Agriculture and the question of environmental security – Meeting the ecosystem challenge – What is environmental security for?
Winston Churchill, seeing a group celebrating on the fateful autumn evening of "peace in our time" in 1938 was heard to mutter "Those poor people. They little know what they will have to face".
Today, at a time of wonderful scientific progress we might nevertheless be tempted to make the same remark although many scientists and policy makers indeed have a very good idea of what is coming down the tracks in environmental terms. But, at least to me, it is not yet clear that a full realisation exists of the consequences environmental degradation will bring.
The environment is not a giver of free dinners although occasional snacking has seemed possible even if current consumption seems to go beyond this. The build up of greenhouse gases, the run down of natural resources, the increased pressure on water resources and the long slow and now rapid depletion of biodiversity all have a price in both environmental and economic terms. Without wishing to over dramatise, the short answer to the question as to what environmental security is for is the continued long-term successful existence of human and other life on the planet.
We need clean water and natural resources for life and biodiversity, together with them, provides not just our food but the functioning of the ecosystem. Of course, it is not as if the environment were not resilient or unable to overcome minor setbacks. It is more a matter of its reaction to constant and increasing attack, which can eventually overcome its resilience.
In today's debate on agriculture, it is appropriate to concentrate on land and land use in addressing environmental security. Soil is the greatest storehouse of terrestrial carbon in the world and upon it and its associated cover depends most of our food supply and also a large part of the regulation of the carbon and weather cycles as well as the tasks of filtering and storing water, storehousing, biodiversity and replenishing nutrients. It is a bit like a second row forward in rugby – essential to the team but unlikely to win man of the match award. Yet, you cannot but be struck by our worldwide attitude to it and indeed to some of the best agricultural soils. Urban expansion, be it in Tokyo or Dublin, means we lose vast areas with, in some cases, imports from afar replacing what was formerly produced locally.
This simple illustration, and there are others related to soil, including desertification, raises general questions as to how we treat one of our great natural resources not just in Europe but worldwide and therefore how much we truly understand long-term environmental security. It is not by chance that the UNCCD is sometimes called the poor man's convention.
And there are many other examples. World supplies of economically extractable phosphorus are limited. Yet intensive agricultural practices have led to soil and water phosphorus saturation in some areas while poorer parts suffer demineralisation and resultant yield loss. We could, certainly in Europe, reduce greatly our demands on newly mined phosphorus by an active reuse and recycling policy; it would be costly but saving in terms of finite resources.
We face equally difficult issues on biodiversity. The introduction of set-aside in 1992 contributed to reduced fertiliser and plant protection product use in the years immediately following and there is abundant scientific evidence of improvement in many species thereafter, as well as less pressure on water. As set-aside now draws to an end, those benefits risk to be lost unless there is a very substantial investment in agri-environment to redress the balance – and here the issue of resource allocation comes to the fore.
There are very problematic questions to be addressed as agriculture intensifies in a bid to feed and perhaps partly fuel the world. Three of the most important relate to what extent intensive agriculture is capable of respecting the environment – and our current nitrates directive derogations will provide some evidence in this regard. Secondly, can species and habitats thrive when pushed to the field margins and still fulfil their ecosystem role? The third involves opening up new land, be it forest or extensive range or scrub, to more intensive use – what will be the cost to water, to biodiversity and to soil carbon and what ultimately to the global ecosystem?
My penultimate point relates to sustainability. It often seems that, when push comes to shove, socio-economic factors still come first and the environment is somehow squeezed. This may be tolerable in a transition period but as our knowledge of environmental security needs grows, it can no longer be acceptable. Integration with the environment given a key place of at least equality and in preference more is necessary to achieve security.
Environmental security presents a global and local challenge. The parameters – soil, water, biodiversity, etc – together forming the world's ecosystem are individually but not really collectively understood. But this is required if policy and practice worldwide are to ensure security and hence the opportunity to survive and thrive. All actors including policy makers, scientists and the entire agricultural and forest sectors have to play their roles both locally and globally.
The views expressed in this paper are those of the author. They do not engage the European Commission in any way.
