Monthly Archive for March, 2006

Sea level rise, planning, and governance

Published on March 28, 2006 in Community, Environment, Governance, Mysteries and Science. 0 Comments

Rising sea levels will soon challenge our ability to adapt creatively and sustainably here in Florida. To date, none of the county-level planning in the Treasure Coast region has tackled the consequences that will arise from these changes. To be sure, the Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council released a report on sea level rise in December, 2005, and our planners submitted comments on a draft of the study. Still, it seems this report – and the whole issue of how we’re going to respond to rising sea levels – has been passed over in silence.

Now is the time to face sea level rise. We will see its many effects over the coming 10, 20, 30, 50, 100 years, and choices we are making today need to take rising sea levels into account.

For example, the engineered RO brine disposal marsh, the Spoonbill Marsh, is proposed for a location along the west shore of the Indian River Lagoon that has been identified in the Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council maps as an area that will be inundated by rising sea levels. Yet, sea level rise has not been incorporated in the design of this treatment plant. If sea levels rise, will the treatment plant still work? How long will it work before it’s under water? Have these questions, and a host of others, entered into the benefit-cost analysis of the project?

There are many similar examples, of course. Rising sea levels will do more than pose a threat to property built below ten feet elevation (the focus of the planning council’s report). The coming changes in sea levels will also impact water supplies (mainly through saltwater intrusion), RO brine wastewater disposal, stormwater management, and wastewater disposal.

Many of these issues are “trans-generational” in that they will unfold over the long term, and may involve management decisions and actions that span more than a single generation. Such issues are typically not handled well by elected officials, since they are not readily tractable and don’t yield quick results. Long range challenges like climate change and sea level rise will test our current forms of governance and decision-making. As a first step, we must begin addressing sea level rise in a comprehensive, coherent way, and we must do so now, or we’ll pay for it big time later.

The future of Florida’s $9.3 billion citrus industry

Published on March 24, 2006 in Economy, Environment, Growth, Mysteries, Science and Sustainability. 0 Comments

The University of Florida’s Institute for Food and Agricultural Science (IFAS) has just released a report forcasting the future of Florida’s huge, citrus industry. A summary appears here, and the full report may be found at the UF Food and Resource Economics site. These projections are of crucial importance to agricultural counties like ours (Indian River County, of “Indian River Grapefruit” fame). Thanks to Dr. Richard Baker, President of Pelican Island Audubon Society, for passing this along.

LAKELAND – Citrus canker and greening will reduce the volume of fruit produced in Florida over the next 15 years, and the state may never return to the level of fruit harvested in 2003 before hurricanes spread canker around the state, according to a new University of Florida report.

“In addition to these disease problems, rising land values will affect the willingness of investors to commit capital to citrus production in Florida, and we expect that orange and grapefruit production will decline before it begins to rebound,” said Tom Spreen, a professor with UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences.

“However, growing world demand for Florida’s high quality citrus is expected to help boost prices at all levels – ranging from growers to juice processors and consumers. In other words, higher prices should offset lower production volume,” he said.

These are some of the forecasts in the report – “An Economic Assessment of the Future of the Florida Citrus Industry” – prepared by UF’s food and resource economics department. Spreen, chairman of the department, presented the 166-page report to the Florida Department of Citrus today (March 23).

He said canker and greening will affect citrus producers in different ways so the economic impacts of the two diseases must be measured separately.

“Industry response to suppress citrus canker and greening will increase production costs in the near term,” he said. “These diseases will also affect revenues through decreased fruit yields and pack-out in fresh-fruit operations – eroding the overall profitability of the industry.”

Because of canker, 62 percent of the nursery trees in the state have been destroyed, severely limiting the acreage in groves that can be replanted over the next three years, Spreen said. The presence of canker and greening will also require new greenhouse investments and management systems to ensure disease-free nursery trees.

Citrus canker attacks the fruit and leaves of a citrus tree, resulting in increased premature fruit drop. The bacterial disease affects the external appearance of fruit grown for the fresh market, and the disease may open pathways for other pest problems, resulting in increased tree mortality. Spreen said it is likely that citrus canker will have more profound effects on fresh fruit producers compared to the processing segment of the industry.

Citrus greening, a more worrisome threat than canker, is already widespread in Asia, where little citrus is now produced. Considering the fact that the Asian citrus psyllid, which spreads the disease, is already present throughout Florida, it is likely that greening will eventually affect many commercial citrus production areas of the state, Spreen said.

Greening results in increased tree mortality. It is more likely to attack young trees than older trees, and there are many questions regarding economically sound management practices with respect to greening, he said.

“It is crucial that answers be found to these questions because increased tree mortality rates have a detrimental effect on the ability of a business to survive and compete in the global market,” Spreen said. “We need to identify practices that suppress greening for the most economical production of citrus in Florida.”

Because of Florida’s importance as a citrus producer, diseases that adversely affect production of various citrus varieties in the state will also affect prices. With the strong competition between Brazil and Florida in the world orange juice market, it is important to assess the supply response in both regions as they begin the process of managing citrus canker and citrus greening, Spreen said.

Analyses of the world market for orange juice and fresh and processed grapefruit were conducted to quantify the price effects of these diseases. This work was combined with grove-level analyses to assess the future profitability of citrus production in the state.

According to a separate agricultural land values report released in January by John Reynolds, a professor emeritus in the UF food and resource economics department, the price of Florida farmland increased by more than 80 percent between 2004 and 2005.

Spreen said increasing land prices have implications for all commodities grown in Florida, particularly citrus. Higher land prices mean higher investment costs for new grove development, he said.

“This factor – combined with increased costs of grove maintenance, lower yields and higher tree mortality associated with citrus canker and greening – will likely significantly increase the fruit price required to justify new grove development,” Spreen said.

“With the large number of bearing acres affected by the hurricanes in 2004 and 2005, along with groves that have been eradicated because of citrus canker, bearing citrus acreage in the state is down, pointing the way to smaller citrus crops in the future,” he said.

The new economic study also incorporated the effects of greening in Brazil, Florida’s main competitor in the world orange juice market. Citrus greening has been present in the state of Sao Paulo for two years and has spread to most of its commercial citrus production area.

Spreen said citrus production continues to be an important part of Florida agriculture and the state’s overall economy. A study based upon the 1999-2000 season provided an estimate that the total economic impact of citrus in Florida was nearly $9.3 billion, and this study was updated to reflect the 2003-04 season. The study also includes detailed projections on the future economic outlook for the industry as it begins an aggressive program to manage canker and greening.

Roving bandits pillaging the Treasure Coast

Published on March 22, 2006 in Community, Environment, Governance, Growth, Mysteries, Science and Sustainability. 0 Comments

A hot article just published in Science explores the effect of “roving bandits” over-exploiting freely accessible marine resources. The harvesters have no incentive to conserve, because global markets fail to reinforce the vested interest in maintaining local resources that arises from a sense of place. Globalization promotes new market development that is so rapid that the speed of resource consumption outstrips the ability of local governance to respond. This is the “tragedy of the commons” writ large. And what do Berkes et al. suggest as the proposed policy response? “Institutions with broad authority and a global perspective are needed to create a system with incentives for conservation.” Hmmm…now that sounds practical.

In contemplating the authors’ examples of sequential depletions of species (sea otters, cod, and sea urchins), I was immediately struck by the direct parallels with resource exploitation on land. I was thinking mainly of the roving, corporate bandits who are transforming North America into a patchwork of sprawling subdivisions, planned developments, and fake towns. They operate over a vast spatial scale, and move so fast that small communities have no time to mount an institutional response to protect their place-based character. The Treasure Coast is now facing an armada of such swift-moving pirates, buying up and depleting our region’s natural legacy, and leaving behind a bland landscape designed for the global marketplace.

There have been few effective responses to this kind of exploitation, and this is in part an unintended consequence of local control over land use. How the Treasure Coast might avoid the fate of South Florida remains a mystery.

Thoughts on local governance and science

Published on March 20, 2006 in Community, Governance, Mysteries and Science. 0 Comments

The following may sound cynical, but then I’ve watched local government in Florida closely for a decade or so, and have come to the following 4 guiding principles of governance.

1. Avoid making decisions.
2. When making a decision is unavoidable, take the path of least resistance.
3. Choose this path by using as little information as possible.
4. Before making a decision, identify who to blame if things go wrong.

Elected decision-makers following these principles give their administrative staff no clear sense of direction, so that very little effective action results. This leads to two corollaries:

C1. Consultants must be hired to recommend what decisions should be made.
C2. Decisions are based on information bought either from consultants, or from think tanks and institutes that are funded by special interests.

One interesting consequence for scientists hoping that science might help inform public policy is that they get treated just like any other stakeholders in the political process. My apologies to Kai Lee, the Resilience Alliance, and many other serious thinkers on these matters.

The simple mystery of Ockham’s razor

Published on March 18, 2006 in Mysteries and Science. 0 Comments

William of Ockham, Ockam, or Occam, was born at Ockham in Surrey, England, late in the thirteenth century. He studied at Merton College, Oxford, which was then a great center of scientific thought. While at Oxford he became a Franciscan, and taught at the University until 1323. His later life was largely spent in controversies with Pope John XXII and his successors, at first over the concept of evangelical poverty and later on the question as to whether the Emperor could depose the Pope. After captivity at Avignon, from which he escaped, he lived the later years of his life in Munich, under the protectorate of Ludwig IV of Bavaria. He died sometime in the late 1340’s, probably excommunicated for his religious beliefs; he was buried in the Franciscan Church in Munich, which was pulled down in the early 19th century.

The famous passage quia frustra fit per plura quod potest fieri per pauciora, “because it is vain to do by more what can be done by fewer,” occurs casually, almost as if it were a widely accepted opinion, as may well have been the case, in a demonstration that substance is itself a quantity, ipsamet substantia est tunc quantitas. This passage appears in Ockham’s work Tractatus quam gloriosus de sacremento altaris, et in primis de puncti, linae, superficiei, corporus, quantitatis, qualitatis et substantiae distinctione veneralibis Inceptoria Guilhelmi Ockham Anglici… (The very celebrated tract on the sacrament of the altar and particularly on the distinction of the point, line, surface, solid, quantity, quality and substance, of the venerable Inceptor William Ockham the Englishman…). An Inceptor was someone who had not yet earned a higher degree. The book, apparently based on lectures given at Oxford, seeks to establish a foundation theory of a geometrical kind as the basis for the doctrine of transsubstantiation in the Holy Eucharist. One of the most useful editions of the De Sacremento Altaris, as the book is usually called, is one edited by T. Bruce Birch (Burlington, Iowa, Lutheran Literary Board, 1930). This edition gives, opposite the Latin, a literal English translation; the passage quoted appears on pages 104-105.

Ockham apparently had an important influence on Luther and has been hailed as the forerunner of many later philosophers from Locke to Russell. His simplicity postulate has been treated in various ways by modern writers, though many philosophers have been attracted to the treatment presented by Harold Jeffreys in Scientific Inference (Cambridge University Press, 1931). Sparing the detail, Jeffreys maintains that the simple law is in some sense more likely to be true than any randomly chosen law of greater complexity. Though it leads to certain obvious difficulties, most scientists seem to feel that Ockham’s razor gives good entry to further complexities. As Lagrange said, “Seek simplicity but distrust it.”

The origin of this phrase “Ockham’s razor” is obscure, and though the Oxford English Dictionary lists it as a figurative use of “razor,” no derivation is presented, nor is the use of “razor” in this context explained. The meaning of the phrase is given “that for purposes of explanation things not known to exist should not, unless it is absolutely necessary, be postulated as existing.” Ockham seems not to have invoked this principle in theological disputations, at least not publicly; perhaps his shaves with the Church were close enough.