of progress is good, but not near enough. We implore the masses to try that much harder to achieve utopian outcomes. Not utopian because they are inherently unreasonable or philosophically shaky - but utopian because the likelihood of their achievement is so confounded by the brutal context of modern development.

I come across this all the time in my research into environmental compensation, policy effectiveness and tradeability of natural values. There is a spectrum of perspectives on the offsetting of environmental damage. On one hand, there are those ardently opposed to the concept of treating nature as a commodity or worse, a checker on a checkerboard. This 'camp' tends to contend the following:
- nature is unique and any area of remote significance to the protection of biodiversity (read: almost everywhere) should be utterly devoid of human development. Anything less than total prohibition is selling out.
- offsetting loss of natural values is not only undesirable but nigh-on impossible. Establishing equivalency of exchanges is too uncertain and too damn hard.
- That the ultimate alternative to any undesirable activity should be to do nothing: to proceed far far away or not at all.

On the opposite side of the spectrum (keeping in mind the swathe of shades of grey in between) there are those that enthusiastically spout of the opportunities that compensation presents. The desperately underfunded conservation organisations (non government, government and otherwise) note the possibilities of tapping into private sector resources to achieve positive conservation outcomes. Regulatory agencies see light at the end of the arduous tunnel of negotiating the oxymoronic strands of sustainable development. Private sector eyes light up at the idea of the opportunity to leverage public favour and a smoother ride through the quagmire of resource management litigation.

And each side alternates in it's dominance. The former perspective, although noble, appears in practice to be old-fashioned, preservationist and largely non-constructive. It runs into deep difficulty when one considers the importance of the rights to utilise private land to fulfil private aspirations. It is more richly applied when such private interests see value gleaming in the public realm.

The second perspective is perhaps more pragmatic, but often bereft of an ability to consider the spatially specific importance of an ecological context and the intrinsic values thereof. The notion that everything is tradeable acorss space does, in all fairness, fly in the face of sound ecological science. And this perspective has been shown in theory and in practice to lead to skewed and ineffectual outcomes, based more on achieving consensus than success.

So, the debate will rage on. Some activities are, by their very nature, adverse in effect on natural ecosystems. Subdivision of open space, damming of rivers, construction of wind turbine fields, mining and other extraction activities, industrial activities like processing and refining, and any number of other examples. The residual effects can (purportedly) in some cases, reasonably be offset but what of the justification?

First you must justify why the activity proceeding free of restriction is not reasonable. Is it significant? What is significant and where do you draw the line? On the other hand, aren't areas that are not of significance important for biodiversity to provide buffers, connectivity and the like? Does that not make just about everything significant? And is that fair and why?

Once the common ground of this is established (i.e. we think it is 'this much' significant) then the contention becomes the reasonableness of proceeding with the proposed activity. Another opportunity for fighting as the decision is made whether the proposal be abandoned, scaled down or somehow offset.

Then, should option 3 be entered into, what then? How much is a reasonable offset and how much does it depend on external pressures for its scale, timing and likely success? And once established, how do you protect it so that the gain is as certain as the loss?

On reflection, it would seem to me that environmental compensation demands not only astute policy, nor simply robust scientific metrics, but rather a profound and fundamental decision on behalf of human kind. Do we want outcomes for biodiversity in the context of sustainable development that are 'good' or just 'good enough'? And to what extent does downgrading our aspirations to good enough mean that the current unsupportive context negates the possible positives? Are we resorting to more symbolic policies or making a genuine commitment to retaining the full suite of biodiversity and ecosystem function?

Conversely, is the desire to stop everything (except on Tuesdays between 4 and 6) counter productive? Is the cultivation of an adversarial approach to biodiversity protection retarding our ability to integrate resource management? Is there not some value in reasonable engagement with those embarking upon resource use to help to mould approaches, rather than just fight them? Or is the fear of selling out and downgrading too pervasive to see this happen in some instances?

It could be that our failures (repeated that they are) to 'sustainably manage', 'sustainably develop' or 'wisely use' (which ever moniker takes your fancy) biological resources is less about shaky policy, lax laws and poor resourcing than it is about a fundamental mismatch of expectations. These two sides of the spectrum have profoundly disparate and irreconcible views and discourse on the relative values of resistance and collaboration is sorely needed....