Healthy Solutions for the Low Carbon Economy
Guidelines for Investors, Insurers and Policy Makers
 The Ecological Context: How Systems Work
Richard Levins Ph.D., Harvard School of Public Health
Lecture Given on February 7, 2007
Lecturer Biography
Lecture Summary
Readings
Resources
Lecture Video (Streaming)
Biography
Richard Levins is an ex-tropical farmer turned ecologist. He researches in evolutionary, public health, agricultural ecology, philosophy of science and mathematical biology with a special interest in the understanding of complexity and is a participant/observer in the transformation of Cuban agriculture toward an ecological pathway. At HSPH he teaches Human Ecology in the fall and The Ecology of Health in Development in the spring, in the Department of Population and International Health.
Summary
1. The case of the Lake Victoria ecosystem–a case study in mis-development: The introduction of the Nile perch to "improve" fishing and the impacts of deforestation, mining, the invasion of the water hyacinth converge to debase the environment while increasing "the economy."
2. General ecological observations: Organisms select, modify, define and react to their environments. Human biology is a socialized biology at all levels.
3. Mutualist, competitive, Predator/prey and other inter-specific relations in communities. Process in complex networks. Sources, sinks, feedbacks in ecosystems. Stability, resistance and resilience.
4. The eco-social distress syndrome–a pervasive, multidimensional dysfunctional relationship between our species and the rest of nature and with each other. It is the latest of many crises we have faced in the last 50,000 years. The Eco-social Distress Syndrome includes depletion of nonrenewable resources; excessive exploitation of renewable resources including the major life support systems of fisheries, grazing lands, forests, and agricultural lands and water; saturation of the waste removal capacity; pollution of the environment with 100,000 historically new molecules and increased exposure to heavy metals, noise, and electromagnetic radiation.; demographic disruption; emergence of new diseases and resurgence of old ones; growing inequality among and within countries; nationalist conflicts; destruction of indigenous and other cultures; Loss of biodiversity; a system of knowledge with growing sophistication in the small and increased irrationality at the level of the enterprise as a whole.
5. The peoples of the world want a rising standard of living, but if it follows the Euro-North American pattern it is unsustainable. When two urgent human needs such as justice and sustainability come into conflict a good working hypothesis is that we have posed the problem too small: what if a rising standard of living were based on raising the quality of life more than the unlimited consumption of energy and materials? Development as a branching path with choices along the way.
6. The example of ecological agriculture from capital intensive to knowledge intensive, from the industrial scale monocultures to planned heterogeneity, from large scale to mixed scales of planning and production with a rotating patchwork of land uses; combining traditional and local knowledge with scientific knowledge. Soil fertility would be based on microbial nitrogen fixation, fungal mobilization of minerals, rotation, green and animal manure, composting, earthworms. Pest management through polyculture, trap and repellant crops, natural enemies (predators, parasites, infections). Example of Cuba.
Readings
Levins R. How Cuba is going ecological. Paper presented at Latin American Studies Association meetings. October 2005.
Levins R, Lopez C. Toward an ecosocial view of health. International Journal of Health Services. 1999; 29(2):261-293.
Levins R. Preparing for Uncertainty. International Journal of Ecosystem Health. 1995; 1(1):47-57. Resources
Brown, Lester. Eco-economics. Earth Policy Institute 2001.
Foster JB. A planetary defeat: the failure of global environmentalism. Monthly Review. Jan. 2003.
Levins R. A whole-system view of agriculture, people, and the rest of nature. In: Cohn A, Cook J, Fernandez M, Reider R and Steward S, eds. Agroecology and the Struggle for Food Sovereignty in the Americas. New Haven, CT: Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies; 2006.
Levins R and Lewontin RC. Organism and environment. In: The Dialectical Biologist. Harvard University Press 1985. pp.51-58.
Martens, Pim. Health and Climate Change. EarthScan Publications Ltd. London 1998
McMichael AJ. System Overload (Chapter 4 of Planetary Overload. pp. 82-107. Cambridge University Press; 1993.)
Meadows, Donella H., Dennis L. Meadows and Jorgen Randers. Beyond the Limits. Chelsea Green Publishing Co. White River Junction Vermont. 1992.
Samir A. The Millennium Development Goals: A critical view from the South. Monthly Review. 2006;57(10):1-15.
Zimmerer, Karl S. and Thomas J. Bassett. Political Ecology: and integrative approach to geography and environment-development studies. Guilford Press 2003.
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