Predicting the unpredictable

Executive summary - the Ecosystem Approach is quack science, and the UK’s Houses of Parliament report from 2011 makes that crystal clear.

Period.

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Before we kick off, I want you to look at this YouTube clip.

This is a very simple 2D Navier-Stokes, simulating airflow relative to various shapes.

Now, consider the following; should you change -

• Floating point precision of the calculations from 32 to 64 bit, the simulation will change, eventually slowly, but it won’t be long before you’ll notice this change yielding a dramatic impact.

• The discrete time step, and it’s the same story.

• Even one pixel of the shapes themselves, again, will quickly result in a very, very different output.

• The position or rotation of any of the shapes - or the position or direction of the airflow - again, same story. Very, very different output.

• The velocity - or even use some level of variable velocity, as is the case with nature itself - and then again, the entire simulation changes.

And none of this even considers expanding the simulation to three dimensions, introducing a second shape, considering a reflexive environment, adding animation to the shape, or, or, or, or, or. Nature is vastly more complex.

ANY change to the settings will yield a different outcome. It is, in other words, completely impossible to predict. It’s chaotic. And so is nature itself.

And anyone stating otherwise is either grossly incompetent, or trying to pull wool over your eyes.

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Let me start by attaching the entire document from 2011 with my markups, courtesy of the House of Parliament. It is frankly that ridiculous, that I have no idea why I didn’t have to resort to using wayback to locate it. Had I personally penned this, I would promptly retire, hoping no-one would ever identify me for producing this utter mockery of science.

To state in simple terms - the Ecosystem Approach is pure guesswork. It’s a laughable, disjointed attempt to predict the unpredictable; a hopeless claim of being able to tame chaos.

It’s just extremely carefully hidden under verbose and utterly dull verbiage.

First off, it’s the Ecosystem Approach, yes it’s the Convention on Biological Diversity, and yes, you’re probably bored of this by now. But it’s important. First off because I might have misunderstood the 12 principles, so this serves as confirmation if nothing else. Because all of us make mistakes from time to time. But also because I can’t be bothered to deal with people claiming I misunderstood some absolute technicality, when said typically haven’t even bothered to read the description beyond the first line on Wikipedia.

Except, here I haven’t misunderstoof. Every comment I’ve made so far I stand by. Well, apart from one, possibly, but we’ll get to that.

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The overriding theme here is that of management. But while the authors - unnamed as they smartly decided to remain - are certainly not shy of discussing management techniques, the evaluation thereof, or the different stakeholders, or interpretations, or various states, or the limitations of knowledge, or or or… at no time are they honest about what the Ecosystem Approach actually suggests. Which is to wrestle control away from the present land owner, and arbitrarily transfer property rights further up the hierarchical management structure, without any genuine control over the process. It is thoroughly undemocratic. And the overview already hints as such -

‘Changes in the way ecosystems are managed can be contentions as they result in different flows of benefits from ecosystem services, and costs to be borne’

In other words, whoever at present benefits from what’s on a plot of land - be it a home, a beetroot patch, or even a Christmas tree plantation - regardless of which change is made, someone will end up with the worse deal, and that someone almost certainly will be whoever owns said house or beetroot patch in the present system.

Further, alone the fact that someone - the stakeholders - can assign rights away from the original owner should be alarming as it is. Which is probably why it continues, stating that ‘It remains unclear what kind of governance structures and institutions are most capable of delivering the ecosystem approach and sustaining flows of ecosystem services in the longer term‘.

The answer to that, however, is very simple. Because under the present structure, that is the owner of the plot, given that it’s his.

But it’s precisely this right they seek to eliminate.

‘…there has so far been little progress in incorporating relevant practices into the actual management programmes for natural resources.‘

Again — which management programmes for natural resources? What this implies is that the present owner of the plot no longer is in charge. And who takes ownership of the resources? The stakeholder, correct?

‘Conservation policy has previously focused on protection of areas of high species diversity, but it is not yet understood how these coincide with high levels of ecosystem services.‘

Translated to English, it broadly means they don’t have the faintest clue if this indeed will work, or how. High levels of ecosystem services means, ie, elevated logging or water use, and they don’t even have the faintest idea how this meshes with biodiversity in general. This section alone should instantly dismiss the entire quasi-scientific Ecosystem Approach, and probably would, did they not intentionally attempt to hide their rampant intellectual dishonesty behind opaque, excessive verbiage.

‘There are numerous different stable ecosystem states possible for any area of land, each with different combinations of services and reflecting the different aspirations of those who could benefit or lose from changes in service delivery‘

Ie - biodiversity will naturally find an equilibrium regardless of what’s on the plot of land in question. Should you plant a forest, it will eventually find an equilibrium, and so it will, should you build a colossal pile of cow dung.

‘The benefits generated by ecosystem services are both private and public goods, occur over a range of temporal and spatial scales and can be associated with a variety of property rights and other institutional arrangements‘

More meaningless nonsense. Which benefits? And which of those benefits are private, and public? Without specifics, this is completely void of meaning.

As for the ‘range of temporal and spatial scales’, again, this is utterly meaningless, because it could be taken to mean any period of time, and any patch of land.

Finally, the variety of property rights and other institutional arrangements once again is completely arbitraty - in fact the entire quote above is.

‘The gainers and losers from any environmental change vary depending on the type and scale of ecosystem service provided, the mix of stakeholders involved, the economic characteristics and the cultural context.‘

It’s the same story again. It states quite literally nothing.

It is telling, however, because who selects the stakeholders to be involved? Oh golly, better not elucidate on that key matter.

‘… most ecosystem services are not sold in markets. However, economic valuation techniques can be used to attach an appropriate value to benefits arising from them.‘

This is hinting at Enron accounting, quite frankly. What was their term again, ‘hypothetical future value’ wasn’t it? Because if you can’t sell it, it won’t have a cash value, and consequently, everything is guesswork. Or, I guess, valued by David E Margin’s magic valuation equation.

‘Even if ecosystem services have no formal economic valuation, they can still be traded.‘

Setting aside the ludicrous, absurd logic courtesy of The Onion, this is pretty much how ponzi schemes work. The hope of cashing out at a higher point than where you entered. Because these things won’t generate income in themselves, ergo, no way to value them in a traditional sense.

‘Identifying and providing qualitative assessment of the potential impacts of policy options on ecosystem services, through an ecosystem service valuation assessment‘

I refer you to my point above relating to Navier-Stokes. Any - any - action taken on a plot of land will have almost impossible to assess outcomes — short of bulldozing and covering it with tarmac, of course, though even that would probably yield a more complex underground biota.

‘The value of the natural resource systems is the value of the flow of benefits less the cost to produce them. Some of these have direct market values, such as crops, whereas others such as the regulation of water flows by wetlands do not. Typically, the relevant natural capital stocks cannot be transported to another location, meaning that some ecosystem services are location specific, particularly regulatory, supporting and cultural ecosystem services‘

We start off with establishing value = output - input, establishing that trees and fields cannot be moved to different plots (golly), and hence the value of said ‘services’ relate to their location. I mean, genius.

In comparison to the prior quote, anyway.

‘The spatial layout of ecosystems and the natural capital stock within them is important for the interactions that give rise to beneficial processes and ecosystem services‘

It’s more of the same. It’s as though they spent their childhood playing Civilization, and think that real life’s exactly the same. It’s beyond incomprehensibly retarded.

‘Equally, the social value of ecosystem services relates spatially to where they are consumed. The development of spatially explicit ecosystem service indicators at appropriate scales is critical to assessing impacts of changes.‘

The first part is essentially the mirrored argument as above, just this time from the perspective of who derives the benefit. Again, Einstein logic.

The second part, however, again hints at a total lack of land ownership rights, as the ‘manager’ will decide at which scale to make decisions, and obviously on the back of incomplete information.

This is dangeously incompetent - at best. Except, of course, that it isn’t incompetence.

‘The relevant scale for mapping ecosystem services remains a matter of debate as ecosystem management decisions can be taken at the national, regional or local level.’

In other words, they can opt for a decision targeting your plot only, at the level of your neighbourhood, town, region, or even nation. Up to the stakeholders — not you.

’Local scale areas are based more on natural landscape boundaries, such as an area of similar geology like chalk downland or a river catchment.‘

And certainly not your property rights, which are long gone.

‘A full spatial classification of ecosystem services and their quantification and mapping for each location would also take into account local, regional and global consumers of ecosystem service benefits‘

Absurd. Even considering all your local inputs, external voices will still be heard, and this decision through a process which I’m sure you will have no involvement with. Absolute and total quack science, and absolutely undemocratic through and through.

‘Globe International’s Natural Capital Action Plan recommended that all policy and project proposals that influence the environment should undergo economic appraisal that includes the valuation of ecosystem services‘

First off - the UK government just admitted to accepting input from Al Gore’s deeply undemocratic organisation. And furthermore, I refer you to the video clip above, because said valuation is nothing short of guesswork.

‘explicit measures of the condition and trends of biodiversity associated with the relevant ecosystems‘

Explicit guesswork, that is.

‘the context of contrasting future scenarios, which incorporate both the value of ecosystem services and the cost of actions affecting those ecosystems, so that the impacts of alternative decisions on ecosystem services can be assessed‘

Again, we’re back to playing Civilization. If I replace my farmland square next to my capital with a mine…

‘integration of an analysis of risks and uncertainties, including the limitations of knowledge of the impacts of human actions on ecosystems‘

It’s just incomprehensible how anyone educated can write this with a straight face. Said impacts ARE outside the limitations of knowledge.

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I’ve had enough. Honestly, this is such utter fraudulent quack science for political purpose. Part of me really does want to know who penned this, another part is secretly hoping it was the output of 1,000,000 monkeys on typewriters. Because this contemptuous, deliberately intellectually dishonest piece of trash science is more than an indicator that something is seriously wrong with politics in general - not just that this is produced in the first place, but also because it hasn’t been called out for being the complete and utter intentionally misleading scam as the case is.

But there’s one part I wish to finish off with, because I think I got it wrong in my first article on the Ecosystem Approach, and it’s this-

‘The closer management is to the ecosystem, the greater the responsibility, ownership, accountability, participation, and use of local knowledge. It is only at the local scale that holistic decision-making which can accommodate consideration of multiple benefits, trade-offs between ecosystem service benefits, environmental limits and appropriate levels of stakeholder participation is possible. Where communities are equipped with suitable information on the consequences of decisions, participatory approaches can improve outcomes.‘

My former interpretation was that the ecosystem was to be seen as one, and consequently, it was some false suggestion that those higher up in the hierarchy would be judged more harshly than those below. Given this phrasing - especially considering the added term ‘local knowledge’ - I actually now think it’s the peasants closer to the floor who will have the book thrown at them for failing to predict the unpredictable.

Which then is a further insult, because those ridiculous get-out clauses in the 12 principles will definitely not be used to spare those acting on obvious imperfect information.

No, when it comes down to it, probably better not to do anything at all.

And that’s probably also deliberate, because it’s the only way we’ll ever close in on net zero.