Controversies in Science & Technology: From Sustainability to Surveillance [4] 978–0–19–938377–1

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Controversies in Science & Technology

Controver sies in Science & Technology, Volume 4 From Sustainability to Surveillance

Edited by Daniel Lee Kleinman, Karen A. Cloud-Hansen, and Jo Handelsman

1

1 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford New York Auckland  Cape Town  Dar es Salaam  Hong Kong  Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016

© Oxford University Press 2014 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. CIP data is on file at the Library of Congress. ISBN 978–0–19–938377–1

987654321 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments  vii 1. Introduction: From Sustainability to Surveillance   1 Robert M. Chiles PART ONE: Infrastructure Development: Resilience, Privacy, and Well-Being 2. Our Fragile Infrastructure: Adapting to Global Warming   17 Matthys P. Levy 3. Critical Infrastructure in Extreme Events   33 Thomas A. Birkland and Megan K. Warnement 4. Privacy Concerns for Ubiquitous Data Aggregation and Storage   47 Jarrod M. Rifkind and Seymour E. Goodman 5. Transitioning to Renewable Sources of Electricity: Motivations, Policy, and Potential   62 Chelsea Schelly 6. Infrastructure and Health   73 Ka man Lai PART TWO: Food Policy: Balancing Productivity, Conservation, and Social Justice   7. How to Feed Ourselves—Could This Be the Biggest Question of the 21st Century?   89 Frances Moore Lappé 8. Global Obesity and Global Hunger   111 Kelly Moore and Judith Wittner 9. Food Sovereignty, Food Security: Markets and Dispossession   124 Annette Aurélie Desmarais and Jim Handy

10. Food Security and Gender   137 Belinda Dodson and Allison Goebel PART THREE: Chemicals and Environmental Health: Defining Safety   11. Endocrine Disruptors in the Environment   153 Nancy Langston 12. C  hemicals Policy in the United States—The Need for New Directions   166 Joel A. Tickner 13. P  olitics in a Bottle: BPA, Children’s Health, and the Fight for Toxics Reform   183 Jody A. Roberts 14. O  f Baby Bottles and Bisphenol A: Debates about the Safety of an Endocrine Disruptor   196 Sarah A. Vogel PART FOUR: Ecosystem Management: Protecting Nature and Livelihoods   15. Biological Invasions: Impacts, Management, and Controversies  211 Daniel Simberloff 16. The Aliens in Our Midst: Managing Our Ecosystems   228 Banu Subramaniam 17. Controversies in Aquatic Sciences   241 Judith S. Weis 18. O  n an Economic Treadmill of Agriculture: Efforts to Resolve Pollinator Decline   259 Sainath Suryanarayanan Contributors  269 Index  279

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We are grateful for the contributions of our excellent collection of authors and the peer reviewers who provided careful comments, which made already valuable essays stronger. You would not be reading this fourth volume of Controversies in Science & Technology had Oxford University Press’s Jeremy Lewis not taken an interest in this type of collection. At Oxford, we have also benefitted from the guidance of Hallie Stebbins. At the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Robert Chiles served as our presubmission copy editor and managing editor, helping us get the manuscript out the door. Support received by Kleinman from the Robert F.  and Jean E.  Holtz Center for Science and Technology Studies at the University of Wisconsin– Madison enabled us to get the volume ready for submission to Oxford in a timely fashion. The preparation of this volume was also supported by an award from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor’s program to Handelsman. We very much appreciate earlier support from the University of Wisconsin Press and Mary Ann Leibert, Inc. Publishers, who produced Volumes 1 through 3 of Controversies in Science and Technology. Finally, all views expressed in this volume are those of the authors and do not represent official positions of the U.S.  government or any other organization.

Controversies in Science & Technology

CHAPTER 1

Introduction: From Sustainability to Surveillance ROBERT M. CHILES

A

t Stanford University, a long-standing tradition is for undergraduate students to identify themselves as “techies” or “fuzzies.” Techie students study math, engineering, physics, biology, and related fields in the natural sciences, and most of their coursework revolves around solving problem sets. Fuzzy students study art, history, communications, and other disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, and most of their coursework involves writing term papers. When asked to explain the difference between the two, one student offered a very simple, quotidian explanation:  Techies study questions that have right or wrong answers, while fuzzies study questions where acceptable answers can be multiple and ambiguous. While the techie/fuzzy distinction is largely intended to be humorous, there is nonetheless something to it; it reflects multiple historical cleavages: fact versus opinion, natural versus social world, and science versus non-science. The existence of scientific and technological controversies illustrates the woeful inadequacy of these dualistic categories for two reasons. First, the acquisition of scientific knowledge is not a simple matter of fact-finding, whereby scientists go out and discover The Truth, straightforwardly reading off of nature. Scientific knowledge reflects the historical, political, economic, cultural, and institutional environments in which it is embedded (Latour and Woolgar 1979; Pinch and Bijker 1984). Favored methods of investigation, what levels of uncertainty are acceptable, and

error type preferences (false positive versus false negative), among other factors that shape how science is done, reflect human history and values. In this context, science and technology are neither above nor immune from controversy. Second, social problems that are intrinsically related to certain technologies (for instance, the environmental consequences of fossil-based energy production) are arguably becoming increasingly acute. In the face of these kinds of challenges, it is no longer sufficient for scientific and technological controversies to be left solely in the hands of scientists and other experts. Scientific claims are becoming increasingly politicized by citizen groups, public officials, and others, many of whom are actively challenging traditional notions of what constitutes valid and acceptable knowledge. The “black box” of scientific expertise has been cracked open, and it is only likely to open wider. Unfortunately, while the need for widespread and informed public engagement with science is greater than ever, U.S. science and math education continues to falter globally. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, in 2011, fourth-grade U.S.  students scored 7th in international science and 11th in math rankings, while eighth-grade U.S. students scored 10th in science and 9th in math (Rich 2012). Perhaps as a partial result of this, many who participate in public debates over science and technology policy either display a minimal understanding of the available evidence, selectively pick and choose certain findings while ignoring the big picture, or otherwise dismiss the science altogether. The Controversies in Science and Technology series is a multivolume effort to redress this issue by bringing together experts and commentators from across disciplines, fields, and backgrounds for the purpose of broadening public engagement while elevating the quality of debate on some of the crucial technoscientific issues of the day. Chapters in this volume consider multiple themes, tensions, and questions that have driven scientific controversies for decades. What types of natural, social, and technological threats should be prioritized by citizens, scientists, and policymakers, and how should these threats be dealt with? In what ways are technical controversies intertwined with social values? How should the relationship between the natural world and the social world be conceptualized? To what extent can technology-related “harms” be alleviated through technical fixes as opposed to broad-based cultural and political reform? In the spirit of locating commonalities and identifying broader patterns across social domains and academic disciplines, the subtitle of this volume—From Sustainability to Surveillance—refers to the many

[ 2 ] Chiles

sociotechnical entanglements that have concerned those who pursue the aforementioned questions. “Sustainability” is at the nexus of many controversies discussed in the volume: the protection of infrastructure in an era of climate change, the impact of built environments on public health outcomes, the development of an adequate and reliable global food system that also protects ecosystems and communities, and the negotiation of competing scientific claims as to what’s sustainable and what isn’t. “Surveillance” controversies—which pertain to state oversight and governance—include the debates over digital privacy and corporate/government recordkeeping of telephone and Internet activity, the supervision of industrial chemicals and environmental health standards, and federal gatekeeping over which types of plant species are considered “invasive” and therefore dangerous. In this volume, these and related controversies have been organized into four thematic areas:  infrastructure development, food policy, chemicals and environmental health, and ecosystem management.

INFRASTRUCTURE DEVELOPMENT: RESILIENCE, PRIVACY, AND WELL-BEING

Highways, power plants, the Internet, and other features of the national infrastructure are taken-for-granted aspects of daily life for many people across the globe. In confronting the 2008 financial crisis, the terrorist attacks of September 11, and the accumulating evidence of ongoing climate change, however, many experts, public officials, and social commentators have looked at infrastructure issues with increasing scrutiny. While many economists and engineers argue that infrastructure spending is a worthwhile economic investment (Grigg 2013)—and the 2009 stimulus act was widely viewed by many observers as preventing a second Great Depression—the perpetuation of stubbornly high unemployment and stagnating wages in the aftermath of the 2009 stimulus helped fuel a strong backlash against this and other investments. Solyndra, a U.S. solar power company that received federal financial support before ultimately going bankrupt, came to symbolize, for many conservatives, the wastefulness of government infrastructure spending and the futility of a green energy economy. On the other hand, the debate over phone and Internet surveillance programs represents a very different type of concern over how our national infrastructure ought to be used and managed. To what extent should activity that takes place using telecommunications infrastructure be considered private? The recent leaks by former National Security Agency contractor

Introduction 

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Edward Snowden—which revealed the extent to which private companies provided the federal government with mass quantities of data on patterns of citizen information technology use—has further intensified this discussion. In the face of controversies from public investment in bridges to government surveillance of e-mail and telephonic communications, the chapters in this section are motivated by the growing importance of public discussion about national infrastructure. These chapters consider some of the broad historical context to contemporary disputes, the key technical and cultural issues at play, and the consequences of the resolution of these debates. In discussing both the history and the imperiled future of national and global infrastructure, Matthys Levy elucidates the threat of global warming to the continued resilience of transportation, energy, water, communications, and solid waste management systems. Levy, in explaining how these systems were fundamental to the emergence of modern societies, also shows how vulnerable these societies have been when disasters rendered them inoperable. Intensified flooding, windstorms, heat damage, drought, sea-level rise, and other consequences of global warming pose a truly existential threat to these systems. Most of these structures are already under tremendous strain, and these challenges will be exacerbated by expanding populations and dwindling natural resources. While it is not too late for the United States and other nations to adapt to these changes while preventing the worst potential consequences of climate change, as observed by Levy, doing so will require forward-thinking investments, innovative research agendas, and courageous political leadership. Thomas A. Birkland and Megan K. Warnement extend the discussion of infrastructure vulnerability and resilience by noting that no system can be perfectly designed to fully and equally account for affordability, safety, aesthetics, and political viability. Policy decisions require tradeoffs. According to Birkland and Warnement, among the most difficult choices facing policymakers and engineers is the extent to which social and technical systems should be made more efficient and affordable on the one hand or more resilient and redundant on the other. Another critical choice concerns whether infrastructure systems should be built to prevent any failure or simply to prevent catastrophic failure. Birkland and Warnement suggest that policymakers and engineers can make more informed decisions on these issues by weighing which systems are more or less critical, by taking seriously the political and technical lessons of Hurricane Katrina and by accounting for all available resources at the local, state, and national level (both public and private).

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Not all threats to infrastructure are disaster-related. Indeed, threats that are ingrained within the infrastructure itself can be especially insidious. As observed by Jarrod M. Rifkind and Seymour E. Goodman, the massive gathering of personal data by government agencies and private companies introduce serious vulnerabilities to personal privacy, information security, and civil liberties. Given that individuals and organizations are becoming increasingly reliant on the World Wide Web, e-mail, social networking sites, online commerce, paperless government, smart phones, and related conveniences, information technology has generally been regarded as more of a blessing than a curse. Through the practices of ubiquitous data gathering and long-term data storage, however, telecommunications infrastructures have also been used for the more questionable purposes of targeted advertising and intelligence gathering. Edward Snowden’s recent disclosures about corporate and government surveillance of telephone and Internet activity have brought much of this debate into the spotlight (Lee 2013). As foreshadowed by Rifkind and Goodman’s chapter, however, the controversy over acceptable business practices, public right-to-know, personal privacy, information security, and national security remains far from settled. While the issues of infrastructure security and resilience are often examined from the standpoint of government and business practices, Chelsea Schelly’s chapter on distributed solar power showcases how policy choices also need to be informed by a broader understanding of citizens’ personal choices. Case in point:  In order to encourage electricity users to install solar panels on residential homes and businesses, the federal government and numerous state governments have put in place a series of mandates, tax subsidies, and rebates intended to prompt environmentalists and the financially minded to switch to solar energy usage. Schelly’s interviews with solar users, however, show that environmental values and incentive structures were not the only motivators for adoption:  Broader economic circumstances, the timing of household and career events, the desire to set the trend, entrepreneurial know-how, and personal judgment were also important. According to Schelly, however, residential solar power programs and individuals’ preferences are constrained by private utility companies’ interests in maintaining a monopoly on electricity production. The case study of solar power provides an excellent example of how government policy, personal lifestyle choices, and industry structure all contribute to shape infrastructure development. In reaffirming that infrastructure can be a boon as well as a bane, Ka man Lai’s chapter on infrastructure and health provides an instructive wrap-up to this section. Well-functioning infrastructure is indispensable, as it can facilitate citizen access to food, water, energy, transportation, sanitation

Introduction 

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services, health care, education, and economic opportunity. At the same time, the poor, racial minorities, women, the disabled, children, and the elderly frequently lack equal access to the benefits of these systems while also suffering from disproportionate exposure to pollution and other infrastructure-related threats. Poor planning, inadequate maintenance, and a lack of vigilance can also result in infrastructural hazards that affect everyone, as is the case with nuclear catastrophes, traffic accidents, natural disasters, and the proliferation of modern-era diseases. Lai makes the case that engineers, policymakers, and local communities need to work collaboratively and incorporate multiple perspectives in order to make meaningful and lasting improvements to infrastructure systems.

FOOD POLICY: BALANCING PRODUCTIVITY, CONSERVATION, AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

A wide variety of people are increasingly paying attention to food and agriculture issues. Food’s upswing in visibility over the past several decades can be attributed to a litany of factors, including the 2007–2008 global riots over food prices, increased awareness about nutrition and obesity (most recently brought to the fore by recent efforts to ban the sale of large glasses of soda in New York City), the rise of the sustainable agriculture and local food movements (as promoted by Michael Pollan, Eric Schlosser, and others), TV cooking shows, and increased concern about meat production and consumption. While food has been an obvious preoccupation of all societies across time and space, this confluence of factors has contributed to a marked elevation in the prominence of food policy issues within U.S. national discourse. In her analysis of the underlying principles that inform food policy, Frances Moore Lappé presents the global food debate as encompassing a schism between two dominant frames. According to the “productivist” frame, we can feed the world only if we produce more food for more people, and this can be done only by converting forests and pastures to crop production, eliminating government regulations, and expanding the use of synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and genetically modified seeds. Alternatively, according to what Lappé refers to as the “relational” frame, a just food policy can be achieved only through the strengthening of relationships between communities and ecosystems. Proponents of the relational frame argue that the productivist model has been a disastrous failure and that the surplus yields generated by agribusiness result in waste and overconsumption in the industrial North and peasant displacement in the

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Global South. In endorsing the relational frame, Lappé argues that organic, agroecological, and knowledge-intensive farming techniques have already proven to be highly effective, that productivist farming is intertwined with corporate control and environmental degradation, and that community empowerment and more public decision making is a prerequisite for a food system that truly works for all. Kelly Moore and Judith Wittner, while touching on many of the themes introduced by Lappé, focus more explicit attention on the political, economic, and technological threads that intertwine obesity and hunger. In popular and scientific discourse, obesity has gradually evolved from being treated as a moral issue of individual choice to a biomedical epidemic. Despite this progress, many of the underlying structural factors that contribute to obesity—namely, global inequities in food production and distribution, environmental health hazards, and productivist agriculture—continue to be generally downplayed. Structural factors are similarly downplayed in much of the conventional wisdom on hunger, as the latter is often discussed in relation to drought, war, food scarcity, and the need for food aid. Moore and Wittner challenge these accounts by pointing out that the current global food system rewards poor countries that produce food for export rather than domestic subsistence, that peasants are forced off of their land when they are unable to compete in global export markets, and that hunger is an inevitable result when people’s livelihoods have been stripped from them. The same global food system that uproots peasants and turns poor countries into global exporters also overproduces commodity crops, which in turn are used to produce processed snacks, meats, and dairy—foods that damage the environment, are low in nutrition, and contribute to the obesity epidemic in wealthier nations. Similar to Lappé, Moore and Wittner also call for a global food system that prioritizes self-sufficiency rather than the development of export markets and expensive agricultural technologies. Annette Aurélie Desmarais and Jim Handy put the food debate in historical context by tracing the genealogy of food security rhetoric over the course of the past several centuries. They begin by introducing two competing discourses on food policy, discourses that (respectively) parallel the productivist and relational frames introduced by Lappé. Put simply, the food security discourse emphasizes increased production and modernization, while the food sovereignty discourse stresses social justice and the democratization of policy decision making. Here, Desmarais and Handy note that arguments in favor of modernizing agriculture through the dispossession of peasants are not new; indeed, their antecedents can be found in 16th-century Britain, where nobles and landlords sought to privatize

Introduction 

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common lands and turn the peasantry into a docile workforce in order to gain access to wool markets. These efforts later matured into a broader movement, which, while purporting to modernize agriculture by increasing its efficiency, actually resulted in hunger, malnutrition, and increased dependence on food imports. It is a cruel irony of history that during the Irish potato famine, while countless people starved, Ireland continued to export hundreds of thousands of tons of grain per year. Unfortunately, according to Desmarais and Handy, these lessons have gone unheeded by those who continue to push for further penetration of capital and technology into agriculture (most recently in the name of “food security”). In response, the food sovereignty movement has emerged to advocate for peasant land rights (including access to the common spaces), climate justice, and increased politicization of the food debate at all levels. In critiquing both the food security discourse and the food sovereignty discourse for being naïve on gender dynamics, Belinda Dodson and Allison Goebel depart from the traditional dichotomy that underlies much of the debate in this section and elsewhere. When viewed through a gender lens, the food security discourse is deeply problematic: It treats women as somehow underutilized in modern agricultural production while ignoring the fact that it is more difficult for women than men to gain access to the capital, technology, and employment opportunities that would allow them to participate more fully in global markets. Women also suffer disproportionately when dispossessed from land by corporate “land grabs” and other forces of global capitalism. Dodson and Goebel see the food sovereignty discourse as also being problematic to the extent that it ignores discrimination against women in peasant households:  Women usually lack control and ownership of land in these systems, and the fruits of their labor are often appropriated by men. Another problem, according to Dodson and Goebel, is that the food security and food sovereignty discourses are overwhelmingly focused on production issues and neglect questions of consumption. For urban residents, access to abundant and nourishing food is threatened primarily by unemployment and low wages. Here, not only do women face discrimination in the formal workplace but they are also disproportionately responsible for household labor, and their personal wealth and access to food are often the first casualties of household hardship. Women play a critical role in providing informal agricultural labor, food for children and other household members, and retail services for local food markets. Accordingly, for Dodson and Goebel, any food policy position cannot be fully comprehensive unless it includes a full accounting of women’s production and consumption practices.

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CHEMICALS AND ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH: DEFINING SAFETY

Mounting evidence suggests that exposure to synthetic chemicals can results in massive disruptions to hormonal processes in humans and other animals. Contact may result in elevated risks of reproductive and sexual abnormalities, breast cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, limb deformities, and other side effects, which could potentially be inherited by offspring. Questions abound, however, as to how this evidence ought to be interpreted and acted upon. The debate over hormone-disrupting chemicals thus prompts discussion over whether or not science policy should be guided by the precautionary principle, proof of harm, or cost-benefit analysis. In her chapter, Nancy Langston offers a comprehensive overview of the relationship between chemicals and environmental health. In this context, Langston investigates the breadth and significance of the environmental health costs associated with hormone-disrupting chemicals. While traditional toxicology risk research argues that toxicity is immediately apparent and dependent on dosage, as noted by Langston, endocrine disruption is often not dose dependent but tends to correlate with the age of the exposed individual rather than size or weight and often occurs years (or possibly generations) after initial exposure. In addition to exploring the debate over dose dependence, Langston addresses the controversy over whether or not a causal relationship between chemical exposure and human health effects can be established. Despite the growing evidence, which suggests that the environmental health costs of chemical exposure are potentially quite severe, as acknowledged by Langston, humans and other animals are continually exposed to countless environmental risks, and controlled experiments are usually either impractical, illegal, or unethical. In his chapter, Joel A. Tickner turns his attention to government regulation of industrial chemicals. According to Tickner, the regulation of chemicals is byzantine, underresourced, and largely impotent. Tickner contends that little is known about the public health implications of the thousands of chemicals on the market, the burden of proof required to take precautionary action is excessively high, there is minimal incentive for companies to develop safer alternatives, existing policy is ill-equipped to deal with the threat of multiple low-level exposures from thousands of different chemicals, and regulatory oversight is made reactionary and weak due to overlapping jurisdictions and legislation. While noting the positive strides that have been made in recent years to improve the nation’s chemicals policy, Tickner maintains that more should be done. Specifically, he recommends deeper investment in developing hazard assessment tools and safer

Introduction 

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technologies. He also argues that government should do more to collaborate with the private sector and nonprofit organizations while also providing appropriate incentives and disincentives for companies. Jody A.  Roberts’ chapter delves into the historical context that has informed the contemporary debate over chemicals policy. Drawing on insights from in-depth interviews with former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) staff, Roberts gives readers an inside perspective on how critical legislation, key EPA personnel, the courts, an emerging scientific movement focused on endocrine disrupting chemicals, nonprofits, superstore retailers, a new generation of toxics activists, and newly trained green chemists all competed and collaborated to shape contemporary plastics governance. After laying out the key moments and broad contours of this history, Roberts outlines three important lessons: first, that the history of chemicals governance is nonlinear; second, that a reinvigorated chemicals policy needs to account for how existing law has been used and interpreted (and not just how it was originally written); and third, that while even the best governance structure will inherently be incomplete and fallible, if stakeholders are persistent, lasting reforms and innovations can be made. Sarah A. Vogel’s chapter on bisphenol A (BPA) and baby bottles rounds out the discussion on chemicals and environmental health by focusing on the technical aspects of the debate. After providing valuable historical background, Vogel draws several conclusions from the BPA controversy. First, she suggests that it would be a mistake to simply conclude that early warnings about the effects of BPA were ignored. Rather, the real issue is how risk is understood, analyzed, and regulated in the first instance. Second, Vogel argues that banning individual chemicals is an insufficient strategy, as other potentially harmful chemicals can be used as replacements while thousands of other chemicals go unexamined altogether. Here, Vogel maintains that comprehensive changes in public policy and regulatory assessment are vital. Finally, Vogel suggests that traditional and nontraditional toxicity studies should be integrated in order to produce more robust data on the effects of BPA.

ECOSYSTEM MANAGEMENT: PROTECTING NATURE AND LIVELIHOODS

This section explores the technical questions and social values at play when we consider broad-scale ecosystem risks. In so doing, it touches on invasive species, the protection of oceans and aquatic life, and agricultural resiliency. This discussion is timely and relevant. Citizens, scientists, and

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policymakers seek to understand the causes and effects of the encroachment of Asian carp in the Great Lakes area, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, shoreline vulnerabilities (as exposed by Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Sandy), and the existential threat that recent declines in pollinator populations pose to modern agriculture. As evidenced by Daniel Simberloff and Banu Subramaniam’s chapters on invasive species, solutions to these crises are not easy to come by. Their chapters provide a useful illustration of how competing understandings of both technical and social questions contribute to the profound complexity of these problems. While there are many instances where invasive species are widely regarded as harmful (as with the potato blight pathogen that caused the Irish potato famine), in his chapter, Simberloff notes that the question of whether invasive species are intrinsically bad remains a contentious subject. The potato itself, for example, was non-native to Ireland but ultimately became a widely appreciated dietary staple. Simberloff argues that all invasive species nonetheless require careful scrutiny, as their impacts are unpredictable and may not be manifest for centuries. He also reports that native species are much less likely to dominate local habitats than invasive species. Another controversy in this area concerns how invasive species ought to be managed. Here, among the most difficult questions facing citizens and policymakers is the extent to which financial resources, chemical controls, and natural enemies should be used to confront invasive species. Subramaniam’s chapter stands in sharp contrast to Simberloff’s. Drawing on the work of the feminist scholar Donna Haraway, Subramaniam argues that nature and culture are strongly intertwined, and that the debate over invasive species needs to be understood in this context. This is for two key reasons. First, there is the question of how understandings of risk are shaped by cultural values. Here, Subramaniam argues that Western European understandings about “nativeness” tend to be very ethnocentric: When colonizers introduced new species to other parts of the world, even when ecological damage occurred, they didn’t see a problem; however, after colonizers had come to dominate America, thereby becoming the “true” natives, “non-native” people and species were deemed a threat. Here, Subramaniam cites numerous secondary sources as evidence that Western fears about invasive species emerged in tandem with fears about the outsourcing of jobs, global terrorism, the spread of disease, and invasive people. Second, there is the question of how understandings about risk are shaped by technical findings. Subramaniam argues that the definition of what constitutes an “invasive” species (as opposed to a “native”

Introduction 

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species) is difficult to establish on a biological basis. Moreover, she contends that the problem is not invasive species per se but rather the ecosystem disturbances that emerge as a result of human activity: overdevelopment, changes in land use, weak environmental governance, trade, travel, and globalization. Judith S. Weis’s chapter on aquatic sciences controversies highlights how debates over oil pollution, the impact of herbicides on amphibians, shoreline protection, and fishery collapse have each taken unique shape. In the aftermath of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, while most scientists agreed that the effects of the spill on local wildlife would be long-lasting, industry-funded studies have continued to inhibit the development of a full consensus. With respect to the impacts of the herbicide atrazine on amphibians, despite the accumulating evidence that pointed to potential hazards, the EPA and Syngenta (a chemical manufacturer) declared the evidence to be insufficient to take regulatory action. Several events, however, cast doubt over this decision: The European Union banned atrazine for precautionary reasons, a Syngenta scientist was fired after publishing critical findings, and subsequent Syngenta studies were faulted for allegedly using poor-quality data. With respect to controversies over shoreline protection, Weis identifies two basic approaches: One approach favors the use of “hard structures”— like seawalls and rocks—and the other approach supports the use of “living shorelines”—formations composed of native wetland grasses, trees, sand, and related materials. While most agree that hard structures are necessary to protect urban areas, in other locations, hard structures exacerbate erosion and damage habitat. Controversy has since ensued over which types of living shorelines are legitimate and which have only been marketed as such. Last, Weis notes that the fishery collapse controversy is unique in that two conflicting sides (one that envisioned a global fisheries collapse in the year 2048 and the other that believed that these numbers were exaggerated) both share the same values of sustainable fishing, ecosystem protection, and unbiased science. As a result, both parties came together at a conference, integrated their methods and data, and published a joint recommendation on fisheries protection in Science. Whereas Weis’s chapter discusses corporate influence on the aquatic sciences, Sainath Suryanarayanan’s chapter considers corporate influence in the area of plant pollination. In order for the world’s agriculture to thrive, many crop-producing plants must be pollinated by insects. While pollination occurs naturally in functional ecosystems, with the emergence of monocropping, widespread pesticide use, and other industrial-agriculture practices, natural pollination has become inadequate to meet commercial agricultural needs. As a result, commodity growers increasingly rely on commercial,

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chemical-intensive beekeeping for their pollination needs, and this context has been associated with widespread decline in both commercial and natural insect pollinators. Among honey bees associated with commercial pollination services, this drop in population has been labeled Colony Collapse Disorder. Suryanarayanan provides helpful background on the disorder and identifies two primary responses to the epidemic: restorative efforts, which involve the introduction of pollinator-friendly wild flowers, shrubs, and landscapes; and substitutive efforts, which involve the use of trees that have been genetically manipulated to “self-pollinate” (among other technologies). Suryanarayanan argues that the playing field between these two efforts is unequal. Substitutive efforts facilitate established industrial agricultural practices, and these are reinforced in turn by government subsidies to the biggest growers and the externalization of ecological costs.

CONCLUSION

One message from this collection is that science and technology do not exist outside society. Thus as we consider where we stand on the controversies considered in this volume and what the appropriate technical, policy, and individual responses are, we should ask ourselves the following questions: First, what are the interests at stake in each controversy? Who stands to benefit from one outcome or resolution over another, and who stands to lose? Second, what are the origins of the debate and how have these beginnings shaped each controversy’s framing? What are the key principles and assumptions of the competing worldviews? Third, which types of knowledge are held in esteem, and which types of knowledge are being devalued and why? These tactics of inquiry may allow us, as individuals, to better understand these controversies and, collectively, to choose reasoned and fair-minded resolutions. REFERENCES Grigg, N.  S. 2013. “Infrastructure Stimulus Spending:  Lessons for Assessment and Engineering Education.” Journal of Professional Issues in Engineering Education & Practice 139: 81–86. Latour, B., and S. Woolgar. 1979. Laboratory Life:  The Social Construction of Scientific Facts. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Lee, T. 2013. “The President Is Wrong:  The NSA Debate Wouldn’t Have Happened Without Snowden.” The Washington Post, August 9. Pinch, T.J., and W.E. Bijker. 1984. “The Social Construction of Facts and Artefacts: Or How the Sociology of Science and the Sociology of Technology Might Benefit Each Other.” Social Studies of Science 14: 399–441. Rich, M. 2012. “U.S. Students Still Lag Globally in Math and Science, Tests Show.” The New York Times, December 11.

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PART ONE

Infrastructure Development: Resilience, Privacy, and Well-Being

CHAPTER 2

Our Fragile Infrastructure: Adapting to Global Warming MAT T HYS P. LEV Y

T

his chapter summarizes the history and evolution of various forms of infrastructure and the current state of their technology as a basis for exploring the anticipated effects of global warming on existing infrastructure facilities and for developing a strategy that adapts to these effects. Infrastructure encompasses all of the physical structures that support the functioning of a community or enhance the quality of life of its members. These structures are part of systems that provide the basic services of an industrial society: transportation, energy, water management, communications, and solid waste management. There are numerous other facilities that will also experience the impact of climate change, such as those for flood control, but in this chapter I consider only the major systems.

GLOBAL WARMING

For a thousand years, the world’s average temperature remained relatively constant; in fact, it was very slowly decreasing. Then, at the end of the 19th century, it began to rise dramatically. This change was concurrent with an explosive increase in the world’s population—from less than 1 billion to today’s almost 7 billion. This change spurred rapid industrialization. The insatiable appetite of a growing population for goods and services required the burning of ever-increasing amounts of fossil fuels to support power plants (starting with coal and then oil and gas) as well as ever more

complex transportation networks (Randers 2012). Today, our planet’s atmosphere is overburdened by the increasing amounts of CO2 spewing from these plants, and nature’s equilibrium as it existed for millennia has been destroyed. The world’s oceans and plants are no longer able to absorb any more CO2. Concentrations in the atmosphere have reached 400 parts per million (ppm) and are still rising at an annual rate of 2 ppm. As a consequence, we now have a blanket of CO2 in the upper atmosphere that traps heat in the way that the roof of a glass-enclosed greenhouse does, and it raises both the planet’s air and sea temperatures. These are the essential facts of what is popularly called global warming. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of the world’s most eminent scientists, supports the view that anthropogenic (caused by humans) climate change events are occurring, as documented in the latest update (2010) to its original 2000 report. Of course, there are also naysayers such as the Heartland Institute, a libertarian think-tank that denies the artificial causes of climate change and resists government action to limit CO2 emissions in the name of free enterprise (Oreskes and Conway 2010). The reality, though, is that we are already experiencing many of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change-predicted consequences shown in Table 2.1 (Levy 2007). Some of these expected changes, which are discussed in subsequent sections of this chapter, will seriously compromise our infrastructure, while

Table 2.1   PREDICTED PHYSICAL CHANGES DUE TO GLOBAL WARMING AND THEIR RESULTS Two major changes in our physical world are predicted by the end of the 21st century: •  Average global temperatures will rise 3°C. •  Sea level will rise as much as 1 m, caused by (one-third each) thermal expansion of the oceans, melting of mountain glaciers, and partial melting of the Greenland glacier. Among the anticipated results of these environmental changes are the following: •  Storms and floods will become more severe and deadly. In general, weather will tend to be more extreme, with heavier rain and snowstorms and longer dry spells. •  Hurricanes will become more intense because of warming oceans. •  Mountain glaciers will recede and some will vanish. •  Deserts will expand and periods of drought will lengthen with a concurrent increase in frequency of wildfires. •  Oceans will become more acidic (causing coral and other species to die). Since the Industrial Revolution, the acidity of the oceans has increased by 30%. •  The oceans will become less salty due to the intrusion of fresh water from melting glaciers, causing a decrease in density and an ensuing change in the flow of ocean currents.

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others may exact only indirect penalties. Governments around the world may think they can argue about how to restrict CO2 emissions and avoid exceeding the critical value of 450 ppm to keep warming below 2oC, but they no longer have the freedom of deciding whether or how to control future emissions of global warming gases. This is because the world has already reached a turning point whereupon consequences are irreversible. While I still support the continuing effort to stem the increase in atmospheric carbon, in this chapter I am more interested in exploring strategies to mitigate the effects of climate change rather than dwelling on its causes or remedies.

TRANSPORTATION INFRASTRUCTURE

Our transportation infrastructure consists of the roads, bridges, tunnels, railroads, airports, ports, and canals that we require to get from one point on the planet to another.

Roads and Bridges

In the early days of civilization, our ancestors tramped down pathways to visit neighboring villages or to reach hunting grounds. Over the centuries, the pathways eventually became roadways—a basic element of our infrastructure. Roadways are needed for moving people and goods to and from hubs of commercial activity and to foster communication among these more populated centers. Moreover, even those cultures that settled along rivers and used them to travel to adjacent settlements (such as the Egyptians) built pathways along the banks of those rivers. As populations and traffic increased, it became obvious that these primitive pathways, which turned muddy whenever it rained, needed paving. One of the earliest civilizations to act on this insight was the Romans, who built a network of roads to connect the cities of their vast empire (an empire that stretched from England east through Germany, down to Greece and into North Africa). Since they believed that their empire would last forever, the Romans constructed sturdy, multilayered roads that distributed wheel loads efficiently. They earned the distinction of being the greatest ancient road builders for good reason. In addition to having proper drainage, the roads also had good wearing surfaces made of stone, components that could be easily repaired or replaced. In the same period (200 bce–220 ce), the Chinese built the Silk Road, a 6,400-km roadway network extending from present-day Xian, west

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through Persia, and to the Mediterranean. In the time of the Han Dynasty and in the centuries that followed, Greek, Indian, Chinese, and Persian travelers and traders used this road system to provide a vital commercial and cultural link between China and the Near East. The first asphalt roads were built in the Babylonian era (620 bce), but it was not until the early 19th century that modern road building began. It was made possible by the development of macadam construction that initially used a mix of stone dust and water. Later, tar and finally crushed stone and a binder were used to build roads. After the invention of the automobile at the beginning of the 20th century, macadam roads, which tended to rut, were replaced by bituminous or concrete surfaces. The United States, with only 16 kilometers (km) of paved roads in 1900, now has over 4 million km of paved roads in addition to over 2 million km of unpaved ones. The country’s interstate system of limited-access highways, which was initiated in the 1950s by President Eisenhower, today covers 66,000 km. A curious fact of history is that when the system was built, 1.6 of every 8.0 km were required to be straight so that the highway could be used as an emergency landing strip for airplanes . . . a response to the paranoia and fear surrounding the Cold War. Worldwide, there are presently over 17 million km of paved roads. The question as to how to maintain, repair, rehabilitate, and reconstruct this vast network poses fiscal challenges for the government agencies that are responsible for its viability, even more so now that global warming is affecting climate and intensifying storms. For instance, a study prepared for the Sacramento, California, region illustrates the escalating costs associated with maintenance and replacement (SACG 2012). Four levels of upkeep, with their relative costs, were identified (as shown in Table 2.2). Rather than budgeting for these future costs at the time of construction, most municipalities generally disregard them until the need arises, most often on an emergency basis. Other social needs usually trump road

Table 2.2   REL ATIVE COSTS OF ROAD MAINTENANCE AND REPL ACEMENT Work Item

Relative Cost/Kilometer

Routine maintenance: patch, fill potholes 1. 2. 3. 4.

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yearly Periodic repair: slurry or chip seal coat every 7 years Rehab: asphalt overlay every 15 years Reconstruction: remove and rebuild >40 years

1 3–4 15–20 100

maintenance, and more often than not the latter is relegated to the bottom of the municipal budget list. As a result, the condition of roads in the United States is mostly poor, evidenced by the high number that earned a failing grade of D– when the American Society of Civil Engineers issued its “Report Card for America’s Infrastructure” (American Society of Civil Engineers 2013). Modern roads generally follow the same contours as earlier pathways, which were influenced by natural landforms such as valleys and waterways. Bridges, which were created to extend roadways across rivers or streams, were initially placed at the lowest possible elevation above a river or valley to minimize spans. As a consequence, they proved to be highly vulnerable to washouts from heavy storms. Such occurrences were generally rare because the intensity of storms was somewhat predictable. Over time, modifications were made to the design of the roads and bridges in response to the knowledge gained from construction failures. Climate change requires that we reevaluate the condition of our roads and bridges to resist extreme weather events and plan to deal with destructive consequences. In addition to water damage, which is taking place even now, governments also need to plan for heat damage, as roadway surfaces soften or buckle with rising air temperatures. Furthermore, low clearances under bridges near the sea will certainly become a problem with rising sea levels. Bridge piers would thus no longer be adequate at their current height and would need to be raised. Fendering systems, structures that are used to protect bridge piers from ship impact, may also need to be raised. Finally, an increase in the frequency and intensity of high-wind events will affect flexible bridges—such as cable-stayed and long-span suspension bridges—and will require them to be stiffened or receive other modifications. In recent times, storms have become more intense, although they are not necessarily more frequent. For example, as Hurricane Irene moved across the northeastern United States in 2011, it caused the destruction of numerous bridges and roads adjacent to rivers as well as the washout of culverts (large pipes intended to help drainage), all of which were overwhelmed by the massive flows caused by the storm. Greater in intensity than typical storms of the past, Irene proved to be a harbinger of the destruction that is expected to occur as the consequences of global warming intensify over the coming decades (New  York Academy of Sciences 2011). In preparation for the inevitable increase in storm intensity and higher sea levels, we must begin the process of relocating roads along shorelines to higher ground, raising bridges to provide clearance for higher stream flows, and building defenses to fend off the destruction of vital networks. The vulnerability of tunnels to flooding was brought into sharp focus in 2012 by

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Hurricane Sandy. The storm resulted in a 4 meters (m) surge of seawater that inundated low-lying areas across the East Coast of the United States, including those along the edges of Manhattan Island. Vehicular tunnel and subway tunnel entrances in those areas allowed the water to flood these tunnels, causing a complete shutdown of the New York City subway system for the first time in its history. In addition, exposure to the salty seawater is expected to result in longer-term corrosion problems for the metal structures in those tunnels. Highways in regions of the world subject to higher air temperatures, such as the southwestern United States, are already beginning to experience buckling of surfaces due to expansion and rutting caused by softening of asphalt. At the same time, extended periods of drought are causing soils to shrink, which results in severe cracking of road surfaces. Switching to different surfacing materials, introducing more expansion joints, or adopting other as yet undefined solutions will be required to deal with these consequences of global warming—an open invitation to inventive minds. Another factor to consider for the future development of roadway infrastructure is the prospect of a near-term changeover in vehicle fuels from gasoline to liquefied natural gas (LNG) and a longer-term introduction of electric vehicles. In order to bring these systems online, distribution stations for LNG and charging stations for electric vehicles will be needed. Some countries, such as Argentina, already have LNG fueling stations. Other countries, such as Israel, have added electric-charging stations to their stock of infrastructure facilities. China, Germany, and South Africa are also enthusiastically pursuing the future of electric-charging networks. In contrast, despite the recent introduction of a number of American-developed electric vehicles such as the Chevy Volt, the United States lags behind other nations in developing such alternative fuel-station networks.

Railways

The earliest guided track, which dates from around 660 bce, was a grooved limestone wagonway built across the Isthmus of Corinth in Greece. It covered a distance of only about 8 km but served the community until the first century ce. In the 17th century, a number of railways were built using wooden rails, which were later reinforced with cast-iron bars. The difficulty in keeping the wagons on the rails, especially around curves, led to the development of flanged wheels. In the 19th century, following the invention of the steam engine and the utilization of the Bessemer furnace to produce cheap steel, rail transportation networks proliferated in countries around the world.

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The railway infrastructure of the United States grew from a 48-km rail line in Maryland in 1830 to a nationwide railway network that extended 262,000 miles in 1890 and 406,000 miles in 1920. After World War II, many unprofitable rail lines throughout the country were abandoned, reducing the network to a mere 225,000 miles by 2007. Cars and airplanes were viewed as the better alternative until the present energy crisis, which made high-speed rail an especially attractive alternative. The conversion of these abandoned railroad rights of way to pedestrian and bicycle paths was also embraced as a healthy alternative to automobiles and a boost to tourism. The era of high-speed rail began with the 1964 opening of the Tokaido Shinkansen line, a route that connected Tokyo and Osaka. Functioning at speeds up to and above 300 km/h, subsequent high-speed rail lines were built in Spain, France, Germany, Italy, China, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, South Korea, Scandinavia, Belgium, and the Netherlands. The construction of many of these lines has resulted in a dramatic decline in short-haul airplane and automotive trips between destination cities, along popular corridors such as London–Paris–Brussels, and between many other major cities served by the lines (with the benefit of reduced CO2 output and therefore reduced global warming effects). In the United States, the Boston–New York–Washington, DC, corridor was upgraded slightly in the late 20th century, but not anywhere near the level of a true high-speed line. Trains on this corridor achieved 240 km/hr over short stretches of line but still average only 120 km/hr along the whole length of the line. Proposals for a high-speed rail network in the United States continue to meet political opposition from stakeholders of competing transportation modes. This particular battle is emblematic of the kinds of conflicts that impede infrastructural progress, as technology pushes forward and the will to change lags behind, subverted by entrenched interests. Until politicians and planners agree on a comprehensive transportation plan that optimizes the roles of the road, rail, and airplane sectors relative to each other, real advancements in high-speed rail in the United States appear to be unlikely. Similar to roads, many older railroads were built adjacent to waterways that were subject to flooding during heavy rainstorms. Many coastal railroads are today within 4 m of sea level and occasionally flood from storm surges. With an anticipated rise in sea level over the coming decades, many of these railroads will need major improvements to remain viable. Apart from the consequences of increasingly intense storms, the higher temperatures that are anticipated to result from global warming will cause more rail buckling and catenary distortion. In order to avoid these outcomes, expansion joints on bridges will need to be enlarged and more heat-resistant materials for bridge decks and roadways will need to be used. As new

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flood-zone maps are introduced that incorporate the anticipated rise in sea levels and increase in stream flows, rail systems will have to be raised or relocated in response to the new reality they represent, particularly in estuaries and other coastal zones. In anticipation of more frequent and serious washouts, erosion, mudslides, landslides, and flooding in the coming decades, Japan, Taiwan, and parts of Europe have already raised rights of way and are even changing to elevated tracks in vulnerable areas.

Airports

Following the Wright brothers’ first flight in a powered flying machine in 1903, commercial aviation grew slowly at first. The industry only began to mature in the period between WWI and WWII, when airplanes evolved from a novelty to a necessity, and every little town throughout the world suddenly needed its own airfield. The development of passenger-carrying airlines accelerated this trend (Crouch 2004). After the introduction of jet aircraft in the years following WWII, there was a rapid expansion of air travel. It is still going on today, with the world’s commercial aircraft fleet now projected to double from 14,000 to 28,000 airplanes in the period from 2009 to 2029, with the greatest growth occurring in the Asia-Pacific region. Airfields are increasingly situated far from major urban centers, where large parcels of land can be obtained for building longer runways and bigger terminals to accommodate progressively larger and heavier aircraft. Many airports have been built on marginal land, often within flood plains or along coastal regions or, as in the case of Osaka, on artificial islands at sea. For protecting runways, many of these airfields have dikes that were designed based on sea-level conditions anticipated at the time of their original construction. Levees and dikes, which are elevated earth barriers, have been used since ancient times to control flooding along the shores of rivers as they flow toward the seas. The Egyptians used levees along the western shore of the Nile River 3,000 years ago, both to regulate flooding and to provide a controlled amount of water for agriculture. Given that half of their country lies below sea level by as much as 7 m, the Dutch became (and remain) the leading experts in modern dike construction (McKinney 2007). Since the 12th century, when they first constructed their dikes in response to floods, the Dutch have continued to improve the type and strength of these dikes based on the criterion of resisting a 1 in 10,000-year event. A seminal moment in dike development occurred in 1953, when a severe flood resulted in the loss of 1,835 lives. This event provided further incentive for

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substantially improving the dike system, which now consumes 0.2% of the country’s gross domestic product for construction and maintenance. More recently, in response to the sea-level rise anticipated by global warming, the Dutch government changed the design criterion to provide for much more conservative (and robust) 1 in 100,000-year event flood protection. An upgrade of the Venice lagoon storm-surge barriers in Italy has also been proposed, and the introduction of such barriers into New York harbor has been recommended. Other regions of the United States and other countries, particularly those with extensive low-lying areas facing the sea (e.g., Bangladesh), will need to make similar changes to their infrastructure. Assuming that sea levels will rise and that storm surges due to severe storms will intensify, even the best of existing dikes are expected to prove inadequate. Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans in 2005, was followed by a massive reconstruction and raising of most of the city’s levees. Unfortunately, some of these rebuilt levees were overtopped in 2012 by Hurricane Isaac (a much weaker storm) due to a combination of the storm surge pushing up from the Gulf and the pressure of river water flowing down to the sea. Hurricane Isaac provides a clear example of the need for conservatism in setting new standards. Levees or dikes that are already in place to protect airports such as La Guardia in New York will certainly need to be raised to survive in this new age of increasing sea levels and storm surges.

Ports

Most of the world’s cargo traveling to or from overseas destinations moves through various nations’ ports. Ninety-nine percent of the over 2 billion tons of overseas cargo that reaches the United States every year passes through domestic ports. The wharfs and docks are built, for practical reasons, no more than 3 to 4 m above sea level. As a consequence, these facilities are especially vulnerable to sea-level rise and coastal storms and thus will certainly need to be modified. On the other hand, some inland lakes that are used as waterways for shipping, such as the Great Lakes, are expected to experience a decrease in water levels resulting from reduced rainfall. These docks, accordingly, may have to be lowered.

ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE

The energy infrastructure consists of generation facilities, distribution facilities, and the pipelines that are used to deliver liquid or gas fuels to

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points of purchase and use (coal, the exception, moves primarily by rail and barge). Since the introduction of electricity as a concept in the 19th century, the production of electrical energy has grown exponentially. First-generation electrical plants used coal or waterpower as fuel. Since the end of WWII, the world’s electricity-generating capacity has grown twentyfold, supported primarily by fossil fuels (66%), with contributions from hydro (16%), nuclear (13%), and other sources (3%); (International Energy Agency 2011). However, the total electrical energy produced annually is only 11% of the solar energy the earth receives per day, which is a persuasive argument for expanding solar production to provide future energy supply. Currently, the world’s hydroelectric-generating capacity is almost used up, with no significant growth possible. Rivers that can be dammed have been dammed. In some cases, dams are even being demolished to reverse sediment buildup and protect fish spawning areas. Nuclear capacity is expanding primarily in the Far East with China, India, and Korea, but there are still serious reservations about the industry’s ultimate sustainability and safety. As for fossil fuels (coal, gas, and oil), the world entered a new era of depletion in 2010. Despite the emergence of new extractive technologies, a slow but continual decline in production is forecast. This trend will lead eventually to shortages and cost increases. It is expected that reserves, especially of oil and gas, will have declined by 75% by 2100. While wind and solar energy production will undoubtedly continue to grow, they will remain intermittent and insufficient sources of energy unless additional storage facilities are developed. It is possible that other renewable sources will be developed in the next few decades (hydrogen is a current favorite); if so, they should help to complete the transition away from fossil fuels. In general, climate change will result in an increase in peak demand for electricity of 1% to 2% for each 1°C rise in air temperature. This will be due primarily to increased demand for cooling, which often coincides, unfortunately, with the periods of hot and dry weather that decrease plant output. It is important to note that electricity-generating stations are always located near water, either along a river or near the ocean, because all forms of generation require water for cooling. This exposes a critical vulnerability of these plants, as they are subject to damage or failure as a result of extreme weather phenomena or seismic-related events. The 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan brought this problem into sharp focus, when a nuclear plant was first damaged by an earthquake and then knocked out by a tsunami. This double blow caused a failure of its cooling water supply and a subsequent nuclear meltdown. Although the initial reaction to this disaster was a decision on the part of Germany, Japan, and other countries to discontinue building nuclear plants, the reality is that such plants will continue

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to be constructed until viable alternative power sources reach maturity and become widely available. Japan, for example, has already reevaluated its initial reaction to the disaster and will continue to use nuclear facilities into the foreseeable future. Since electricity-generating plants are highly dependent on a stable water supply, climate change can also expose them to increased flooding from storms and/or decreased river flows (and water accessibility) during periods of drought. Furthermore, in flooding or storm-surge conditions, water intake structures are at risk of clogging with debris. All these potential threats will need to be addressed to ensure the generation of a stable energy supply. Energy distribution networks are also vulnerable to the effects of climate change. One of the most common energy distribution problems, even now, is the downing of overhead power cables during storms. With an increase in storm intensity, power interruptions due to downed lines can be expected to become more frequent while also affecting wider regions. This leads to the obvious conclusion that more power lines should be placed underground, especially as the cost of frequent and extensive repair in the most vulnerable localities begins to approach the amortized costs of the high initial investment required for underground lines. Also of concern are underground transformers, which are vulnerable to flooding and thus may need to be converted to submersible types. This kind of unforeseen investment may become easier to defend as more people are affected. For example, in the summer of 2012, a straight-line windstorm (also known as a “derecho”) knocked out power for eight days in the eastern United States. Affecting 4.3 million people, this event ultimately led the local utility to reassess transmission methods with the goal of reducing vulnerability (Wald and Schwartz 2012). Whereas previous studies did not support the cost of placing power lines underground, the increasing frequency and destructive intensity of storms is shifting the economical balance toward such a change in strategy.

WATER MANAGEMENT INFRASTRUCTURE

Despite the fact that it covers 70% of our planet’s surface, water is becoming an increasingly rare resource. The vast majority of the world’s water is in the oceans and is therefore saline. Only 3% of the total supply is fresh, and most of this is trapped in icecaps and glaciers. This leaves only 1% of the earth’s water readily accessible for human exploitation, and this comes mostly from lakes, rivers, and underground sources. Of the available fresh

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water, 70% is already being used for agriculture. Furthermore, potable water sources are not always located in those regions where people prefer to live. As a consequence, of the almost 7 billion people on the earth today, 1 billion lack access to fresh water and 3 billion lack adequate sanitation facilities. Considering that each of us needs about 30 liters of water per day to survive, it is difficult to imagine where and how we will continue to obtain the required water. Population growth makes this an especially intractable problem. By the end of the century, the population is expected to grow to 10 billion, even as water tables continue to fall, rivers and lakes shrink, and the costs of finding new sources of water skyrockets. The input part of our water infrastructure consists of wells, dams, reservoirs, desalinization plants, and distribution networks. On the output side, there are sewer networks, sewage collection structures, and disposal plants. The Greeks were the first to build aqueducts to carry water from mountain springs to cities. At the other end of the world, the Indus Valley people in Asia were the first to develop a sewage system. Of course, the industrious Romans could be counted on to develop both water collection/distribution and waste-disposal systems for their cities. Most modern municipal water systems date from the 19th century, and, in fact, many of the buried pipes currently in use in cities like New York, London, and Paris are more than a century old. Failure of these pipes is an unending maintenance nightmare. Meanwhile, the need to find new sources of water and expand existing water-supply facilities is an ongoing problem worldwide. In large urban areas, strategies include seeking water further from urban centers, improving storage facilities, and reducing losses from evaporation and leakage. The southwest United States serves as an example of how this search for solutions is complicated by competing interests and depletion of resources. The city of Los Angeles, for instance, looks to northern California and the Colorado River basin for its water needs. The desert areas of Phoenix and Las Vegas also rely on the Colorado River for water, which used to flow majestically into the Gulf of California and has now been reduced to a trickle. A major reason for this is the Hoover Dam, which was built along the Colorado to provide flood control and to create hydroelectric capacity. Lake Mead, the reservoir behind the dam, is now experiencing a long-term drop in water level. The current level is expected to drop even further over the coming decades as a consequence of drought and reduced precipitation, the predicted consequences of global warming in that region. In general, over the past century, population expansion in the Southwest has outstripped available capacity to the point that water use currently exceeds capacity. This is clearly an unsustainable situation. The Gulf States, Israel, and many other coastal nations with minimal fresh

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water access have resorted to desalinization to supply their needs, and similar efforts are already underway in the United States. In terms of output, the number of sewage and wastewater collection and treatment facilities is expanding worldwide as the need intensifies to safeguard the environment while also cleaning our rivers and coastal ocean regions. Wastewater can be treated to remove sludge, grease, grit, and other solids, whereupon it can then be chemically or biologically manipulated and filtered to produce clean drinking water. Currently, Singapore is the only place in the world where sewage is thus treated, sanitized, and then reintroduced into the fresh-water system. Some treatment plants have become virtually self-sufficient by using methane from digesters as fuel to run essential equipment. These plants also sell the treated sludge as fertilizer, while the recovered grease and oils are sold for soap making. Unfortunately, in many parts of the world, raw sewage is still discharged into the environment without treatment. In South America, for instance, 85% of sewage goes untreated. Treatment methods in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa remain unknown, while in the Middle East much of the sewage is injected directly into the ground. With an expected increase in global temperatures, untreated sewage will likely cause an increasing number of local health crises as it serves as a breeding ground for many forms of disease-causing bacteria. In a similar vein, toxic algae (which are caused by runoff from agricultural lands treated with phosphorus-rich fertilizer) blooms in lakes and will become more widespread due to increasing temperatures and decreasing water flow. This may motivate towns and cities to intercept and treat the runoff.

COMMUNICATIONS INFRASTRUCTURE

The communications infrastructure comprises networks for landline telephones, mobile telephones, and the Internet. Landlines provided the primary means of communication until the latter part of the 20th century, when mobile networks were introduced. Over 2 billion km of wire are strung across the United States alone, mostly in overhead lines. A small fraction, primarily in major cities, is distributed underground. The overhead line system, which includes central offices and switching stations, is vulnerable to damage from storms. In 2008, Hurricane Katrina destroyed a central office and damaged switches throughout New Orleans, thus rendering the wired telephone system unusable while demonstrating its extreme vulnerability. Although the central office was equipped with emergency generators, the engines suffered from fuel depletion and became inoperable. Since global

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warming is predicted to generate more intense storms and hurricanes, the wired telephone network will need to be upgraded in anticipation of such events. Cellular telephone networks are less vulnerable to storm damage. This is because the cell sites, which constitute only half of the system, are comprised of fixed transceivers. The cellphones, which make up the other half of the system, are mobile. Although cell towers may depend on wired power sources, emergency generators that are time-limited in operation generally back them up. In many parts of the developing world, cellphones were introduced where no wired systems existed and evolved rapidly to become the primary mode of communication. These systems are no less vulnerable to high temperatures and strong storms, and they may need to be upgraded in order to be sufficiently rugged in the future. The World Wide Web, which dates back to the introduction of Internet service in 1991, is the most important development in data communication in the new century. This service is available either through wired networks or, since 1996, via mobile systems that permit the interchange of an unlimited range of information between users. The wireless facilities required for support are still being expanded, although escalating demand is certain to drive supply. As noted above, it is this support network that will prove vulnerable to climate change.

WASTE MANAGEMENT INFRASTRUCTURE

Waste management consists of the collection, processing, and disposal of solid waste material as well as the recovery of those materials that can be recycled. In ancient times, people dropped remains of food, shells, bones, and charcoal on the ground and simply moved on as the remains accumulated. This, of course, provided archeologists with a treasure trove to learn about these ancient peoples. When people first came to live together in towns and cities, garbage was similarly thrown into streets and left to rot or was otherwise tossed into rivers. This led to the spread of plagues, as germ-infected rats fed on the garbage and transmitted these highly infectious diseases to humans. This condition continued well into the 18th century. At that time, municipalities began to collect garbage and dispose of it by burying it or creating landfills along the margins of the cities. Rubble from frequent fires was also disposed of in this manner. The new landmasses became extensions of the city along the water’s edge, thus supporting new construction, as in New York City and San Francisco.

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Modern waste management includes compaction, reuse, energy recovery, and disposal. Landfills that used to vent methane and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere (thus adding to global warming conditions) now capture and reuse these gases. Incineration, which consumes waste and generates heat or electricity, is used where land is scarce (such as in Japan and some European countries). Recycling of reusable materials was adopted as a waste-management strategy at the end of the 20th century and has expanded to include metals, glass, plastics, and paper. In the emerging cradle-to-cradle movement, an attempt is made to differentiate reusable technical materials from biodegradable materials, the latter of which can serve as food for lower life forms. The objective is a waste-free environment. Until this ideal can be achieved, we must deal with waste using currently available technology. With a predicted 60% increase in the world population by the end of this century, new solutions will be needed to deal with an increase in waste. While it is recognized that much of the population growth will occur in undeveloped and developing nations, developed ones will nevertheless face some level of increase in waste production. This will cause extreme strain on existing waste-management facilities. In addition, higher temperatures will make the problem of biological material disposal more urgent for both sanitary and health reasons, particularly in regions expected to receive the greatest rainfall. A  recent report from the World Bank (2012) predicts that the global generation of waste will grow 70% from current levels to 2.2 billion tons per year by 2025. As a consequence, dealing with this mountain of waste will become a major infrastructure challenge in the coming decades.

CONCLUSION

If there is a common theme in this chapter’s descriptions of the effects of global warming on our infrastructure networks, it is the need to address future maintenance and attendant costs of monitoring and repairing facilities at the time of their construction. Thus far, capital costs have been treated as one-time events with no provision for future costs (the exception is the requirement for nuclear plants to provide for decommissioning funding). This is undoubtedly due to the narrow timelines that come from political shortsightedness, as legislators who serve for relatively short terms generally do not choose to be concerned with consequences that extend beyond the next election. A fundamental change in philosophy would require a forward funding of infrastructure facilities that takes into account the future cost of maintenance, perhaps in the form of an annually

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funded reserve. Furthermore, a fundamental change in infrastructure management is needed. This would include: • The introduction of risk-based management for developing projects, taking into account the probability of unknown future events and their likely effects. • The adoption of life-cycle-based methods, in which future costs for maintenance are built into the initial program. • The promotion of public–private partnerships to build toll roads, bridges, and transit systems, whereby private companies are responsible for construction and operational capital while the government pays for use. The Romans may have built for the millennia, but we are barely building for decades. Because serious consequences to our infrastructure are anticipated to result from global warming, this is the time to plan for a future that will be markedly different from the past and to utilize our limited resources to ensure a better outcome. It is clear from this brief outline that action will need to be taken by the agencies responsible for our infrastructure to forestall the possibility of restricted usability or outright failure of these facilities. Our dependence on this infrastructure is taken for granted, and we cannot wait for the day when it no longer functions as we expect it to. As we can no longer forestall climate change, now is the time to secure our future with responsible planning. REFERENCES American Society of Civil Engineers. 2013. “Report Card for America’s Infrastructure.” Reston, VA: Author. www.infrastructurereportcard.org/report-cards Crouch, T. 2004. Wings:  A  History of Aviation from Kites to the Space Age. New York: Norton. International Energy Agency. 2011. “Key World Engineering Statistics.” Paris: Author. www.iea.org Levy, M. 2007. Why the Wind Blows: A History of Weather and Global Warming. Hinesburg, VT: Upper Access Publishing Co. McKinney, V. 2007. “Sea Level Rise and the Future of the Netherlands.” ICE Case Studies 212. http://www1.american.edu/ted/ice/dutch-sea.htm SACG. 2012. MTP2035 Issue Papers:  Road Maintenance. Sacramento Area Council of Governments, 2012. http://www.sacog.org/mtp/pdf/MTP2035/Issue%20 Papers/Road%20Maintenance.pdf New  York Academy of Sciences. 2011. “Responding to Climate Change in New  York State.” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1244: 2–649. Oreskes, N., and E.M. Conway. 2010. Merchants of Doubt. New York: Bloomsbury Press. Randers, J. 2012. 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green. Wald, M., and J. Schwartz. 2012. “Weather Extremes Leave Parts of U.S. Grid Buckling.” The New York Times, July 25. World Bank. 2012. “What a Waste:  A  Global Review of Solid Waste Management.” Washington, DC: Author. http://documents.worldbank.org/ [ 32 ] Levy

CHAPTER 3

Critical Infrastructure in Extreme Events T HOMA S A . BIRKL AND AND MEGAN K . WARNEMENT

INTRODUCTION

The September 11 attacks triggered concern about the performance of “critical” infrastructure on which social, political, and economic activity depend. The attacks moved terrorism to the top of the national security agenda and led to significant legislative, regulatory, and behavioral changes. Furthermore, the shift in focus to the threat of terrorism diminished policymakers’ appreciation and preparation for the natural disasters that communities typically face every year (Boin and McConnell 2007). The increasing number of declared natural disasters, coupled with the threat of terrorism, suggests that “extreme events” can lead to failures in critical infrastructure. These failures have national implications that can ripple through society and the economy. This chapter is about the performance of our interdependent infrastructure systems in extreme events, which are outside shocks to infrastructures; we do not consider failures internal to a system, such as major power blackouts that are not triggered by some significant external shock. We argue that “infrastructure” is best considered as systems of technical and social systems that interact in both predictable and unpredictable ways. As such, we cannot simply consider their design and performance as solely technological problems.

WHAT IS INFRASTRUCTURE?

There is no one universally accepted definition of “infrastructure.” The Compact Oxford English Dictionary defines the term as “the basic physical and organizational structures and facilities (e.g., buildings, roads, power supplies) needed for the operation of a society or enterprise” but uses the example sentence “the social and economic infrastructure of a country,” suggesting that the term is very broad and very vague. The term came into widespread use in the 1960s and 1970s to mean “public works” (Boin and McConnell 2007). Alternative definitions link “public works” with narrowly defined systems, such as telecommunications and electrical systems, as well as broader systems such as finance, health care, and food production and distribution. The broader definition of infrastructure, which gained currency after September 11, refers to what’s become known as “critical” infrastructure. Of course, the definition of “critical” is no more clear than that of “infrastructure,” but it is provided in the Critical Infrastructures Protection Act of 2001, codified at 42 USC 5195C(e): [T]‌he term “critical infrastructure” means systems and assets, whether physical or virtual, so vital to the United States that the incapacity or destruction of such systems and assets would have a debilitating impact on security, national economic security, national public health or safety, or any combination of those matters.

The range of critical systems is broad, as shown in Table 3.1, and reflects the idea that infrastructure encompasses socio-technical systems on which modern life is most dependent, as well as systems that are included for symbolic rather than functional reasons. The key feature of most of these systems is their interdependency on each other. This is not a new concept, but the tools by which we can gather information about and model infrastructure interdependence have made us better able to understand how these systems operate and depend on other systems.

WHAT IS AN EXTREME EVENT?

An “extreme event” is an event that “relative to some class of related occurrences, is either notable, rare, unique, profound, or otherwise significant in terms of its impacts, effects, or outcomes” (Sarewitz and Pielke 2001). Geophysical phenomena are not “disasters” unto themselves—they

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Table 3.1   DEFINITION OF INFRASTRUCTURE SYSTEMS E.O. 13010 1996

U.S. PATRIOT Act 2001 42 USC 5185C(b)(2)

National Strategy for Homeland Security 2002

National Strategy Homeland Security for the Physical Presidential Directive 7 Protection of Critical 2003 Infrastructures and Key Assets 2003

American Society of Civil Engineers 2009

Telecommunications

Telecommunications

Information and

Telecommunications

Information technology;

Virtual critical infrastructure includes

telecommunications;

cyber, electronic, and information systems.

telecommunications

Built critical infrastructure systems include Electrical power

Energy

Energy

Energy

systems Gas and oil storage and

Energy: electric power except

communication systems Built critical infrastructure includes energy

for commercial nuclear power systems Energy

Energy

Energy

transportation

facilities Energy: including the

Built critical infrastructure includes energy

production refining, storage,

systems

and distribution of oil and gas, except for commercial Banking and finance Transportation

Financial services Transportation sector

Banking and finance Transportation

Banking and finance Transportation

nuclear power facilities Banking and finance Transportation systems,

Built critical infrastructure includes

including mass transit,

transportation systems

aviation, maritime, ground/ surface, and rail and pipeline systems (Continued)

Table 3.1  (CONTINUED) E.O. 13010 1996

U.S. PATRIOT Act 2001 42 USC 5185C(b)(2)

National Strategy for Homeland Security 2002

National Strategy Homeland Security for the Physical Presidential Directive 7 Protection of Critical 2003 Infrastructures and Key Assets 2003

American Society of Civil Engineers 2009

Water supply systems

Water sector

Water

Water

Drinking water and water

Built critical infrastructure includes water

treatment systems

and wastewater treatment, distribution, and collection

Emergency services

Emergency services

Emergency services

Emergency services

Agriculture Food Public health Defense industrial

Agriculture and food Agriculture and food Public health Defense Industrial Base

Agriculture and food Agriculture and food Public health, health care Defense industrial base

base Chemical industry

Chemicals and

Chemical

Postal and shipping

hazardous materials Postal and shipping

(including medical, police, fire, and rescue) Continuity of

Government

government

Postal and shipping National monuments and icons Natural critical infrastructure systems includes lakes, rivers, and streams that are used for navigation, water supply, or flood water storage, as well as coastal wetlands that provide a buffer for storm surges

become so only when they disrupt social systems. In human terms, the most extreme event is a catastrophe: a particular kind of disaster that so overtaxes a community that it must seek extensive outside assistance to respond to, and begin to recover from, the upheaval (Quarantelli 2005). The increasing incidence of extreme natural events, combined with increasing human settlement of vulnerable areas, has made the frequency of major disasters a considerable concern of officials worldwide, and these threats have historically been greater than that posed by terrorism.

INTERDEPENDENCE AND VULNERABILITY

The design of our infrastructure systems has created interdependencies, both within and across sectors. This structure of interdependency creates large technical systems (LTS), which consists of several organizations working together in a complex and socio-technical network. An LTS supports the goals and missions of these multiple organizations and is comprised of both “hard” and “soft” technologies, human operators, and rules and procedures (Grabowski and Roberts 1996; Egan 2007). These complex, tightly coupled systems experience an increased level of vulnerabilities for several reasons. Egan (2007) found that even the broadest definitions of critical infrastructure have recently been expanding due to new technological advances, the interdependence of systems, and new understandings of vulnerabilities (p. 5). This growth in “critical” elements or systems increases the number of vulnerabilities and potential for failure (Coase 1960; Bea 2002; Egan 2007). Interdependence creates vulnerabilities as these systems are continually “rafting” together in order to improve effectiveness and efficiency. “ ‘Rafting’, as it is used here, refers to the joining of different elements to achieve a purpose usually unrelated to the purpose of each of the individual elements” (Egan 2007, p. 6). Just as one would build a makeshift raft in order to float to a destination, these systems join together in order to accomplish a goal. However, when they do so, each system assumes the vulnerabilities of the other systems and complexity increases. Therefore, when one part of the raft begins to sink, it sinks all the other systems rafted with it as well. The more diverse these rafted systems are, the higher the chances for a complete “system failure” as demonstrated by Hurricane Katrina. The critical infrastructure systems that were influenced by Hurricane Katrina included “roads, electricity, water and food distribution, emergency and security personnel, and sanitation, including morgue services” (Egan

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2007). Even if only one of these critical infrastructure systems were affected, it would have proved difficult for the entire system. During Hurricane Katrina, all of these critical infrastructure systems were either extremely taxed or otherwise knocked completely out of commission, thus causing a system failure. Hurricane Katrina provides an example of a LTS failure in an extreme event. The sequence of failures in New Orleans can be greatly simplified as follows: Storm surge from the hurricane breached levees that were not well designed or built (Cooper and Block 2006; van Heerden 2007). Once the levees were breached, water filled the New Orleans “bowl,” flooding 80% of the city. Flooding knocked out the power on which urban services depend, including the pumps that move water out of New Orleans. Roads were impassable, and power, water, and sewers were inoperable. The damage took weeks to years to repair, and New Orleans has still not fully recovered from this event. In some ways, this depiction of interdependent systems reflects Perrow’s understanding of normal accidents. Normal accident theory relies on the idea that “unexpected” failures are actually normal failures because complexity creates more opportunities for closely coupled systems to fail in unpredictable but, ultimately, unsurprising ways (Perrow 1999, Little 2002). LTSs are prone to normal accidents because they are managed separately and rafted together rather than designed as a single organization. Egan (2007) argues that an “LTS will have developed through a planned, or more likely unplanned, ‘rafting’ together of many different system, each relying on the next for efficiency, stability, and effectiveness” (p.  6). The notion of rafting among systems is similar to, but not precisely the same thing as, the conventional “networks of networks” approach, because rafting tends to link various aspects of infrastructure systems into smaller clusters. While Newman (2011) notes that networks also have this community structure, “with most connections falling within groups and only a few between groups” (p. 25), Egan’s rafting concept takes this a step further by noting the dependency of each “community” (or raft) of systems on other systems. There may also be systems that are just so fundamental to the operation of the whole system that they are truly critical systems, such as electric power or potable water. But in some fundamental ways, the failure of levees in New Orleans (and the subsequent damage and disruption), does not reflect the sorts of “normal” accidents that we can understand as function of complexity. While we argue that, in gross terms, the system of levees is an LTS, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers acknowledged in a post-Katrina report that the levees were a “system in name only.” Through a set of poor assumptions, poor

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engineering, and design flaws, the levee “system” “lack[ed] any built-in resilience that would have allowed the system to remain standing and provide protection even if water flowed over the tops of levees and floodwalls” (Schwartz 2006). Attempts to operate the levees as a system were made, and some sound planning was undertaken, but the lack of resilience in the levee and floodwall system was so manifest that the system was, on the day of Katrina’s landfall, unmanageable. But to claim that the failures revealed by Katrina were simply engineering errors would be inaccurate. The weak system of flood protections in New Orleans and in surrounding areas was a result of budget constraints that may have driven engineering and design shortcuts (Seed et al. 2006). And the failure was certainly exacerbated by the poor decision making of both the state and Orleans Parish in areas such as land use planning, where the Orleans Parish Levee Board was much more concerned with land reclamation and development than with flood mitigation. In short, the failure of this LTS can be attributed to a combination of social, political, economic, and engineering failures that made the city less resilient, less robust, and more prone to catastrophic damage (Cooper and Block 2006). These potential failures were well known before Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, but there was an apparent lack of economic, political, and organizational will to better prepare for such a storm (which did most of its damage through storm surge, rather than wind or rain).

INFRASTRUCTURE, VULNERABILITY AND RESILIENCE

Current research on disaster recovery shows that communities and systems vary in the extent to which they are likely to be harmed by an extreme event (vulnerability) and their ability to “rebound” or “bounce back” from such an event (resilience). While there are many ways to define resilience (Comfort 1994; Manyena 2006; Aguirre 2007), most definitions of resilience encompass the idea of “failing gracefully” or having “rebound capacity.” In engineering, a system that is resilient is stressed to some point without failing catastrophically; in this way, the engineered system may not work at peak capacity, but it retains its function sufficiently well enough as to not create major disruptions or losses of life. The goal in resilient engineered systems is either to allow for a wide performance envelope—even if service quality does degrade—so that the overall engineered system performs reasonably well under stress.

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[ 39 ]

A similar idea is reflected in the systems literature, where resilience is offered as a solution to the open system nature of increasingly complex human systems (Fiksel 2003). As we know from the normal accident literature, anticipating every change in the environment of a system is nearly impossible. From a systems perspective, the failures during Katrina can partially be attributed to the sorts of unanticipated interactions between systems that characterize normal accidents (Perrow 2009). However, considering that the destruction that would be wrought by a hurricane was well understood before the disaster, one might also argue that people and their leaders in New Orleans, in the state, and in the nation failed to consider the “worst case” (Clarke 2005) that could result from a major storm. But such an analysis would overlook the social and political considerations inherent in the overall design of communities (Wachtendorf and Kendra 2006). As Campanella (2006) notes, even when badly damaged, cities contain certain fundamental elements: a group of surviving citizens and the core of a city that exists on that site for some basic reason. Even when infrastructure systems are not resilient, the overall city itself has considerable resilience. Again, seen in this light, infrastructure plays a supporting role. This supporting role is sometimes misunderstood by engineers and nontechnical policymakers. Engineers are motivated by many goals, with societal values being very high among these goals. In practice, however, engineers are particularly concerned with the strength, resilience, operational efficiency, construction-phase efficiency, and safety of systems. Ultimately, engineering is both a creature and a servant of society (Petroski 1992)  and, as such, is embedded in all the other social aspects of communities that promote or inhibit resilience. Engineers play a crucial role in promoting community resilience; they must also consider the social and political environment of engineering, as well as the limits of engineering in protecting communities from the worst outcomes of disasters. The subtle balancing of social, political, economic, environmental, and engineering aspects of communities is particularly difficult to achieve but is a worthy goal in a world of increased hazard vulnerability and increased systems interdependence.

IMPLICATIONS OF CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE FAILURE IN EXTREME EVENTS

The main concerns with the performance of critical infrastructure in extreme events are the nature and extent of damage to the infrastructure system and the other systems that depend on the damaged system. In the

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most extreme events, all infrastructure systems will be affected by the event itself and by the failures of the other infrastructure systems. Regardless of whether a particular infrastructure system fails as a result of failures of other systems, or due to direct impacts from the event itself, the immediate post-event performance of the system will have a significant influence on near-term disaster recovery and on long-run community resilience. By definition, a community will struggle to recover from a disaster if its infrastructure systems are not functional and are failing to provide the services on which the community depends. Disaster response also relies on at least a minimally functional set of infrastructures. For example, in New Orleans, law enforcement was hampered by the inability of police officers to recharge their radios (Sims 2007). But in many cases, response to a disaster is supported with external resources, such as from nearby local governments; national government; and an ad hoc network of private, public, and nonprofit organizations that work together to improvise a response (Smith 2011). Researchers at MCEER at the University at Buffalo have developed a simple concept known as the resilience delta, which can be applied to both communities and infrastructure systems.1 The resilience delta demonstrates that communities and infrastructure systems have different resilience profiles. These resilience profiles reflect the relationship between robustness and resilience within the infrastructure system and can be depicted in a conceptual diagram. Figure 3.1 depicts a series of resilience deltas for four kinds of communities or systems. Communities 1 and 2 are hypothetical communities that experience different degradation of social and infrastructure systems in a given event. Communities 3 and 4 are hypothetical communities that experience the same extent of shock to their systems but recover at different rates. Over time, a community operates at its normal level of function until a shock occurs. In Figure 3.1, the vertical axis represents community functionality—that is, how well a community’s social and built infrastructures are working and where these infrastructures are assumed to be working at a baseline level immediately before a shock (such as a natural disaster). Such a shock degrades systems, including infrastructure systems, and community networks. Accordingly, we can speak conceptually of the vertical axis as addressing both social and infrastructure systems that are inextricably linked with each other. In simplest terms, the questions for any system will be how severe is the shock (how deeply does the system fall on the vertical axis) and how quickly does a community or system respond to that shock? The speed of

Cri tic al Infr a structure in Extreme Events 

[ 41 ]

Co m m un ity

1

Time Good community or system function

ity

2

ity

un

m

m

m

Co

Co m m un

ity

3

Co

4

un

m

Figure 3.1  Infrastructure Resilience Delta Source: Draws on work at MCEER, SUNY at Buffalo.

the recovery is, in simplest terms, defined by the angle in the line between the depth of the shock and the recovery to preshock functionality. Also, for a given shock of a particular physical magnitude, a community or engineered system may be more or less robust. For example, Community 1 and Community 2 both experience significant extreme events. However, Community 1 is more robust than Community 2. Therefore, if we assume that both communities recover from the disaster at the same rate, a system that is more robust will allow for quicker recovery. Of course, there is a limit to robustness; “too much” robustness is technically infeasible and is economically inefficient. In a manner similar to the “robustness” of a community, a classic engineering problem is whether (and to what extent) to build a system to be robust, or, alternatively, to allow it to “fail gracefully.” When a system fails gracefully, it means that it does not fail all at once, or catastrophically, thus allowing manager and people using the system to contain the damage and seek safety. For example, structural engineers are learning that it is best to build a bridge that will not collapse during an earthquake but will instead retain enough integrity to protect life safely by allowing people to get off the bridge.

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Returning to Figure 3.1, we also show that while two communities’ infrastructure or community functionality declined to the same extent, in our hypothetical Community 3, recovery was much quicker than in Community 4 (as shown by the sharper angle between the shock and the line that represents a return to functionality). Activities like planning and preparedness on the part of all actors in the system will promote faster recovery; in short, Community 3 may have planned better than Community 4, may have greater social capital available to respond to the disaster, may have greater wealth and physical capital available, or may have all of these things. In these conceptual models, engineers define recovery as the reestablishment of preexisting functionality of infrastructure systems. This would be highly correlated with community recovery because, as stated previously, by definition infrastructure systems make communities and their socioeconomic structures possible. In short, big shocks usually mean longer recovery times, but communities that plan and prepare can recover more quickly than those that do not. Alternatively, the goal is to balance robustness and resilience in such a way that systems can withstand large shocks and then recover quickly. Of course, how one optimizes these two features within an infrastructure system is not an easy question to answer. The extent to which the system should be robust is a function of risk and the cost of the loss of that infrastructure system. A less critical system would likely be built less robustly than a more critical system. Systems such as water and telecommunications may be a higher priority for robust construction and for rapid restoration than are other systems, such as schools, parks, or other systems that have been labeled as infrastructure but are not central to the maintenance of economic activity.

PROSPECTS FOR IMPROVEMENT

Improving the performance of infrastructure systems is a daunting task, particularly considering that existing infrastructure systems are overstretched and are characterized by aging technology and deferred maintenance. But improvements in technology and management systems have great potential for mitigating the effects of extreme events and infrastructure systems. Fortuitously, such improvements will also improve the day-to-day functionality of the systems, thus yielding gains in efficiency and effectiveness. One of the most promising developments in infrastructure is the idea of “failing gracefully.” Systems that fail gracefully are those that recognize

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that unanticipated conditions will arise and that time and additional resources will therefore be needed to address these unpredictable conditions (Harrald 2006). These resilient systems are prepared and have prevention plans in place to deal with a disaster but are also agile and flexible enough to change their plans when the need arises. Perrow (2008) argues that the best we can hope for is to fail gracefully and avoid a catastrophic, cascading failure. To accomplish this, we need to reduce vulnerability and reduce the “size of that which is vulnerable” (p.  162). As previously stated, the interconnectedness and rafting that occurs between our critical infrastructure systems is increasing our vulnerability and complexity, thus impeding the capacity for a system to fail gracefully. What happens instead is a cascading failure, as demonstrated by the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Perrow’s (2008) response is to break apart the rafts through modularization. He argues despite the tremendous effort and resources that have been spent on disaster prevention and recovery—which is important—we will nonetheless face a never-ending cycle if we do not reduce the size of our vulnerable targets. Since “complexity is the enemy of reliability,” it is necessary that our systems are made less complex, less interconnected, and therefore less vulnerable (p. 165). Of course, these measures are challenging to put into practice. Engineers and their clients value efficiency very highly, and many infrastructure dependencies and complexities have arisen from the fact that it is often more efficient to rely on other infrastructure providers than it is to create one’s own systems. Hospitals, for example, would be less efficient in generating power and finding water than would electric and water utilities. Engineers also build systems to stand up to a certain design level of shock or disturbance but not the most extreme shocks, particularly if those extremes are unknown and unlikely. Theoretically, we could build systems that are so robust that they would never break regardless of the forces applied to them. But such systems may become unwieldy and would be far more expensive to build than would be resilient systems that fail gracefully, and their very robustness would violate other engineering and human values, such as aesthetics and efficiency. The design of infrastructure systems must balance a number of values, goals, and human desires, and it is very difficult, if not impossible, to maximize all of these values. NOTE 1. Formerly the Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research; the abbreviation is simply its name now.

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REFERENCES Aguirre, B.E. 2007. “Dialectics of Vulnerability and Resilience.” Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law and Policy 14: 39–60. American Society of Civil Engineers. 2009. 2009 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure. Washington: Author. Bea, R.G. 2002. “Human and Organizational Factors in Reliability Assessment and Management of Offshore Structures.” Risk Analysis 22: 29–45. Boin, A., and A. McConnell. 2007. “Preparing for Critical Infrastructure Breakdowns:  The Limits of Crisis Management and the Need for Resilience.” Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management 15: 50–59. Campanella, T.J. 2006. “Urban Resilience and the Recovery of New Orleans.” Journal of the American Planning Association 72: 141–146. Clarke, L. 2005. Worst Cases:  Terror and Catastrophe in the Popular Imagination. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Coase, R.H. 1960. “The Problem of Social Cost.” Journal of Law and Economics 3: 1–44. Comfort, L.K. 1994. “Risk and Resilience: Interorganizational Learning Following the Northridge Earthquake of 17 January 1994.” Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management 2: 157–170. Cooper, C., and R. Block. 2006. Disaster: Hurricane Katrina and the Failure of Homeland Security. New York: Times Books. Egan, M.J. 2007. “Anticipating Future Vulnerability:  Defining Characteristics of Increasingly Critical Infrastructure-like Systems.” Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management 15: 4–17. Fiksel, J. 2003. “Designing Resilient, Sustainable Systems.” Environmental Science & Technology 37: 5330–5339. Grabowski, M., and K.H. Roberts. 1996. “Human and Organizational Error in Large Scale Systems.” IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, Part A: Systems and Humans, 26: 2–16. Harrald, J.R. 2006. “Agility and Discipline:  Critical Success Factors for Disaster Response.” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 604: 256–272. Little, R.G. 2002. “Controlling Cascading Failure: Understanding the Vulnerabilities of Interconnected Infrastructures.” Journal of Urban Technology 9: 109–123. Manyena, S.B. 2006. “The Concept of Resilience Revisited.” Disasters 30: 434–450. Newman, M.E.J. 2011. “Communities, Modules and Large-Scale Structure in Networks.” Nature Physics 8: 25–31. Perrow, C. 1999. Normal Accidents:  Living with High-Risk Technologies. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Perrow, C. 2008. “Complexity, Catastrophe, and Modularity.” Sociological Inquiry 78: 162–173. Perrow, C. 2009. “What’s Needed Is Application, Not Reconciliation:  A  Response to Shrivastava, Sonpar and Pazzaglia.” Human Relations 62: 1391–1393. Petroski, H. 1992. To Engineer Is Human:  The Role of Failure in Successful Design. New York: Random House. Quarantelli, E.L. 2005. “Catastrophes Are Different from Disasters: Some Implications for Crisis Planning and Managing Drawn from Katrina.” http://understanding katrina.ssrc.org/Quarantelli/ Sarewitz, D., and R. Pielke. 2001. “Extreme Events: A Research and Policy Framework for Disasters in Context.” International Geology Review 43: 406–418.

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Schwartz, J. 2006. “Army Engineers Admit Levees Were Badly Made.” International Herald Tribune, June 1. Seed, R.B., R.G. Bea, R.I. Abdelmalak, A.G. Athanasopoulos, G.P. Boutwell, J.D. Bray, et  al. 2006. Investigation of the Performance of the New Orleans Flood Protection Systems in Hurricane Katrina on August 29, 2005. Berkeley:  Independent Levee Investigation Team, University of California. Sims, B. 2007. “The Day after the Hurricane’:  Infrastructure, Order, and the New Orleans Police Department’s Response to Hurricane Katrina.” Social Studies of Science 37: 111–118. Smith, G. 2011. Planning for Post-Disaster Recovery :  A  Review of the United States Disaster Assistance Framework. Fairfax, VA: Public Entity Risk Institute. van Heerden, I.L. 2007. “The Failure of the New Orleans Levee System Following Hurricane Katrina and the Pathway Forward.” Public Administration Review 67: 24–35. Wachtendorf, T., and J.M. Kendra. 2006. “Improvising Disaster in the City of Jazz:  Organizational Response to Hurricane Katrina.” http://understandingka trina.ssrc.org/Wachtendorf_Kendra/

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CHAPTER 4

Privacy Concerns for Ubiquitous Data Aggregation and Storage JARROD M. RIFKIND AND SEYMOUR E . GOODMAN

INTRODUCTION

Information technology has drastically changed the ways in which individuals are accounted for and monitored in societies. Over the past two decades, the United States and other countries worldwide have seen a tremendous increase in the number of individuals with access to the Internet. Data collected by the World Bank shows that 17.5 of every 100 people in the world had access to the Internet in 2006, and this number increased to 23.2 in 2008, 29.5 in 2010, and 32.8 in 2011 (World Bank 2012). According to the latest Cisco traffic report, Internet traffic exceeded 30 exabytes (1018 bytes) per month in 2011 and is expected to reach a zettabyte (1021 bytes) per month by 2015 (Cisco Systems 2011). Activities on the Web are no longer limited to seemingly noncontroversial practices like e-mail. The sheer growth of the Internet as a medium for communication and information sharing as well as the development of large, high-performance data centers have made it easier and less expensive for companies and governments to aggregate large amounts of data generated by individuals. Today, many people’s personal lives can be pieced together relatively easily according to their search histories and the information that they provide on social networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter. Therefore, technological breakthroughs associated with computing raise important questions regarding information security and the role of privacy in society.

As individuals begin using the Internet for e-commerce, e-government, and a variety of other services, data about their activities has been collected and stored by entities in both the public and private sectors. For the private sector, consumer activities on the Internet provide lucrative information about user spending habits that can then be used to generate targeted advertisements. Companies have developed business models that rely on the sale of such information to third-party entities, whether they are other companies or the federal government. As for the public sector, data collection occurs through any exchange a government may have with its citizens. At least in the United States, such developments in the public sector have steadily increased in the years following the September 11 terrorist attacks and have reignited debates regarding the inherent tension between preserving national security and respecting personal liberties and privacy. The ubiquitous data aggregation conducted by the public and private sectors and the potential privacy concerns that arise as a consequence of this practice will continue to grow as contentious points in policy circles while also meriting public discourses to redress them. A critical component of the current concerns regarding the public and private sectors’ collection and treatment of personal data is the concept of privacy. Although this concept has been evoked in a variety of contexts and situations, all of these discussions share similar underlying themes— knowledge, choice, and protection. As some have argued regarding ubiquitous data collection, it is crucial for individuals to know exactly what types of data are being collected and stored, by whom, and in what ways (Breznitz et al. 2011, p. 102). For the purpose of this analysis, the scope of the privacy concern is limited to that of personal data provided by individuals and collected by private companies and governments, whether national or local. The Congressional Research Service defines privacy in this context as “knowing what data is being collected and what is happening to it, having choices about how it is collected and used, and being confident that it is secure” (Stevens 2011, p. 5). Despite the fact that the United States shows no signs of having federal legislation outlining a uniformly accepted definition of privacy, the one provided by the Congressional Research Service can help contextualize problems raised by current practices in the public and private sectors. Recent policy discussions concerning privacy have revolved around Facebook and Google, two private companies known for their prominent presence on the data market and increased negative publicity. In order to provide services to their consumers, these companies have acquired the ability to gather large volumes of data pertaining to users while also tracking their users’ activities online. User-generated information becomes

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another product for these companies to sell. Thus their primary clients are third-party companies interested in acquiring user information for marketing and other purposes. Regarding the private sector, Google and Facebook represent extreme cases of what advancements in data acquisition and storage capacities can mean for individuals who willingly share their information online. On the other hand, the public sector’s initiatives through e-government have also amassed user data in unprecedented ways. The problem outlined here is therefore two-pronged. First, if left unaddressed, these developments could increase the existing controversy surrounding privacy and civil liberties, particularly as it concerns responsible and appropriate handling of personal data. This problem becomes even more acute in the public sector when the preservation of personal privacy and civil liberties needs to be balanced against concerns of national security. Second, such large amounts of personal data stored by companies and governments alike can become ideal targets for skilled hackers. These databases are therefore vulnerable to information security breaches. Both of these issues will become increasingly complex as newer, more advanced technologies capable of tracking a full range of individuals’ activities continue to enter the market. The following analysis intends to examine how the technique of ubiquitous data gathering further complicates issues of privacy and information security, which have become complex and highly interrelated in the public and private sectors over the past few decades.

PRIVATE SECTOR, AGGREGATION CAPACITIES, AND DATA TREATMENT

According to recent statistics, the social networking website Facebook had 1.23 billion monthly active users as of December 31, 2013 (Facebook 2014). It also had 945 million monthly active members who used its mobile products in the same month (Facebook 2014). If Facebook were a country, its population would be the third largest in the world, and it is growing at a faster rate than the two countries preceding it. As a case in point, Facebook epitomizes the trade-off between the benefits of being connected to people around the world and the privacy concerns associated with creating a profile that leads users to reveal self-identifying information. Harvey Jones and José Hiram Soltren (2005) found that privacy on Facebook is undermined by three realities: Users disclose too much information, Facebook does not take adequate steps to protect user privacy, and third parties actively seek out end-user information using Facebook (p. 1). Although users willingly share information about themselves, they are oftentimes not presented

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with a complete picture of what is being done with their data after it is shared online. Facebook has therefore been able to adopt a business model that profits from accumulating the personal information of hundreds of millions of individuals. With current storage and computing technologies, companies like Facebook can store vast amounts of user information generated at any time of day. The book Delete reveals how individuals who use social networking sites like Facebook share their information and, as a result, cannot easily be forgotten by the technologies storing their data (Mayer-Schönberger 2009). The possibility of an individual’s private information existing forever in one of Facebook’s data centers has been made possible by advancements in data storage. Facebook in particular may store user profile information even if the account has been deactivated or deleted due to the complex distributed systems it uses. Since storage has become so cheap, it may be more expensive for companies like Facebook to sort through and delete selected user data than to keep it. Technological developments have thus facilitated and enabled individuals to leave a lasting and nearly permanent footprint in cyberspace. According to the Facebook Data Infrastructure Team, the entire data processing infrastructure of Facebook has grown from a 15 terabyte (1012 bytes) data set in 2007 to a 700 terabyte one, and this infrastructure processed more than 75 terabytes of compressed data per day in 2010 (Thusoo et al. 2010, pp. 1, 9). The same data storage techniques for user data applies to the billions of photos users upload on a regular basis. Recent figures indicate that Facebook stored over 260 billion images in 2010, which is over 20 petabytes (1015 bytes) of data (Beaver et al. 2010, p. 1). To place these statistics into perspective and to contextualize Facebook’s computing capacity, one petabyte of data is equal to 13.3 years of HD-TV video, and 20 petabytes is the total hard-drive space manufactured in 1995 (Nate 2009). In order to keep up with the amount of data continuously generated by users, Facebook has had to enhance its computing power and storage capacity over the years. A danger associated with holding this amount of data is that Facebook also enables other companies to gain access to it—at a price. Serving as a host for user information, Facebook has become an attractive business platform for marketers willing to pay for tailored advertising for Facebook users who might be interested in their products. By agreeing to Facebook’s terms and creating a profile, users lose control over their information and who has access to it. Once that information is stored, Facebook can share user data with third parties wanting to market their products on the social networking website. This type of collaboration between Facebook and advertisers enables third-party companies to know about the personal

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interests and online behaviors of Facebook’s users (Fuchs 2011, p. 15). In the end, the information that users share on Facebook could be accessed and acquired by other companies without their knowledge, thus challenging the notion of privacy provided earlier. Facebook is not the first company to aggregate large amounts of personal data and is unlikely to be the last. Although different in the services provided, Google shares Facebook’s ability to collect and store large amounts of personal information, and it has been able to dominate a market highly dependent on user-generated content. Google provides its users with Gmail (a free e-mail service), Android (operating software for cell phones), Chrome (a web browser), Google Maps (a web-based map application), and a variety of other services, all of which supply it with users’ personal information. Google’s entrance into the cellphone market has become problematic in recent years, as its highly developed and ubiquitous data-gathering techniques have raised unique privacy concerns. In particular, Google and other companies are able to track users with the advent of the smartphone, a product that resembles a computer in its capacity more than it does a traditional telephone. Google found itself at the center of controversy when it was discovered that the company was tracking the browsing habits of people using Safari, the Apple web browser, for Internet searches on their iPhones. According to The Wall Street Journal, Google used “special computer code that tricks Apple’s Safari Web-browsing software into letting [it] monitor many users” (Angwin and Valentino-Devries 2012). Google’s powerful search engine and its varied services have given this particular company the capability to acquire as much information as possible associated with the online activities of individuals regardless of whose products they use. In this sense, mobile platforms can pose yet another distinct threat to personal privacy. According to research conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project, 42% of cell phone users owned a smartphone in the United States as of May 2011 (Smith 2011). While most individuals do not carry their computers around with them everywhere they go, smartphone users typically keep their devices on them at all times of the day, oftentimes sharing their location on social networking sites and applications they have downloaded on their phones. Besides being voluntarily given away by the users, location data can also be triangulated using cellular towers or through the global positioning system that may already exist on the device. Smartphones are thus an example of location-based tracking systems. Of course, as observed by researchers such as Subhankar Dhar and Upkar Varshney (2011), this type of geospatial data gathering capability can be advantageous to users in areas such

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as information/directory services, tracking and navigation services, emergency services, and location-based advertising (p.  124). Yet, on a basic level, such practices can also threaten an individual user’s personal privacy and safety if the geospatial information gathered is mishandled. Due to the conveniences that technologies introduced by Google and other companies provide, privacy remains an under-addressed concern. The examples introduced here are intended to show the other side of the coin regarding rapid technological breakthroughs that are not thoroughly analyzed prior to widespread adoption. The helpful services provided by companies like Facebook and Google are not in dispute; what is at issue is the implementation of ubiquitous data gathering. The concerns become particularly acute regarding what these companies do with the large sets of data they have acquired. According to Jessa Liying Wang and Michael Loui (2009), the real privacy concern is not caused by the mere collection of personal information about a user’s location. The main worry is over these companies’ large-scale aggregation of that information (p.  3). Therefore, mobile devices and other platforms present a particular cause for concern for personal privacy as companies’ ubiquitous data-gathering techniques evolve. Google’s practices and internal policies concerning user identity and anonymity have become a focal point of recent controversy. Although Google has tried using gathering techniques that keep the identity of users anonymous in its traditional practices, this will change as Google restructures the way it provides its services. This is the case for individuals who join Google’s attempt at social networking, Google+, and provide Google with their first and last names. Google’s introduction of Google+ is likely to remove the veil of anonymity that has shielded users in the past (McCracken 2011). Even though users must willingly join Google+ in order to lose their anonymity, trends like these lead one to realize that the Internet is becoming a place where an individual’s actions are no longer private and where the data collected is becoming increasingly identifiable. Much like Facebook, Google has the computing power to obtain and retain inordinate amounts of data generated by users of its services. According to processing statistics, Google processes around 20 petabytes of data per day (Nate 2009). This type of processing has become more of a concern in recent months with the implementation of Google’s new privacy plan. Adopted on March 1, 2012, the plan has effectively merged privacy policies for 60 services into one (Ur et al. 2012, p. 2). This change will allow Google to combine its user-generated data to establish what will be “one of the biggest databases of human activity and interests ever created” (Learmouth and Delo 2012). Google has already been known to store every

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e-mail received, sent, and deleted by those using Gmail. In collaboration with advertising companies, Google has created an algorithm that scans the e-mails for keywords that provide enough information about the user such that Google can post relevant ads on user accounts (Meuli and Finn 2007). Google’s changes to its privacy plan and current practices with user information have been criticized in the United States, and the European Union appears poised to sue Google for violations to its privacy laws. Although not as well known as recent actions taken by Facebook and Google, online tracking conducted by websites is yet another example of large-scale data collection on the part of private companies. There have been an increasing number of reports detailing initiatives taken by the private sector to trace and gather data on individuals’ online activities for marketing purposes. This is often achieved by placing a “cookie” on users’ browsers that relays information back to the originating website. Instead of only having one cookie per site as before, companies now deposit hundreds of them on users’ computers. The information collected and relayed from cookies is then sold to advertising companies. Recent findings by those at The Wall Street Journal place these developments into perspective. They visited 50 websites that account for 40% of US page views and discovered that these 50 sites installed a total of 3,180 tracking files (Angwin and McGinty 2010). Companies associated with a majority of these tracking files were found to be responsible for creating databases of consumer profiles that can be sold. Ubiquitous data gathering by Facebook, Google, and companies conducting online tracking reveals how the collection, storage, and sharing of personal data is at the center of these companies’ business models. Both Facebook and Google represent extreme cases of current private-sector practices because of the level of investment they are able to afford to improve their data collection and processing capacity. They characterize the potential challenges to conventional societal understandings of privacy in the United States. In the process of discussing specific companies and cases, the emphasis thus far has been placed on advancements in computing technologies in recent years and the widespread online services provided to users on a continual basis. The controversy stemming from these developments is an individual’s potential loss of privacy and anonymity on the Internet. If this is the case, should these companies be regulated by federal legislation to prevent further threats to privacy and anonymity, or are individuals who willingly share their personal information online responsible for their loss of privacy? The technologies may be providing beneficial solutions to daily problems, but a duplicity exists regarding such developments, specifically the negative ramifications of personal information being disseminated across numerous entities.

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Besides the privacy concerns surrounding the act of aggregating and storing large amounts of data, there is also an information security element that requires consideration. Recent news articles and public discussion have centered around a number of high-profile incidents involving skilled and persistent hackers stealing private data stored on company servers. According to Verizon’s 2012 Data Breach Investigations Report, there were 855 incidents and 174 million compromised records over the course of the previous year (Verizon 2012, p. 1). Of the data compromised, 94% involved servers (Verizon 2011, p.  2). Although not specific to the companies mentioned earlier and not fully comprehensive, these statistics show the possible threats to information systems and the data they store, furthering the need for additional discourse on proper handling and distribution of personally identifiable information. These numbers may also be underestimated due to the unwillingness of companies to publicly admit to being breached. Of course, whether controlled by the public or private sectors, information systems are always vulnerable, and it is often only a matter of time before they are compromised. The subsequent section will thus complement the above discussion by highlighting some controversies surrounding public sector data aggregation and the potential for privacy legislation on issues related to ubiquitous data collection across both the public and private sectors.

PUBLIC SECTOR, CIVIL LIBERTIES, AND PRIVACY

Concerns about the federal government gathering information about the public and tracking what individuals do, where they go, and with whom they communicate are not unique to this decade. Historically, governments have always had to deal with issues of privacy because of their complex relationship with their citizens. This complex relationship is characterized by the dualistic obligations that governments have toward their citizens. In particular, what defines the boundary of appropriate government actions when tensions exist between preserving national security and ensuring civil liberties? To codify the possible resolutions to such tension is so difficult that even the United States, the most powerful democracy in the world, has enacted laws protecting individual privacy rights in a fashion that lacks cohesion and efficacy.1 As Jeff Smith (1994) stated in the early 1990s, these laws merely form a “patchwork quilt” of what is required to address and keep pace with privacy concerns raised by rapid technological advancements (p. 10). This observation can still be readily applied to the current privacy environment.

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The federal government now faces new dimensions to this dilemma as its services become more digitized. Current developments in computing technology are enabling individuals, organizations, and governments to obtain, store, and process data faster, cheaper, and in greater volume than ever before. Governments today are able to use these technological advancements to collect increasing amounts of information about their citizens in the name of improved efficiency and, in more extreme cases, national security. Nearly eight years ago, federal agencies and departments maintained over 2,000 databases covering a wide range of information about citizens (Solove 2004, p. 15). Without establishing proper guidelines, governments, much like companies in the private sector, will find it difficult to redress the privacy concerns of their constituents. In both the public and private sectors, data collection itself is not necessarily unique to technologies of this decade, but ubiquitous data collection is. Computing technologies for the gathering and processing of information have been in existence for several decades, at least since personal computing became widely available, but the capacity of companies and governments alike to amass large amounts of digital data has advanced dramatically only in recent years. Historically, the U.S. government has had to deal with the privacy implications of such large acquisitions of personal information because of the services it provides citizens, such as voting, Social Security, and Medicare. The steeply declining cost of data aggregation and storage, along with the demand for improved services, has been a central impetus behind public and private sector initiatives to increase the scope of their data gathering on individuals. Research suggests that this very trend has been developing for decades. In an article published in Human Rights, Andrew Shapiro (1999) argues that it has historically been too expensive for anyone but governments to collect data, store data, and create files on citizens (p. 10). This reality has changed over time, and the federal government is benefiting as much from this development as the private sector. The government can now also cheaply and easily store information about hundreds of millions of people. Today, data that has been gathered by different departments can be stored and shared across the federal government, and this phenomenon has been further facilitated by current government initiatives to provide online services to citizens. To contextualize the existing complex relationship between the government and its citizens concerning service, technology, privacy, and security, it is perhaps important to trace how this relationship has evolved over the years. Computing technologies that have historically improved ubiquitous data collection methods used by governments find their roots in the 1960s and 1970s. At that time, a survey of the executive branch disclosed

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a frightening number of agencies and departments that maintained computerized files on American citizens (LeMond and Fry 1975, p. 137). The surveillance aspect of any government’s actions tends to consistently draw criticism. Public knowledge of government surveillance has previously led to court decisions restricting what kind of information the government can collect on citizens. For government bodies, there is a very fine line drawn between providing services for the general public and upholding basic civil liberties. Even the most benign intentions of governments can be construed as victimizing the general populace. One such instance of this occurred in 1965 with the initiative led by several US government agencies to establish a single National Data Center. The initial motivation was to cut costs, and such an establishment was seen as making government operations more efficient. According to Simson Garfinkel, this changed with the publication of a New York Times article titled “Don’t Tell It to the Computer.” This article changed public opinion, shifted the balance in favor of the opposition, and effectively ended the possibility for a National Data Center at the time (2000, p. 14). As advancements in computing technologies continue, government initiatives to gather data on citizens—data that has been involuntarily shared online—are likely to face similar scrutiny and criticism in the future. The importance of data collection and processing has further changed for federal government agencies over the past decade, especially in light of the September 11 attacks. Along with being able to provide services to citizens, data collection by federal agencies can also help deal with threats to national security. For instance, the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT) Act was at the center of national controversy when it was enacted in 2001 and again when it was up for renewal in 2011. In particular, Article 215 of the bill allows investigators to obtain records from Internet service providers, stores, libraries, and bookstores while removing the requirement that the target of the search be an agent of a foreign power (O’Harrow 2006, p.  27). The consequence of this legislation is that data gathering for national security purposes has been made even easier. The government is now capable of collecting a wider range of information that has the potential to jeopardize the privacy of ordinary citizens. The federal government’s ubiquitous collection of data about American citizens can thus become problematic without a clearly defined understanding of privacy grounded in legal and jurisdictional boundaries. The advent of electronic government and the online delivery of public services have been a critical component of this exchange of information. It

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is through these digital networks in particular that the rewiring of information flows is facilitated (Mayer-Schönberger and Lazer 2007, p.  12). Since the data-collection activities of the federal government have often been seen as straddling a line between improving services and conducting surveillance (Dutton et al. 2005, p. 13), these developments have been of particular concern to privacy advocates and those emphasizing the importance of “cyber trust” in e-government. The issues concerning government information collection and individual privacy have an additional dimension of complexity as governments bypass existing legal restrictions by becoming a consumer of information gathered in the private sector. The connection between governments and private industry regarding data sharing should therefore be a cause for concern. Although the U.S. government is able to gather a large portion of its information about citizens through e-government initiatives, the federal government is restricted in how and what it collects about citizens through the Data Privacy Act of 1974, which was meant to ensure that citizens could, among other things, “discover what information is contained in his or her record and how it is used” (Center for Democracy & Technology 2012). The federal government has been able to circumvent these restrictions by collaborating with private industry. Of course, companies that refuse to divulge information can always be subpoenaed, but by selling information to the government, private companies have profited and the government has found an easier way to access information (Holtzman 2006, pp. 111–115). The connection between the two sectors has led to additional concerns about whether individuals have any control over their personal data. It has also raised questions as to how personal privacy can be maintained when information is shared without consideration for responsibility and accountability. As shown in this analysis, the capability to amass and store large amounts of data on individuals is available to both public and private sectors. As a result, both sectors face their share of scrutiny as concerns the complex implications of ubiquitous data gathering. Although government agencies and private companies claim they are collecting information to improve the services they provide, given the depth and breadth of personal information that is being collected, these organizations’ data management practices can pose serious privacy and civil liberty concerns. As discussed earlier, threats exist in cyberspace that target the technologies used to collect and store vast amounts of data. Persistent hackers could compromise the servers that hold personal information at any time. These threats apply to the public and private sectors equally, and personal information, once acquired, can be used to commit a wide array of cyber-crimes. In this regard, changes to these practices require further public debate and consideration.

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IMPLICATIONS FOR DATA AGGREGATION IN THE FUTURE

Privacy and security concerns surrounding ubiquitous data collection and storage are only likely to increase if left unaddressed. Computing technologies will continue to advance in the coming years. Some say a revolutionary technological breakthrough is already underway with the advent and increased use of cloud computing, a phenomenon whereby information technology organizations increasingly share infrastructure resources while also becoming more flexible as based on user demand. Arguments have been made that cloud computing can facilitate even cheaper storage and quicker access to data. It is through technologies like this that the public and private sectors can continue to make their data gathering, processing, and storage more extensive and efficient. These issues have surfaced historically from similar technological breakthroughs in computing. Companies and governments alike have been able to harness the ability to gather and store user-generated content to their benefit. With little to no regulatory oversight, and without a proper framework for data handling in a fast-paced technological environment, the privacy and security of personal information is likely to remain both marginalized and jeopardized. Novel or more advanced versions of previous technologies will continue to be introduced to the marketplace in the future. Although not necessarily explicitly covered by this analysis, many of these technologies will likely invade the privacy of individuals because of their inherent surveillance capabilities. In addition to existing concerns regarding data storage and sharing, these developments raise privacy concerns because an individual’s actions can be tracked on a nearly continuous basis. Technologies that enable this tracking can be found in a variety of forms such as mobile applications that facilitate consumer expenditures, the proliferation of cameras in public places, and the increased use of global positioning systems. A clear example of one of these technologies is smart closed-circuit television, which can now provide an unprecedented level of detail that makes it possible to prefilter large quantities of data and more accurately identify people and objects (Held et  al. 2012, p.83). Since this information can be digitized, mined, and shared among multiple sources, the net result may be that people can be easily tracked without their knowledge or consent. As these technologies develop and mature, they will require boundaries to be defined along privacy lines. To date, different countries have had starkly different responses to the growing concerns surrounding this issue. The United States, in comparison to its European counterparts, has done very little to address the issue of privacy. European countries are

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consistently in the news for taking large companies like Facebook and Google to court over violations of European privacy laws. There is legislation currently under consideration in the US Congress that has the potential to address concerns raised by public and private sector data collection. Despite these efforts, legal restrictions on companies may not be the answer to these trends if the information is willingly shared. However, it is through these types of proceedings that the public is made aware of the extent to which their data is collected and shared. This is not to say that governmental intervention is the only solution to this problem. Some have argued that the self-regulated market will sort these things out, but to date it has only largely resulted in irresponsible and careless use of information (Solove 2004, p. 53). The databases storing personal information can and have become targets for cyber-criminals and individuals skilled at social engineering; as such, technological advancements that have facilitated ubiquitous data collection by the public and private sectors should be viewed as problematic for both privacy and information security. The United States in particular can benefit from public discourse on these issues. It may be possible that a definition of privacy can be addressed and articulated through legislative action. However, it is important to note that current technological and security trends are likely to complicate the efforts of public and private sector entities in ensuring that privacy is incorporated into their information management practices. The will and persistence to change the current lack of concern for individual privacy will have to come from a well-informed and concerned public that is aware of the detrimental ways in which their personal information is handled. Now is the time to acknowledge that technologies exist and are being developed that will exacerbate this issue in the future. It is no longer sufficient to simply react to the challenges raised by the emerging disruptive technologies outlined here. Governments, in fulfilling their obligations to protect constituents, must be proactive in establishing privacy best practices for those entities collecting, storing, and sharing vast amounts of personal data.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The work of both authors was supported by NSF Grant 0911886. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect official positions of the National Science Foundation or any other U.S. government agency.

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NOTE 1. Constitutionally speaking, the Fourth Amendment is meant to protect citizens from unwarranted search and seizure. Other laws include the Privacy Act of 1974 and the Information Practices Act. Individual states may also have additional laws related to controversies surrounding digital privacy and information security. REFERENCES Angwin, J., and T. McGinty. 2010. “Sites Feed Personal Details to New Tracking Industry.” The Wall Street Journal, July 30. Angwin, J., and J. Valentino-Devries. 2012. “Google’s iPhone Tracking.” The Wall Street Journal, February 17. Beaver, D., S. Kumar, H.C. Li, J. Sobel, and P. Vajgel. 2010. “Finding a Needle in a Haystack:  Facebook’s Photo Storage.” Conference Proceedings, 9th USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation. Vancouver, BC, October 4–6. Breznitz, D., M. Murphree, and S. Goodman. 2011. “Ubiquitous Data Collection: Rethinking Privacy Debates.” IEEE Computer 44: 100–102. Center for Democracy & Technology. 2012. “Existing Federal Privacy Laws.” Washington, DC: Author. https://www.cdt.org/privacy/guide/protect/laws.php Cisco Systems. 2011. “Cisco Visual Networking Index:  Forecast and Methodology, 2010–2015.” San Jose, CA:  Author. http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/collateral/ser vice-provider/ip-ngn-ip-next-generation-network/ white_paper_c11-481360.html Dhar, S., and U. Varshney. 2011. “Challenges and Business Models for Mobile Location-Based Services and Advertising.” Communication of the ACM 54: 121–129. Dutton, W., G.A. Guerra, D.J. Izzo, and M. Peltu. 2005. “The Cyber Trust Tension in E-Government:  Balancing Identity, Privacy, Security.” Information Policy 10: 13–23. Facebook. 2014. “Newsroom: Statistics.” https://newsroom.fb.com/key-Facts Fuchs, C. 2011. “How Can Surveillance Be Defined? Remarks on Theoretical Foundations of Surveillance Studies.” The Internet & Surveillance—Research Paper Series. Vienna: Unified Theory of Information Research Group. Garfinkel, S. 2000. Database Nation: The Death of Privacy in the 21st Century. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly & Associates, Inc. Held, C., J. Krumm, P. Markel, and R.P. Shenke. 2012. “Intelligent Video Surveillance.” IEEE Computer Society 45: 83–84. Holtzman, D.H. 2006. Privacy Lost:  How Technology Is Endangering Your Privacy. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Jones, H., and J. Hiram Soltren. 2005. “Facebook: Threats to Privacy.” MIT Ethics and Law on the Electronic Frontier Course Paper. Unpublished manuscript. Learmouth, M., and C. Delo. 2012. “Google Embarks on Unification Effort in Order to Better Mine Trove of Data.” Advertising Age, January 30. http://adage.com/ article/digital/google-embarks-unification-effort-mine-data/232407/ LeMond, A., and R. Fry. 1975. No Place to Hide: A Guide to Bugs, Wire Taps, Surveillance and Other Privacy Invasions. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Mayer-Schönberger, V. 2009. Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Mayer-Schönberger, V., and D. Lazer. 2007. “From Electronic Government to Information Government.” In Governance and Information Technology:  From

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Electronic Government to Information Government, edited by V. Mayer-Schönberger and D. Lazer, 1–14. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. McCracken, H. 2011. “Google+’s Real-Name Policy:  Identity vs. Anonymity.” Time, September 22. http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2094409,00. html Meuli, G., and C. Finn. 2007. “Google:  Trust, Choice, and Privacy.” In The Ethical Imperative in the Context of Evolving Technologies, edited by D. McIntosh, R. Drabic, K. Huber, I. Vinogradov, and M. Bassick, 171–182. Boulder, CO: Ethica Publishing. http://www.ethicapublishing.com/ethical/3CH15.pdf Nate. 2009. “How Much is a Petabyte?”The Mozy Blog, July 2. http://mozy.com/blog/ misc/how-much-is-a-petabyte/ O’Harrow, R. Jr. 2006. No Place to Hide. New York: Free Press. Shapiro, A.L. 1999. “Privacy for Sale:  Peddling Data on the Internet.” Human Rights 26: 10–12. Smith, A. 2011. “35% of American Adults Own a Smartphone:  One Quarter of Smartphone Owners Use Their Phone for Most of Their Online Browsing.” Washington, DC:  Pew Research Center. http://pewinternet.org/~/media/Files/ Reports/2011/PIP_Smartphones.pdf Smith, H.J. 1994. Managing Privacy:  Information Technology and Corporate America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Solove, D.J. 2004. The Digital Person:  Technology and Privacy in the Information Age. New York: New York University Press. Stevens, G. 2011. “Privacy Protections for Personal Information Online.” Congressional Research Services Report R41756, April 6. Thusoo, A., J.S. Sarma, N. Jain, Z. Shao, P. Chakka, N. Zhang, et al. 2010. “Hive—A Petabyte Scale Data Warehouse Using Hadoop.” Paper presented at the 2010 IEEE 26th International Conference on Data Engineering, Long Beach, CA, March 1–6. Ur, B., M. Sleeper, and L.F. Cranor. 2012. “{Privacy, Privacidad, Приватност} Policies in Social Media:  Providing Translated Privacy Notice.” Paper presented at the Workshop on Privacy and Security in Online Social Media, Lyon, France, April 12. Verizon. 2012. “2012 Data Breach Investigations Report.” Basking Ridge, NJ: Author. http://www.verizonenterprise.com/resources/reports/ rp_data-breach-investigations-report-2012-ebk_en_xg.pdf Wang, J.L., and M.C. Loui. 2009. “Privacy and Ethical Issues in Location-Based Tracking Systems.” Conference Proceedings, 2009 IEEE International Symposium on Technology and Society. Tempe, AZ, May 10–20. World Bank. 2012. “Internet Users (per 100 People).” Washington, DC: Author. http:// data.worldbank.org/indicator/IT.NET.USER.P2/countries/1W?display=map

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CHAPTER 5

Transitioning to Renewable Sources of Electricity: Motivations, Policy, and Potential CHEL SE A SCHELLY

T

he electricity grid in the United States may be the largest, most pervasive technological system ever constructed to meet the needs and comforts of human beings (Nye 1997). Although it is less than 150 years old, the electricity infrastructure of this nation is ubiquitous; power lines stretch across deserts, forests, states, highways, and the entire nation in order to provide electricity to residences, businesses, and communities. The electricity carried by these transmission lines is generally produced using fossil fuels (mostly coal; see US Energy Information Administration 2012) and is most commonly generated at a monstrously large facility (a coal plant, a nuclear facility, or a hydropower dam). Our electricity infrastructure was constructed to carry enormous amounts of electricity across vast geographical expanses, based on the massive generation facilities and concentrated fossil fuel based energy sources that defined the system and its use. However, there are increasing concerns regarding the sources of our energy supply. Many of these concerns are related to climate change and how carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels contribute to rising global temperatures and the climate instability of the planet (Brown 2003). Additional concerns include the host of other environmental damages caused by the use of coal (Epstein et al. 2011), nuclear energy (Slovic et al. 1991), and hydro-electricity (Dincer 1998); other debates involve worries about nearing or reaching peak energy supplies (Brown 2003), energy

security (Yergin 2006), and the aging transmission grid (Amin 2003). For a multitude of reasons, many would agree that it’s time to rethink our dependence on fossil fuel based forms of energy and move toward alternative, renewable energy sources (Brown 2003, pp. 116–135). The good news is, the renewable energy industry gets bigger every year, with more energy from renewable sources being produced, sold, and used (Sherwood 2011). Some US states have enacted renewable energy standards requiring that a certain percentage of their electricity supply come from renewable sources. Tax incentives, subsidies, and various forms of rebates, in financially incentivizing renewable energy adoption, also provide evidence that we are indeed moving in the direction of clean, renewable sources of energy. These renewable energy sources have the potential to significantly reshape electricity infrastructure in the United States. They change not only the sources of electricity but could also change the production, generation, and transmission infrastructures necessary to provide electricity. Accordingly, renewable energy can potentially reshape the function and role of the electric utilities industry. Although renewable energy sources currently supply only a fraction of the electricity consumed in the United States (Sherwood 2011), there are many reasons to expect (and to hope for) that to change in the coming decades. This chapter explores some of the controversies regarding residential solar electric technology adoption in the United States, specifically related to motivations for adoption, the role of policy in motivating adoption, and the role of the electric utilities industry in moving toward increased renewable energy usage. The ideas presented here are based on qualitative, in-depth interviews with 96 residential solar electric technology adopters, homeowners who have installed solar electric (also called photovoltaic, or PV) technologies on their homes, from two states (Wisconsin and Colorado). Although these states are relatively similar both politically and economically,1 they vary significantly in two important respects: the amount of solar radiation that shines on them every year and the structure of their incentive programs for residential solar technology adoption. The stories shared by 48 people from 36 Wisconsin households and 48 people from 39 Colorado households help to shed light on what motivates homeowners to adopt residential solar electric technology, how the economic incentives of tax credits or financial rebates shape motivation and influence adoption, and the role of the utilities industry as a nation transitions to more renewable and distributed sources of energy generation. These stories help us to understand the controversies surrounding a transition to renewable energy sources, namely: What motivates people to adopt solar technology at the residential scale? What role do financial

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incentives such as rebate programs have in shaping adoption? What is the role of the current utilities industry in transforming our energy infrastructure? Understanding the motivations expressed by renewable energy technology adopters themselves provides insight for policymakers, advocates, the solar energy industry, and other homeowners interested in promoting renewable energy technology adoption and reshaping national electricity infrastructure.

RESIDENTIAL SOLAR ELECTRICITY ADOPTION

The sun provides more than enough power, when captured and transformed into electricity, to provide for the needs and comforts of human societies (Brown 2003, p. 124). The technological challenge lies in capturing, transforming, and storing that power; yet solar electric technologies provide one already available means of doing just that. One way that people are utilizing this technology is by installing solar electric systems on their homes, essentially becoming extremely small-scale generation facilities by using a distributed energy resource (the sun) to make electricity. These systems can use battery storage to make it possible to live disconnected from the electrical grid, but the more common practice nowadays is to install a solar system but stay connected to the grid. Then the electricity produced by the sun can be fed into the electric transmission line, and users can still draw power from the larger system when they need it. The vast majority of the solar technology users I met in both Wisconsin and Colorado were grid-tied, meaning that they do not use battery storage and are still connected to the utility transmission grid.2 For most, this was a practical decision because their homes were already connected to the grid (as most homes are). Grid-tied residential solar systems involve agreements with the local utility company regarding how energy usage and generation are tracked and recorded and, if applicable, how homeowners are reimbursed for the excess electricity their systems make. A 30% federal tax credit helps to incentivize adoption, and many states, cities, and electric utilities offer other rebates and incentives. These incentives help to displace some of the large upfront costs of installing a solar electric system. Incentives from utilities are often offered because of renewable energy requirements placed on the industry by the state; both Wisconsin and Colorado have instituted renewable energy portfolio standards. Only two solar electric technology users I  met installed their systems without any credits or rebates available to them. For most, these economic incentives were very important, because they either couldn’t have or

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wouldn’t have paid for the entire cost of the system. The cost, of course, varies with the size of the system; among the people I met, system size ranged from less than 1 kilowatt (kW) to 20 kW, and out-of-pocket costs ranged from around $6,000 to over $50,000. Of course, electricity usage also varies considerably, up to 300% even in comparable households (Lutzenhiser 1993; Gram-Hanssen 2004; Hargreaves et al. 2010). Some users were producing much more electricity than they consumed, most intentionally sized their systems to cover all of their annual electricity usage, and others were producing only 50% or even 30% of the electricity they consumed annually.

WHAT MOTIVATES ADOPTION? THE “HEAD, HEART, WALLET”

So what motivates someone to spend as much as they could on a new car (even a very expensive new car) to generate electricity from the sun even though electricity is a relatively cheap commodity in the United States? Most people would likely guess that the primary motivation is environmental concern and a desire to reduce one’s carbon footprint (Wackernagel 1994; Wackernagel and Rees 1996); if so, most people would seemingly be right. Every homeowner I met in Colorado said that they were at least in part motivated by environmental values, and the majority (although less than two-thirds) of Wisconsin homeowners did as well. However, most homeowners said it would be impossible to isolate the importance of their environmental values from other important considerations, including other values, issues related to finances, and others related to life events such as retirement or replacing the roof. All agreed that the decision to adopt solar electric technology was motivated by a combination of practical and value-oriented considerations, captured by one Colorado homeowner’s use of the phrase, “the head, the heart, and the wallet.” While scholars may wish for a clear and direct relationship between environmental attitudes or values and pro-environmental behaviors (Owens and Driffill 2008), the truth is much more complicated; values often do not predict actual behaviors (Heberlein 2012). Even among homeowners who did say they were motivated by environmental concerns, this alone was not enough to motivate adoption.3 Some homeowners explicitly identified as early adopters (see Labay and Kinnear 1981; Rogers 1995; Faiers and Neame 2006)  and felt that they were contributing to awareness and diffusion of residential solar technology in their local community. As Bill, a middle-aged professional and father of two in Madison, Wisconsin, told me, “I keep saying somebody’s gotta go first, and I don’t mind going first. . . . Because I’m a very big fan

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of using appropriate technology to replaced entrenched technology.” Don and Kathy, a retired couple living in rural Wisconsin, similarly said, “People need to step out there and be on the front edge of it. . . . I think that kind of figured in it.” Others were motivated to adopt for reasons related to a perceived responsibility not only to the natural environment and future generations (or commitment to environmental values) but also to their community and to social justice (this is “the heart”). Many said that they felt they had a responsibility to adopt because they could afford to while many other homeowners cannot; this was especially true among adopters in Colorado. Some talked about the environmental injustices inherent in fossil fuel based production of electricity, issues related to the citing of facilities as well as their effects on both personal and community health, and said that they were motivated to adopt because they wanted to do their part to move away from the inequitably distributed negative consequences of the current system. Finally, the majority of homeowners said that while economic factors were certainly important, the narrow consideration of return on investment or payback period was not of primary importance. Some said that payback period is not a helpful way to think about the investment at all; many told me that people don’t calculate payback periods for cars, televisions, or new countertops, so it makes no sense to think about buying solar panels that way. Others, like Ramona in Milwaukee, told me that the calculated payback period provided by her solar installation company was not meaningful to her because, “Whose calculation are you going to use? Are you going to use the calculation that looks at the carbon footprint? Or just strictly at how much you spent? Today’s dollar value, or later? Who you gonna believe?” The timing of economic events in a household—such as retiring, replacing the roof, or even concerns about the stock market (many of the people I met in Colorado installed their solar systems after taking money out of the market as it began to crash in 2008)— played more of a direct role in motivating adoption than strict calculations of payback for most of the homeowners I met in both Wisconsin and Colorado (Schelly 2014). Thus it is important to recognize that the motivation to adopt solar electric technology at the residential scale is not just about environmental values or economic calculations. Choosing to adopt involves myriad factors that are both personal and structural (see Heberlein 2012) and that take into account past, present, and future situations (such as knowledge and values accumulated previously; present economic conditions both inside and outside the home; and future considerations regarding finances, climate, energy prices, and household events) that shape behavior (Emirbayer and Mische 1998).

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POLICY AND ADOPTION

The tax credits, rebate programs, and other financial incentives that help lower the upfront costs are one of the most important structural factors driving residential solar technology adoption (Sherwood 2011). The overall effect of these policies on prices can be substantial; in Colorado, most of the homeowners I met actually paid about 50% (some even less) of the total cost of their systems. Both Wisconsin and Colorado have instituted renewable portfolio standards that require utilities to produce a percentage of their power from renewable resources. State-level incentive programs are often sparked by such requirements through partnerships with local utility companies, yet Wisconsin and Colorado have very different policy structures. Because of the differences between the rebate structures in the two states, we can more specifically examine how these economic policies matter in shaping who adopts and why. In Wisconsin, most of the people I  met took advantage of the federal tax credit4 as well as a state rebate program run by a third party entity called Focus on Energy.5 Although the initial rebates to cover the costs of installation were often smaller than those in Colorado, Wisconsin policy allows larger systems (sized up to 20 kW), while Colorado allows residential installations up to 10 kW but limits adoption to no more than 110% of home energy use. Wisconsin also has a much more lucrative structure for selling power back to the local electric utility. Here’s how a buy-back agreement, sometimes called a feed-in tariff, works: If you install a solar electric system on your house, you can sell any power that you generate in excess of what you use to the local electric utility. Although they are required to buy it, the amount that they pay for it varies significantly. In Wisconsin, utility companies6 were paying up to two-and-a-half times the retail price for each kilowatt hour (kWh) generated, while in Colorado, homeowners are paid back at wholesale rates for the extra power they produce. This means that in Wisconsin, you can make money every month from your installed solar system. And in Wisconsin, this economic fact was clearly the motivator for the almost 40% of homeowners who did not identify as environmentally oriented (at least one of whom explicitly dismissed climate change as a “hoax”). Jeff and Jolene had the most financially savvy approach I’ve seen to installing a solar system: They set it up as an limited liability corporation, which meant that they qualified for the federal tax credits and could depreciate the value of their system over five years and could avoid paying state taxes on their system, in addition to receiving the

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state rebate and participating in the lucrative buyback program offered by their local utility company. They have already made back much of their initial $53,000 investment (receiving $12,375 from the state rebate program right away, then being able to claim 30% of the remaining $40,000 as tax credits over two years, in addition to being able to claim 50% depreciation the first year and the remaining 50% over the following five years, and receiving 25 cents for every kilowatt hour produced by selling the electricity back to their utility provider). When I met with them, Jolene told me, “We have never been what I would call green, but I think we are extremely conservative. And I think our conservative approach means that we want to do things efficiently, effectively. We appreciate having more to do more with.” Similarly, Matt, a General Motors retiree, told me that while the cost of everything is going to go up, his pension will remain the same. His 16 kW solar system gives him an extra monthly check for the foreseeable future. For him, adopting solar technology was sound financial planning. In contrast, there is no way to make money from a residential solar system in Colorado. State policy limits system size to no more than 110% of home usage (because only this amount is eligible for rebate funding), and utilities pay for excess electricity at the much lower wholesale rate. As Kevin, a successful businessman in Boulder, Colorado, said, “In Colorado, there’s no reason to make more power than you really need. Anybody who can make change in their head for a restaurant bill figures out there’s no real economic reason.” Perhaps this explains why everyone I met in Colorado, in contrast to Wisconsin, said they were motivated by environmental values. All this is to say: The specifics of how a policy is instituted shapes who adopts and why. This is important to consider in all policy but especially in the case of residential solar technology because (a) if solar technology is perceived as merely an “environmental” decision,7 some Americans will simply not be interested, and policy has the power to change perceptions, and (b)  solar electric technology is still perceived as new and innovative (Faiers and Neame 2006), and people gain experience with it by knowing others who have it. If policy influences who adopts and why, by extension it influences the future of adoption.

RENEWABLE ENERGY SOURCES AND THE ELECTRIC UTILITIES INDUSTRY

One of the challenges in transitioning to renewable sources of energy is the electric utilities industry itself. Designed to generate and sell electricity, thus making a profit by providing for the needs and comforts of human beings, the current structure of the electric utilities industry is at loggerheads with [ 68 ] Schelly

those who choose to generate their own power through solar electric technologies, a distributed energy resource that can be generated where it’s used and by the residences (and businesses) that use it. This creates a conflict for an industry designed to profit by making and selling electricity. As Kevin told me, while sitting in a large conference room at his business in Boulder:  The utilities industry as a whole is in a transformation and they don’t realize it. . . . For now, they make their money on selling electricity, so fundamentally the business model is flawed. . . . What they really need to do is to reinvent their business model, to something like moving electricity or being the broker like Google is or Visa is and brokering electricity. But they haven’t made that jump yet. So, when they pay for me to have solar panels, they’re basically paying for one of their customers not to make them any money . . . it would be like me paying my customers not to do business for me. It’s craziness. So it doesn’t make any sense. And now the power company is, like, “okay, well now this is kinda getting to be a little more than just a little thing, we’re paying out tens of millions of dollars a year in these solar rebates and we’re not getting money from these people.” They’re just thinking, “I can’t sell this power to [Kevin] anymore.”

Carol, a math teacher in Wisconsin, expressed a similar sentiment. As she was walking me to my car after our conversation in her rural, solar-powered home, she told me that the biggest barrier to solar technology adoption is that it threatens the current model of profit-driven energy production and supply; if people are able to produce their own power, wealth is redistributed from the companies making money to the people making energy. Or, as Don put it, “I wanted to get some value, some value that would come back to us. You can pay your utility costs, just like they say owning a home versus renting a place to live. You can build equity, or you can have receipts. Well, I think by doing what we did, we have equity.” Without a transformation in the electric utilities industry that rethinks and reshapes the current means of profit making, residential solar technology adoption will continue to be at odds with the dominant structures of power production. The current structure of the electric utilities industry, wherein granted monopolies profit from the generation, transmission, and most importantly the sale of electricity based on vertically integrated ownership models, limits the potential of distributed, renewable forms of energy to transition and transform America’s energy infrastructure. The electric utilities industry in the United States, as a legalized monopoly, makes a profit via long-term investments in “hard path” (Lovins 1976) technological infrastructures such as large-scale coal-fired power plants. Distributed solar technologies, which allow homeowners to invest in energy generation at the site of use (or, as Carter from Milwaukee put it, “setting up my own power T r a n s i t i o n i n g t o R e n e wa b l e S o u r c e s of E l e c t r i c i t y  

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plant”), fundamentally challenge the current profit structure of the utilities industry. States recognize this when they include a requirement for distributed energy technologies in a renewable portfolio standard (saying that a certain percentage of the renewable requirement must come from distributed sources); without such a requirement, the utilities industry would have no reason to financially incentivize these technologies. The utilities industry can increase the amount of energy generated from renewable sources via centralized wind and solar, but distributed energies have incredible potential to efficiently produce energy at the source using currently empty rooftops across America. Yet distributed solar technologies fundamentally challenge the current structure of the electric utilities industry. As Kevin in Colorado told me, the utilities industry “is in a transformation and they don’t realize it” and “as a legalized monopoly that makes money making and selling energy, fundamentally their business model is flawed.” As the potential of distributed solar technologies continues to increase with technological improvement and increased public acceptance, the utilities industry and the policies that govern it may need to shift as well in order to most effectively facilitate a new energy economy and infrastructure. CONCLUSION: “THE SUN ISN’T CONTROVERSIAL, BUT HOW WE USE IT IS”

There are many good reasons to create electricity from the sun and to replace fossil fuel based energy production with renewable energy sources. It’s good for the environment for a whole host of reasons, from confronting concerns about climate change to the environmental degradation caused by mining and burning coal. It has the potential to address some of the environmental injustices in our society caused by the extraction and use of fossil fuels. It decreases dependency on sources of fuel that will inevitably run out, sooner or later. It potentially provides a means of technological development and job creation. We have plenty of open roof space on homes and businesses (think of all the roof space in a shopping mall!) around the country. It’s arguably more efficient to use distributed energy sources, where energy is produced where it’s used, rather than transmitting massive amounts of power across our vast nation. Yet, as Carol told me, “the sun isn’t controversial, but how we use it is.” It is still difficult for us, as scholars and policymakers, to identify what motivates people to engage in particular behaviors. Understanding solar technology adoption as simply a “green” thing or simply a matter of “payback” does not capture the actual motivations of real adopters. Both value orientations and practical considerations come into play when deciding to [ 70 ] Schelly

adopt, and the specifics of how a policy is written or implemented have a big effect on who adopts and why, which in turn affects perceptions of a new technology and future adoption. Further, residential solar technology adoption presents a challenge for the electric utilities industry; they make money by selling electricity, but people with solar panels don’t need to buy it. Rethinking the structure of this industry so that it is no longer in conflict with distributed, renewable energy sources may be necessary in order to truly transform our nation’s energy infrastructure. NOTES 1. Wisconsin and Colorado are arguably both truly “purple” states, with high concentrations of political liberalism in urban areas and contrastingly high rates of political conservatism in rural areas. According to US Census data, the median household income is lower in Wisconsin ($51,598) than in Colorado ($56,456; national median income is $51,914). The poverty rate in Colorado is slightly higher (12.2%) than in Wisconsin (11.6%), but both are below the national poverty rate (13.8%). The homeownership rate in Colorado is 67.6%, with a median home value of $236,600; the homeownership rate in Wisconsin is 69.5% with a median home value of $169,000. 2. Out of 48 Wisconsin homeowners, only one was completely off grid and three had combination grid-tied systems with emergency battery backup (a valuable technological scheme that some homeowners told me is unfortunately no longer allowed in Wisconsin). Out of 48 Colorado homeowners, only nine were completely off-grid and one had a grid-tied system with emergency battery backup. 3. Even the two homeowners who installed systems without receiving any financial rebate or tax credit (one before such incentives existed, another during an off year for any credits, both in Wisconsin) were arguably not exclusively motivated by environmental concern. One lived off-grid for 20 years; thus solar was the only option for electricity when he built his home. The other told me that she installed solar electricity because she wanted to “thank mother earth for this glorious ride she’s given me.” Yet she didn’t install until after retirement, when she moved into a smaller home that she intended to stay in indefinitely. Even for the most environmentally oriented person I met, the timing of life events mattered too. 4. Once set at 10%, this tax credit is now 30%. The credit used to be capped at $2,000 for residential installations, but the cap has been lifted and the full 30% credit (meaning 30% of actual expenses to the homeowner, after state rebates are deducted) is set to be on the books until 2016. 5. In 2011, many of the homeowners I met were concerned about the future of this program, given Republican Governor Scott Walker’s conservative policy agenda. This program has since been gutted. 6. More specifically, the large investor owned and municipal utilities. Rural electric cooperatives, a third type of organization within the utilities industry, are unique:  they are smaller, not-for-profit, and often exempted from state regulations and requirements. 7. Susan (an architect) and Tom (an engineer) built a LEED-certified house in Madison, Wisconsin, as their retirement home. Susan told me that there’s still a preconception that “if you have solar panels, you must be hippies” that prevents some people from even considering adoption.

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REFERENCES Amin, M. 2003. “North America’s Energy Infrastructure:  Are We Ready for More Perfect Storms?” Security and Privacy 5: 19–25. Brown, L. 2003. Plan B:  Rescuing a Planet under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble. New York: Earth Policy Institute. Dincer, I. 1998. “Energy and Environmental Impacts: Present and Future Perspectives.” Energy Sources 20: 427–453. Emirbayer, M., and A. Mische. 1998. “What is Agency?” American Journal of Sociology 103: 962–1023. Epstein, P.R., J.J. Buonocore, K. Eckerle, M. Hendryx, B.M. Stout III, R. Heinberg, et al. 2011. “Full Cost Accounting for the Life Cycle of Coal.” Annual New York Academy of Science Ecological Economics Reviews 1219: 73–98. Faiers, A., and C. Neame. 2006. “Consumer Attitudes Toward Domestic Solar Power Systems.” Energy Policy 34: 1797–1806. Gram-Hanssen, K. 2004. “Domestic Electricity Consumption—Consumers and Appliances.” In The Ecological Economics of Consumption, edited by L.A. Reisch and I. Røpke, 132–150. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar. Hargreaves, T., M. Nye, and J. Burgess. 2010. “Making Energy Visible: A Qualitative Field Study of How Householders Interact with Feedback from Smart Energy Monitors.” Energy Policy 38: 6111–6119. Heberlein, T. 2012. Navigating Environmental Attitudes. New York: Oxford University Press. Labay, D.G., and T.C. Kinnear. 1981. “Exploring the Consumer Decision Process in the Adoption of Solar Energy Systems.” Journal of Consumer Research 8: 271–278. Lovins, A. 1976. “Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken?” Foreign Affairs 55: 65–96. Lutzenhiser, L. 1993. “Social and Behavioral Aspects of Energy Use.” Annual Review of Energy and the Environment 18: 247–289. Nye, D.E. 1997. Electrifying America: Social Meanings of a New Technology, 1880–1940. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Owens, S., and L. Driffill. 2008. “How to Change Attitudes and Behaviours in the Context of Energy.” Energy Policy 36: 4412–4418. Rogers, E.M. 1995. Diffusion of Innovations. 4th ed. New York: Free Press. Schelly, C. 2014. “Residential Solar Electricity Adoption: What Motivates, and What Matters? A  Case Study of Early Adopters.” Energy Research and Social Science. Forthcoming. Sherwood, L. 2011. “U.S. Solar Market Trends 2010.” Latham. NY:  Interstate Renewable Energy Council. http://irecusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/ IREC-Solar-Market-Trends-Report-June-2011-web.pdf Slovic, P., J.H. Flynn, and M. Layman. 1991. “Perceived Risk, Trust, and the Politics of Nuclear Waste.” Science 254: 1603–1607. U.S. Energy Information Administration. 2012. “Electric Power Monthly, March 2012.” Washington, DC:  Author. http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/current_year/march2012.pdf Wackernagel, M. 1994. “Ecological Footprint and Appropriated Carrying Capacity:  A  Tool for Planning Toward Sustainability.” PhD diss., University of British Columbia. Wackernagel, M., and W. Rees. 1996. Our Ecological Footprint. Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Press. Yergin, D. 2006. “Ensuring Energy Security.” Foreign Affairs 85: 69–82.

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CHAPTER 6

Infrastructure and Health KA MAN L AI

INTRODUCTION We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us. —Winston Churchill

Infrastructure is designed to bestow benefits onto societies, but if we look at it from a different perspective, this is not always the case; infrastructure can sometimes create public controversy and even endanger human health. This chapter highlights a number of controversies and other issues related to infrastructure and health. A main aim is to stimulate debate on urban complexity, urban development, and infrastructure inequality in order to promote public understanding. Infrastructure such as water and sanitation, roads, power supply, and buildings are critical parts of the vital skeletal framework necessary for the function and operation of societies. At present, moreover, with over half the world’s population (3.4 billion) living in cities, urban infrastructure plays a key role in support of the health and livelihoods of city dwellers (World Health Organization 2010). According to the World Health Organization (1948), “Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” We begin with an overview of three particular issues and links between infrastructure and health. The section “Urban Health” highlights how the controversy of urbanization gives rise to significant public health challenges in rapidly expanding informal settlements around the world. “Infrastructure as Threat” provides various infrastructure examples that can pose dangers to communities and in some cases arguably outweigh

the benefits of the infrastructure. “Aging Infrastructure and New Hazards” discusses the constant change and evolution of infrastructure forms and functions. As infrastructure ages, some of it is forgotten and can thereby introduce new hazards to human life. After setting out the problems, we further explore the “Reasons Behind the Infrastructure Controversies” in our attempt to understand and learn from the difficulties arising out of these controversies and set the stage for better decision making on infrastructure policy and healthier infrastructure for the future. We explore the issue of “Infrastructure Complexity and Connectivity” and use water systems as an example to highlight the lessons to be learned from previous experience. In emerging countries, rapid “Urban Development” accelerates the infrastructure building process and thereby deepens our reliance on infrastructure. We suggest that now is a critical time to consider the side effects and sustainability of this development. Last, we discuss infrastructure as a supposed universal public good. However, we can observe that “Infrastructure Inequality” is still prevalent in numerous forms around the world and must be addressed in order to achieve and sustain healthy infrastructure.

OVERVIEW OF INFRASTRUCTURE AND HEALTH Urban Health

In commemoration of the 2010 Year of Urban Health, Dr. Margaret Chan, director-general of the World Health Organization, stated “In general, urban populations are better off than their rural counterparts (so-called urban advantage). They tend to have greater access to social and health services and their life expectancy is longer. But cities can also concentrate threats to health such as inadequate sanitation and refuse collection, pollution, road traffic accidents, outbreaks of infectious diseases and also unhealthy lifestyles” (World Health Organization 2010). Rapid population growth and changes in demographics over the past 30 years have outpaced the capacity of infrastructure to support a healthy city in many areas of the world. Inequality and the disparity between urban rich and poor are moreover widening rapidly as economies continue to grow. Although urban dwellers have an improved quality of life on average, the urban poor either continue to suffer from substandard infrastructure or must endure the complete absence of infrastructure (thus rendering them unable to meet even basic human needs). This has been referred to as the urban penalty, whereby urban living is no longer a guarantee of improved public health.

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The United Nations estimates that approximately 1 billion people (nearly one-sixth of the global population and one-third of the urban population) presently live in informal settlements, slums, and shantytowns. The slum population is predicted to reach 9 billion by 2030. The expansion of these “hidden cities” is a significant global health concern that requires global efforts and timely solutions in order to deliver basic infrastructure and defuse this ticking health time bomb (World Health Organization 2010). The dimension of urban health is not limited to informal settlements. For example, studies on urban transportation systems reveal the impacts of infrastructure in relation to ill health and well-being. Air pollution (e.g., particulate matter, toxic gases, heavy metals, free radicals, and carcinogenic organic compounds from vehicle emissions) are shown to be associated with premature deaths worldwide (Pope et al. 2002; Schwartz et al. 2008). Moreover, Levy et al. (2010) evaluate the public health impacts of traffic congestion in 80 U.S. cities and estimate that emissions from traffic congestion are linked to approximately 3,000 premature deaths in 2005. In Europe, road traffic injuries are the third leading cause of death among people aged zero to 24 years; however, these injuries would largely be preventable through the implementation of effective measures (World Health Organization 2009). Another study concludes that noise pollution from aircraft can affect children’s cognitive performance and response to stress (Stansfeld et  al. 2001). Transport systems are also linked to psychological stress, social isolation, and reduced accessibility to health care (World Health Organization 2010), but transport infrastructure that promotes walking and cycling can increase the physical well-being of urban dwellers and reduce noncommunicable diseases such as obesity and heart attacks (Kahlmeier et  al. 2011). These examples show some of the typical infrastructure controversies. Should governments invest in infrastructure to formalize informal settlements? Should governments build more cycle lanes instead of vehicle lanes to promote physical activities and reduce pollution? How can we optimize the benefit of infrastructure to promote urban health?

Infrastructure as Threat

The provision of infrastructure is essential to the good health of a society, but infrastructure can also become a threat, and in so doing, facilitate the spread of ill health, pathogens, toxic chemicals, and physical matter. The Chernobyl disaster of 1986 and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan in 2011 are reminders of the power and dangers that

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infrastructure can unleash on modern society. An accidental explosion during a safety test set off the Chernobyl disaster. A later report commissioned by the United Nations (2002) revealed a spectrum of deleterious impacts on health, socioeconomic, and environmental conditions 15  years after the nuclear Chernobyl incident. The safety of nuclear facilities has undoubtedly improved since the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown; however, only 25 years after Chernobyl, an earthquake and subsequent tsunami off the coast of Japan triggered the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear tragedy. The official report of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission states that this tragedy was a profoundly manmade disaster—one that could and should have been foreseen and prevented (Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission 2012). According to the International Atomic Energy Agency,1 there are over 400 nuclear reactors in operation around the world. These facilities have raised much polemical discussion with regard to the maintenance, operation, safety, and future role of nuclear power infrastructure. Infrastructure allows the impossible to become possible:  It supports and concentrates people in areas where nature alone cannot fortify human life. In most developed countries, it is obvious that infrastructure provides a comfortable lifestyle for citizens. What would happen to livelihoods if this infrastructure were to be taken away? Disasters and extreme events that disrupt or destroy infrastructure reveal the extent to which modern life is dependent on it and at the same time is threatened by it. Health risks arising from infrastructure do not merely appear during and after disasters and extreme events; common infrastructure facilities that appear to be operating normally, such as landfill sites (Macklin et al. 2011), incinerators (National Academy of Sciences 2000), coal-burning power plants (Environmental Health & Engineering 2011), and power lines (Portier and Wolfe 1998), have been linked to various health problems that affect people living around these infrastructures. A lack of holistic and long-term planning of infrastructure and infrastructure resilience can allow a small change in a natural event (abundant rainfall) or human decision (land zoning) to magnify the risk and impact of a natural disaster. A good example is the case of the United Kingdom, where over the past 20  years 350,000 residential properties have been built on flood plains and the ratio of built environments to green space has dropped significantly (Austin et al. 2000). As shown by the summer of 2012 in the United Kingdom, short-term planning in the urban landscape has heightened the vulnerability of some UK infrastructure, thereby increasingly subjecting people to flooding incidents.

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Aging Infrastructure and New Hazards

Infrastructure is built to operate for decades and much longer. However, aging infrastructure can cause problems. For example, London’s underground sewerage system, which is over 100 years old, has been a constant source of pollution in the river Thames during times of heavy rainfall. In one incident, over 450,000 tons of storm sewage were reported to have been discharged into the river after a heavy rain, an event that subsequently killed large numbers of fish and other aquatic life (BBC 2011). Forgotten infrastructure that is no longer in use can quietly lay dormant, like a time bomb, thus posing a discreet threat to urban health. As trivial as dried-up water in the water trap of disused floor drains assisted the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) throughout a building complex in Hong Kong (World Health Organization 2003). As the most severe new disease of the 21st century, the SARS outbreak struck prosperous cities the hardest (World Health Organization 2010). Poor planning and maintenance and lack of vigilance against opportunistic pathogens are the main watchwords for the key decision makers in the infrastructure field:  urban planners, politicians, and engineers. Poor planning and maintenance can accelerate infrastructure aging and is obvious in disorganized development and emergency situations after a disaster has occurred (Water and Sanitation Program 2006). Although short-term basic needs can be fulfilled by the provision of infrastructure, this can also pose a long-term threat to the community. Secondary shocks due to infrastructure failure and malfunction are unintended consequences that can provoke more harm and long-term impacts than the effects of the initial problem and disaster. In infrastructure-fragile communities such as Haiti after the earthquake of 2010, ongoing assistance, restoration from disaster relief, and sustainable development through knowledge transfer to local people are crucial endeavor in the prevention of long-term citizen upheaval. Projects led by nongovernment organizations can deliver resilient infrastructure to fragile communities to protect people in the event of future disasters, but the aims and objectives of these organizations can often be short-term solutions (World Bank 2006). Microorganisms adapt and may even modify their environments for long-term survival. Infrastructure allows for new pathogenic ecosystems to take hold, grow, and spread. Legionalla spp. is a well-known pathogen that has been able to successfully take advantage of urban infrastructure (e.g., by proliferating in reservoirs of cooling towers; World Health Organization 2007). Different forms of infrastructure are usually treated separately as static and isolated systems. In order to fully understand and assess how

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infrastructure can impact us, we will need to change this one-dimensional approach to health to consider the entire infrastructure life cycle. The difficulty concerns the following conundrum:  What should we do with this aging and mega infrastructure—in particular, the structures underneath our cities? REASONS BEHIND THE CONTROVERSIES Infrastructure Complexity and Connectivity

Given the various links between infrastructure and health discussed in the previous section, we next explore the issues in greater depth to uncover the reasons behind the infrastructure controversy. Our goal is to learn from previous experience and improve policy and engineering decisions on infrastructure development. As discussed above, infrastructure may be understood as an intertwined system that usually operates for many decades. Old infrastructure may continue to run at satisfactory levels, be phased out, get replaced, or be forgotten altogether, while new infrastructure with new design concepts and functions may be introduced into the network with (or without) consideration of the existing infrastructure. If we use urban water infrastructure as an example (water supply, sanitation, wastewater and solid waste treatment, and environmental pollution), we can see that the availability of a water supply affects the design of sanitation infrastructure and vice versa, which in turn directs the engineering requirements for wastewater, sludge, and human solid waste treatment and disposal and thereby ultimately influences pollution levels and environmental health outcomes. As mentioned above, the model for modern water and sanitation systems was established during the Victorian era in London. Water-based centralized sanitation and wastewater treatment systems thereafter became the norm for engineering design in developed countries. This model is also generally accepted in developing countries and in some places is regarded as prestigious. However, although the installation of toilet blocks in a community may seem to be straightforward, the necessary wider planning and management support may in fact be overlooked. A report by the Slum Sanitation Programme in Mumbai, India, highlights the challenges of providing water-based toilets to developing communities (Water and Sanitation Program 2006). Within the first years of this program, nearly two-thirds of the newly built community toilet blocks were in disrepair and disuse. Disregard for peripheral influences and conditions (such as lack of water, wastewater overflow, and the absence of any form of wastewater

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treatment prior to water discharge into the environment) may introduce significant public health challenges and undermine the worthiness of the program. Controversy abounds in the literature in relation to imposing such systems in areas with poor governance and planning coordination. Nevertheless, in the case of Mumbai, forward thinking and flexible approaches were carried out to integrate community participation in the planning and design of the toilet blocks. Rather than treat the community as passive recipients, citizens were brought into the consultation process, and the program has yielded good results. Satisfying market and community demands (such as introducing pay-and-use tariffs and membership, setting up an in-house caretaker’s room, providing extra space for community activities, and creating a management, maintenance, and training structure) has also led to greater acceptance and approval of the toilet blocks by the Mumbai community, local authorities, and politicians (Water and Sanitation Program 2006). In addition to highlighting engineering as a complex process, this case study also supports the notion that engineering alone cannot solve public health problems. A wider connection and collaboration between engineering and social science is needed to deliver positive changes. While the early modern infrastructure system was already complex, it became even more technologically complicated and interconnected to other infrastructures and social structures in the 21st century. The traditional functions of water infrastructure (providing clean water and removing wastewater) have expanded to encompass other demands and functions, including sustainability, efficiency, infrastructure resilience to extreme events, and security. These concerns are nowadays taken into consideration when shaping the design, engineering, management, and operation of water infrastructure. Water scarcity is a major environmental threat to humanity. Unfortunately, in most developed countries, each flush of a toilet still uses about 4 liters of perfectly clean potable water. In resource-limited countries, water infrastructure and its management are treated as the lifeblood of the city. Moreover, in resource-poor countries, the nutrients (e.g., from human and animal waste), which are treated as waste in developed countries, are used as essential fertilizers to ensure the local food supply (Corcoran et al. 2010). The water supply is also scarce in countries such as Israel and Singapore, where water use and recycling are thus part and parcel of national security. At the opposite end of the spectrum, open defecation is still common practice in some countries, and no wastewater is ever treated before discharge. In these places, environmental service is provided only by nature as the sole support of health to the community. As a result, over a million lives in countries around the world

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are lost each year from diarrheal diseases that could have been prevented through basic measures to improve environmental conditions and water infrastructure (Prüss-Üstün and Corvalán 2006). Here lies the dilemma and difficulty in making infrastructure decisions and targeting investment. There is no single formula to balance the components in this complex system. Since the motivations for and expectations of infrastructure are constantly changing and evolving—from removing wastewater to prioritizing environmental sustainability and resource recovery—controversy in relation to infrastructure decisions is seemingly a natural product of this complex issue.

Urban Development

Urban development is a key driver for infrastructure development. In order to support rapid and ever-expanding growth, it is likely that more high-risk, high-capacity, and controversial infrastructures will be applied to societies. London’s population grew from 1 million to 8 million people over approximately 130 years. Bangkok took 45 years to achieve the same population level, and Seoul achieved this feat in a mere 25 years (United Nations Human Settlements Programme 2004). The widespread and rapid transformation of Chinese villages was recently featured in a BBC News programme titled “White Horse Village–Changing China” (BBC 2012). In four short years, a village was transformed from rice fields and farmhouses without water and sanitation infrastructure to a city with highways, apartment blocks, and hotels. Farmers became city dwellers nearly overnight. According to the deputy governor of the county, the benefit of this rapid transformation is the creation of a civilized, hygienic, and scenic city. Moreover, the fast growth of populations in major coastal cities requires that rural areas transformed in order to sustain economic development and population growth. These newly converted towns and cities can also reduce the urban–rural segregation in the country. In fact, villagers who had been migrant workers are now returning to their hometown to benefit from city facilities and to take advantage of business opportunities. Nevertheless, this economic, social, cultural, and environmental revolution has resulted in other important consequences. First, villagers have complained about the lack of consultation during the whole planning and construction process. They feel that their home has been seized during the development process. When land in China was collectivized after the communist revolution, villagers had no rights to their land. However, given that houses have been regarded as private property, villagers have

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been able to negotiate with the government for home compensation. The high number of violent protests nationwide (74,000 recorded in 2005) and robust conflict over the expropriation of land and property indicate the complexity and controversy of these negotiations (BBC 2012). Second, the older generation in particular has not been able to cope easily with the pace and pressure of urbanization in such a short period of time. Will farmers be able to adapt to their new city jobs and lifestyles? Physical infrastructures may be in place to support the city’s operation, but is social infrastructure available to support vulnerable people? Moreover, from an economic and environmental point of view, is the urban development transformation sustainable in emerging countries, such as China, Brazil, and India? The steady rise in consumerism significantly threatens the supply and reserve of resources, such as energy, water, and food. How will current and future infrastructure cope with higher demand? For instance, China is presently self-sufficient in the provision of food for its own population, which comprises one-fifth of the entire world’s population. But land-use changes, water scarcity, climate change, land degradation, and the demand for more diverse types of food can also have harmful, if as yet unseen, global impacts (United Nations 2010).

Infrastructure Inequality

Health equality is regarded as an ethical principle and a human right (World Health Organization 2010). The benefit of infrastructure provision, as opposed to individual health care, is to provide more equitable health to greater numbers of people. The aims are to prevent disease and secure sustainable and long-term health impacts as compared to medical treatment and, more crucially, to serve broad groups and populations, male and female, despite income level. In reality, infrastructure availability, accessibility, adequacy, affordability, and sustainability vary across different groups and populations. Socioeconomic status—As shown above, developing regions and poor districts carry a disproportionate share of the environmental disease burden. The poorest of the poor in these areas are living in extreme conditions in which infrastructure may be present in the neighborhood but is neither accessible nor affordable for them. Many of these people do not have access to a centralized tap-water supply and may instead have to obtain water from wells (groundwater) or collect surface water that has been contaminated by their wealthier neighbors. Some slum dwellers can barely afford to use the toilet facilities (Water and Sanitation Program 2006). For those

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who cannot afford it, open defecation is an unfortunate necessity of daily life. Even in developed regions, where nearly everyone shares the benefits of infrastructure, it is nearly always the urban poor who suffer most from the unintended health hazards of infrastructure (such as living near busy roads, landfill sites, and power plants). In some countries, informal settlements are regarded as a nuisance by their governments. In 2005, with little or no warning, the government of Zimbabwe launched “Operation Murambatsvina” to ostensibly clean up its cities. According to government officials, the operation was meant to crack down on illegal housing and commercial activity and reduce the risk of infection. However, the United Nations estimates that this operation has directly affected at least 700,000 people through the loss of their homes and/or their livelihoods (Tibaijuka 2005). Gender—After more than 2,000 years of civilization, it is alarming that widespread gender inequality remains relevant to the topic of infrastructure and health. How much more time must pass until males and females are finally equal? A  policy brief on the topic (“Gender, Water and Sanitation”) developed by the Inter-agency Task Force on Gender and Water and Interagency Network on Women and Gender Equality (2005) highlights the challenges that women confront in order to gain access to water infrastructure. Not only does limited access to water result in women directly suffering (due to poor water supply and poor water health environments), it also impacts women in indirect ways. Given the frequent absence of designated male and female toilet facilities in schools (not to mention girls’ assigned duty to fetch water over long distances), girls are as a consequence often unable to attend school. The existence of community toilets and water supplies situated far from homes also tends to promote violence and physical assaults against women. This is a serious issue in unstable environments such as refugee camps. Moreover, the lack of female toilets and unclean facilities can lead to bladder disease in women because some women will deliberately dehydrate themselves and hold their urine as long as possible in order to avoid the condition of the facilities (Inter-agency Task Force on Gender and Water and Interagency Network on Women and Gender Equality 2005). Disability—Over time and mainly in developed countries, more research, consultation, infrastructure modifications, and infrastructure innovations have been proposed and implemented to address the inadequacy of infrastructure as concerns the needs of disabled people. However, concerted efforts are not yet underway in developing countries to improve the lives of disabled people through the development of healthy infrastructure. In some countries, resources, planning, and governance are limited, and priority for disabled people is either low or nonexistent. Disability is also a

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relative term. Given the right infrastructure, most everyone can carry out normal activity regardless of ability. The integration of appropriate measures and designs in infrastructure sectors would therefore serve to eventually phase out inequality for disabled people in relation to infrastructure access (Wiman and Sandhu 2004). The benefits of integration also extend to a wider context, as they promote social inclusion and participation, increase access to social and health services and facilities, and improve employment and education opportunities. Age—Adults in midlife are better able to compete for infrastructure services, adapt to different physical environments, and migrate if necessary to infrastructure rich areas to work and enjoy better health; meanwhile, the young and old are left behind in less developed infrastructure; in less accessible areas; with less financial, physical, and social power to improve their lives. In some cases, the very young and very old share the most infrastructure inequality because of their perceived social and economic value, ability, and limited mobility; as a result, their needs and rights are undermined or ignored (Zaidi 2008). In developed countries, given an aging population, it has become necessary to reconsider the role and adaptation of infrastructure to keep pace with social change. The first international conference on age-friendly cities thus took place in 2011 to strengthen the World Health Organization’s (2011) Global Network of Age-friendly Cities and advance the ideas and approaches on how to make cities more inclusive by being age-friendly. Infrastructure inequality can also be experienced by migrants who have fewer rights to it or must pay a higher price to access infrastructure facilities (BBC 2012). People of different races can also experience infrastructure inequality, as was the case during the apartheid era in South Africa and more recently in the Israeli-occupied territories (where Palestinians’ access to infrastructure, land, and resources is controlled and restricted; United Nations 2009; Emergency Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Group and Al-Haq 2011).

CONCLUSION

A range of examples of the controversies of infrastructure and health has been presented in order to provide a broad overview to readers from different backgrounds, and a number of social, ethical, environmental, and economic issues relating to the complexity of infrastructure have also been set out. Infrastructure certainly brings vast and diverse positive impacts to societies and to the world, but its contribution is not always positive.

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Nevertheless, from my point of view, controversies in infrastructure design, building, maintenance, and access can be addressed in a reasonable fashion. The mission is to find acceptable solutions in order to build secure healthy infrastructure that can deliver its function for all while avoiding adverse health effects to humans and the environment. To realize this task will require global partnerships, political will, robust governance structures, community engagement, and the willingness to listen and respond to stakeholders’ views. The ability to develop decision tools that make the process transparent, quantifiable, and scientific will help to integrate different perspectives and reach an agreeable result. Given the looming threat and uncertainty brought about by climate change, urbanization, new and emerging diseases, and aging infrastructure, it is more important than ever to understand what we are building and how these structures will shape the health and well-being of societies moving toward the future. NOTE 1. http://www.iaea.org REFERENCES Austin, B., P. Cheeseman, and C. Maggs. 2000. United Kingdom Floods: Technical Report. London: Guy Carpenter & Co. BBC. 2011. “Thousands of River Thames fish killed by storm sewage.” http://www.bbc. co.uk/news/uk-england-london-13693265 BBC. 2012. “White Horse Village: Changing China.” London: Author. http://news.bbc. co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/5103100.stm Corcoran, E., C. Nellemann, E. Baker, R. Bos, D. Osborn, and H. Savelli. 2010. “Sick Water? The Central Role of Wastewater Management in Sustainable Development. A  Rapid Response Assessment.” United Nations Environment Programme, UN-HABITAT, and GRID-Arendal. http://www.grida.no/_cms/ OpenFile.aspx?s=1&id=1447 Emergency Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Group, and Al-Haq. 2011. “Israel’s Violations of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights with Regard to the Human Rights to Water and Sanitation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.” Geneva: United Nations, Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights http://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/25404F8138A8FEA5852578FC 0050F939 Environmental Health & Engineering, Inc. 2011. “Emissions of Hazardous Air Pollutants from Coal-Fired Power Plants.” EH&E Report 17505. Needham, MD: Author. Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission. 2012. “The Official Report of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission.” Tokyo: Author. http://warp.da.ndl.go.jp/info:ndljp/pid/3856371/ naiic.go.jp/en/ Inter-agency Task Force on Gender and Water, and Interagency Network on Women and Gender Equality. 2005. “Gender, Water and Sanitation:  A  Policy Brief.” Geneva: UN-Water. www.unwater.org/downloads/unwpolbrief230606.pdf

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Kahlmeier, S., N. Cavill, H. Dinsdale, H. Rutter, T. Götschi, C. Foster, et  al. 2011. “Economic Assessment of Transport Infrastructure and Policies – Health Economic Assessment Tools (HEAT) for Walking and for Cycling. Methodology and User Guide.” Geneva: World Health Organization. Levy, J.I., J.J. Buonocore, and K.  von Stackelberg. 2010. “Evaluation of the Public Health Impacts of Traffic Congestion: A Health Risk Assessment.” Environmental Health 9: 1–12. Macklin, Y., A. Kibble, and F. Pollitt. 2011. “Impact on Health of Emissions from Landfill Sites.” London:  Health Protection Agency. http://www.hpa.org.uk/ webc/HPAwebFile/HPAweb_C/1309969974126 National Academy of Sciences. 2000. Waste Incineration and Public Health. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. Pope, C.A., R.T. Burnett, M.J. Thun, E.E. Calle, D. Krewski, K. Ito, et al. 2002. “Lung Cancer, Cardiopulmonary Mortality, and Long-Term Exposure to Fine Particulate Air Pollution.” JAMA 287: 1132–1141. Portier, C., and M.S. Wolfe. 1998. “Assessment of Health Effects from Exposure to Power-Line Frequency Electric and Magnetic Fields.” NIH Publication 98-3981. Washington, DC: U.S. National Institutes of Health. Prüss-Üstün, A., and C. Corvalán. 2006. Preventing Disease through Healthy Environments:  Towards an Estimate of the Environmental Burden of Disease. Geneva: World Health Organization. Schwartz, J., B. Coull, F. Laden, and L. Ryan. 2008. “The Effect of Dose and Timing of Dose on the Association between Airborne Particles and Survival.” Environmental Health Perspectives 116: 64–69. Stansfeld, S., M. Haines, S. Brentnall, J. Head, R. Roberts, B. Berry, et  al. 2001. “West London Schools Study: Aircraft Noise at School and Children’s Cognitive Performance and Stress Responses.” http://www.aerohabitat.eu/uploads/ media/05-09-2006_-_Aerei_e_studenti__West_London_schools_study.pdf Tibaijuka, A.K. 2005. “Report of the Fact Finding Mission to Zimbabwe to Assess the Scope and Impact of Operation Murambatsvina by the UN Special Envoy on Human Settlements Issues in Zimbabwe.” Geneva: United Nations. www.un.org/ News/dh/infocus/zimbabwe/zimbabwe_rpt.pdf United Nations. 2009. “Israelis, Palestinians Continue to Commit Serious Rights Violations.” UN News Centre, October 15. http://www.un.org/apps/news/story. asp?NewsID=32568&Cr=palestin&Cr1= United Nations. 2010. “Mandate of the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food— Mission to the People’s Republic of China from 15 to 23 December, 2010.” Beijing: Office of the United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights, December 23. United Nations Human Settlements Programme. 2004. “State of the World’s Cities 2004/2005:  Globalization and Urban Culture.” Geneva:  Author. http://ww2. unhabitat.org/mediacentre/sowckit.asp Water and Sanitation Program. 2006. The Mumbai Slum Sanitation Program: Partnering with Communities for Sustainable Sanitation in a Megalopolis. Water and Sanitation Program South Asia. Delhi: World Bank. Wiman, R., and J. Sandhu. 2004. “Integrating Appropriate Measures for People with Disabilities in the Infrastructure Sector.” Eschborn:  The German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development. World Bank. 2006. Social Resilience and State Fragility in Haiti: A Country Social Analysis. Washington, DC: Author.

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World Health Organization. 1948. Proceedings and Final Acts of the International Health Conference Held in New York from 19 June to 22 July 1946. Geneva: Author. World Health Organization. 2003. “Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS)— Multi-Country Outbreak—Update 33, April 18.” Geneva:  Author. http://www. who.int/csr/don/2003_04_18/en/ World Health Organization. 2007. Legionella and the Prevention of Legionellosis. Geneva: Author. World Health Organization. 2009. “Accidents and Injuries. Healthy Environments for Children (Issue Brief Series) Mortality from Road Traffic Injuries in Children and Young People Fact Sheet.” Geneva: Author. http://www.who.int/heca/infomaterials/injuries.pdf World Health Organization. 2010. “Urban Planning Essential for Public Health.” Geneva: Author. http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2010/urban_ health_20100407/en/index.html World Health Organization. 2011. “First International Age-Friendly Cities Conference September 28–30—Dublin, Ireland.” Geneva: Author. http://www.who.int/ageing/events/age_friendly_cities/en/index.html Zaidi, A. 2008. Features and Challenges of Population Ageing: The European Perspective. Vienna: European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research.

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PART TWO

Food Policy: Balancing Productivity, Conservation, and Social Justice

CHAPTER 7

How to Feed Ourselves—Could This Be the Biggest Question of the 21st Century? FR ANCES MOORE L APPÉ

N

ot all scientific controversies are fought in the laboratory: Today much of our planet is the testing ground in a scientific controversy touching virtually every human being on Earth. It centers on the path we choose to feed ourselves, a choice that will create ripples ranging from the extent of hunger and the severity of climate change to how many species remain at century’s end. And that path will be shaped by what social philosopher Erich Fromm (1973) called a “frame of orientation”—the core assumptions, often beneath conscious awareness, through which we each view our world. For human beings, these frames function as filters, determining what we see and what we do not see. Today, two quite different ways of seeing the global food challenge are emerging as scientists, farmers, and engaged citizens struggle to answer the question: How will we feed ourselves? Here I  contrast the frames, the first and dominant one—promoted in most US agricultural universities and by farm-related corporations—I call “productivist” because the frame defines the challenge of conquering today’s hunger and meeting growing demand largely as that of producing more food. Limiting the human population is also seen as critical. The second lens is my own and that of a growing number of food and farming experts worldwide. It is sometimes described as “ecological” or “sustainable.” But such terms might mislead by suggesting a worldview

focusing principally, or exclusively, on the environment. So I prefer to call the lens “relational,” suggesting a way of seeing that embraces both the ecological and social dimensions of the food system. Its focus is not primarily on the quantities produced but the qualities of relationships within both human and nonhuman aspects of food systems, as it asks whether these relationships enhance life. I first present the productivist frame and then the relational.

PRODUCTIVIST FRAME

Worldwide, our “food system is working for the majority of people,” notes the UK think-tank Foresight (2011, p. 36). Yields of major food crops have grown markedly. And number and share of people going hungry has fallen in the past 20 years (Food and Agriculture Organization [FAO] 2013). Yet hunger remains, reflecting the hard fact that humanity’s growing population is hitting the earth’s natural limits. Agricultural soils and water supplies are increasingly degraded by overuse, and conventional agricultural technology is proving unable to prevent a decline in the rate of yield improvements of major cereal crops (Fischer and Edmeades 2010). At the same time, climate change is already thwarting food production in some regions, particularly in Africa (Ozor et al. 2010). Economic progress is straining resources as well. “Some 3 billion people are also trying to move up the food chain,” writes Earth Policy Institute’s Lester Brown (2011). They are “consuming more meat, milk, and eggs;” and, “as global consumption of grain-intensive livestock products climbs, so does the demand for the extra corn and soybeans.” Describing this productivist view, a 2011 report from the European Commission Standing Committee on Agricultural Research, Sustainable Food Consumption and Production in a Resource Constrained World, says that “scarcities” result from “regional under-exploitation of the theoretical production potential of land and of input of energy, nutrients, and technology.” In other words, the problem is our inefficient use of resources; at the same time, says the report, we are overexploiting the “buffering and regenerative capacity of ecosystems” (Freibauer et al. 2011, p. 24). Put most simply: Overcoming scarcity, as we are hitting our ecosystems’ natural limits, is our biggest challenge. To take advantage of this now-proven, underexploited potential we must spread to poor countries the food system that has proven to be dominant and effective in the industrial North, one relying on commercial fertilizers, pesticides, and seeds, including bioengineered seeds (Fig. 7.1).

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Figure 7.1  Productivist Frame versus Relational Frame

This modern food system got its start in the industrial North in the 1950s, and under the banner of the “Green Revolution” it reached the Global South in the 1960s. First adopted there on a large scale in India, the Green Revolution refers to the use of hybrid seeds that

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respond to synthetic fertilizer, pesticides, and irrigation. As a result, cereal yields in Asia and some other areas of the Global South have nearly tripled, saving the lives of hundreds of millions of people (Hazell 2009, p. 22). These breakthroughs “have all increased the amount of food that can be grown on each acre of land by as much as 10 times in the last 100 years,”1 notes Nina V. Fedoroff (2011), former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Now genetically engineered seeds offer the possibility of a “doubly green” revolution, according to professor Sir Gordon Conway (1997). To spread this successful approach means focusing on research to create new agricultural technologies to produce the highest-yielding seeds— those seeds that are best adapted to coping with drought, pests, and other conditions made more difficult by climate change. Of course the approach brings with it some environmental problems needing remediation, but they are solvable, and genetic engineering can help reduce environmental impacts. In any case, this path is our only viable option.

Meeting Demands of Population Growth

No other path can produce the volume of food humanity needs to meet the demands of our growing population. In 2002, the “father” of the Green Revolution Norman Borlaug rejected the idea that agriculture without such manufactured inputs—synthetic fertilizer, pesticides—and commercial seeds could meet global food needs: “We aren’t going to feed 6 billion people with organic fertilizer,” he states (World Watch Institute, 2006). A 2012 report in Nature reinforced his judgment, stating: “Our analysis of available data shows that, overall, organic yields are typically lower than conventional yields” (Seufert et al. 2012). Genetically modified seeds, also called transgenic seeds, are essential, argues Fedoroff (2011) and many others. She advocates “genetic modification” because the rate of past yield increases must be doubled by 2050 to meet a growing world population’s needs. One reason, she says, is the “affluent” demographics’ demand for animal protein dependent on increasing feed-crop yields. Cambridge University chemist John Emsley (2001) goes further, supporting the view that “[t]‌he greatest catastrophe that the human race could

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face this century is not global warming but a global conversion to ‘organic farming’—an estimated 2 billion people would perish.”

Additional Drawbacks to Alternatives

Without chemical inputs, not only will yields per acre drop but much more land would have to be cleared for farming to make up for that loss. Borlang, as quoted by World Watch Institute (2006), argues that “[i]‌f we tried to do it [farming without synthetic inputs], we would level most of our forest and many of those lands would be productive only for a short period of time.” Obviously, destroying even more forests is not advisable, given the essential role forests play in stabilizing our climate. One reason that organic agriculture cannot meet global food needs is that its farming practices rely on compost (the return of organic matter from manure and plant residue), which cannot supply enough nitrogen for satisfactory plant growth. Canadian nitrogen expert Vaclav Smil (2011) notes that “synthetic nitrogenous fertilizers now provide just over half of the nutrients received by the world’s crops. . . [without which] we could not secure enough food for the prevailing diets of nearly 45% of the world’s population, or roughly three billion people.” The return of organic matter to soils—as practiced in what is called organic farming or agroecology—cannot work, he writes, because “the nitrogen content of these wastes is inherently low.” An additional drawback making alternative approaches impractical is that they require too much labor. Organic methods need more hand labor in weed and pest control, for example.2 These greater labor demands also make the products of nonchemical agriculture more expensive (FAO 2012). Moreover, in the industrial countries not enough laborers are willing to do the fieldwork that would be required if we tried to expand organic agriculture significantly.

Environmental Benefits

Warnings of environmental and human health risks from introducing transgenic seeds are unfounded. In fact, genetically modified organisms (GMOs) offer environmental benefits. Such seeds are crucial because, Fedoroff (2011) states, they help plants resist pests and disease while increasing crop productivity in ways that are “more environmentally benign” than other methods. Additionally, transgenic seeds make agriculture easier for farmers, she says, because they produce crops that require

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less labor for weed and pest control. She applauds the use of genetically modified (GM) seeds because their use encourages what is called no-till farming, a method that “decreases soil erosion and shrinks agriculture’s carbon footprint.” Genetic modification offers health benefits too. “Contamination by carcinogenic fungal toxins,” for example, Fedoroff (2011) notes, “is as much as 90% lower in insect-resistant genetically modified corn than in nonmodified corn3. . . because the fungi that make the toxins follow insects boring into the plants. No insect holes, no fungi, no toxins.” The genetic engineering of seeds has the support of major philanthropists as well, including The Gates Foundation, the world’s largest private foundation for which public information is available. It is a primary actor in global agricultural development. The Foundation reports, for example, that it has provided $39.1 million to the African Agricultural Technology Foundation—using as a subcontractor the world’s leading GM seed company, Monsanto—to develop drought-tolerant maize varieties and work on transgenic approaches. The Foundation states that “genetic modification. . . is a small part of our portfolio, representing about 6% of our investments in agriculture and nutrition, [but] it is one that we believe has promise.”4

Government’s Role

Much of government oversight of new agricultural technology, including seeds, is a block to progress. Without it, scientists, private foundations, and entrepreneurial farmers will develop and spread the improved seeds and new technologies. “The reason farmers turn to genetically modified crops is simple: yields increase and costs decrease,” argues Fedoroff (2011). So “the government needs to stop regulating genetic modifications for which there is no scientifically credible evidence of harm.”

Access to Food: A Separate Social Problem

The role of agriculture is to produce enough food to meet human needs. Questions about access to that food are unrelated to the model of agriculture used to produce it. These are social questions best resolved by responsible governments, free-market economies, and concerned citizens. Government can address this societal challenge by providing improved educational opportunities, essential agricultural infrastructure such as

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roads, property rights’ enforcement, and the elimination of corruption in order to attract business investment—all toward the purpose of creating employable workers and more jobs so that people are able to purchase the food they need. In sum, the fundamental world food problem today is one of scarcity, given the swelling global population and the increasing demand for resource-intensive animal foods. The solution is greater production through modern technologies. Alternatives are ungrounded in science and even dangerous, for they will inevitably produce less food, bring more hunger, and increase environmental distress.

RELATIONAL FRAME

Our global food system is clearly not working for the majority of the world’s people. Focused narrowly on production disconnected from nutrition, the productivist model has helped transform the food supply into a health hazard for roughly half the world’s population. Today, nearly 842 million people go hungry (FAO 2013). In addition, more than a billion of us suffer the consequences of obesity, which is often coupled with malnourishment (De Schutter 2012). Two billion are anemic (Tulchinsky and Yaravikova 2009, p. 310). In the United States, four of the top six most deadly diseases are food related (Kochanek et al. 2011, pp. 4–5). Scarcity, moreover, is not the core challenge. The world already produces plenty of food—roughly a third more for each of us than in the 1960s.5 Even after feeding to livestock a third of global grain production, 90% of all soy meal, and a third of the fish catch, there is still a global average of more than 2,800 calories available per person per day.6 Even where local or regional shortages occur, hunger is needless—a tragic symptom of extreme power imbalances in human relationships and of farming practices disrupting nature’s regenerative capacity. So solutions are both agricultural and social, and they are deeply intertwined. Agriculturally, the solution is farming that aligns with natural processes, called “organic farming” or “agroecology.” Agroecology emphasizes locally developed, largely noncommercial farm inputs such as natural pest controls. Its practices include enabling synergistic crop interactions through polyculture (multiple crops in one field), composting, mulching, and water conservation—all to ensure soil and plant health and total-system resiliency (Altieri 2012).

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Socially, solutions require inclusive and fair economic and political rules and norms that disperse power and afford more people voice. Such rules include those developed democratically from village councils as well as those developed in national and international policymaking bodies. These rules can shape everything from farmers’ access to knowledge, land, and local markets all the way to agricultural trade. Agroecology itself, with its emphasis on farmer learning and knowledge sharing, helps communities move toward more balanced human power relationships in several ways (explored below).

Agroecological Farming Proven Effective, Especially in the Hungriest Countries

Evidence is mixed about whether synthetic inputs or organic practices typically generate higher yields.7 The power of GM seeds to increase yields in the Global North, as is assumed in the productivist frame, has been modest at best (Gurian-Sherman 2009; Carpenter 2010). In the Global South, recent evidence is mixed, with one study showing significant gains (Carpenter 2010, p.  320). Other reports are unequivocally negative:  In India, farmers took on debt to plant genetically engineered cotton in response to GM maker Monsanto’s advertised promises of higher profits. But a three-year agronomists’ study tells of “untold miseries” of poor Indian farmers whose more costly GM cotton seeds yielded 30% less than non-GM (Qayum and Sakkhari 2005, p. 2; Sakkhari and Qayum 2009). But focusing on competing yields alone misses the point. Even if GM seeds and chemical agriculture were to bring better yields, poor farmers dependent on them would still be vulnerable to the demands of banks, money lenders, and corporate seed sellers. By contrast, agroecological practices free farmers from the costs of manufactured inputs and the dependency they create, thus allowing farmers to benefit more from their own labor. In Andhra Pradesh, India, farmers who shifted to ecological practices have seen their net income rise. “In fact some of the farmer groups reported up to 100% higher profits through CMSA (Community Managed Sustainable Agriculture) than the previous methods,” noted a World Bank blog (Jacob 2011). Agroecology has now proven its potential globally to provide enough food, especially in the Global South. The largest study of ecological methods in the Global South—analyzing 286 projects in 57 countries and involving 12.6 million farmers on 37 million hectares—showed a mean relative yield increase of 79% “across the very wide variety of systems and crop types”8

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(Pretty and Hine 2001, c­ hapter  4; Pretty 2006, pp.  2–3; United Nations Conference on Trade and Development 2008; Kumar et al. 2009). For the global picture, scientists at the University of Michigan, using 293 examples, examined the potential of organic agriculture. In the model the authors called “more realistic,” they found that that the potential output of organic agriculture “exceeds the current food supply in all food categories, with most estimates over 50% greater than the amount of food currently produced.” Organic farming can, therefore, “contribute substantially” to meeting the needs of the current and anticipated world population “on the current agricultural land base” (Badgley et al. 2007, pp. 91, 94). Moreover, the argument that agroecological farming can never reach significant scale because it lacks the essential nitrogen now supplied in manufactured fertilizer is countered by the same Michigan study. The authors show that “green manures”—cover crops that fix nitrogen—could provide roughly 70% more nitrogen than synthetic fertilizers currently provide.9 Narrowly defining the challenge as greater production, by whatever approach, can also blind us not only to current abundance but also to the potential being squandered in the current, vast waste of food—waste that itself is a product of the systemic impoverishment of people. Roughly one-third of the world’s food is wasted (FAO 2011). In the Global South, much is lost because many small farmers lack proper storage and other facilities (Gastavsson et al. 2011). In the North, even greater waste occurs (Harrison 2004; Jones 2006). Diversion of crops into fuel production—including 40% of U.S. corn—is yet another waste of food potential (Jessen 2011). If we fixate on producing “more,” we can fail to see that reducing waste in all these forms can be as or more effective in ensuring supply as is increasing output—and without placing additional demands on water and soil.

Population Growth and Its Relational Roots

The productivist mindset considers population growth as an independent variable—that is, a virtually inexorable force leading to 9 billion in 2050. But in the relational mindset, population growth is determined by the quality of human relationships. Globally, the number of people added yearly stabilized in the 1990s, observes Robert Engelman (2011), president of World Watch, and most continuing growth is in the Global South—largely as a consequence of poverty. Too often poor people, especially women, are unable to choose the size of their families because they lack money to pay for contraception and the power to use it. If women were able to have only

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intended pregnancies, world population would peak below 9 billion, decline somewhat, and level off. With this insight, it becomes clear that addressing the poverty and disempowerment of women is critical to harmonizing human population size with our food supply.

Productivism’s Health and Environment Downsides

Besides hunger and food-related diseases—from diabetes and heart ailments to anemia—evidence mounts of other health threats in the modern diet. While productivism defends the use of pesticides, each year pesticides could be causing “as many as 25 million agricultural workers in the developing world” to suffer “an episode of poisoning,” according to a 1990 overview in World Health Statistics Quarterly (Jeyaratnam 1990). Examining data on chemicals in 9,000 Americans, a 2004 study found an average of 13 pesticides, with many people’s levels exceeding government-assessed safety limits (Schafer et al. 2004). While many productivists argue that GMOs reduce pesticide use, a 2012 study found the opposite: In 2011, US farmers applied 20% more pesticide on each GMO-planted acre than on each non-GMO acre (Benbrook 2012). The most widely used GMOs—Roundup Ready soy and corn—are designed to be used with the herbicide glyphosate, which is linked to serious human disease and reproductive problems. Human exposure to glyphosate has been associated with increased risk of miscarriage and birth defects, cancer, and neurological problems in children (Eriksson et al. 2008; Ávila Vazquez and Nota 2010). Neurologists report that herbicides, especially glyphosate, “have been recognized as the main environmental factor associated with. . . Parkinson’s disease” (Gui 2012). Health risks from GM seeds are also increasingly suggested via laboratory tests. A review of 19 peer-reviewed studies found several in which mammals fed GMO corn and soy developed “liver and kidney problems” that could mark the “onset of chronic diseases” (Séralini et al. 2011). In another study, pigs on the GM diet were 2.6 times more likely to get severe stomach inflammation than control pigs (Carman et al. 2013, p. 51). Scientists have called for more long-term studies (Bardocz et al. 2012; European Network of Scientists 2013). Another assumption underpinning GM technology is that a single inserted gene will produce a single, predictable effect. According to scientists, however, “unintended effects are common in all cases where GE [genetic engineering] techniques are used.” Therefore precision is not

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possible (Freese and Schubert 2004). Furthermore, a team of UK scientists report that “unintended consequences” from heritable “genome-wide mutations” could result in “alternations to the toxicity or nutritional value of a transgenic cultivar.” Genetic engineering could moreover “adversely affect beneficial insects (e.g. plant pollinators), soil organisms or other wildlife,” and could also “have implications for food security” (Wilson et al. 2006, p. 223). GM seed overuse, involving widespread application of the herbicide glyphosate, mentioned above, has also created serious outbreaks of “superweeds” resistant to glyphosate. By 2011, the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry noted that the spread of glyphosate-resistant superweeds is leading farmers to seek alternatives (Warwick et al. 1999; Nandula et al. 2005; Green and Owen 2011). Those with a relational worldview are alarmed that in the 1990s promoters of genetic engineering, in denying such risks, pressed the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to approve genetically engineered crops without standard testing. They argued that GM crops did not need testing because they are “substantially equivalent” to non-GM and sidelined dissenting Food and Drug Administration scientists.10 Those in the relational worldview dismiss the claim that Roundup Ready seeds (GM seeds engineered to tolerate the pesticide Roundup) are environmentally helpful because they encourage soil-conserving no-till farming. Defenders of Roundup pesticide argue that it helps farmers deal with unplowed fields’ greater weed problems. But for ecological farms, this purported benefit is irrelevant, because these farms manage weeds differently—namely, by using crop rotation and cover crops. The United Nation’s FAO has accordingly noted that for ecological farms, herbicide-resistant GM varieties “do not provide any advantage.”11 At the same time, the productivist farming system has become a leading source of the greenhouse gases that cause global climate disruption. In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported that farming alone contributes 14% of manmade greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). The estimate excluded related deforestation, processing, packaging, transportation, buildings, and retail store emissions (Pachauri and Reisinger 2007, p. 36). More recently, the Spain-based agricultural think-tank GRAIN drew on diverse studies to gauge the global food system’s impact in all its dimensions, concluding that it accounts for 44% to as much 57% of GHG emissions (“Food and Climate Change” 2011). The magnitude of the food system’s climate-related harm is more understandable once learning that about 70% of deforestation in the Amazon, for example, serves livestock production (Fearnside 2005). Also, synthetic

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nitrogen fertilizer—the largest single source of agriculture’s GHG emissions—emits nitrous oxide, which is about 300 times more potent per unit than CO2 (Takle and Hofstrand 2008; Forster et al 2007, p. 212). Additionally, large-scale ecological damage includes the contamination of wells with pesticides, occurring from the Indian Punjab to the U.S. Midwest (Tiwana et al. 2007; Wu et al. 2010). Nitrogen pollution of waterways by fertilizer run-off is also creating aquatic “dead zones” (areas where marine life suffocate from lack of oxygen) worldwide (Diaz and Rosenberg 2008). One of the dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico often grows to approximately the size of New Jersey (Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium 2010). Chemical agriculture is also rapidly diminishing plant and animal species. Focusing solely on the goal of highest production of crops grown in monocultures, the productivist model has contributed to the loss of roughly three-fourths of plant genetic diversity since the 1900s. Thus today just 12 plants and 5 animal species supply 75% of our food, making our sustenance unnecessarily vulnerable to climate change and disease (FAO 2004). Objections to GMOs are not just about their environmental and health risks, as the use of GMOs also deepens the very imbalances in power relationships that lie at the root of the hunger crisis. GMO technology is tightly controlled. One corporation, Monsanto, has control of 90% of genetically engineered seed technology (Center for Food Safety 2005). So far, commercialized GMOs have neither improved nutrition nor consistently improved yields. Rather, most are engineered to deal with pests and to function only if the farmer purchases not only the corporation’s seed but its pesticide. The industry’s tightly held control also enables it to set the rules for oversight of its products. While GMO advocates insist on the seeds’ safety, others counter that the industry’s concentrated power has prevented significant testing. “For a decade,” protested Scientific American’s editors in 2009, user agreements demanded by GMO companies “have explicitly forbidden the use of the seeds for any independent research,” so “it is impossible to verify that genetically modified crops perform as advertised” (Editors 2009). Given today’s global food sufficiency and vast food waste—as well as the untapped promise of agroecology—those in the relational mindset ask:  Why take on risks to environmental integrity and human health to grow more food? Ecological farming not only avoids such risks but also offers a range of positive effects both in the fields and far beyond.

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Positive Ripples of Eco-Farming

Since the ultimate purpose of a food system is healthy nutrition for all and a healthy Earth to sustain us, the most critical question is: What system of producing food best enables people to eat and care for the Earth? The choice is clear:  a system characterized by relationships that continually create and disperse power, dignity, and knowledge—for farmers and eaters alike. These are values furthered by agroecological farming and undermined in the productivist approach. Half the world’s hungry people are themselves small farmers (World Food Programme 2012). Whether relying on GMOs or other patented seeds, the productivist model, as suggested above, increasingly traps farmers in dependence on corporate input suppliers, as well as on banks and money lenders for credit to buy them (Kumar et  al. 2009, p.  7). By contrast, improved farming practices not dependent on purchased inputs— such as synthetic fertilizers and pesticides and seeds—typically enable farmers to reduce farming costs and indebtedness. So incomes go up even if yields do not change. Thousands of farmers, for example, in Andhra Pradesh, India, upon rejecting dependency on commercial inputs—which account for almost half of production costs—are seeing their net incomes rise and health improve (in part due to less pesticide exposure; Centre for Sustainable Agriculture 2008; Kumar et al. 2009). Turning away from dependency on purchased inputs, ecological farmers also often develop collaborative working relationships with neighbors as they share learning on, for example, natural pest controls. Those relationships build confidence in further experimentation to improve farming practices and sometimes engender collaboration beyond the fields. One such example of this collaboration can be found in the creation of marketing cooperatives, organizations that keep more of the return from farming in the hands of farmers (Marten 2007). Relying more on knowledge-intensive practices than on money-dependent purchases also strengthens the role of women. Many of the world’s small farmers are women, and they are denied access to credit in many parts of the world. But agroecology doesn’t rely on credit to buy inputs, so in this system female farmers are no longer handicapped (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development and United Nations Environment Programme 2007, p. 15). Agroecological practices also help meet the challenge of climate change:  Compared to farms using chemical inputs, agroecological farms emit about half to as little as a third the amount of GHG emissions (FAO 2005). Ecological practices include minimal soil disturbance and the use of

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cover crops, techniques that prevent the release of CO2 while enhancing the absorption and storage of carbon from the atmosphere. Cover crops, an important practice among ecological farmers, can reduce [climate-harming] nitrogen fertilizer pollution by up to 70% (Tonitto et al. 2006). One practice, agroforestry—growing trees and crops in the same area— holds particular promise. If proven agroforestry practices were used on the over 2 billion acres worldwide for which they’re suitable, in 30 years agroforestry could have a striking impact. It could account for a large share of agriculture’s overall potential contribution to righting the earth’s carbon balance (Neufeldt et al. 2009, p. 3).

Role of Government

In contrast to the productivist view that typically sees government regulation as an obstacle to progress, the relational frame views government as an essential setter of rules to maintain relationships that are fair, open, and protective of life. Where monopoly arises, as in the GM seed market, abuses of power involving harm to humans and the environment are more likely. Government, however, can set and enforce standards that keep a market competitive. In the relational view, government can serve this constructive function through fostering genuine, open participation by citizens in pubic decision making, as well as fair elections to public office in which all voices are heard, not just those of wealthy citizens and corporations.

Efficiency and Viability of an Ecological Approach

The relational view counters the productivist claim to efficiency, and it does so by arguing that what matters to human well-being is not just yield per acre but nutritional output per acre. By the latter measure, a monoculture of corn, soy, or wheat on the productivist farm pales in comparison to an ecological farm (Shiva and Singh 2011). In 2012 in Andhra Pradesh, I visited farms of just a few acres, each growing more than 20 crops—including millets, pulses, and oilseeds, as well as a “green manure” crop (in this case, a border crop providing nitrogen)—that provided all the nutrients needed by the farm family as well as excess to sell. Moreover, despite the widely held assumption that larger operations are more efficient, a 1999 study by Dr. Peter Rosset (a rural development specialist) shows the opposite:  “In all cases relatively smaller farm sizes are

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much more productive per unit area—2 to 10 time more productive—than are larger ones,” he writes (Rosset 1999, p. 7). Whereas the productivist frame sees as a sign of inefficiency the increased need for labor in ecological farming, the relational frame views more jobs as a plus in a world where billions are under- or unemployed. Moreover, the productivist model’s capacity to typically keep food prices lower than those for food produced via ecological farming is not a sign that ecological methods are inefficient. In part, the lower prices of the productivist model result from the almost $90 billion in annual public subsidies that are used to prop up this approach in the United States and European Union.12 For all these reasons, significant international bodies are calling for a shift of public support to ecological farming methods. A striking example is the 2009 International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development—prepared over four years by 400 experts and now supported by 59 governments. It calls for a redirection of resources toward agricultural development along sustainable, agroecological lines (International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development 2008). Small-scale farmers worldwide are also leading the way. Worldwide, 200  million small farmers striving for what they call “food sovereignty”—freedom from dependence on corporate seed and chemical monopolies—are linked through Via Campesina (an international peasant advocacy organization). Founded in 1993, the movement now involves 150 local and national organizations in 70 countries. More recently, the European Commission’s Standing Committee on Agricultural Research recommended refocusing public support on “farming systems that take account of the interactions between productivity, environmental, economic and social sustainability goals and how such systems can be made more robust and resilient in the long run” (Freibauer et al. 2011, p. 8).

THE CORE CONTRAST, THE CRITICAL CHOICE

In the productivist frame, humanity is hitting the resource limits of a finite planet, thus creating a food and environmental crisis. According to this view, the greatest danger is that unfounded fears will cause us to fail to employ the latest science and technology to meet our needs and manage climate change successfully. Greater production, using new technologies, including bioengineering, is key to the solution. If there is enough food,

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the market will keep food prices low, and remaining problems of access to food will be dealt with separately by government and private services. New, genetically engineered seeds will reduce the environmental problems associated with agriculture. In the relational frame, the greatest danger is a thought system—blind to power relationships—that ends up creating scarcity from plenty and leaves most of humanity feeling powerless. Because hunger amid plenty is a symptom of extreme relational inequities, solutions require the opposite:  the empowerment of citizens through their active engagement in building more fair and democratic decision-making processes—all the way from the field to the international bodies that shape, for example, rules of trade and intellectual property rights to seeds (McMichael 2008). Solutions also entail the spread of ecological farming practices that build synergistic relationships among humans as well as with the soil, plants, animals, microbes, and more. In this evolution, more life-sustaining social and ecological relationships reinforce one another. Here, farmers, as well as consumers, gain greater self-determination, help spread ecological practices, and contribute to building more citizen-accountable polities. On this journey, humanity can align its food production with nature’s regenerative powers—enriching soil, conserving water, and meeting the food needs of all while contributing to climate solutions. NOTES 1. The FAO reports that during the half-century from 1961 to 2010, average yields of the four crops providing most of the world’s calories—rice, wheat, corn, and soy—increased roughly two and one-half fold. It seems implausible that during the previous half-century advances were even greater and enough to achieve a ten-fold increase over 100 years. Maize:  In 1961, the world average yield was 19,423 hectogram/hectare (hg/ ha), and in 2010 it was 51,946 hg/ha. This is an increase of 167.45%, or 2.67-fold. (“Production. Crops: World + (Total): Maize: Yield,” FAO; http://faostat.fao.org/ site/567/DesktopDefault.aspx?PageID=567#ancor). Soybeans:  In 1961, the world average yield was 11,286 hg/ha, and in 2010 it was 25,839 hg/ha. This is an increase of 128.95%, or 2.29-fold (“Production. Crops:  World + (Total):  Soybeans:  Yield,” FAO; http://faostat.fao.org/site/567/ DesktopDefault.aspx?PageID=567#ancor). The following are the global comparisons for wheat and rice between 1961 and 2010, using what I  believe is the global average yield:  World + (Total) on FAOSTAT. For wheat: 1961 = 10,880 hg/ha | 2010 = 30,092 hg/ha. This is a 176.35% increase. For rice:  1961  =  18,693 hg/ha | 2010  =  43,680 hg/ha. This is a 133.67% increase. 2. Labor inputs average about 15% higher (Pimentel et al. 2005, p. 580). 3. Dr.  Fedoroff did not respond to my request for a source for this statement. I  located an article with this assertion coauthored by persons employed by the

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Monsanto Company, which sells almost all GM corn seeds, and the consulting firm Jellinek, Schwartz and Connolly, whose clients have included Monsanto. (See Bertz et al. 2000.) 4. “Agricultural Development:  Strategy Overview,” Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, p.  10 (http://www.gatesfoundation.org/agriculturaldevelopment/ Documents/agricultural-development-strategy-overview.pdf); “What We Do:  Agricultural Development” (http://www.gatesfoundation.org/What-We-Do/ Global-Development/Agricultural-Development). 5. FAOSTAT Food Production, Net Per Capita, Index 100  =  2004–2006. In the 1960s, the index number was 75 to 77; in 2010 it was 105 (http://faostat.fao.org/ site/612/). 6. For 2009, the most recent year available, the FAO estimates 2,831 calories per capita per day. See FAOSTAT, Food Balance Sheets (http://faostat.fao.org/ site/368/). 7. See Seufert et al. 2012 (“Our analysis of available data shows that, overall, organic yields are typically lower than conventional yields”). For an overview reporting that chemical and organic farming result in similar yields, see Pimentel et  al. (2005). 8. Quote from Pretty (2006). 9. Badgley et al (2007, p. 92). This study shows 140 million Mg of nitrate could be fixed by green manures each year; whereas the global use of synthetic nitrate fertilizers in 2001 was 82 million Mg. 10. Center for Bio-Integrity, “Key FDA Documents Revealing (1)  Hazards of Genetically Engineered Foods and (2)  Flaws with How the Agency Made its Policy.” (http://biointegrity.org/list.htm), and Smith (2003, ­chapter 5). 11. Food and Agriculture Organization, “Conservation Agriculture: Frequently Asked Questions” (http://www.fao.org/ag/ca/doc/Y3783e.pdf). 12. Environmental Working Group, EWG Farm Subsidies (http://farm.ewg.org/ region.php?fips=00000). In 2010, the European Union put 56.8 billion euros into agricultural subsidies (General Budget:  Title 05—Agricultural and Rural Development; http://eur-lex.europa.eu/budget/data/D2010_VOL4/EN/nmctitleN123A5/index.html).

REFERENCES Altieri, M.A. 2012. “The Scaling Up of Agroecology:  Spreading the Hope for Food Sovereignty and Resiliency. A Contribution to Discussion at Rio+20 on Issues at the Interface of Hunger, Agriculture, Environment and Social Justice.” Berkeley, CA:  American Scientific Society of Agroecology. www.agroeco.org/ socla Ávila Vazquez, M., and C. Nota, eds. 2010. Report from the First National Meeting of Physicians in the Crop-Sprayed Towns. Cordoba, Spain: Faculty of Medical Sciences, National University of Cordoba. Badgley, C., J. Moghtaker, E. Quintero, E. Zakem, M.J. Chappell, K. Aviles-Vazques, et  al. 2007. “Organic Agriculture and the Global Food Supply.” Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems 22: 86–108. Bardocz, S., A. Clark, S. Ewen, M. Hansen, J. Heinemann, J. Latham, et  al. 2012. “Seralini and Science:  an Open Letter.” Independent Science News, October 2.  http://independentsciencenews.org/health/seralini-and-science-nk603-rat-s tudy-roundup/print/

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Benbrook, C. 2009. “Impacts of Genetically Engineered Crops on Pesticide Use:  The First Thirteen Years.” Washington, DC: The Organic Center. http://www.organiccenter.org/reportfiles/13Years20091126_FullReport.pdf Benbrook, C.M. 2012. “Impacts of Genetically Engineered Crops on Pesticide Use in the U.S.—The First Sixteen Years.” Environmental Sciences Europe 24: 24. Bertz, F.S., B.G. Hammond, and R.I. Fuchs. 2000. Safety and Advantages of Bacillus Thuringiensis-Protected Plants to Control Insect Pests. Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology 32: 156–173. Brown, L.R. 2011. “The New Geopolitics of Food.” Foreign Policy, April 25. http:// www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/04/25/the_new_geopolitics_of_food? page=0,0 Carman, J.A., H.R. Vlieger, L.J. Ver Steeg, V.E. Sneller, G.W. Robinson, C.A. Clinch-Jones, et al. 2013. "A Long-Term Toxicology Study On Pigs Fed a Combined Genetically Modified (GM) Soy and GM Maize Diet." Journal of Organic Systems 8: 51. Carpenter, J.E. 2010. “Peer-Reviewed Surveys Indicate Positive Impact of Commercialized GM Crops.” Nature Biotechnology 28: 319–321. Center for Food Safety. 2005. “Monsanto vs. Farmers.” Washington, DC:  Author. http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/campaign/genetically-engineered-food/ crops/other-resources/monsanto-vs-u-s-farmers-report/ Centre for Sustainable Agriculture. 2008. “In the Hands of the Community: Inspiring Stories from Community Managed Sustainable Agriculture CMSA Programme.” Andhra Pradesh, India:  Author. http://www.scribd.com/doc/21383196/ In-the-Hands-of-the-Community Conway, G. 1997. The Doubly Green Revolution: Food for All in the Twenty-First Century. New York: Penguin. De Schutter, O. 2012. “Obesogenic’ Food Systems Must Be Reformed:  Five Ways to Tackle Disastrous Diets.” Barcelona:  GRAIN, March 12. h t t p : / / w w w. g ra i n . o r g / b u l l e t i n _ b o a rd / e n t r i e s / 4 4 8 0 - o b e s o g e n i c- f ood-systems-must-be-reformed Diaz, R.J., and R. Rosenberg. 2008. “Spreading Dead Zones and Consequences for Marine Ecosystems.” Science 321: 926–929. European Network of Scientists for Social and Environmental Responsibility, “297 Scientists and Experts Agree GMOs Not Proven Safe,” December 10, 2013, http://www.ensser.org/media/0713/ Emsley, J. 2001. “Going One Better Than Nature? Review of Enriching the Earth: Fritz Haber, Carl Bosch, and the Transformation of World Food by Vaclav Smil.” Nature 410: 633–634. Engleman, R. 2011. “An End to Population Growth: Why Family Planning Is Key to a Sustainable Future.” Solutions 2(3). http://www.thesolutionsjournal.com/ node/919 Eriksson, M., L. Hardell, M. Carlberg, and M. Akerman. 2008. “Pesticide Exposure as Risk Factor for Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma Including Histopatholocial Subgroup Analysis.” International Journal of Cancer 123: 1657–1663. Fearnside, P.M. 2005. “Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazonia: History, Rates, and Consequences.” Conservation Biology 19: 680–688. Fedoroff, N.V. 2011. “Engineering Food for All.” The New York Times, August 18. Fischer, R.A., and G.O. Edmeades. 2010. “Breeding and Cereal Yield Progress.” Crop Science 50: 85. Food and Agriculture Organization. 2005. “Organic Agriculture and Climate Change.” Rome: Author. http://www.fao.org/docrep/005/y4137e/y4137e02b.htm

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Food and Agriculture Organization. 2011. “Global Food Losses and Food Waste.” Rome: Author. http://www.fao.org/docrep/014/mb060e/mb060e00.pdf Food and Agriculture Organization. 2012. “FAQ: Why Is Organic Food More Expensive than Conventional Food?” Rome: Author. http://www.fao.org/organicag/oa-faq/ oa-faq5/en/ Food and Agriculture Organization. 2013. “Hunger.” Rome: Author. http://www.fao. org/hunger/en/ Food and Agriculture Organization, Economic and Social Development Department. 2004. Rome:  Author. “What Is Happening to Agrobiodiversity?” ftp://ftp.fao. org/docrep/fao/007/y5609e/y5609e00.pdf “Food and Climate Change:  The Forgotten Link.” 2011. Barcelona:  GRAIN, September 28. http://www.grain.org/article/entries/4357-food-and-climat e-change-the-forgotten-link Foresight. 2011. The Future of Food and Farming Final Project Report. London: Government Office for Science. Forster, P., V. Ramaswamy, P. Artaxo, T. Berntsen, R. Betts, D.W. Fahey, et  al. 2007. “Changes in Atmospheric Constituents and in Radioactive Forcing.” In Climate Change 2007:  The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I  to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, edited by S. Solomon, D. Qin, M. Manning, Z. Chen, M. Marquis, K.B. Averyt, M. Tignor, et al. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Freese, W., and D. Schubert. 2004. “Safety Testing and Regulation of Genetically Engineered Foods.” Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering Reviews 21: 299–324. Freibauer, A., E. Mathijs, G. Brunori, Z. Damianova, E. Faroult, J. Girona, et al. 2011. Sustainable Food Consumption and Production in a Resource-Constrained World. Brussels:  European Commission. http://ec.europa.eu/research/agriculture/scar/pdf/scar_feg_ultimate_version.pdf Fromm, E. 1973. The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Gastavsson, J., C. Cederberg, U. Sonesson, R.  van Otterdijk, and A. Meybeck. 2011. Global Food Losses and Food Waste. Rome:  Food and Agriculture Organization. Green, J.M., and M.D.K. Owen. 2011. “Herbicide-Resistant Crops:  Utilities and Limitations for Herbicide-Resistant Weed Management.” Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry 59: 5819–5829. Gui, Y., X. Fan, H. Wang, G. Wang, and S. Chen. 2012. “Glyphosate Induced Cell Death Through Apoptotic and Autophagic Mechanisms.” Neurotoxicology and Teratology 34: 344–349. Gurian-Sherman, D. 2009. “Failure to Yield: Evaluating the Performance of Genetically Engineered Crops.” Cambridge, MA: Union of Concerned Scientists. http://www. ucsusa.org/assets/documents/food_and_agriculture/failure-to-yield.pdf Harrison, J. 2004. “Study: Nation Wastes Nearly Half Its Food.” UA News, November 18. Hazel, P.B.R. 2009. “The Asian Green Revolution.” Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. http://www.ifpri.org/sites/default/files/publications/ ifpridp00911.pdf International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development. 2008. Agriculture at a Crossroads:  Global Report. Washington, DC: Island Press.

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Jacob, S. 2011. “Paving the Way for a Greener Village.” Washington, DC: World Bank. http://blogs.worldbank.org/climatechange/paving-way-greener-village Jessen, H. 2011. “Ethanol: One Market for a Growing Corn Supply.” Ethanol Producer Magazine, September 12, para 3. Jeyaratnam, J. 1990. “Acute Pesticide Poisoning:  A  Major Global Health Problem.” World Health Statistics Quarterly 43: 139–144. Jones, T.W. 2006. “Using Contemporary Archaeology and Applied Anthropology to Understand Food Loss in the American Food System.” Tucson:  Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology, University of Arizona. http://www.ce.cmu. edu/~gdrg/readings/2006/12/19/Jones_UsingContemporaryArchaeology AndAppliedAnthropologyToUnderstandFoodLossInAmericanFoodSystem.pdf Kochanek, K.D., J. Xu, S.L. Murphy, A.M. Miniño, and H.C. Kung. 2011. “Deaths:  Preliminary Data for 2009.” National Vital Statistics Report 59: 1–51. Kumar, T.V., D.V. Raidu, J. Killi, M. Pillai, P. Shah, V. Kalavadonda, et al. 2009. Ecologically Sound, Economically Viable: Community Managed Sustainable Agriculture in Andhra Pradesh, India. Washington, DC: World Bank. Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium. 2010. “2010 Forecast of the Summer Hypoxic Zone Size, Northern Gulf of Mexico.” Chauvin, LA: Author. http://www. lumcon.edu/UserFiles/File/LUMCOn%20LSU%202010%20hypoxia%20forecast%20NNR.pdf Marten, G. 2007. “Escaping the Pesticide Trap:  Non-Pesticide Management for Agricultural Pests (Andhra Pradesh, India).” EcoTipping Points Project, June. http://www.ecotippingpoints.org/our-stories/indepth/india-pestmanagement-nonpesticide-neem.html McMichael, P. 2008. Development and Social Change:  A  Global Perspective. 4th ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press. Nandula, V.K., K. Reddy, S. Duke, and D. Poston. 2005. “Glyphosate-Resistant Weeds:  Current Status and Future Outlook.” Outlooks on Pest Management 16: 183–187. Neufeldt, H., A. Wilkes, R.J. Zomer, J. Xu, E. Nang’ole, C. Munster, et  al. 2009. “Trees on Farms:  Tackling the Triple Challenges of Mitigation, Adaptation and Food Security.” World Agroforestry. Centre Policy Brief 07. Nairobi:  World Agroforestry Centre. http://worldagroforestry.org/downloads/publications/ PDFs/mitigation-adaptation-food-security.pdf Ozor, N., M.C. Madukwe, P.C. Onokala, A. Enete, C.J. Garforth, E. Eboh, et al. 2010. “A Framework for Agricultural Adaptation to Climate Change in Southern Nigeria.” A  Development Partnerships in Higher Education (DelPHE) 326 Project Executive Summary Supported by DFID and Implemented by the British Council. Engugu: African Institute for Applied Economics. Pachauri, R.K., and A. Reisinger, eds. 2007. Climate Change 2007 Synthesis Report: Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Geneva:  Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Pimentel, D., P. Hepperly, J. Hanson, D. Douds, and R. Seidel. 2005. “Environmental, Energetic, and Economic Comparisons of Organic and Conventional Farming Systems.” BioScience 55: 573–582. Pretty, J. 2006. “Agroecological Approaches to Agricultural Development: Version 1.” Santiago: Rimisp-Latin American Center for Rural Development. http://sitere-

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sources.worldbank.org/INTWDR2008/Resources/2795087-1191427986785/ PrettyJ_AgroecologicalApproachesToAgriDevt[1].pdf Pretty, J., and R. Hine. 2001. Reducing Food Poverty with Sustainable Agriculture. Colchester, UK: Center for Environment and Society, University of Essex. Qayum, A., and K. Sakkhari. 2005. “Bt Cotton in Andhra Pradesh:  A  Three Year Assessment.” Andhra Pradesh, India: Deccan Development Society. http://www. ddsindia.com/www/PDF/BT_Cotton_-_A_three_year_report.pdf Rosset, P.M. 1999. “The Multiple Functions and Benefits of Small Farm Agriculture.” Food First Policy Brief 4.  Oakland, CA:  Institute for Food and Development Policy. Sakkhari, K., and M.A. Quyam. 2009. “What Farmers Reaped Growing Bt Cotton— Profits or Problems??” Andhra Pradesh, India:  Deccan Development Society. http://www.ddsindia.com/www/PDF/Bt%20Cotton%20Five%20Years%20 Study%20Report.pdf Schafer, K.S., M. Reeves, S. Spitzer, and S. Kegley. 2004. “Chemical Trespass: Pesticides in Our Bodies and Corporate Accountability.” Oakland, CA:  Pesticide Action Network North America. http://www.panna.org/legacy/panups/ panup_20040511.dv.html Séralini, G.E., R. Mesnage, E. Clair, S. Gress, J.S. de Vendômois, and D. Cellier. 2011. “Genetically Modified Crops Safety Assessments:  Present Limits and Possible Improvements.” Environmental Sciences Europe 23: 10. Seufert, V., N. Ramankutty, and J.A. Foley. 2012. “Comparing the Yields of Organic and Conventional Agriculture.” Nature 485: 229–232. Shiva, V., and V. Singh. 2011. “Health Per Acre:  Organic Solutions to Hunger and Malnutrition.” Delhi:  Navdanya. http://www.navdanya.org/attachments/ Health%20Per%20Acre.pdf Smil, V. 2011. “Nitrogen Cycle and World Food Production.” World Agriculture 2: 9–13. Smith, J.M. 2003. Seeds of Deception. Fairfield, IA: Yes Books. Takle, E., and D. Hofstrand. 2008. “Global Warming—Agriculture’s Impact on Greenhouse Gas Emissions.” Ames:  Iowa State University. http://www.extension.iastate.edu/agdm/articles/others/TakApr08.html The Editors. 2009. “Do Seed Companies Control GM Crop Research?” Scientific American, August 13. Tiwana, N.S., N. Jerath, S.S. Ladhar, G. Singh, R. Paul, D.K. Dua, et al. 2007. “State of Environment—Punjab 2007.” Punjab, India: Punjab State Council for Science & Technology. http://envfor.nic.in/soer/state/SoE%20report%20of%20Punjab. pdf Tonitto, C., M.B. David, and L.E. Drinkwater. 2006. Replacing Bare Fallows with Cover Crops in Fertilizer-intensive Cropping Systems:  A  Meta-analysis of Crop Yield and N Dynamics. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 112:58–72. Tulchinsky, T.H., and E. Yaravikova. 2009. The New Public Health. Burlington: Elsevier Academic Press. United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, and United Nations Environment Programme. 2007. “Organic Agriculture and Food Security in Africa.” Geneva: Author. http://unctad.org/en/docs/ditcted200715_en.pdf Warwick, S.I., H.J. Beckie, and E. Small. 1999. “Transgenic Crops: New Weed Problems for Canada?” Phytoprotection 80: 71–84. Wilson, A.K., J.R. Latham, and R.A. Steinbrecher. 2006. “Transformation-Induced Mutations in Transgenic Plants:  Analysis and Biosafety Implications.” Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering Reviews 23: 209–234.

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World Food Programme. 2012. “Hunger: Who Are the Hungry?” Rome: Author. http:// www.wfp.org/hunger/who-are World Watch Institute. 2006. "Can Organic Farming Feed Us All?" World Watch Magazine, 19. http://www.worldwatch.org/node/4060 Wu, M., M. Quirindongo, J. Sass, and A. Wetzler. 2010. “Still Poisoning the Well: Atrazine Continues to Contaminate Surface Water and Drinking Water in the United States.” Washington, DC: Natural Resources Defense Council http:// www.nrdc.org/health/atrazine/files/atrazine10.pdf

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CHAPTER 8

Global Obesity and Global Hunger KELLY MOORE AND JUDI TH WI T TNER

The tragic irony in some parts of the Global South is that people are starving while staring over fields of beans, plantations of coffee and tea, and stands of palms, all grown to meet the demands of the already well-fed consumers in the North. —Lawrence et al. 2008

C

hances are you’ve heard that, around the globe, people are getting fatter. In fact, you may have read about the “epidemic” of obesity that is causing costly health problems such as heart disease, type-2 diabetes, high blood pressure, cancer, and premature death. Most scientific evidence suggests that approximately 10% of the world’s population is obese (World Health Organization [WHO] WHO 2012b; 2012c, p. 36) and that most of these people live in the northern hemisphere in wealthier countries. The WHO and other groups call obesity a preventable epidemic, like SARS, AIDS, and the flu, caused by the failure of individuals to follow scientific and other rules for increasing exercise and reducing energy intake (calories) and the consumption of specific foods such as sugars and fats (Nestle 2002; Pollan 2008; United States Department of Health and Human Services 2012; WHO 2012c). At the same time that so much attention is given to obesity, hunger and food insecurity imperil almost a billion people globally. While we hear less about the problem of hunger in Western news media, chronic hunger affects approximately 13% of the world’s population, nearly as many people now as it did in the 1970s. Most of these people live in Africa and Southeast Asia (Food and Agriculture Organization [FAO] 2012a, pp. 8–9). Many observers believe that hunger

is caused by inadequate access to agricultural technologies (International Food Policy Research Institute 2012; Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation 2013; Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research 2013) or short-term problems such as war or drought (FAO 2012b). Global obesity and global hunger might be seen as independent problems, caused by the personal habits of individuals in the case of obesity or by short-term problems such as war or lack of technical knowledge in the case of hunger. In this chapter, we take a different approach by examining these two phenomena as two sides of the same coin. The causes of hunger and obesity are connected through scientific and technological applications and mediated by political and economic considerations. They are not separate problems of personal choice, chance, or a lack of scientific knowledge. We first review the evidence for a global obesity epidemic and some of the most common explanations for its prevalence. In the next section, we examine the problem of too little food, focusing first on its prevalence and the extent to which it is caused by wars, disasters, or the failure of countries to make use of the latest technologies to increase yields. In the third section, we take a closer look at how the problems of obesity and hunger are caused by a common set of factors: the rise and spread of industrialized and chemically based global food systems that unevenly distribute benefits and harms across the globe.

TOO MUCH: OBESITY AS A BIOMEDICAL PROBLEM

Being fat used to be a high status position associated with health, and it remains so in some cultures today (Bordo 1993; Massara 1997). It has also been associated with failure to discipline the appetite (Saguy 2013). In the second half of the 20th century, however, fatness came to be framed as a biomedical problem rather than as a desirable state or as a purely moral problem (Clarke et al. 2010; Boreo 2012). Based on studies of data from the early 1980s through the mid-1990s, British, Australian, French, and Canadian biomedical researchers predicted rapidly growing populations of very fat people who would die early deaths and new generations of very fat children who would be saddled with ill health at an early age (Cameron et  al. 2003; Rennie and Jebb 2005). Other researchers, in documenting the spread of obesity in places as diverse as Kuwait, the Philippines, and the South Pacific Islands, argued that a combination of changes in what people were eating (more oils and fats, and, as wealth increased, more meat and fish), changes in how much they ate, and lower rates of physical activity were the leading causes of global obesity (Burslem 2004). Fat children

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became a special concern, despite the fact that food insecurity leading to malnutrition, not obesity, is mainly to blame for 7.6  million under-five child deaths each year (WHO 2012b).

Evidence for the Increase in Obesity

The most common way to measure weight at the global level is by using body mass index (BMI), also known as the Quetelet index. BMI is calculated by dividing weight by the square of a person’s height and multiplying that number by a universal constant (if height and weight are measured in the metric units of centimeters and kilograms, that constant is 1). Although it underestimates fat levels in elderly people and may overestimate it in people who are extremely muscular, such as some kinds of athletes, it is still the most widely used measure of obesity at the global level. BMI scores are measured in a range: A BMI of 24.99 to 29.99 is considered “overweight,” above 30 “obese,” 24.99 to 18.5 “normal,” and under 18.49 “underweight” (WHO 2012a). At the country or global level, obesity is measured by aggregating individual BMI scores, to give an overarching score for each country that can be compared to other countries. It is important to note that in many studies and journalist accounts of the obesity “epidemic,” the percentage of people who are overweight are combined with the percentage who are obese, incorrectly inflating the numbers of people who are in the biomedical category obese. Scientific research shows that the obesity rate across the globe has increased since 1980. But rates of obesity are not growing evenly around the world and have leveled off in many countries (McMichael 2009; Patel 2012; Gard 2011; Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development 2012, p.  2). Of the 10 countries with the highest levels of obesity, 9 are among the world’s wealthiest (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development 2012). The highest levels of obesity are found in the Americas, particularly in North America. The regions with the lowest rates of obesity are Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa (WHO 2012c). To put this in sharper terms: North America has only 6 percent of the world’s population but 34% of the world’s biomass. In contrast, Asia has 61% of the world’s population but only 13% of the world’s biomass (Walpole et al. 2012).

Why Obesity Has Been a Biomedical Concern

The WHO and other national and international agencies and commentators express concern over obesity rates because obesity has been linked to heart

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disease and stroke; osteoarthritis; diabetes; and cancer of the breast, colon, prostate, endometrium, kidney, and gall bladder (WHO 2012b). However, recent studies show that being fatter than the “normal” category is less of a health risk that was previously thought: Mortality risk is lowest among populations of “overweight” people, as compared to those in the obese, normal, and underweight populations (Flegal et  al. 2013). Researchers have also questioned the direct effects of obesity on some illnesses, such as heart disease and diabetes, as well as the causal order between obesity and illness, which suggests that there are more complex pathways to illness than the existence of too much weight (Carthenon et  al. 2012; National Clearinghouse for Diabetes Information 2013; Lim et al. 2013). The health problems associated with obesity are often framed in terms of financial costs to nations, whereby fat people are exhorted to “lose weight for your country” (Guthman and DuPuis 2006; “Special Report:  Obesity” 2012; WHO 2012c; Rampell 2013). The costs of obesity, however, are not simply those of caring for those with illnesses. They include the economic, social, and environmental costs of the uneven distribution of the production and distribution of food-as-commodity that results in some countries having far more food than they need and others far less. TOO LITTLE What It Means to Have Too Little

Unlike obesity, today the problem of too little food is less likely to be measured in purely biomedical terms, such as extreme starvation, or kwashiorkor (protein deficiency), but rather in terms of how far away a person, group, or country is from a state of food security. Food security is a standard used by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP). To be food secure is to have all-time access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life (WFP 2012a). Sufficient food is measured by the capacity of a country or region to have adequate stores of food, the capacity to raise it, and the ability to acquire it through aid. Access is measured by the ability of people to regularly acquire adequate quantities of food. By nutritious, the WFP means that food must have a positive nutritional impact on people and that people also have the means to cook, store, and use adequate hygiene practices, in addition to having access to water. Few groups or experts debate the biological consequences for those who are chronically food insecure: It leads to lassitude (fatigue), cognitive processing problems, blindness that is the result of nutrient deficiencies, and susceptibility to illnesses, thus impairing people’s ability to

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work, go to school, and carry out other daily activities (WHO 2005; FAO 2012b; International Food Policy Research Institute 2012; WFP 2012). It is especially devastating to children.

The Distribution of Food Insecurity

Approximately 948 million people, or about 13% of the world’s population, are estimated to be food insecure. Although the global level of food insecurity has dropped since 1990, the rate of decline has leveled off since 2007– 2008. Sixty-five percent of the people who are food insecure around the globe live in just seven countries:  India, China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Ethiopia (FAO 2012b; International Food Policy Research Institute 2012, p. 8; WFP 2012b). None of the world’s poor countries are in Western Europe or North America, although all wealthy countries also include people who are food insecure. In the United States in 2011, for example, 17.2 million households, or 14.5% of the population, were food insecure, the highest number ever recorded in the United States (Coleman-Jensen 2011, p. v). Western Asia is the one region of the world where food insecurity is increasing, and progress at remedying food insecurity has slowed in Latin America and the Caribbean. Rates of food insecurity are highest in sub-Saharan Africa (26%; FAO 2012b; International Food Policy Research Institute 2012; WFP 2012b).

Too Little Food at the Global Level?

What causes food insecurity? Only 8% of world hunger is due to an acute event such as a war or a drought. The remaining 92% of food insecurity is chronic, meaning that over long periods of time, people are hungry and unable to live full lives. The amount of food in the world is not a cause of food insecurity, despite what Lappé (2013) calls “the scarcity scare,” the discourse that warns us that we are soon to reach the point in human history when we will be unable to feed ourselves. In contradiction to that widespread belief, global food production per capita today is higher than it was in the 1990s. The problem of hunger is related to the distribution of food, not to its declining production or to rising world population levels. A seemingly simple solution would be to increase food aid, or the distribution of food or of cash to purchase food in support of food assistance programs. Yet food aid can exacerbate the problem of food insecurity by flooding markets with imported food while depressing food prices in

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recipient countries even further. Depressed food prices might seem to be a good situation for the poor, but in countries where most of the poor are agricultural workers, the low food prices contribute to the problem of impoverishment because farmers get lower prices, which drives hunger. New food aid systems avoid this problem by providing countries and regions with money to buy the food that is available in their country at a price that does not exacerbate poverty (Clapp and Cohen 2009). Food aid, however, is hardly a solution to chronic food insecurity. Explaining food insecurity requires an analysis not only of why some countries have populations that consume far less food than they need but a joint examination of how the global food system simultaneously shapes food security and obesity.

EXPLAINING GLOBAL OBESITY AND GLOBAL HUNGER TOGETHER: THE EFFECTS OF GLOBAL FOOD AND POLITICAL SYSTEMS

The global food system is the set of relationships and materials for growing, processing, and distributing food. Food has long been bought and sold around the world, but under new global trade and lending rules, countries that specialize in producing and exporting just one or two crops to the highest bidder are rewarded. Poorer countries are the most vulnerable in this system, since they often have little surplus money or food when global prices for particular commodities decline, or when drought, pestilence, and other problems reduce production. Thus rather than encouraging within-country production and consumption of a wide variety of crops and animals, the new system encourages countries to treat food as a commodity for profit (Magdoff and Tokar 2010; Patel-Campillo 2010, Fromartz 2011). With just a few specialty crops grown, countries must import more food to feed people and pay whatever world prices are at that moment. To specialize in a particular export commodity, large tracts of land and enormous amounts of water are needed. One result of the need for land for export-commodity production is that, in some countries, people who used to have small landholdings are forced off their property, as large international companies and foreign investors consolidate land, remove trees, and draw heavily on local water sources (Kugelman and Levenstein 2009). Competition for water and land is now the norm in most parts of the world (United Nations Development Programme 2006). These changes are especially problematic in Africa, where more than 77% of the population is engaged in farming (FAO 2009b).

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Only a handful of companies control the global food supply (Lang and Heasman 2004; Lawrence and Burch 2007; McMichael 2009). These companies include fertilizer giants Potash, Yara, and Mosaic (a subsidiary of top grain trader Cargill). Other corporate grain trading giants are ADM and Bunge. The top global seed and pesticide companies include Bayer, Syugenta, Dupont, and Monsanto. The latter was recently in the news for its multimillion-dollar investment toward the successful defeat of a genetic modification organism labeling law in California. These corporations drive the sale of food to whoever can pay the most: the people in the wealthiest countries and the wealthiest people in poor countries. Wealthy countries are the countries in which the shareholders of the large global chemical, food, banking, and marketing firms are likely to be concentrated, benefitting (and sometimes losing) from food speculation. Holt-Giménez and Patel (2009) contend that the root cause of food insecurity is based on this monopoly control of food production: The root causes of the food crisis lie in a skewed global food system that has made Southern countries and poor people everywhere highly vulnerable to economic and environmental shock. This vulnerability springs from the risks, inequities and externalities inherent in food systems that are dominated by a globalized, highly centralized, industrial agrifoods complex. Built over the past half-century—largely with public funds for grain subsidies, foreign aid, and international agricultural research—the industrial agrifoods complex is made up of multinational grain traders, giant seed, chemical and fertilizer corporations, global processors and supermarket chains. These global companies dominate local markets and increasingly control the world’s food-producing resources: land, labor, water, inputs, genes, and investments. (p. 20)

Holt-Giménez and Patel’s arguments raise questions about the value of one of the major technological solutions proposed to end food security: the use of genetically modified seeds and animals to raise productivity and thereby alleviate the problem of food security. If overproduction and distribution and little access to money and land are the causes of food insecurity, it seems unlikely that genetic modification organism crops will solve the problem (nor have they). Moreover, despite the claims of corporate purveyors of transgenic seeds and crops (products that have been manufactured through the insertion of foreign genes), such as Monsanto, Cargill, Bayer, and other giants, bioengineering has not been shown to increase agricultural productivity nor enhance food security (Altieri and Rosset 1999; Altieri 2005; Azadi and Ho 2010).

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Part of the explanation for this is that biotechnology innovations are designed for profit rather than as responses to need. Herbicide resistant crops (such as Monsanto’s Roundup Ready seeds) and other crops that produce their own insecticide make farmers dependent, through patents and other legal devices, on biotechnology companies for seeds and chemicals. By bringing together the seed and chemical industries in seed-plus-weed management systems, companies have been able to raise fees to farmers higher than ever before—a practice that yields more profits for corporations but not for small-scale farmers. Beyond this, transgenic plants that produce their own insecticides and weed killers have, like all lethal chemical agents (also known as biocides), created resistant superweeds and superpests. These new seeds undermine crop diversity and create genetic uniformity, thus making crops vulnerable to pests and pathogens while removing ownership and knowledge from most small farmers (Altieri and Rosset 1999; Kinchy 2012). Genetically modified inputs are only one of the ways that science and technology shape the intensification of agricultural production for export. Intensification and specialization wreak havoc on the environment as well. Huge tracts of land for monocrops are needed, as are large amounts of water. In Africa, Asia, and other places around the world, billions of acres of land and the water on it are being snapped up by foreign investors, in what some critics are calling a new “land grab” that may make citizens of poor countries ever more vulnerable to food insecurity (Cotula et al. 2009; FAO 2009). Moreover, the spread of genetically modified plants and animals is already displacing the knowledge that small farmers used to have. The new experts are global chains of agriculture scientists, chemical companies, and seed distributors. Local knowledge and crops are either displaced, or, in some cases, local crops are reengineered, patented, and then used by companies or international food traders to grow food for export markets. The result: Those with more money and land are highly advantaged, and farmers experience what Otero (2008) calls “de-peasantization.” They move to ever-more crowded cities to find wage work so that they can buy food and other necessities, often from supermarkets that are owned by the same companies and partnerships that are part of the production of crops for export (Davis 2010). Those who remain behind are likely to become employees of companies that grow food for export. The link between the poorest groups in the global food system, who are most vulnerable to food insecurity, and the wealthiest, who are more likely to be fat, is mediated not only by commodity prices but also by global supermarket chains. These companies look to buy foods from international producers at the lowest possible cost and to sell “value-added” (i.e., highly

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profitable) processed foods with low nutrient value. These markets are concentrated in the North but are rapidly expanding in the South. Typically, supermarkets will heavily promote highly processed snack foods, meats, and dairy products. These are also the foods that are the most environmentally damaging, as the production, shipping, and packaging of these foods results in high energy use and waste (Øresund Food Network 2008). The chemical-, water-, and energy-intensive system of global food production has implications not only for hunger but for obesity too. Research has begun to show that chemicals and chemical modifications of food may also be playing a role in obesity around the world. Nutrition-poor diets (a form of starvation) can lead to people becoming overweight (Wells 2012). Many obese children and adults subsist on low-nutrition, high-fat, high-sugar diets that provide few vitamins and minerals. For example, researcher Carlos Grijalva-Esternod and his colleagues (2012) found a “double burden” of stunting (reduced growth rate) in children and obesity in their mothers in a refugee population in the western Sahara that is dependent on food assistance for survival. There is also growing evidence that the proliferation of chemicals in the environment (in pesticides, dyes, perfumes, cosmetics, medicines, food additives, plastic, fire retardants, and solvents) since the end of World War Two (a time period that coincided with rising obesity) may be an important cause of significant weight gain at the level of populations (Krimsky 2008; Guthman 2011, p. 108). Similar conclusions were drawn from a study that observed a nationally representative subsample of 2,838 US children and adolescents (ages 6 through 19 years). Participating children were randomly selected for measurement of urinary Bisphenal A (BPA) concentration (which had previously been assessed in the 2003–2008 National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys), whereupon researchers found that the chemical BPA, an “endocrine disrupter” used in cans and plastic containers, is “significantly associated with obesity” (Trasande et al. 2012). Unfortunately, the “biomedical” focus of most obesity research treats this condition as a problem of overconsumption. Clearly, obesity is a phenomenon that also needs to be understood within the framework of the global flows of chemicals that are present in the inputs, transport, processing, and consumption of food.

CONCLUSION

We have attempted to show the common origins of obesity and hunger in the capture of the food system by large-scale corporate players. They have created many of the problems we face today, problems that cannot

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be solved by more of the same (more chemicals, more genetically modified food, and, indeed, more food aid). Technological and biological fixes designed to intensify the amount and speed of food production and to make it possible for wealthier countries to have more, and more convenient, food will do no good unless land and resource redistribution make it possible for the poor to eat. As Patel (2012) explains: Merely having the food around doesn’t guarantee that the poor will eat. In fact, if the only way that the poor can get food is through the market. . . then at times when food is perceived to be scarce. . . the shape of the food system is almost certain to deliver not food, but hunger. Those who are in a position to control the distribution of grain will only do so if they’re able to command a sufficiently high price. The only way that famine can be overcome is to guarantee rights to hungry people that trump those of grain hoarders. (p. 140)

The problem of hunger, then, comes down to questions of money, land distribution, and democratic systems that allow the poor, as well as the wealthy, to participate in decisions affecting their lives. Finding ways to redistribute money in the global economy is thus one way to alleviate the key root cause of hunger—poverty—and will require more than technology: It will require political and economic systems that allow people to be self-sufficient and to grow food to eat rather than to sell for the highest possible profit. This means that food should not be a commodity—a thing to be bought and sold. It should instead be a human right, guaranteed to every human on the planet, outside the market. This may mean that the citizens of wealthier countries may pay more for their food or may have less access to different kinds of food from around the globe all year long, but this outcome may also address the twin problem of the global food system: obesity in wealthy countries, hunger among the poor. REFERENCES Altieri, M.A. 2005. “The Myth of Coexistence:  Why Transgenic Crops Are Not Compatible with Agroecologically Based Systems of Production.” Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society 25: 361–371. Altieri, M.A., and P. Rosset. 1999. “Ten Reasons Why Biotechnology Will Not Ensure Food Security, Protect the Environment and Reduce Poverty in the Developing World.” AgBioForum 2: 155–162. Azadi, H., and P. Ho. 2010. “Genetically Modified and Organic Crops in Developing Countries:  A  Review of Options for Food Security.” Biotechnology Advances 28: 160–168. Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. 2013. “Agricultural Development:  Strategy Overview.” Seattle, WA:  Author. http://www.gatesfoundation.org/agriculturaldevelopment/Documents/agricultural-development-strategy-overview.pdf [ 120 ] 

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Bordo, S. 1993. Unbearable Weight:  Feminism, Western Culture and the Body. Berkeley: University of California Press. Boreo, N. 2012. Killer Fat:  Media, Medicine, and Morals in the American “Obesity Epidemic.” New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Burslem, C. 2004. “The Changing Face of Malnutrition.” Paper presented at the International Food Policy Research Institute and its 2020 Vision Initiative, Washington, DC, October 1. Cameron, A.J., P.Z. Zimmet, D.W. Dunstan, M. Dalton, J.E. Shaw, T.A. Welborn, et al. 2003. “Overweight and Obesity in Australia: The 1999–2000 Australian Diabetes, Obesity and Lifestyle Study.” The Medical Journal of Australia 178: 427–432. Carthenon, M.R., P.J.D. De Chavez, M.L. Biggs, C.E. Lewis, J.S. Pankow, A.G. Bertoni, et al. 2012. “Association of Weight Status with Mortality in Adults with Incident Diabetes.” Journal of the American Medical Association 308: 581–590. Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research. “Who We Are.” Washington, DC: Author. http://www.cgiar.org/who-we-are/ Clapp, J., and M.J. Cohen. 2009. “The Food Crisis and Global Governance.” In The Global Food Crisis: Governance Challenges and Opportunities, edited by J. Clapp and M.J. Cohen, 1–12. Waterloo, ON: Wilifred Laurier University Press. Clarke, A.E., L. Mamo, J.R. Fosket, J.R. Fishman, and J.K. Shim, eds. 2010. Biomedicali zation: Technoscience, Health, and Illness in the U.S. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Coleman-Jensen, A., M. Nord, M. Andrews, and S. Carlson. 2011. “Household Food Security in the United States in 2010.” Washington, DC:  U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service. http://www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/ err125/ Cotula, L., S. Vermeulen, R. Leonard, and J. Keeley. 2009. Land Grab or Development Opportunity? Agricultural Investment and International Land Deals in Africa. London: International Institute for Environment and Development. Davis, M. 2010. Planet of Slums. London: Verso. Flegal, K., B.K. Kit, H. Orpana, and B.I. Graubard. 2013. “Association of All-Cause Mortality with Overweight and Obesity Using Standard Body Mass Index Categories:  A  Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.” Journal of the American Medical Association 309: 71–82. Food and Agriculture Organization. 2009a. “From Land Grab to Win-Win:  Seizing the Opportunities for International Investment in Agriculture.” Rome: Author. ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/011/ak357e/ak357e00.pdf Food and Agriculture Organization. 2009b. How to Feed the World 2050:  The Special Challenge for SubSaharan Africa. Rome: Author. Food and Agriculture Organization. 2012a. “High Levels of Food Insecurity in South Sudan.” Rome: Author. http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/121612/icode/ Food and Agriculture Organization. 2012b. The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2012: Economic Growth Is Necessary But Not Sufficient to Accelerate Reduction of Hunger and Malnutrition. Rome: FAO. Fromartz, S. 2011. “The Production Conundrum.” The Nation, October 3. Gard, M. 2011. The End of the Obesity Epidemic. London: Routledge. Grijalva-Eternod, C.S., J.C.K. Wells, M. Cortina-Borja, N. Salse-Ubach, M.C. Tondeur, C. Dolan, et  al. 2012. “The Double Burden of Obesity and Malnutrition in a Protracted Emergency Setting:  A  Cross-Sectional Study of Western Sahara Refugees.” PLoS Med 9: e1001320. Guthman, J. 2011. Weighing In:  Obesity, Food Justice, and the Limits of Capitalism. Berkeley: University of California Press. Global Obesi ty and Global Hunger 

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Guthman J., and M. DuPuis. 2006. “Embodying Neoliberalism: Economy, Culture, and the Politics of Fat.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 24(3): 427–448. Heintzman, A., and E. Solomon, eds. 2004. Feeding the Future, From Fat to Famine: How to Solve the World’s Food Crisis. Cambridge, MA: Small Planet Institute. Holt-Giménez, E., and R. Patel (with A. Shattuck). 2009. Food Rebellions: Crisis and the Hunger for Justice. New York: Food First. International Food Policy Research Institute. 2012. Strategies and Priorities for African Agriculture: Economywide Perspectives from Country Studies. Washington, DC: Author. Kinchy, A.J. 2012. Seeds, Science, and Struggle: The Global Politics of Transgenic Crops. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Krimsky, S. 2008. “Plastics in Our Diet.” Scientific American 18: 30–31. Kugelman, M., and S. Levenstein, eds. 2009. Land Grab? The Race for the World’s Farmland. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Lang, T., and M. Heasman. 2004. Food Wars: The Global Battle for Mouths, Minds, and Markets. London: Earthscan. Lappé, F.M. 2013. “Beyond the Scarcity Scare: Reframing the Discourse of Hunger with an Eco-Mind.” The Journal of Peasant Studies 40: 219–238. Lawrence, G., and D. Burch. 2007. “Understanding Supermarkets and Agri-Food Supply Chains.” In Supermarkets and Agri-Food Supply Chains: Transformations in the Production and Consumption of Foods, edited by G. Lawrence and D. Burch, 1–28. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar. Lim, S.S., T. Vos, A.D. Flaxman, G. Danaei, K. Shibuya, H. Adair-Rohani, et  al. 2013. “A Comparative Risk Assessment of Burden of Disease and Injury Attributable to 67 Risk Factors and Risk Factor Clusters in 21 Regions, 1990– 2010: A Systematic Analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010.” The Lancet 380: 2224–2260. Magdoff, F., and B. Tokar, eds. 2010. Agriculture and Food in Crisis: Conflict, Resistance, and Renewal. New York: Monthly Review Press. Massara, E. 1997. “Que Gordita.” In Food and Culture: A Reader, edited by C. Counihan and P.V. Esterik, 251–255. New York: Routledge. McMichael, P. 2009. “A Food Regime Analysis of the World Food Crisis.” Agriculture and Human Values 4: 281–295. McMichael, A.  J., J. W.  Powles, C. D.  Butler, and R. Uauy. 2007. “Food, Livestock Production, Energy, Climate Change, and Health.” Lancet 370 (9594): 1253–1263. National Clearinghouse for Diabetes Information. 2013. “Causes of Diabetes.” Bethesda, MD: Author. http://diabetes.niddk.nih.gov/dm/pubs/causes/ Nestle, M. 2002. Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health. Berkeley: University of California Press. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. 2012. Obesity Update 2012. Paris: Author. Øresund Food Network. 2008. Climate Change and the Food Industry Climate Labeling for Food Products: Potential and Limitations. Copenhagen: Author. Otero, G., ed. 2008. Food for the Few: Neoliberal Globalism and Agricultural Biotechnology in Latin America. Austin: University of Texas Press. Patel, R. 2012. Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System. 2nd ed. Brooklyn, NY: Melville House. Patel-Campillo, A. 2010. Agro-Export Specialization and Food Security in a Sub-National Context: The Case of Colombian Cut Flowers. Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society 3: 279–294.

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Pollan, M. 2008. In Defense of Food. New York: Penguin. Raj, P. 2008. “The Hungry of the Earth.” Radical Philosophy 151 (September/ October): 2–7. Rampell, C. 2013. “Lose Weight for Your Country.” The New York Times, January 13. Rennie, K., and S.A. Jebb. 2005. “Prevalence of Obesity in Great Britain.” Obesity Reviews 6: 11–13. Saguy, A. 2013. What’s Wrong with Fat? Berkeley: University of California Press. Sen, A.1981. Poverty and Famines:  An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation. New York: Oxford University Press. “Special Report: Obesity.” 2012. The Economist, December 15. Trasande, L., T.M. Attina, and J. Blustein. 2012. “Association Between Urinary Bisphenol A Concentration and Obesity Prevalence in Children and Adolescents.” Journal of the American Medical Association 308: 1113–1121. United Nations Development Programme. 2006. “Water Competition in Agriculture. Beyond Scarcity: Power, Poverty and the Global Water Crisis.” Geneva: Author. http://hdr.undp.org/en/media/HDR06-complete.pdf U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Surgeon General. 2012. “The Surgeon General’s Vision for a Health and Fit Nation Fact Sheet.” Washington, DC:  Author. http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/initiatives/healthyfit-nation/obesityvision_factsheet.html Walpole, S.C., D. Prieto-Merino, P. Edwards, J. Cleland, G. Stevens, and I. Roberts. 2012. “The Weight of Nations: An Estimation of Adult Human Biomass.” BMC Public Health 12: 439. Wells, J.C.K. 2012. “Obesity as Malnutrition:  The Role of Capitalism in the Obesity Global Epidemic.” American Journal of Human Biology 24: 261–276. World Food Programme. 2012a. “Food Insecurity.” Geneva: Author. https://www.wfp. org/node/3592 World Food Programme. 2012b. “Hunger: Causes.” Geneva: Author. http://www.wfp. org/hunger/causes World Health Organization. 2005. “Malnutrition:  Quantifying the Health Impact at National and Local Levels.” Geneva: Author. http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2005/9241591870.pdf World Health Organization. 2012a. “BMI Classification.” Geneva: Author. http://apps. who.int/bmi/index.jsp?introPage=intro_3.html World Health Organization. 2012b. “Controlling the Global Obesity Epidemic.” Geneva: Author. http://www.who.int/nutrition/topics/obesity/en/ World Health Organization. 2012c. World Health Statistics 2012. Geneva: Author.

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CHAPT ER 9

Food Sovereignty, Food Security: Markets and Dispossession ANNET T E AURÉLIE DESMAR AIS AND JIM HANDY

Global food systems are increasingly at risk. Rising demand, scarce resources and increased volatility are placing new pressures on an already stressed agriculture sector. Over 870 million people, many of them small farmers, remain chronically hungry and undernourished. In response to this challenge, the New Vision for Agriculture calls for a new approach to agriculture that will deliver food security, environmental sustainability and economic opportunity. Achieving this vision requires a comprehensive approach to transforming whole value chains and systems, harnessing the power of market-based solutions, and engaging local and global stakeholders in an unprecedented joint effort. ―World Economic Forum’s New Vision for Agriculture Initiative January 2013

T

he ongoing global food crisis combined with the growing environmental crisis manifested in climate change provides a special political moment for the international community to define what policies might best eradicate poverty and ensure the full realization of the right to food. There are essentially two very different models of agriculture being proposed, one associated with the idea of “food security” and the other associated with the idea of “food sovereignty.” Both models, if not the terms used to label them, have a long history and reflect opposing views of economic and social development. Food security can be represented by the 2008 High Level Task Force’s Comprehensive Framework for Action and more recently the World Economic Forum’s New Vision for Agriculture Initiative report titled “Achieving the New Vision for Agriculture: New Models for Action” released in January 2013. Both promote more investment in agriculture

and highlight the need to increase global production and foster greater market integration. On the other hand, La Via Campesina—now considered to be the world’s most significant transnational agrarian movement— and a growing number of civil society organizations advocate new food systems based on food sovereignty. They claim that the official food security responses are essentially “more of the same”—that is, they emphasize increasing production and productivity, expanding liberalized trade, and pursuing another Green Revolution through the greater use of genetically modified organisms in agricultural production. In other words, the official solutions being proposed are further modernization and industrialization of agriculture aimed at producing more food. However, as Murphy and Paasch (2009) point out, the official solutions on offer focus on increasing production “yet the FAO itself has said that lack of food is not the reason for the food crisis” (p. 6). The tragedy is that hunger persists in a world that produces sufficient food for every human being on the planet (United Nations [UN] Human Rights Council 2011). Surely not starving is a simple justice. Food sovereignty tackles the issue of justice head on. In a nutshell, food sovereignty is the “right of peoples and nations to control their own food and agricultural systems, including their own markets, production modes, food cultures, and environments” (Wittman et al. 2010, p. 2). Fairbairn (2010) claims that food sovereignty is best conceptualized as a social justice “counter-frame to food security” as it “emphasizes solidarity over individualism,” insists food is more than a commodity, rejects “free” markets, and “demands state intervention and market regulation” (p. 30). In the process, food sovereignty redistributes access to and control over food-producing resources and promotes small-scale agroecological agriculture. Importantly, it considers power as a key resource and places decision making in the hands of communities. This chapter begins by stating what is at stake:  the livelihoods of the millions of the impoverished who are living with hunger. The continued faith in science and markets to “solve” the problems of poverty and hunger has deep roots, as does the inherent criticism in much of this literature that hunger and poverty are somehow the fault of peasants and smallholders. We critique these arguments, both historical and contemporary, and suggest that they have largely created the environment for rural poverty by legitimizing dispossession. The chapter goes on to outline the radical nature of food sovereignty as a concept in the face of calls for a continued neoliberal faith in food security and markets. The people who live in the countryside are the ones most severely affected by the food crisis that hit the headlines in 2008 and remains with

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us today. According to the UN (2008), “80% of hungry people live in rural areas and 50% are small-scale farm-holders, and these people are especially vulnerable to food insecurity, given the increasing costs of inputs and the fall in farm incomes” (p. 4).1 Olivier De Schutter (2011), the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, explains that the impoverishment of rural peoples is largely caused by the increasing pressures on land created by a number of other factors: Existing plots of land are being subdivided into smaller and smaller units (due in part to increasing rural populations), farmland is being destroyed, peasants are being dispossessed by large infrastructure projects, cities are growing, and soil is being eroded and depleted. He makes the case that those who do manage to hold on to land face enormous pressure in trying to eke out a living from farming “since they are routinely under the threat of being evicted from their land and, with increased speculation on the price of farmland, are often priced out of the markets for land rights” (p. 257). The situation for pastoralists and artisanal fishers is similar: “as land becomes increasingly scarce, they too increasingly risk being fenced off from the fishing and grazing grounds which they were able to rely upon for generations” (p. 257). The UN Special Rapporteur’s mission reports on various countries, and a growing academic literature clearly indicate that the impoverishment and subsequent hunger of people living in rural areas is the result of unequal distribution of land, growing disparities, and persistent dispossession. Other contributing factors include the lack of access to and control over food-producing resources and the commons such as land, seeds, and forests. The UN Special Rapporteur is essentially describing a continuing process of enclosure; the history of this process dates back, most famously, to the privatization of common lands in England and Scotland in the period between the 16th and 18th centuries. The irony that the majority of the hungry in the world are rural inhabitants who work the land is the result of a long history of faith in a failed logic. This “logic” has historically derided peasant or small-scale agriculture as inefficient, has actively sought the dispossession of peasants and small-scale agriculturists as a means for fostering improved agricultural operations, and has focused on market-based solutions to drive agricultural change. While more recent literature has been careful to make such arguments in ways that seem slightly less objectionable than those made over the past century and a half, they are also quite clearly still driven by the same assumptions. The genesis for apparently contradictory arguments about the need to push peasants from the land in order to foster increased agricultural production stems primarily from the origins of capitalist development in

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Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries. The privatization or enclosure of common peasant lands in Britain had been pursued since the 16th century as nobles and landlords sought to tap burgeoning wool markets. Enclosure was justified in a discourse arguing that such dispossession was necessary to make the rural poor more obedient and more willing to work by making them poorer and more dependent. By the mid-18th century, the arguments in favor of dispossession had been polished to suit contemporary sensibilities, but they followed a similar trajectory. For the next hundred years, dispossession of British smallholders and commoners was pursued in the name of increased agricultural production. This new agriculture was transformed by the magic of capital into “high” agriculture (the forerunner to current industrial agricultural models). According to its proponents, high agriculture benefited everyone: Agricultural production would be dramatically increased; in the words of one of high agriculture’s most ardent proponents, The Economist newspaper, the transformations in British agriculture had “broken down the parochial and patriarchal barriers which made each spot of land a gaol, though a home, for a particular portion of the community, and the same progress will cause them to be entirely removed” (The Economist 1855). And British manufacturers were able to depend on a flood of rural migrants to help power British manufactures. Most of these arguments turned out not to be true. British agriculture did not become remarkably more productive, despite the application of capital and imported fertilizer. Britain needed to import increased percentages of food through the 19th century, and British agriculture, high or not, was particularly depressed by the second half of the 19th century. Nor did the British poor appear to benefit. Even those who most strongly supported the changes in British agriculture expressed concern about the “deluge of paupers” streaming into British cities. Life expectancy rates in most urban centers in Britain were, in 1850, only slightly more than half what life expectancy had been in rural areas 150 years earlier; and widespread evidence suggests increased levels of hunger and malnutrition in Britain during the very period that the country was meant to have benefited most from the transformation of agriculture wrought through the application of science and capital (The Economist 1844; Nicholas and Steckell 1991; Woods 2000, pp. 364–371; Allen 2009; Belich 2009, pp. 448–449). The failure of high agriculture did nothing to temper the determination to export it. The most intimate colony to feel its effects was Ireland, where The Economist—in the midst of a famine created by the combined effects of dramatic inequality in land ownership, the export of food to England, and the failure of the potato crop—argued that landlords needed to be free to

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“improve” their estates and that such freedom, “doomed the bulk of the Irish peasantry, like Indians, to extermination” (The Economist 1846). In this case, the functioning of a free market in food (after 1846) provided a lesson that has been ignored by those who promote market solutions to hunger: In Ireland, a free market in food led to Ireland exporting hundreds of thousands of tons a grain a year while more than a million Irish poor died from hunger or hunger-related illness (Thomas 1982, pp.  328–342; Belich 2009, p. 446). Despite its almost complete failure in its own terms, the supposed and largely mythical benefits of the British approach to a particular form of agrarian dispossession produced a powerful discourse which by the 20th century became the accepted means for pursuing “development” in third-world countries. Two of the most influential works on economic development from the 1950s and 1960s aptly demonstrate the attack on the peasantry that was considered to be an inherent and necessary part of such development. Both trace their ideology to work on British economic history. W.W. Rostow’s The Stages of Economic Growth:  A  Non-Communist Manifesto, published in 1960, was perhaps the most influential proponent of “modernization” as a necessary and interrelated set of changes to “backward” societies. Rostow was particularly anxious that “shocks” to the social system be induced to spark a shift from “traditional” society to modernizing societies (a change that would be marked by the investment of capital and the dominance of new elites). The biggest threat to such beneficial changes was the most obvious purveyors of tradition: the peasantry (Rostow 1960, pp. 5, 18–24). While Rostow was driven by a particularly obvious political agenda, he was in good company when it came to attacking the peasantry. A  much more sympathetic figure in development literature, W.A. Lewis, Nobel Prize winner in economics in 1979, argued in his most influential work— a 1954 article titled “Economic Development with Unlimited Supplies of Labour”—that for economic development to occur in poor countries a sea of peasants who collectively comprised the “unlimited supplies of labour” needed to be induced to work for the capitalist sector. To ensure that wages in the capitalist sector did not need to increase, the remaining peasantry needed to produce more without “enjoying the full fruit of their extra production” (Lewis 1958, pp. 434–448). Of particular note is that both Rostow and Lewis came from academic backgrounds in which their first area of study was British economic development. Common to all of these arguments are assumptions that still drive the neoliberal food security agenda:  that peasant agriculture needs both capital and science to be more productive and that market solutions will

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provide adequate and appropriate incentives to address these questions. Of course, the contemporary food security discourse is not a single voice; dissent and differences of opinion exist within that field. On the one extreme are those who openly push for further dispossession; this would include such commentators as R. Zoellick, a former president of the World Bank, and the noted academic Paul Collier, the latter of whom denounces what he describes as middle-class romanticism about peasants (Collier 2008; Zoellick 2008). A middle group of food security advocates argues that new technology— especially in the shape of biotechnology—is needed to promote a new Green Revolution that will permit small farmers to increase production and outrun population increase. Such arguments, of course, seem to ignore the very real social, economic, and environmental problems that stemmed from the first Green Revolution (a mid-20th-century movement that featured the development of new dwarf versions of crops highly dependent on chemical inputs). These advocates ignore a widespread literature on the very real efficiencies of peasant agriculture. This literature explores these efficiencies both historically—arguing for example that British commoners were as innovative as capitalist agricultural improvers and just as efficient—and in the contemporary context. For example, Robert Netting (1993) has explored the efficiencies of peasant and small-scale agriculture around the world for much of his life. He has painstakingly detailed the sustainable nature and impressive yields achieved by peasant agriculture in places as diverse as Swiss Alpine villages and northern Nigeria. Miguel Altieri (1995, 1999, 2002) has studied the productivity of agroecological practices throughout Latin America, arguing that careful innovation in small-scale peasant agriculture using intensive farming practices leads to dramatic improvement in yields. These findings have been confirmed by recent extensive reviews of multisited, multiyear research conducted in various countries around the world (UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food 2010; Pretty et al. 2011). One of the issues in this debate is a contradiction in what is meant by productivity. For most of the 19th and 20th centuries, productivity has most often been measured in relation to labor; peasant agriculture, however, is more efficient when it comes to the use of scarce resources—land, water, and capital, the very resources that are expected to become scarcer in the world—precisely because they use more labor per acre in production. Still, the arguments for the efficacy of peasant agriculture are drowned out by the chorus of voices calling for versions of industrial agriculture. To take just one example, when a representative from the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture presented a glowing picture of the

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future that could be created through its new biotech products, it warned that the most serious threats to this Utopia were “peasant romanticism” and “food sovereignty” (Ferroni 2010).2 Meanwhile, the World Economic Forum’s New Vision for Agriculture Initiative seeks to transform agriculture with a three-pronged approach focused on “food security, economic opportunity and environmental sustainability” grounded in consolidating “market-based” and “multi-stakeholder” partnerships between small-holder farmers, the private sector, transnational agribusiness, and government. A  stated aim of the partnerships is to “improve the livelihoods of smallholder farmers by increasing productivity, improving market access, and reducing market volatility” (World Economic Forum’s New Vision for Agriculture Initiative 2012, p. 8). A third level of debate around food security and food sovereignty is provided by those who suggest they have seriously considered the possibilities of food sovereignty; however, they either reject it outright or suggest alternative versions designed primarily to deradicalize food sovereignty to make it amenable to elements of industrial agriculture. As just one example, a special edition of the African Technology and Development Forum in November 2011 was intended, as the editors suggest, to “discuss the meaning of the term ‘Food Sovereignty’ and explore the potential impact of national and food sovereignty policies.” Such a discussion in a journal dedicated to development issues in Africa was timely and potentially very useful. But three of the four articles dismissed food sovereignty as dangerous and impractical, using questionable understandings of the concept and of agricultural history. These articles conflated food sovereignty’s idea that not all decisions in agricultural production and trade should be left to the market with an assertion that food sovereignty proponents would welcome all government intervention in agriculture. Douglas Southgate (2011, p. 19) equated food sovereignty to Mao Tse-tung’s (sic) policies of forced collectivization and distrust of peasant knowledge during the Great Leap Forward. Similarly, Philip Aerni (2011, p. 27) warned that food sovereignty principles will lead to famines similar to those created by all socialist regimes. However, the regimes that these critics discuss demonstrate widespread distrust of peasant agriculture and an unwarranted faith in scientific and political experts. Anyone familiar with food sovereignty ideas would recognize that its proponents would find these policies equally aberrant. In the same journal issue, William Kerr (2011), in perhaps the most blatant misuse of history, complains, on the one hand, that food sovereignty proponents have objectives which are too diverse—“a kitchen sink of objectives” (p. 5). On the other hand, he suggests that its ideas can be distilled to

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“protection to achieve self-sufficiency,” which he finds too simplistic (p. 6). He suggests that all protectionist arguments in agriculture have been thoroughly debunked by “rigorous economic analysis undertaken by well known economists” (pp. 4–5). As proof of this argument, he examines the Irish potato famine in the 1840s without citing a single historical source for the famine and apparently forgetting that the famine occurred at the moment when Irish landowners, enjoying free access to English markets, shipped hundreds of thousands of tons of grain to England during every year of the famine (Thomas 1982; Belich 2009). The Irish poor could not compete with wealthier English consumers in the market for their own agricultural productions; as Amartya Sen (1981) has argued about all modern famines in general, the Irish poor lacked sufficient entitlement to food. One is left with the clear impression that the writers did not sufficiently explore the arguments about food sovereignty they were supposed to be discussing. It is only such willful disregard for the literature itself that could lead Aerni (2011) to argue that concern about the overuse of chemical fertilizer, when addressed by food sovereignty proponents, would lead farmers not to weed their fields, preferring instead a “dialogue with unwanted plants” (p. 25). One of the problems with the food security model—in addition to the displacement and impoverishment it causes to peasants and small-scale farmers everywhere—is that it ignores the significant contributions of industrial agriculture to climate change.3 Just as important, it also does not address the structural causes of the growing disparity in the countryside such as unequal access to and control over food producing resources (land, seeds, territory, etc.) and unfair markets structures that are controlled by the powerful and wealthy—all of which are key to addressing the real causes of increased global hunger and poverty. While more investment in agriculture around the world is a welcomed development, a more important question is what kind of investment is needed if the aim is to resolve the human tragedies of poverty and hunger that plague rural areas. The global land grab that has already captured anywhere from 43 million to 80 million hectares around the world is yet another manifestation of the food security model’s social and environmental devastation as it ensures continued impoverishment and dispossession while pursuing large-scale, monoculture production for export (Li 2011).4 Again, of course, another manifestation of the food security model is the persistent and growing number of hungry people in the world today, the overwhelming majority of them living in the countryside.5 Another major issue—which is also linked to the global land grab, given the corporate players involved—that is not addressed in the official food security proposals are the violations of human rights that occur when

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transnational corporations are given increased control over the production and distribution of food (Murphy and Paasch 2009). They have benefited from increased concentration and wealth since neoliberal, free-market oriented policies have been introduced (The Economist 2009; Torres et al. 2000; United Nations Conference on Trade and Development 2006). When governments and international institutions establish international trade and investment agreements, they do so explicitly to protect the legal rights of corporate entities to benefit from such trade. In agriculture, there is little attention paid to how these “rights” conflict with existing human rights obligations.6 As the UN begins to debate an expanded set of “peasant rights” associated with movements like food sovereignty, these contradictions will become even more apparent. La Via Campesina (2008) and other proponents of food sovereignty claim that persistent food crises are about wealth, dispossession, power and politics and that “the time for food sovereignty has come.” They stress that existing wealth, dispossession, and impoverishment are part and parcel of the global capitalist, neoliberal model of agriculture and that it is not reasonable to expect that the solution to the recurring food crisis will come from those institutions, national governments, and corporate players that created and are enriched by the existing global food system. In many cases, these governing bodies have dismantled the very mechanisms that peasants have struggled to build to ensure the viability of small-scale farmers and food security. Support for domestic agriculture has now been replaced by the voracious demands of the “market;” markets know nothing about morality, justice, or the basic rights of people to adequate and nutritious food. As Irish cottiers discovered in the 1840s, markets determine only that goods are sold for the highest bidder. Now, people are outbid by the demands of agrofuels, by commodity speculators, and by cattle. If the aim is to ensure the full realization of the right to food for everyone, while at the same time ensuring the well-being of the planet, then truly radical approaches to solving the problems with the global food system seem to be demanded. What would such a radical approach look like? Michael Watts (2009) has suggested that radical politics in today’s world must encompass “an organized politics of anti-enclosure” (p.  23). Food sovereignty might help us frame such a movement. Fundamentally, food sovereignty argues for a new relationship to food, agriculture, and each other, a different way of relating to nature– what Hannah Wittman (2010) calls a new “agrarian citizenship.” It politicizes relations of production and consumption while also politicizing current local, regional, national, and global food systems and agrarian policies

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(McMichael 2008; Fairbairn 2010; Patel 2010; Wittman et  al. 2010). In some ways then, food sovereignty is best understood as a radical democratic project that, on the one hand, exposes the power dynamics within the current global food system and, on the other hand, cultivates new spaces (at all levels) for inclusive debate on a whole set of different issues related to food and agriculture. And as Patel (2005) argues, it does this in ways that “the deepest relations of power come to be contested publicly.” Food sovereignty proponents argue that this model explicitly takes into consideration an expanded set of rights, such as those articulated in La Via Campesina’s “International Declaration on Peasants’ Rights—Women and Men,” which is currently being discussed by the Human Rights Council (2012).7 They assert that, despite obituaries to the contrary, small-scale farmers and peasants have not disappeared in the face of increased corporate control and industrialization of agriculture. La Via Campesina (2008b) argues that food sovereignty can “feed the world and cool the planet.”

NOTES 1. The UN Human Rights Council (2011) explains that “Hunger, like poverty, is still predominantly a rural problem, and among the rural population it is the peasant farmers, small landholders, landless workers, fisherfolk, hunters and gatherers who suffer disproportionately. The United Nations Millennium Development Project Task Force on Hunger has shown that 80% of the world’s hungry live in rural areas. Some 50% of the world’s hungry are smallholder farmers who depend mainly or partly on agriculture for their livelihoods, but lack sufficient access to productive resources such as land, water and seeds. Another 20% of those suffering from hunger are landless families who survive as tenant farmers or poorly paid agricultural labourers, and often have to migrate from one insecure, informal job to another. Another 10% of the world’s hungry live in rural communities from traditional fishing, hunting and herding activities” (p. 8). 2. The representative, Marco Ferroni, was presenting at the Conference on Global Food Security held at McGill University in Canada. Syngenta, headquartered in Switzerland, is one of the world’s largest agricultural chemical companies. 3. See, for example, the report prepared by the New World Agriculture and Ecology Group (2009) and the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (2009), both of which refer to a comprehensive list of scientific literature. The latter summary is available at www. agassessment.org. 4. According to a recent issue of the Journal of Peasant Studies on land grabbing, a study by Oxfam estimates that the number is closer to 227  million hectares (White et  al. 2012, p.  620). For research on land grabbing see the Land Deal Politics Initiative (www.iss.hl/ldpi), recent special editions of the Journal of Peasant Studies, including 32(2); 39(3); 39(4), the Journal of Agrarian Change 11(2), and the Canadian Journal of Development Studies 33(4).

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5. As just one example, between 1973 and 1974 and 1999 and 2000, the percentage of the Indian population with access to less than 2,400 calories a day increased from 56% to 75%. (Patnaik 2005). 6. For a discussion of the more prominent role and power of the corporate sector as a consequence of the globalization of neoliberal policies and the impact this has had on economic, social, and cultural rights, see J. Oloka Onyango and Deepika Udagama’s (2000) report presented to the UN Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights. More recent papers that shed light on this critical issue are reports by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food (2009a) and Olivier De Schutter (2009). Also see Murphy and Paasch (2009) for analysis of various elements on the right to food and human rights instruments and how they relate to foreign investment policies and practices, agrofuels, speculation, climate change, and trade. 7. Since 2008 La Vía Campesina has been pressuring the Human Rights Council to adopt a declaration specially addressing the rights of peasants. In September 2012 the Human Rights Council passed a resolution to form a working group to finalize a UN declaration on the “rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas” (Human Rights Council 2012). REFERENCES Aerni, P. 2011. “Food Sovereignty and Its Discontents.” African Technology and Development Forum 8: 23–40. Allen, R. 2009. The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Altieri, M. 1995. Agroecology:  The Science of Sustainable Agriculture. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Altieri, M. 1999. “Applying Agroecology to Enhance Productivity of Peasant Farming Systems in Latin America.” Environment, Development and Sustainability 1: 197–217. Altieri, M. 2002. “Agroecology: The Science of Natural Resource Management for Poor Farmers in Marginal Environments.” Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 93: 1–24. Belich, J. 2009. Replenishing the Earth. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Collier, P. 2008. “The Politics of Hunger: How Illusion and Greed Fan the Food Crisis.” Foreign Affairs 87: 67–68. De Schutter, O. 2009. “A Human Rights Approach to Trade and Investment Policies.” In The Global Food Challenge:  Towards a Human Rights Approach to Trade and Investment Policies, edited by S. Murphy and A. Paasch, 14–28. Bern: Bread for All. De Schutter, O. 2011. “How Not to Think of Land-Grabbing:  Three Critiques of Large-Scale Investments in Farmland.” Journal of Peasant Studies 38: 249–279. Fairbairn, M. 2010. “Framing Resistance:  International Food Regimes and the Roots of Food Sovereignty.” In Food Sovereignty:  Reconnecting Food, Nature and Community, edited by H. Wittman, A.A. Desmarais, and N. Wiebe, 15–32. Halifax, UK: Fernwood Publishing. Ferroni, M. 2010. “More Crop per Drop for Universal Food Security.” Paper presented at the Conference on Global Food Security, Montreal, Québec, October 19–21. International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development. 2009. Agriculture at a Crossroads:  Global Report. Washington, DC: Island Press.

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Kerr, W. 2011. “Food Sovereignty: Old Protectionism in Somewhat Recycled Bottles.” African Technology and Development Forum 8: 4–9. La Via Campesina. 2008a. “An Answer to the Global Food Crisis: Peasants and Small Farmers Can Feed the World!” Zimbabwe: Author. Available at www.viacampesina.org La Via Campesina. 2008b. “Declaration of Maputo:  Vth International Conference of La Via Campesina.” Zimbabwe:  Author. http://viacampesina.org/ en/ index.php/our-conferences-mainmenu-28/5-maputo-2008mainmenu-68/ declarations-mainmenu-70/600-declaration-ofmaputo-v-internationalconference-of-la-via-campesina Lewis, W.A. 1958. “Economic Development with Unlimited Supplies of Labour.” In The Economics of Development, edited by A.N. Agarwala and S.P. Singh, 400–449. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Li, T.M. 2011. “Centering Labor in the Land Grab Debate.” Journal of Peasant Studies 38: 281–298. McMichael, P. 2008. “Food Sovereignty, Social Reproduction and the Agrarian Question.” In Peasants and Globalization: Political Economy, Rural Transformation and the Agrarian Question, edited by A.H. Akram-Lodhi and C. Kay, 288–312. New York: Routledge. Murphy, S., and A. Paasch. 2009. “Executive Summary.” In The Global Food Challenge:  Towards a Human Rights Approach to Trade and Investment Policies, edited by S. Murphy and A. Paasch, 6–12. Bern: Bread for All. Netting, R. 1993. Smallholders, Householders. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Nicholas, S., and R.H. Steckel. 1991. “Heights and Living Standards of English Workers during the Early Years of Industrialization.” The Journal of Economic History 51: 937–957. Oloka-Onyango, J., and D. Udagama. 2000. The Realization of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights:  Globalization and Its Impact on the Full Enjoyment of Human Rights. Preliminary Report Submitted in Accordance with Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, 52nd Session. Document #E/ CN.4/Sub.2/2000/13. Patel, Raj. 2005. International agrarian restructuring and the practical ethics of Peasant movement solidarity." Centre for Civil Society Research, Report No. 35, 83–124. University of Kwazulu-natal. http://ccs.ukzn.ac.za/files/CCS_ RREPORTS2_REPORT35.pdf Patel, R. 2010. “What Does Food Sovereignty Look Like?” In Food Sovereignty: Reconnecting Food, Nature and Community, edited by H. Wittman, A.A. Desmarais, and N. Wiebe, 186–196. Halifax, UK: Fernwood Publishing. Patnaik, P. 2005. “The Economics of the New Phase of Imperialism.” http://www.networkideas.org/featart/aug2005/Economics_New_Phase.pdf Pretty, J., C. Toulmin, and S. Williams. 2011. “Sustainable Intensification in African Agriculture.” International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability 9: 5–24. Rostow, W.W. 1960. The Stages of Economic Growth:  A  Non-Communist Manifesto. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Sen, A. 1981. Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Southgate, D. 2011. “Food Sovereignty: The Idea’s Origins and Dubious Merits.” African Technology and Development Forum 8: 18–22. The Economist. 1844. “Incendiary Fires in the Countryside.” The Economist, January 13. The Economist. 1846. “Conflict of Peasantry and Landlords.” The Economist, April 11.

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The Economist. 1855. “The Scarcity of Labour.” The Economist, September 8. The Economist. 2009. “Cornering Foreign Fields.” The Economist, May 21. NewWorldAgricultureandEcologyGroup.2009.“EffectsofIndustrialAgricultureonGlobal Warming and the Potential of Small-Scale Agroecological Techniques to Reverse Those Effects.” http://viacampesina.org/en/index.php/publications-mainmenu-3 0/797-effects-of-industrial-agriculture-on-global-warming-and-the-po tential-of-small-scale-agroecological The World Economic Forum’s New Vision for Agriculture Initiative. 2013. “Achieving the New Vision for Agriculture: New Models for Agriculture.” http://www.weforum.org/reports/achieving-new-vision-agriculture-new-models-action Thomas, B. 1982. “Feeding England during the Industrial Revolution: A View from the Celtic Fringe.” Agricultural History 56: 328–342. Torres, F., M. Pineiro, E. Trigo, and R.M. Nogueira. 2000. Agriculture in the Early XXI Century:  Agrodiversity and Pluralism as a Contribution to Ameliorate Problems of Food Security, Poverty and Natural Resource Conservation: Reflections on Issues and Their Implication for Global Research. Zimbabwe: La Via Campesina. http://www. fao.org/docs/eims/upload/206059/agriculture_xxi_century.pdf United Nations. 2008. “Resolution Adopted by the General Assembly 63/187 (on the Report of the Third Committee—The Right to Food).” A/63/430/Add.2. Geneva: Author. United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. 2006. “Tracking the Trend Towards Market Concentration:  The Case of the Agricultural Input Industry.” Geneva: Author. http://www.unctad.org/en/docs/ditccom200516_en.pdf United Nations Human Rights Council. 2011. “Study of the Human Rights Council Advisory Committee on Discrimination in the Context of the Right to Food.” Submitted to the 16th Session of the HRC. A/HRC/16/40. Geneva: Author. United Nations Human Rights Council. 2012. “Promotion of the Human Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas.” Resolution. A/HR/21/L.23. Geneva: Author. United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food. 2009. “Agribusiness and the Right to Food.” Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Right To Food, Olivier De Schutter. A/HRC/13/33/. Geneva: Author. United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food. 2010. “Report Submitted by the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier De Schutter, to the Human Rights Council.” 16th Session, A/HRC/16/49. Geneva: Author. Watts, M. 2009. “Then and Now.” Antipode 41: 10–26. Wittman, H. 2010. “Reconnecting Agriculture and the Environment: Food Sovereignty and the Agrarian Basis of Ecological Citizenship.” In Food Sovereignty: Reconnecting Food, Nature and Community, edited by H. Wittman, A.A. Desmarais, and N. Wiebe, 91–105. Halifax, UK: Fernwood Publishing. Wittman, H., A.A. Desmarais, and N. Wiebe. 2010. “The Origins and Potential of Food Sovereignty.” In Food Sovereignty:  Reconnecting Food, Nature and Community, edited by H. Wittman, A.A. Desmarais, and N. Wiebe, 1–14. Halifax, UK: Fernwood Publishing. Woods, R. 2000. The Demography of Victorian England and Wales. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Zoellick, R. 2008. “A Ten Point Plan for Tackling the Food Crisis.” The Financial Times, May 29.

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CHAPTER 10

Food Security and Gender BELINDA DODSON AND ALLISON GOEBEL

INTRODUCTION

Food security has reemerged in recent years as a global policy issue and growing area of academic inquiry, notably since the food price crisis of 2008 (Brown 2008; Food and Agriculture Organization [FAO] 2008; Oxfam International 2008; Clapp and Cohen 2009). Three dominant narratives distinguish this current wave of food security discourse. First is its framing at the global scale, with threats to worldwide food production back on the agenda in ways recalling the 1970s’ Limits To Growth (Meadows et al. 1972) movement, often expressed in relation to the effects of global climate change on agricultural systems (Beddington et al. 2012). Second is the casting of food security as a matter of international political security. In addition to the food riots of 2008 (O’Brien 2012), food price increases have been put forward as one of the causes, or at least a contributing factor, of the “Arab Spring” (Johnstone and Mazo 2011; The Economist 2012). Third, and countering the global narrative, is a narrative of “food sovereignty”, which calls for alternative food networks that embed food production and consumption at the local scale and urges delinking from global, corporate agricultural production systems and commodity chains (Patel 2007; Martinez-Torres and Rosset 2010; Via Campesina 2011). Paralleling these competing understandings of food security versus food sovereignty are competing versions and practices of agricultural science:  One version is high-tech, profit-motivated, and funded largely by corporations (e.g., Monsanto, Cargill, Syngenta); another version is

lower-tech, environmentally and socially motivated, based on farmer participation (e.g., Bezner Kerr 2010), and commonly linked to agrarian social movements. What these seemingly competing narratives have in common, however, is a shared emphasis on food production. In the global narrative, this is usually framed in terms of increased global food demand, as a result of population growth and urbanization, in the face of environmental threats and limits to land and water resources. Framing food security in these terms, especially when done at the global scale, acts to marginalize issues of unequal access to food—a marginalization that also occurs on the basis of gender. The “global food shortage” interpretation of food security can lead to proposed solutions being financial, scientific, and technological rather than social and political. The “food sovereignty” narrative, by contrast, is explicitly political; it proclaims the right to food as a foundational principle (Patel 2007, Martinez-Torres and Rosset 2010; Via Campesina 2011). Yet despite its intellectual claim of promoting alternative food systems, its material and political manifestations have been primarily production-focused, as it presents peasant agriculture, ecologically sustainable production methods, and various forms of alternative, farmer-centered food networks as the preferred means by which to enhance food security—or, in its own preferred terminology, to attain food sovereignty. Much store is placed on families and communities producing their own food and being as self-sufficient as possible. In gender terms, the mainstream global food security narrative is largely gender-blind, if far from gender-neutral in effect (Sodano 2009). Yet the alternative narrative can have a tendency to overvalorize the “family farm” and peasant mode of production and in doing so can thus overlook the inequitable gender relations commonly found within such agrarian systems (Caro 2011). The first part of this essay considers how gender is being incorporated into current food security and food sovereignty debates. In the former, this is largely in terms of closing the gender gap in agriculture in productivity and efficiency terms; in the latter it is seen as a matter of social justice and rights to land. Adopting a focus on sub-Saharan Africa, we identify historical and contemporary structural factors that marginalize and exclude women from access to land and other agricultural resources, arguing that agrarian reform has to be grounded in simultaneous and integral gender reform. The second part of the essay focuses on urban areas, arguing that any narrowly production-focused framing of food security, whether globally or locally conceived, is inadequate. Food production obviously has to be a cornerstone of food security. But food security is surely best understood in terms of the World Health Organization’s

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definition: “Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life” (our italics). From this perspective, the food security frame expands from production to encompass consumption and nutrition, and the key roles played by women in ensuring food security become even more evident. It adds cities to the dominant emphasis on rural areas as the locus of food security debates and interventions. A concluding section argues that research to address the global food “crisis” therefore lies in the realms of the economic, political, and social sciences as much as in the agricultural, nutritional, or biological sciences.

AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION AND RURAL LIVELIHOODS

The mainstream, global framing of food security sees it largely in terms of a shortfall of food production relative to growing global food demand. The awareness of the critical roles that women play in food production has propelled the issue of gender into mainstream food security policy discourse, and this discourse now promotes the support and inclusion of women as farmers and agricultural labor as a strategy to boost agricultural output. The FAO recently launched a designated website “Men and Women in Agriculture: Closing the Gap,” which suggests that gender must be central to all food and agricultural policy as it explicitly makes the “business case” for considering gender in agriculture: “Increasing women’s access to land, livestock, education, financial services, extension, technology and rural employment would boost their productivity by 20 to 30%, which alone could lift 100–150 million people out of hunger, and generate gains in food security, economic growth and social welfare” (FAO 2012). From this perspective, the main rationale for understanding gender issues and supporting women’s roles is to increase overall agricultural efficiency and productivity: women are portrayed as underutilized and underperforming as food producers due to lack of technology, finance, and other key inputs and supports. Yet  although such mainstreaming of gender in food security discussions is unquestionably a positive development, it does not go far enough. If women are “under-performing,” this is not just because of lack of recognition and support for their farming roles, or because they lack access to agricultural inputs, but because they are systematically discriminated against through patriarchal family systems, cultures, state laws and practices, and processes of globalization that economically marginalize and sometimes dispossess them. Women’s marginalization and

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disempowerment occur at scales ranging from the household to the global economy, in mutually reproducing and reinforcing ways. Although not focused primarily on gender, the food sovereignty movement does approach food from a rights-based rather than a productivity-based perspective, although a focus on production is central. Fundamentally, the approach draws attention to historical and contemporary dynamics of dispossession from the land and other resources required to produce food. Adding a gender perspective sheds further light on both the mechanisms and the outcomes of such dispossession. In Africa, for example, colonization often involved large-scale removal or marginalization of local people from the most fertile, productive land, whether this was for the establishment of wildlife parks or commercial farming ventures, as in Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, and South Africa (Neumann 1998). These dispossessions had profound and lasting gender implications. The impoverishment of rural life forced labor migration, especially of adult men (who subsequently sought paid employment in mines, commercial farms, and other enterprises developed by colonial newcomers; Murray 1981). Male migration precipitated gendered rural farming systems, with women performing much of the labor in subsistence food production, while usually not enjoying control or ownership of the land, farming implements, or fruits of their labor (Boserup 1970; Dankelman and Davidson 1988; Moore and Vaughan 1994). Customary land tenure systems in Africa are primarily patriarchal and patrilineal, and they accordingly award land access and control to men. Although always subject to change and negotiation, these systems remain in force in many African countries and have consistently limited women’s access to land (Whitehead and Tsikata 2003; MacKenzie 2010). Today’s dynamics of globalization are extending the dispossession of the poor in Africa, Latin America, and Asia through land appropriation for large-scale commercial farming of food and biofuels, mining, parks, and ecotourism development (Hall 2011; Rosset 2011; Zoomers 2011; Kugelman and Levenstein 2013). This pushes rural dwellers into alternative livelihoods such as artisanal mining or other non-farm activities (Hilson 2011). Again, there are important gender dimensions. Given the prominent position of women in subsistence food production systems throughout the Global South, they suffer disproportionately from these new dispossessions (Spieldoch and Murphy 2013). However, neither proponents nor detractors of these so-called “land grabs” have paid much attention to their gender dynamics (Chu 2011). Land-based and agrarian social movements have emerged in response to land grabs and other forms of rural marginalization. Yet although women are notably part of the

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land-based movements, such as the Landless People’s Movement in South Africa and the land occupations in Zimbabwe, they are not often in leadership roles, and gender issues do not appear prominent in the ways these movements articulate their actions (MacKenzie 2010). As these examples indicate, structural barriers to gender equality in the agricultural sector present formidable obstacles. Regardless of whether they have been focused on productivity and markets or rights and redistribution of productive resources, previous attempts at agrarian reform have not always benefitted women, and in many instances these efforts have actually served to reinforce or exacerbate gender inequality. Susie Jacobs (2010) presents a comprehensive global review of land reform from a gender perspective. She observes that neoliberal reforms such as those promoted by the World Bank, including land titling (which is intended to replace customary tenure systems) and other incentives meant to boost the commercialization of small-scale farming sectors, have generally disadvantaged women (Jacobs 2010). Here, women are shut out of titling opportunities either because of patriarchal systems that do not recognize them as legal adults or because husbands and sons capture any commercial opportunities (such as cash cropping). Regardless of the process, men maintain control of women’s labor. Jacobs also observes that large-scale collectivization schemes such as those in the former Soviet Union, as well as land reform programs that redistribute land to households (such as those in Zimbabwe in the 1980s), have had mixed results for women. Although collectivization in communist countries often went together with a formal commitment to gender equality, discrimination against women in terms of benefits remained, and overall these schemes caused massive social disruption and productivity collapse. In terms of family farm land reform schemes, while productivity increases may be realized in some cases where market and other institutional supports are strong, women’s bargaining power as wives often declines, as land is typically allocated to the male head of the household. Increased family farmland holdings often means engagement in cash crop production, and with patriarchal control of women’s labor going unchallenged, this can also mean a reduction in subsistence food production as women’s labor is drawn away from their traditional roles as food providers. This dynamic was in dramatic evidence in Goebel’s 1990s research on land reform in Zimbabwe. In 1996, a bumper harvest of maize (both a food and a cash crop) in the country led to a rash of female suicides, as husbands squandered the money earned from grain sales, thereby leaving families penniless and often food insecure (Goebel 2005). More recently in the Zimbabwe case, there has been some indication that a small proportion of female household heads

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gained access to new land in the post-2000 occupations, but women often lost out in the mostly chaotic, patronage-based land occupations that did not challenge patriarchal culture (Scoones et al. 2010). The 2008 food price crisis threw these issues into sharp relief. Quisumbing et al. (2008), in their analysis of the gender impacts of the crisis, reiterated the well-known constraints facing female farmers. They also went further, highlighting other factors that made women experience the crisis in particular ways. Differential increases in the cost or earnings for particular crops exacerbated intrahousehold conflict over deployment of land and labor in agriculture, with women often bearing added labor burdens without seeing any benefits to their own or their households’ food security. Often overlooked is the fact that rural households are purchasers as well as producers of food, and they are thus directly affected by rising food costs. In households where assets were depleted through sales to deal with price shocks, “[w]‌omen’s assets such as jewelry or small livestock are often the first to be disposed of to maintain household consumption” (Quisumbing et  al. 2008, p.  2), thus negatively affecting women’s subsequent independence and productivity. Where households respond to crises by pulling children out of school, either for reasons of cost or to use them in agricultural labor, it is commonly girls who are more affected. In addition to helping explain the gendered impacts of the 2008 food crisis, these observations caution against the adoption of technological solutions without due consideration of gender obstacles and implications. New agricultural technologies can be inaccessible to women if they require investment of capital or other assets. They may increase women’s labor burden while reducing their control over production and marketing, especially of higher-value, commercial crops. Clearly, solutions to food insecurity, whether conceptualized at the local or the global scale, have to go beyond the gender gap to include broader women’s empowerment and the transformation of gender relations. Indeed, a comprehensive approach to gender and food security must acknowledge that a political struggle is involved—one that challenges gendered power at all levels, from the family and household to processes of globalization, and at all stages in the food system, from production to consumption.

FOOD ACCESS AND CONSUMPTION IN CITIES

Such an approach must also recognize that food security has to be tackled in cities as well as the countryside. Neither the food security nor the food sovereignty camp pays adequate attention to urban areas. Although most of the world’s hungry live in rural areas, the World Food Programme (2012)

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estimates that 25% can be found in urban areas of developing countries, noting further that “the numbers of poor and hungry city dwellers are rising rapidly along with the world’s total urban population.” Some of these urban poor and food-insecure people are the former rural poor who moved to cities when rural livelihoods failed. The question of how these growing urban populations feed themselves has not received adequate attention in food security policy, which remains focused on food production, supply, and related price and availability issues (Cohen and Garrett 2010). In urban areas, food security “primarily concerns the ability to secure sufficient income to be able to afford food and other basic necessities, which in turn is dependent on wages and prices (as opposed to the physical and climatic factors that traditionally dominate rural food security concerns), but also includes other factors such as the effect of a crowded and unhygienic environment and the lack of functioning safety nets” (Maxwell 1999, p. 1941, our italics). For both urban and rural households, food security is the outcome of, and also the driving motive for, household livelihood strategies. Those strategies involve processes of intra-household bargaining over labor, assets, and income, with men commonly holding greater bargaining power (Agarwal 1997). What makes the lives of urban residents different from those of rural residents is their almost total dependence on income rather than household production to obtain food. Urban residents are thus reliant on employment or income generation as the basis of food security. Moreover, women and men are differentially incorporated into, or excluded from, urban labor markets. Women often work in the more precarious and less remunerative informal sector rather than in formal waged employment (Tacoli 2012). Even in cities or regions where there has been a feminization of formal labor, this has often gone hand in hand with casualization and lower security of employment (Tacoli 2012). Women’s greater role in household reproductive labor such as child care, care of the sick and elderly, cleaning, and food preparation limits the time they have available to engage in any form of income-generating activity, whether formal or informal. Conversely, while women’s employment can boost household income, their engagement in income-earning activity can take them away from the domestic and caring roles that they have traditionally filled, often with negative consequences for family health and nutrition. Working women have been found to stop breastfeeding infants earlier, and children often rely on street food while their mothers are at work (Ruel et al 1999). This juggling of women’s productive and reproductive roles becomes especially important and evident when household food security is threatened. “Normal” gender roles and responsibilities shift in response to

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gradual erosion or short-term collapse of livelihood and food security. In contexts of rising food prices and declines in real income, households respond by diversifying their income sources (Rakodi 1995; Maxwell 1999; Cohen and Garrett 2010). A common strategy is for more household members (including women and children) to seek income-earning opportunities while those who are working may take on additional employment. A further strategy in individual or household-level responses to food poverty or insecurity is modification of food consumption practices. People may change their diets or go without food, either by eliminating more expensive items (commonly protein-rich foods or fresh produce, a shift that entails negative nutritional consequences) or by eating only one or two meals a day (Cohen and Garrett 2010). Individual household members, often mothers, forego food themselves in order to ensure that other household members (especially men and children) get enough to eat. This means that even when it is caused by an overall food shortage or a general increase in food prices, food insecurity has effects that are unevenly distributed on the basis of gender and age. Given these multiple forms of gender inequality, one might expect female-headed households to be the least food secure. The relationship between female household headship and urban food insecurity, however, is not straightforward. A study in Accra, Ghana, for example, suggests that female-headed households may in general be more food secure, despite being poorer, and yet more vulnerable to price or other shocks, as there is so little leeway in already-stretched household budgets in which such a high proportion is already allocated to food and other basic needs (Levin et  al. 1999). Numerous studies over the past 20  years have shown that where women have greater control over household budgets, there is a positive effect on family food security, as women are more likely to prioritize food expenditure and family welfare (Kennedy and Peters 1992, Levin et al. 1999). Women are thus already, even in “normal” times, acting as a food security safety net among the urban poor, despite structural forces that disadvantage them socially and economically. Researchers also caution against generalizations regarding whether urban areas are better off than rural areas in terms of poverty and food insecurity (Tacoli et al. 2008). One thing that is clear is inequality of socioeconomic status is higher in urban areas than rural areas, so poor urban dwellers may be no better off than their rural counterparts even if average food security is higher in cities. Another consistent finding, however, is that child nutrition is significantly better in urban areas than in rural areas (Garrett and Ruel 1999; Smith et al. 2005). Here gender is key, as maternal education and women’s status appear to be the principal explanations for

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this difference, along with household access to electricity, water, and sanitation (Smith et al. 2003; Smith et al. 2005). Important as these are, women’s role in the urban food system should not be considered only in terms of family nutrition or household coping strategies nor restricted to household-scale analysis. Paralleling the gender inequalities in rural agricultural production, urban food systems too are highly gendered. In cities in the Global South, women are commonly commercial preparers and traders of food—often especially in the informal sector, while men control formal private-sector or state-controlled urban food systems (Tinker 1997; Smith 1998; Levin et al. 1999; Porter et al. 2007). Women are extensively engaged in urban agriculture, both for household consumption and for sale (Hovorka et al. 2009). Similar to the case for food production, it is the liberalization, corporatization, and globalization of food processing, trade, and distribution that is pushing men and women out of their established positions in the urban food economy. The proliferation of global fast-food and supermarket chains is not only changing diets but also displacing market traders and street food vendors (Reardon et al. 2003; Kennedy et al. 2004). These livelihoods are especially important to urban women, and their erosion exacerbates the food insecurity of these women and their families. It also affects the people who purchase food from them, often the urban poor (Smith 1998; Cohen and Garrett 2010).

CONCLUSIONS

Gender is not merely a lens through which to view food security. To the contrary, addressing gender issues is fundamental to the achievement of food-secure households and communities. Yet despite decades of research that have made the link between gender and food security (Quisumbing et  al. 1995), women’s role as producers, sellers, and consumers of food remains underestimated and misunderstood (Sweetman 2012). Understanding women’s roles in food systems provides an entry point for addressing the linked, synergistic goals of gender equity and food security (or food sovereignty). Women’s marginalization from land, assets, and decision-making power in agrarian systems, whether subsistence or commercial, is simultaneously both a productivity and a political issue, and the former cannot be addressed in isolation from the latter. The same is true in an urban context, where women play important but undervalued and threatened roles in the urban food economy. Providing women with the resources they need to produce, process, cook, and sell food can help them meet their practical daily needs while also acting strategically

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to challenge inequitable gender relations at household and wider societal scales (Sweetman 2012). Many researchers and policymakers neglect the role of gender, or address it only in terms of the gap between men and women in agricultural productivity, or examine it from the exclusive perspective of women’s role in household nutrition. In doing so, they risk misunderstanding the underlying causes of food insecurity, designing inappropriate interventions, and failing to achieve even the basic goals of increasing food production and reducing hunger. Science to support food security thus requires a critical social science perspective alongside agricultural and nutritional science, with policy solutions to be sought in social justice, land reform, labor rights, and gender equity and not in technology and science alone. REFERENCES Agarwal, B. 1997. “‘Bargaining’ and Gender Relations:  Within and Beyond the Household.” Food Consumption and Nutrition Division Discussion Paper No. 27. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. Beddington, J., M. Asaduzzaman, M.E. Clark, A. Fernandez Bremauntz, M.D. Guillou, D.J.B. Howlett, et al. 2012. “What Next for Agriculture after Durban?” Science 335: 289–290. Bezner Kerr, R. 2010. “The Land Is Changing:  Contested Agricultural Narratives in Northern Malawi.” In Contesting Development: Critical Struggles for Social Change, edited by P. McMichael, 98–115. New York: Routledge. Boserup, E. 1970. Women’s Role in Economic Development. London: Allen & Unwin. Brown, L. 2008. World Facing Huge New Challenge on Food Front: Business-as-Usual Not an Option. Washington, DC: Earth Policy Institute. Caro, P. 2011. Food Sovereignty:  Exploring Debates on Development Alternatives and Women’s Rights. Toronto: Association for Women’s Rights in Development. Chu, J. 2011. “Gender and ‘Land Grabbing’ in Sub-Saharan Africa:  Women’s Land Rights and Customary Land Tenure.” Development 54(1): 35–39. Clapp, J., and M. Cohen, eds. 2009. The Global Food Crisis: Governance Challenges and Opportunities. Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press. Cohen, M., and J. Garrett. 2010. “The Food Price Crisis and Urban Food (In)Security.” Environment and Urbanization 22(2): 467–482. Dankelman, I., and J. Davidson. 1988. Women and Environment in the Third World: Alliance for the Future. London: Earthscan. Food and Agriculture Organization. 2008. The State of Food Insecurity in the World. Rome: Author. Food and Agriculture Organization. 2012. “Men and Women in Agriculture: Closing the Gap.” Rome: Author. http://www.fao.org/sofa/gender/en/ Garrett, J., and M. Ruel. 1999. “Are Determinants of Rural and Urban Food Security Different? Some Insights from Mozambique.” World Development 27(11): 1955–1975. Goebel, A. 2005. Gender and Land Reform:  The Zimbabwe Experience. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s Press. Hall, R. 2011. “Land Grabbing in Southern Africa:  The Many Faces of the Investor Rush.” Review of African Political Economy 38(128): 193–214.

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Whitehead, A., and D. Tsikata. 2003. “Policy Discourses on Women’s Land Rights in Sub-Saharan Africa: The Implications of the Re-Turn to the Customary.” Journal of Agrarian Change 3(1–2): 67–112. World Food Programme. 2012. “Who Are the Hungry?” Rome: Author. www.wfp.org/ hunger/who-are Zoomers, A. 2011. “Introduction:  Rushing for Land:  Equitable and Sustainable Development in Africa, Asia and Latin America.” Development 54(1): 12–20.

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PART THREE

Chemicals and Environmental Health: Defining Safety

CHAPTER 11

Endocrine Disruptors in the Environment NANC Y L ANGSTON

INTRODUCTION

Since World War II, the production of synthetic chemicals has increased more than 30-fold due to the post-war boom in petrochemical exploration, manufacture, and marketing. The modern chemical industry, now a global enterprise of $2 trillion annually, is central to the world economy, as it generates millions of jobs and consumes vast quantities of energy and raw materials. Today, more than 70,000 different industrial chemicals are synthesized and sold each year (Chandler 2005; McCoy et al. 2006). New technologies and methods for the detection of these synthetic chemicals have drawn increasing attention to the pervasive and persistent presence of hormone-disrupting chemicals in our lives. Hormones—the chemicals that deliver messages throughout the body in order to coordinate physical processes—are deeply sensitive to external interference, and the consequences of such interference are becoming ever more apparent. In July 2005, the Centers for Disease Control (2005) released its Third National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals, revealing that industrial chemicals now permeate bodies and ecosystems. Many of these chemicals can interfere with the body’s hormonal signaling system (called the endocrine system), and many persistently resist the metabolic processes that bind and break down natural hormones. More than 358 industrial chemicals and pesticides have been detected in the cord blood of minority American infants (Environmental Working Group 2009).

Accumulating data suggests that reproductive problems are also increasing across a broad range of animals, from Great Lakes fish to people. Many researchers suspect that the culprits are environmental exposures to synthetic chemicals that disrupt hormonal signals, particularly in the developing fetus. Endocrine-disrupting chemicals are not rare; they include the most common synthetic chemicals in production, such as many pesticides, plastics, and pharmaceutical drugs. Since World War II, synthetic endocrine-disrupting chemicals have permeated bodies and ecosystems throughout the globe, potentially with profound health and ecological effects (Krimsky 2000). HORMONE ACTIVITY

Hormones are chemical signals that regulate communication among cells and organs, thus orchestrating a complex process of fetal development that relies on precise dosage and timing. Anything that scrambles the messages from hormone-signaling systems can alter patterns of development and health, just as scrambling airplane radio systems can alter flight patterns. The plane might not crash, but the static can disrupt the signals necessary for clear communication. The consequences may sometimes be minor, such as when the plane is in midflight at a steady altitude, but at other times—during takeoff and landing, for instance—scrambled messages create havoc. Similarly, when synthetic chemicals alter hormone-signaling systems, adults might be resilient to the changes, but fetuses and young children can experience permanent transformations (McLachlan 2001). Compounds that have little effect on adults can disrupt hormone signaling pathways that have key effects on fetal development (Newbold et al. 2007). Follow-up studies on the usage of diethylstilbestrol (a synthetic version of estrogen, the female sex hormone), for example, showed how profound the effects of fetal estrogen exposure could be on the developing reproductive tract (Langston 2010). Ever since endocrine-disrupting chemicals were first commercially produced in the 1940s, their hormonal mechanisms of action have posed novel challenges for scientists and regulatory agencies seeking to protect public health because they do not easily fit within traditional risk paradigms. Toxicologists customarily based their paradigms of risk on natural toxins that caused acute poisoning at high doses. As the environmental scientist John Peterson Myers (2006) writes, “Traditional toxicants are thought to work by starting a process (or stopping one) by overwhelming the body’s defense system. Up to some

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level of contamination, the body can defend itself against chemical assaults.” Thus the accepted method of evaluating a chemical’s toxicity was to simply keep increasing the dose until adverse effects occurred. The safe exposure level was then calculated at a point below that threshold. However, chemicals that disrupt hormone systems act in a variety of ways, usually by changing signals that direct complex processes with intricate feedback loops. Even today, a popular Yale University website on poisons teaches that “the dose makes the poison.” All toxins, this website states, are dose dependent:  “The toxic effect of a substance increases as the exposure (or dose) to the susceptible biological system increases. For all chemicals there is a dose response curve, or a range of doses that result in a graded effect between the extremes of no effect and 100% response (toxic effect). All chemical substances will exhibit a toxic effect given a large enough dose. If the dose is low enough even a highly toxic substance will cease to cause a harmful effect” (Yale Office of Environmental Health and Safety 2002). Endocrine disruptors, however, violate every aspect of this definition of risk: Dose: The effects of endocrine disruptors are often not dose dependent. Classic natural toxins such as poisonous mushrooms typically show a dose-response curve, with larger doses leading to more harmful effects than smaller doses (often in a linear relation:  twice as much toxin leads to twice the effect). In contrast, endocrine disruptors may show greater effects at lower doses, depending on the timing of exposure rather than the dose alone. Threshold: Natural toxins usually have a threshold of safety, or what is called a “no observable adverse effect level.” Endocrine disruptors often lack this threshold. Even a single molecule diluted in a trillion molecules of water may have potential activity. These biological effects occur at doses that are orders of magnitude lower than current dose limits for other toxins. Age: The effects of endocrine disruptors often do not correlate to the size or weight of the exposed individual, as is usual with traditional toxins. The age of the exposed individual (rather than size) is often the critical factor. Infants and developing fetuses are most at risk, while adults can often show entirely different effects. Timing: Endocrine disruptors often have effects that are not apparent immediately after exposure. A person exposed to synthetic endocrine disruptors in utero (in the mother’s womb) might show no harm at birth but might develop cancer or reproductive problems at puberty.

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EPIGENETICS AND DEVELOPMENT

Hormones orchestrate the complex dance of fetal development. They tell various genes to turn on and off while also directing cellular replication and morphogenesis (the processes that transform simple collections of cells into complex organs). An embryo must develop from just two cells into an organism with trillions of cells and many organs, and hormonal signals guide the fetus through these developmental paths. Synthetic chemicals can disrupt critical steps, thus leading to effects that may become apparent only decades later, when the child reaches adulthood. As described by Haig (2012), “the [epigenetics] movement is a broad tent that unites studies of the effects of environmental toxins on gene expression, of the fetal origins of adult disease and of how early rearing affects adult behaviour” (p. 15). Since the 1990s, an explosion of research in epigenetics has transformed conceptual models of gene–environment effects on the developing fetus. Every cell in the body contains the individual’s entire genetic code. But brain cells must use only the genes needed by the brain, while kidney cells should activate only the genes needed for renal function. Epigenetic processes direct how these different parts of the genome are activated or silenced during development. Cells commonly control gene behavior by a process called DNA methylation, which involves attaching small molecules known as methyl groups to specific sections of DNA. The attachment and detachment of methyl groups is particularly important in the fetal development of the reproductive system, and hormones play key roles in these epigenetic processes. Recent research in epigenetics has shown that endocrine disrupting chemicals, particularly those that mimic the effects of estrogen, may alter DNA methylation, thus promoting reproductive and sexual problems across subsequent generations (Crews et al. 2007). Exposure of the fetus to toxic chemicals can permanently reprogram tissue in a way that determines whether tumors will develop in adulthood. Many cells have tumor-suppressor genes that keep tumors from becoming malignant. Chemical exposure can lead to epigenetic changes that silence these genes, even when their DNA sequence is unchanged. Likewise, cells also contain tumor-promoter genes, which are normally suppressed. Exposure to synthetic chemicals can block the suppression of these genes, thereby allowing them to promote the growth of tumors. In animals bred to contain genes that make them particularly susceptible to fibroid tumors, those genes are normally suppressed, but exposure to toxic chemicals like the synthetic estrogen diethylstilbestrol (DES) will turn those genes on in the fetus, and tumors will develop years later.

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Newbold and colleagues (2006) exposed young mice to DES and observed epigenetic changes in the DNA that could cause the onset of cancerous growths in adulthood. Even quite low doses of DES altered methylation patterns and increased uterine tumor incidence, and these changes could pass from one generation to the next.

WILDLIFE AND ENDOCRINE DISRUPTORS

In the 1980s the researcher Theo Colborn of the Conservation Foundation began documenting wildlife responses to pollutants in the Great Lakes. About one-fifth of US industries and one-half of Canadian industries are located along the Great Lakes or tributary streams, making the region a microcosm for problems with pollutants in industrial society. Colborn found no shortage of wildlife problems in the area, but few consistent patterns emerged. Some studies suggested elevated rates of cancer in certain species and others showed impaired fetal development, while still others found behavioral changes in wildlife. Little seemed to tie these results together until Colborn learned of research by the biologist Frederick vom Saal, who showed that developing fetuses could be extraordinarily sensitive to tiny differences in fetal hormones. Vom Saal had noticed that female mice from the same litter showed dramatic differences in size and aggression. Because these mice were genetically identical, something other than genes was determining their differences. A female mouse’s position in the womb turned out to powerfully influence her behavior when she reached adulthood. In the mother’s uterus, females positioned next to their developing brothers were exposed to more androgens than those next to their sisters. In maturity, the mice located near their brothers were more aggressive and slower to mature, not because of genetic differences but because of tiny differences in prenatal hormones (vom Saal and Bronson 1980; vom Saal 1989). Vom Saal’s work made Colborn wonder whether the effects she was seeing in Great Lakes species might be linked to fetal development. If exposure to tiny doses of hormones could lead to significant effects later in life for laboratory animals, might the same be true for wildlife? Could synthetic chemicals be disrupting the endocrine system in developing fetuses? Colborn hypothesized that certain chemicals in the Great Lakes were mimicking estrogen, thus influencing the action of steroid hormones on fetal development, which in turn led to reproductive problems in adulthood (Krimsky 2000). Colborn, with John Peterson Myers and Dianne Dumanoski, went on to write Our Stolen Future (1996). This book, in synthesizing results

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from across different fields, brought the attention of researchers and the public to the emerging field of endocrine disruption. Our Stolen Future stimulated a great deal of controversy as well as new research. The more researchers looked, the more they found that rivers and streams were contaminated with chemicals that had the potential to affect reproduction in wildlife. In the effluent of sewage plants, scientists found male carp and walleyes that were not making sperm but were instead producing high quantities of vitellogenin, an egg-yolk protein typically made by females (Vajda et  al. 2008). Other studies in the Great Lakes region found male white perch that had developed intersex characteristics (Fox 2001). Students on a biology field trip in Florida noticed that every mosquitofish they found seemed to be a male, for each had a gonopodium-an anal fin that males use for copulation. But many of these apparent males turned out to be pregnant, and the students discovered that many of them were actually females that had developed gonopodia. As the biologist Mike Howell discovered, the problem was that wastes from pulp and paper mills were contaminated with chemicals that acted like testosterone. Around the world, female killifish, sailfin mollys, blue-gill sunfish, American eels, and Swedish eelpouts had all become masculinized in streams that contained pulp-mill waste (Jenkins et al. 2001). Male Atlantic cod and winter flounder showed reduced testosterone levels, which hampered reproduction, while female Atlantic croakers (a kind of fish) were not developing normal ovaries. Other fish species have also become feminized by synthetic chemicals that mimic estrogen. In some western US rivers, male Chinook salmon have developed female characteristics, a phenomenon that has complicated restoration efforts (Nagler et al. 2001). Problems with reproductive health were not limited to fish. Once researchers began looking, they found similar issues in numerous other species. Male alligators exposed to DDT in Florida’s Lake Apopka developed penises that, at one-half to one-third the typical size, were too small to function (Guillette 1994). Two-thirds of male Florida panthers had cryptorchidism, a hormonally related condition in which the testes do not descend. Prothonotary warblers in Alabama, sea turtles in Georgia, and mink and otters around the Great Lakes all showed reproductive changes. Male porpoises did not have enough testosterone to reproduce, while polar bears on the Arctic island of Svarlbard developed intersex characteristics. In one particularly disturbing example, Gerald A. LeBlanc of North Carolina State University in Raleigh found that more than 100 species of marine snails were experiencing a condition known as imposex, a pollution-induced masculinization. Affected females could develop a malformed penis that

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blocked their release of eggs. Engorged by eggs that could not get out, many snails died (LeBlanc 2000). Despite evidence that individual fish were affected by estrogenic chemicals in laboratory settings, until 2007 it was unclear whether low-level environmental exposures to such compounds could affect entire populations. Whole-lake experiments on fathead minnows in the Experimental Lakes Area of Ontario showed that chronic exposure to ecologically relevant levels of a synthetic estrogen led to intersex males, altered oogenesis in females, and resulted in the collapse and near-extinction of the fish from the lake (Kidd et al. 2007).

BISPHENOL A

Many modern plastics leach extremely low levels of endocrine-disrupting chemicals into the environment, levels so low that conventional risk assessments have minimized their danger. Yet because plastics have become ubiquitous in our daily environments, we are exposed to these chemicals from birth to death. When levels are low but exposure is chronic, calculating the potential risks of human exposure becomes extremely contentious, as the controversy over bisphenol A (BPA) illustrates. Synthesized in 1891 by the Russian scientist A. P. Dianin, BPA has two phenol rings joined together by a carbon bond. BPA, in fact, was one of the chemicals that the British chemist Charles Dodds and his colleagues noted had estrogenic activity in laboratory animals. In 1936, the researchers announced their discovery that BPA was a reasonably potent estrogen, though not as powerful as the natural estrogens (Dodds and Lawson 1936). Endocrinologists expressed interest in the chemical’s potential as a commercial estrogen, but this interest waned in 1938 when Dodds synthesized DES, which proved far more estrogenic (Dodds et al. 1938). BPA received little attention for the next fifteen years until chemists discovered they could polymerize it, linking molecules together to form long chains that would become a key constituent of hard, clear polycarbonate. Between 1980 and 2000, the production of BPA grew sixfold. Over 6 billion pounds of the chemical are now produced each year, and sales generate billions of dollars annually (Burridge 2003). Polymerization appeared to promise an inexpensive, stable plastic with many uses, including CDs, DVDs, lower-cost glasses lenses, durable, reusable water bottles, and other consumer goods. However, the bond that links the monomers (small molecular building blocks) is not particularly stable in water or food. When

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the bond decays, BPA leaches out of the plastics that contain it, thus making its way into the environment (Howdeshell et al. 2003). The first suggestion that BPA might affect development came when a group of researchers led by Patricia Hunt were exploring the chromosomal changes that occur in egg cells from aging mice. The controls suddenly began showing numerous chromosomal abnormalities. Hunt traced the problem to contamination from BPA released from degrading polycarbonate plastic in the animal cages (Hunt et al. 2003). A year later Japanese researchers demonstrated that the placenta does not act as a barrier to BPA, just as it does not block DES from reaching the fetus. Maternally ingested BPA reached maximum concentrations in the fetuses of lab rats in only twenty minutes (Miyakoda et al. 1999). Newbold and colleagues (2007) found that low-dose exposure to BPA by developing fetuses had effects that emerged in the adult. While experimental treatment with BPA increased miscarriage rates, if the pregnant rodent carried offspring to term, the female offspring also show higher rates of miscarriages when they reach adulthood. A single chemical exposure, therefore, may affect three generations: the exposed mother, the developing daughter, and that daughter’s potential offspring. In 2005 epidemiological studies on people showed that women with a history of recurrent miscarriage had higher levels of BPA in their blood than women who had been able to carry their pregnancies to term (Sugiura-Ogasawara et al. 2005). While such studies are suggestive, epidemiological studies on people and experimental studies on laboratory animals do not provide firm proof that synthetic chemicals, at low doses, cause harm in humans (Calafat et al. 2005). It is unlikely we will ever have such proof, because potential human health effects (such as birth defects, infertility, fetal death, diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular disease) have numerous complex causes, many of them unrelated to synthetic chemicals. Over 5,000 research studies on BPA’s hormonal effects have been published, yet controversy over the potential risks of human exposure continues to grow, as explored elsewhere in this collection. Exploratory laboratory animal studies have shown that BPA can alter the behavior of more than 200 genes, and these genes influence how cells multiply, how stem cells become more specialized, how metabolism is regulated, and how the brain develops (Ranjit et al. 2009; Vandenberg et al. 2009). Yet it is often unclear what relevance these genetic endpoints might have for human or environmental health (Hengstler et al. 2011; Vandenberg et al. 2009). Numerous experiments, particularly those used for risk-assessment purposes, have not found low-level adverse effects in laboratory animals (Tyl 2009; Vandenberg et al. 2009; Henglster et al. 2011).

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Recent epidemiological studies have found correlations between BPA levels in the urine and adverse human health effects such as diabetes (Lang et  al. 2008), breast cancer (Yang et  al. 2009), and cardiovascular disease (Melzer et al. 2010). Such associations are often difficult to interpret because BPA has a short half-life in human urine. Nonetheless, one Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study found the presence of BPA in urine samples from 90% of subjects, an outcome that suggests that exposure is chronic. Moreover, measurements of BPA in the urine of adults tell us little about in utero or early childhood BPA exposures in that same individual (the time when exposure would be expected to increase the risk of many diseases; Hengstler et al. 2011). It is not legal or ethical to conduct controlled experiments with a potentially harmful chemical on humans, so researchers cannot test for direct experimental evidence of human harm. Critics of BPA point out that society is, in effect, conducting a vast but uncontrolled experiment by allowing chronic exposure.

CONCLUSION

Because fetal development is so complex and because low-dose exposures to endocrine disrupting chemicals are so difficult to monitor, it can be difficult to determine exactly what exposures are likely to cause significant harm. People are exposed not to one chemical but to many chemicals, and those chemicals may have effects that magnify or counteract each other. Epidemiological correlations suggest paths for future research, but they rarely offer firm proof of either safety or harm. The body is an ecosystem of its own, yet one linked to the outside world. Like all ecosystems, the body is constantly undergoing disturbances—natural toxins, parasites, mutagens. Health is not the absence of stress, disturbance, or toxins; it is the ability to respond to these stresses. The immune response and mechanisms of cellular and DNA repair are all part of a complicated ecosystem that regulates and repairs the human body. Amphibians, for example, are often exposed to parasites such as trematodes, and throughout their evolutionary history they have evolved a set of responses to these parasites. Exposure to endocrine-disrupting pesticides, such as the common herbicide atrazine, changes their ability to respond. In 2002, the ecologist Joseph M. Kiesecker linked increased trematode infection and limb deformities to pesticide exposure. Trematodes alone may not harm a developing frog. Pesticides alone may not harm the frog either. But in the presence of trematodes, pesticides can disrupt the frog’s ability to respond to parasites and other threats in its ecosystem, thus causing limb deformities (Kiesecker 2002).

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Endocrine disruptors concern ecologists of health not simply because they have the potential to harm the body, for bodies are constantly adapting to substances that can cause harm. Rather endocrine disruptors may transform the body’s ecological repair mechanisms, often at the biochemical level. In particular, they alter the epigenetic processes that link environment and gene, thus leading to changes in gene expression and in turn to changes in the numbers and types of immune cells in the blood (as well as changes in hormone production and metabolism). They alter ecological processes of human health, just as they alter broader ecosystem processes. Recently, Crews and Gore (2011) and Wingfield and Mukai (2009) have called for endocrine disruptor research that examines the effects of populations and life history strategies (demographic parameters influencing survival and reproduction, such as age of sexual maturity and first reproduction, and number of offspring). Climate change, habitat loss, and the complex effects of chemical mixtures all suggest that while mechanisms will remain important, understanding the effects of endocrine disruptor chemicals on individuals and populations will require broader studies that examine not just mechanisms but also the ways synthetic chemical exposures affect broader ecological interrelationships. For example, during a lively discussion about whether low levels of organochlorine contaminants continued to affect fish population recoveries in the Great Lakes, Carpenter and colleagues (1995) were skeptical about population-scale effects from individual exposures. As they pointed out, individuals can experience reproductive harm, yet the larger population can continue to thrive. Carpenter and colleagues suggested that in order for researchers to better understand the population effects of contaminants, it would be important to conduct whole-ecosystem experiments, which have used direct manipulation of entire ecosystems to unambiguously demonstrate the impacts of environmental factors such as acid rain. When whole-ecosystem experiments were performed on synthetic estrogens and fish populations (Kidd et al. 2007), they showed that low-dose, environmentally relevant levels of estrogenic exposure over several generations could lead a population close to extinction. Similar whole-ecosystem experiments on the environmental and health effects of chemicals such as BPA would help us understand the broader effects of chronic, continuing exposures to endocrine-disrupting chemicals.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Portions of this essay have been excerpted from Nancy Langston, Toxic Bodies:  Hormone Disruptors and the Legacy of DES (New Haven, CT:  Yale

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University Press, 2010)  and are reprinted with permission from Yale University Press. REFERENCES Burridge, E. 2003. “Bisphenol A Product Profile.” European Chemical News 17: 14–20. Calafat, A.M., Z. Kuklenyik, J.A. Reidy, S.P. Caudill, J. Ekong, and L.L. Needham. 2005. “Urinary Concentrations of Bisphenol A and 4-Nonylphenol in a Human Reference Population.” Environmental Health Perspectives 113: 391–395. Carpenter, S., L.J. Jackson, J.F. Kitchell, and C.A. Stow. 1995. “Organochlorine Contaminants in the Great Lakes: Response.” Ecological Applications 6: 971–974. Chandler, A.D. 2005. Shaping the Industrial Century:  The Remarkable Story of the Evolution of the Modern Chemical and Pharmaceutical Industries. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Colborn, T., D. Dumanoski, and J.P. Myers. 2006. Our Stolen Future:  Are We Threatening Our Fertility, Intelligence, and Survival? A  Scientific Detective Story. New York: Dutton. Crews, D., and A.C. Gore. 2011. “Life Imprints:  Living in a Contaminated World.” Environmental Health Perspectives 19: 1208. Crews, D., A. Gore, T. Hsu, N. Dangleben, M. Spinetta, T. Schallert, et  al. 2007. “Transgenerational Epigenetic Imprints on Mate Preference.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104: 5942–5946. Dodds, E.C., L. Goldberg, W. Lawson, and R. Robinson. 1938. “Oestrogenic Activity of Certain Synthetic Compounds.” Nature 141: 247–249. Dodds, E.C., and W. Lawson. 1936. “Synthetic Oestrogenic Agents without the Phenanthrene Nucleus.” Nature 137: 996. Environmental Working Group. 2009. “Pollution in Minority Newborns.” Washington, DC. http://www.ewg.org/research/minority-cord-blood-report Fox, G.A. 2001. “Wildlife as Sentinels of Human Health Effects in the Great Lakes. St. Lawrence Basin.” Environmental Health Perspectives 109: 853–861. Guillette, L.H. Jr., T.S. Gross, G.R. Masson, J.M. Matter, H.F. Percival, and A.R. Woodward. 1994. “Developmental Abnormalities of the Gonad and Abnormal Sex Hormone Concentrations in Juvenile Alligators from Contaminated and Control Lakes in Florida.” Environmental Health Perspectives 102: 680–688. Haig, D. 2012. “Commentary: The Epidemiology of Epigenetics.” International Journal of Epidemiology 41: 13–16. Hengstler, J.G., H. Foth, T. Gebel, P.J. Kramer, W. Lilienblum, H. Schweinfurth, et al. 2011. “Critical Evaluation of Key Evidence on the Human Health Hazards of Exposure to Bisphenol A.” Critical Reviews in Toxicology 41: 263–291. Howdeshell, K.L., P.H. Peterman, B.M. Judy, J.A. Taylor, C.E. Orazio, R. Ruhlen, et al. 2003. “Bisphenol A Is Released from Used Polycarbonate Animal Cages into Water at Room Temperature.” Environmental Health Perspectives 111: 1180–1187. Hunt, P.A., K.E. Koehler, M. Susiarjo, C.A. Hodges, A. Ilagan, R.C. Voigt, et al. 2003. “Bisphenol A Exposure Causes Meiotic Aneuploidy in the Female Mouse.” Current Biology 13: 546–553. Jenkins, R., R.A. Angus, H. McNatt, W.M. Howell, J.A. Kemppainen, M. Kirk, et  al. 2001. “Identification of Androstenedione in a River Containing Paper Mill Effluent.” Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry 20: 1325–1331. Kidd, K.A., P.J. Blanchfield, K.H. Mills, V.P. Palace, R.E. Evans, J.M. Lazorchak, et al. 2007. “Collapse of a Fish Population after Exposure to a Synthetic Estrogen.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104: 8897–8901.

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Kiesecker, J.M. 2002. “Synergism between Trematode Infection and Pesticide Exposure: A Link to Amphibian Limb Deformities in Nature?” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 99: 9900–9904. Krimsky, S. 2000. Hormonal Chaos: The Scientific and Social Origins of the Environmental Endocrine Hypothesis. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Lang, I.A., T.S. Galloway, A. Scarlett, W.E. Henley, M. Depledge, R.B. Wallace, et al. 2008. “Association of Urinary Bisphenol A Concentration with Medical Disorders and Laboratory Abnormalities in Adults.” Journal of the American Medical Association 300: 1303–1310. Langston, N. 2010. Toxic Bodies: Hormone Disruptors and the Legacy of DES. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. LeBlanc, G.A. 2000. “Steroid Hormone-Regulated Processes in Invertebrates and their Susceptibility to Environmental Endocrine Disruption.” In Environmental Endocrine Disrupters: An Evolutionary Perspective, edited by L.H. Guillette Jr. and D.A. Crain, 126–154. London: Taylor & Francis. McCoy, M., M. Reisch, A.H. Tullo, P.L. Short, J. Tremblay, and W. J. Storck. 2006. “Facts & Figures of the Chemical Industry.” Chemical & Engineering News 84(28): 35–72. McLachlan, J.A. 2001. “Environmental Signaling: What Embryos and Evolution Teach Us about Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals.” Endocrine Reviews 22: 319–341. Melzer, D., N.E. Rice, C. Lewis, W.E. Henley, and T.S. Galloway. 2010. “Association of Urinary Bisphenol A Concentration with Heart Disease: Evidence from NHANES 2003–06.” PLoS One 5: e8673. Miyakoda, H., M. Tabata, S. Onodera, and K. Takeda. 1999. “Passage of Bisphenol A into the Fetus of the Pregnant Rat.” Journal of Health Science 45: 318–323. Myers, J.P. 2006. “Why Endocrine Disruption Challenges Current Approaches to Regulation of Chemicals.” http://www.ourstolenfuture.org/Basics/challenge. htm Nagler, J., J. Bouma, G.H. Thorgaard, and D.D. Dauble. 2001. “High Incidence of a Male-Specific Genetic Marker in Phenotypic Female Chinook Salmon from the Columbia River.” Environmental Health Perspectives 109: 67–69. Newbold, R.R., W.N. Jefferson, and E. Padilla-Banks. 2007. “Long-Term Adverse Effects of Neonatal Exposure to Bisphenol A on the Murine Female Reproductive Tract.” Reproductive Toxicology 24: 253–258. Newbold, R.R., E. Padilla-Banks, and W.N. Jefferson. 2006. “Adverse Effects of the Model Environmental Estrogen Diethylstilbestrol (DES) Are Transmitted to Subsequent Generations.” Endocrinology 147: S11–S17. Newbold, R.R., E. Padilla-Banks, R.J. Snyder, T.M. Phillips, and W.N. Jefferson. 2007. “Developmental Exposure to Endocrine Disruptors and the Obesity Epidemic.” Reproductive Toxicology 23: 290–296. Ranjit, N., K. Siefert, and V. Padmanabhan. 2009. “Bisphenol-A and Disparities in Birth Outcomes: A Review and Directions for Future Research.” Journal of Perinatology 30: 2–9. Sugiura-Ogasawara, M., Y. Ozaki, S. Sonta, T. Makino, and K. Suzumori. 2005. “Exposure to Bisphenol A  Is Associated with Recurrent Miscarriage.” Human Reproduction 20: 2325–2329. Tyl, R.W. 2009. “Basic Exploratory Research versus Guideline-Compliant Studies Used for Hazard Evaluation and Risk Assessment: Bisphenol A as a Case Study.” Environmental Health Perspectives 117: 1644–1651.

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Vajda, A.M., L.B. Barber, J.L. Gray, E.M. Lopez, J.D. Woodling, and D.O. Norris. 2008. “Reproductive Disruption in Fish Downstream from an Estrogenic Wastewater Effluent.” Environmental Science and Technology 42: 3407–3414. Vandenberg, L.N., I. Chahoud, V. Padmanabhan, F.J. Paumgartten, and G. Schoenfelder. 2009. “Biomonitoring Studies Should Be Used by Regulatory Agencies to Assess Human Exposure Levels and Safety of Bisphenol A.” Environmental Health Perspectives 118: 1051–1054. Vandenberg, L.N., M.V. Maffini, C. Sonnenschein, B.S. Rubin, and A.M. Soto. 2009. “Bisphenol-A and the Great Divide:  A  Review of Controversies in the Field of Endocrine Disruption.” Endocrine Reviews 30: 75–95. vom Saal, F.S. 1989. “Sexual Differentiation in Litter-Bearing Mammals: Influence of Sex of Adjacent Fetuses in Utero.” Journal of Animal Science 67: 1824–1840. vom Saal, F.S., and F. Bronson. 1980. “Sexual Characteristics of Adult Female Mice Are Correlated with their Blood Testosterone Levels during Prenatal Development.” Science 20: 597–599. Wingfield, J.C., and M. Mukai. 2009. “Endocrine Disruption in the Context of Life Cycles:  Perception and Transduction of Environmental Cues.” General and Comparative Endocrinology 163: 92–96. Yale Office of Environmental Health and Safety. 2002. “Dose Makes the Poison.” http:// learn.caim.yale.edu/chemsafe/references/dose.html Yang, M., J.H. Ryu, R. Jeon, D. Kang, and K.Y. Yoo. 2009. “Effects of Bisphenol A on Breast Cancer and its Risk Factors.” Archives of Toxicology 83: 281–285.

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CHAPTER 12

Chemicals Policy in the United States— The Need for New Directions JOEL A . T ICKNER

T

he system for regulating toxic substances in the United States is broken. It is disjointed and reactionary, lacking in information, authority, and primary prevention. The case study of bisphenol A (BPA) demonstrates a myriad of limitations with the way we evaluate, regulate, and manage toxic substances in society. The purpose of this chapter is to provide a brief overview of the current U.S. system for regulating toxic chemicals and to identify limits in that approach with particular emphasis on BPA. It provides an overview of some of the drivers shaping new approaches to chemicals regulation and management and a framework for designing more precautionary and solutions-stimulating policies in the future.

THE REGULATORY FRAMEWORK FOR CHEMICALS MANAGEMENT IN THE UNITED STATES

The U.S. system for regulating toxic chemicals in production systems and products is relatively complex. Different types of chemicals are regulated in various ways in the U.S. system, depending on how that chemical is being used. For example, cosmetics, chemicals used in food applications, medical devices, and pharmaceuticals are regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug

Administration (FDA) under the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act, and each of these types of chemical applications is regulated differently under the Act. For chemicals used in cosmetic products, the FDA has no premarket authority and can regulate a chemical ingredient only if it is misbranded or adulterates the product. In the case of new food contact substances and uses of them (indirect food additives including chemicals that might leach out of packaging such as bottles), manufacturers are required to submit notifications, including safety data, to the FDA, except when a substance is previously regulated or considered “generally recognized as safe” because earlier evidence on that material did not indicate concerns. At the FDA, the highest evidentiary burdens are for medical devices and pharmaceuticals that have strong premarket testing requirements to ensure safety and efficacy. Chemicals in many consumer products, such as toys, are regulated by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) under the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act and the Federal Hazardous Substances Act. The former gives the CPSC authority to restrict lead and phthalates (plasticizers used in PVC plastics) in toys and requires safety certification for some other chemicals. Pesticides are regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the Federal Fungicide Insecticide and Rodenticide Act (their registration and testing requirements) and the Food Quality Protection Act (their use in food). These laws require that pesticides be tested and demonstrated to have a “reasonable certainty of no harm” to children when used on food, even when considering exposures from multiple sources. Industrial chemicals are regulated by the Toxic Substances Control Act. The law requires that manufacturers or importers of new industrial chemicals submit a “pre-manufacture” notice to the EPA before they commence manufacture. The EPA can then require additional testing or restrict that chemical. For chemicals already on the market, the EPA can require testing or information on use or hazards and restrict chemicals that present unreasonable risks. The EPA also regulates emissions of chemicals in air, water, and waste disposal, whereas the Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulates exposures to chemicals in the workplace (Tickner et al. 2008; Canadian Environmental Law Association et al. 2009). Table  12.1 summarizes the various structures and agencies regulating toxic substances in products. Each law has different information and testing requirements, different review processes, and different standards of evidence required before preventive action can take place.

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Table 12.1   POLICIES REGUL ATING CHEMICALS IN PRODUCTS AND MANUFACTURING PROCESSES

Chemical Type/Use

Law

Implementing Agency

Pharmaceutical/medical device

Federal Food Drug and

Food and Drug Administration

Cosmetics

Cosmetics Act Federal Food Drug and

Food and Drug Administration

Cosmetics Act Food additive/food contact article Federal Food Drug and

Food and Drug Administration

Toys

Cosmetics Act Consumer Product

Consumer Product Safety

Safety Improvement Act

Commission

and Federal Hazardous Other types of products and

Substances Act Toxic Substances Control

Environmental Protection

manufacturing processes Pesticides

Act Federal Fungicide

Agency Environmental Protection

Rodenticide and Insecticide Agency Act and Food Quality Protection Act

A SYSTEM REPLETE WITH CHALLENGES

While on its surface the U.S. regulatory system for chemicals seems quite comprehensive, it suffers from a number of major limitations in terms of (a) limited information on chemical toxicity, uses, and exposures; (b) high evidentiary burdens to act; (c)  limited resources dedicated to primary prevention; (d)  limits in scientific tools to evaluate hazards and prevention opportunities; and (e) competing jurisdictional boundaries. Together these inhibit the ability of the system to identify and act on early warnings of potential problems and to support the informed transition to safer chemicals and products. A number of academic, government, and nongovernmental studies have outlined these problems in detail (Wilson et  al. 2006; Denison 2007; U.S. Government Accountability Office 2007). The impacts of these limitations are not hypothetical. A recent report from the European Environment Agency (2013), Late Lessons from Early Warnings II, details the impacts of society’s failure to act on early warnings of potential problems in terms of high costs to humans, ecosystems, and the economy. Given the scope of these limitations, small changes in the current systems for assessing and managing chemicals of concern will be inadequate for this large and complex problem.

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The Data Gap

During the last half century, thousands of chemical substances have been developed and put into commerce. Quite often, chemicals have been distributed even when little information is available about them, and the implications of these chemicals for environmental health have not always been considered. While we know a lot about some chemicals, for a large percentage of chemical substances there is still little information on their health implications and, more important, their exposures (including the cumulative effects of the multitude of exposures most people face) and how they are used throughout supply chains (and the economy). For example, we have little information on what chemicals are used in what products, how the chemicals can lead to consumer exposures, and what potential alternatives might exist (Wilson et al. 2006). Without such information, it is difficult to assess chemical risks, set prevention priorities, determine whether a chemical is safe, or be confident that alternatives are safer. We cannot adequately manage chemicals in society if we do not know about their toxicity or how they are used. Unfortunately, the lack of information on many chemicals is mistranslated into evidence of their safety (European Environment Agency 2001).

The Safety Gap

Even when data are available, they are fed into a system that requires high standards of evidence before preventive action can be taken. The burden is on government to make the case for why action is needed. For example, for the EPA or the CPSC to restrict the use of a chemical in a consumer product, they must first demonstrate a significant risk to health or environment, they must weigh the costs of regulation to industry against the benefits to health, and then they must choose the least burdensome means to meet a particular risk reduction goal. Further, in the case of industrial chemicals and chemicals in cosmetics and toys, there are no testing or safety requirements prior to their entrance into the marketplace (Denison 2007; Tickner et al. 2008). Such chemicals are assumed safe until demonstrated dangerous. This creates an incentive to “manufacture uncertainty” that can stall action, while, for example, the details of a mechanism of action of a chemical are being debated (Michaels 2008). While these debates occur, so do exposures. As a result of these high burdens, only a small number of chemicals have been restricted in consumer products or even in workplaces. The safety gap is even more prominent in the case of novel emerging materials,

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such as nanomaterials, where a comprehensive framework to address the unique properties of these materials does not exist (Hansen et al. 2008).

The Technology Gap

There are very few incentives under the current system to use safer chemicals if more dangerous ones are not regulated. For example, U.S. electronics manufacturers unsuccessfully struggled for years to identify and implement alternatives to lead in solder (Lowell Center for Sustainable Production 2007). When the European Union prohibited the use of lead in electronic products, the transition took place relatively quickly. This is similar to the case of chlorofluorocarbons, the ozone-depleting chemicals that were banned in the United States in 1995. While some state and federal agencies, such as the EPA, have undertaken significant steps in working with industry to design safer chemicals and products through pollution prevention, design for the environment, and green chemistry efforts, these programs tend to be underfunded and marginalized (National Research Council 2012). While significant funding has been established to support renewable energy initiatives, very little research funding is dedicated to safer chemistry. As an example, while the House of Representatives introduced the Federal Green Chemistry Research and Development Act, a bill designed to support $35 million annually in safer chemicals research, it never passed in the Senate (U.S. House of Representatives 2007). Instead, an unfunded green chemistry research program was established at the National Science Foundation under the America COMPETES Act (U.S. House of Representatives 2010). Two other major limitations in current chemicals management systems exist that are particularly relevant in the case of BPA. The Science Gap

While lack of information (the data gap) is a limitation in current chemicals policies, there is also a “science gap” that refers to the inability of our scientific methods and processes to characterize complex low-level exposures from multiple sources. As noted in other chapters, there is increasing scientific evidence indicating that low-level human exposures to certain chemicals during critical windows of vulnerability may impact developmental systems in ways that lead to lifelong, and often subtle, impacts (Thornton 2003). When our chemicals policies were designed in the 1970s, chemical concerns focused on large workplace and environmental exposures to

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a small number of chemicals from manufacturing sources—point sources. Attention was focused on acute effects and cancer. Through enhanced analytical approaches to monitor chemicals in the environment and in our bodies, scientists are discovering that humans are exposed to a wide range of chemicals at lower doses from a variety of products, such as pesticides, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, furniture foam, soft plastics, detergents, and clothing (Canadian Environmental Law Association et al. 2009). While the exact pathways by which many of these “emerging” contaminants enter the environment and our bodies (be they from long-range transport, rain, wastewater, or house dust) are not always well understood, often the original source is a particular product type—a pharmaceutical, a couch, a plastic toy, a water bottle, or a sunscreen. While large emissions from manufacturing processes are still a concern, scientists are increasingly realizing that current management systems may be inadequate to address new understandings about exposure to multiple chemicals at lower doses from products and the potential health implications. The ability to evaluate health risks and then manage dispersive and nonpoint exposure to multiple chemicals from multiple product types is currently beyond the capacity of science and policy. This is in part due to our limited (but growing) knowledge of chemical exposures and health impacts, variability in the human population, and assessment tools that were designed to assess single chemicals at relatively high exposures (Colborn et al. 1996; Thornton 2003).

The Jurisdiction Gap

As noted above, chemicals are assessed, regulated, and managed in completely different manners depending on their end use. Entirely separate legislation, regulations, and departments govern pesticides, consumer products, drugs, cosmetics, and industrial chemicals. For the general public and local-level officials addressing the impacts of chemicals of emerging concern in, for example, surface waters, there is no difference between a pesticide, a pharmaceutical, or an industrial chemical—all are chemicals. Scientifically, there is little difference between these groups other than molecular structures. Yet we have created artificial legal and jurisdictional boundaries that inhibit systems-level approaches that attempt to evaluate the intrinsic hazards of chemicals and advance safer chemicals (Canadian Environmental Law Association et al. 2009). Such disjointed policies can also lead to unintended consequences, where actions to protect one population result in changes that impact another. For example, air quality regulations in various jurisdictions have forced the substitution of certain

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solvents that are hazardous air pollutants. Restrictions on the use of the solvent perchloroethylene led to a number of problematic substitutions, including n-hexane in vehicle repair applications and n-propyl bromide in dry cleaning and degreasing (Wilson et al. 2007; Kriebel et al. 2011). While these chemicals were relatively easy to implement as “drop-in” substitutes, both pose neurotoxicological risks to workers.

IMPLICATIONS OF A REACTIVE AND DISJOINTED CHEMICALS MANAGEMENT SYSTEM—THE CASE OF BPA

The case of BPA highlights the limitations of the current disjointed, reactive, chemical-by-chemical approach to chemicals assessment and management in the United States. No single agency has responsibility for BPA regulation: In medical devices and food contact articles, such as bottles and can linings, it is regulated by the FDA (though with different evidence and burdens for medical devices versus food contact articles); its use in toys is regulated by the CPSC; and its use in thermal tape, vinyl pipe, and other products is regulated by the EPA. BPA exposure to workers is regulated by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, though this agency has no standard limiting exposure to the chemical. While at times agencies may collaborate to share toxicological and exposure information on a chemical of concern that spans multiple agencies, this is not the norm. While research on the potential health impacts of BPA dates back some sixty years, it has grown significantly since 2000. Yet numerous uncertainties remain about major sources of exposure, how the chemical is distributed and metabolized in the body, and the extent to which effects seen in animals are transferable to humans. These uncertainties have led to vigorous debates over “how bad” BPA really is. Competing expert panels have come to differing conclusions, and in the meantime the U.S. National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences has set aside more than $30 million for research on the contribution of low-dose exposures of BPA to obesity, diabetes, and other chronic effects. Government agencies in several states and countries have moved to restrict BPA in baby bottles and other children’s articles and can linings. The U.S. EPA established an action plan for BPA that includes research on alternatives to BPA in thermal tape. Meanwhile, well-organized advocacy efforts resulted in significant media attention and very rapid marketplace substitution of BPA, even among companies that had previously vigorously defended products containing BPA (Tickner 2011). These efforts led to a 2012 industry request for the FDA to issue a restriction on BPA for use in infant bottles and sippy cups (FDA, 2013).

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There are several key lessons here: Despite significant funding for basic research on BPA, there is still significant uncertainty as to pathways of exposure and the biological mechanisms by which it may have adverse health effects. Uncertainty will always exist when assessing chemical risks. While toxicological and exposure research is important to reducing uncertainties, it will not lead to preventive action on its own. It is unreasonable to assume that millions of dollars can be invested to evaluate each of the tens of thousands of chemicals in commerce today. The example of BPA highlights a large problem in our system:  a focus on characterizing problems in terms of causes and mechanisms as the basis for subsequent action. Such a reactive approach can lead to extended debates over mechanisms, dueling scientists and scientific panels, and, ultimately, inaction. Current laws place a high burden on government agencies to demonstrate the risks of chemicals before taking preventive regulatory action. Given that any particular decision may be challenged in the courts, agencies are often forced to require significant scientific knowledge of the hazard (Applegate 2000). This is reinforced by a scientific paradigm that focuses on securing detailed explanations of causality before issuing conclusions or recommendations―what might be called a “knowledge-first” approach (Sarewitz et al. 2010). An example of a different, more proactive and solutions-oriented approach is used in Massachusetts to address trichloroethylene (TCE), the carcinogenic solvent and frequent contaminant in hazardous waste sites. For almost twenty years, the U.S. EPA struggled to publish a risk assessment to evaluate the human health risks from TCE with significant attention focused on mechanisms by which it causes cancer. On the other hand, under the Massachusetts Toxics Use Reduction Act, even in the absence of a strong explanation as to how TCE causes cancer, manufacturers using this chemical were required to understand how and why they were using the chemical and evaluate alternatives. Even without definitive evidence on the mechanisms by which TCE causes cancer, there was enough evidence to indicate that the chemical should be avoided where possible. With technical support funded by a small fee on chemicals, Massachusetts manufacturers using TCE in degreasing metal parts were able to evaluate and implement safer, water-based alternatives, thus reducing use of the chemical by some 95% in the state and saving companies money (National Research Council 2012). In the United States, consumer and marketplace pressure became the key driver of actions to substitute other substances for BPA in some applications (though policies in some states helped hasten this substitution). Yet government agencies were unprepared to guide the transition to

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safer substitutes. While millions of dollars have been invested in studying detailed aspects of BPA exposure and toxicity, barely any funding has been made available to evaluate alternatives to BPA. BPA serves an important function as a monomer for polycarbonate plastics (which are costly and have highly regarded impact resistance and optical clarity properties) and in resins. Government agencies and researchers for the most part have failed to evaluate or develop a range of safer chemical and material alternatives for important “functional uses” of BPA (Tickner 2011). To minimize business interruption, manufacturers of water bottles, for example, were seeking “drop-in” solutions that were cost-effective and performed well. Early research indicates that a number of plastic materials that are serving as replacements for BPA may be toxic themselves. Plastic BPA replacements may also exhibit estrogenic activity (meaning they may disrupt normal estrogen hormone activity that can lead to reproductive or developmental problems), a health endpoint of concern for BPA (Tickner et al. 2013). Hence, as in the case of replacements for flame retardants in electronic housings and furniture foam, businesses and the government agencies that regulate these companies may be forced to jump from the “frying pan into the fire” in the future, evaluating and possibly restricting substitutes. Much of the national regulatory debate in the United States on BPA has focused on the FDA, which regulates BPA use in food contact applications. The FDA approach to safety focuses on whether a particular chemical used in food contact applications meets the “safety standard,” a standard of unreasonable risk from exposure to a material (which is not clearly defined by the agency; Tickner 2011). Once a chemical is already on the market for a particular food contact use, it is extremely difficult to remove it. For example, BPA came on the market as a food contact material at a time when scientific concerns about low-level exposures to endocrine disrupting chemicals had not yet been established. The safety standard approach is buttressed by an approach to scientific evidence that demands very particular types of research that provide strong certainty of a problem before action to remove a material from the market (Tickner 2012). Information on the availability of safer alternatives to meet a particular function is not part of the evaluation of whether a material meets the safety standard or should be restricted. Further, the EPA could not use its expertise to evaluate alternatives to BPA in bottles or can linings because this would be outside the agency’s jurisdiction. The agency could focus its evaluation of alternatives on BPA only in thermal tape (Davies et  al. 2013). Given the wide range of uses of BPA—dental, food contact, solvents, safety items— and the range of agencies that regulate it in these different uses—there is

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no coordinated national approach to substituting uses of concern for BPA and implementing safer alternatives.

NEW DRIVERS FOR NEW SOLUTIONS

Despite the many limitations of current federal government chemicals management efforts in the United States, there are a number of important drivers for safer chemistry, and these drivers are advancing progress to address knowledge gaps at the state, international, and corporate levels. They provide evidence and hope that proactive, sustainable solutions to address our toxic chemical crisis can be developed. There is increasing recognition that the current way we manage chemicals is costly and a contributing factor to disease and environmental degradation. For example, in 2010 the U.S. President’s Cancer Panel reported that “the true burden of environmentally induced cancer has been grossly underestimated . . . the prevailing regulatory approach in the United States is reactionary rather than precautionary . . . the burgeoning number and complexity of known or suspected environmental carcinogens compel us to act to protect health, even though we may lack irrefutable proof of harm” (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 2011). The panel recommended research and development of safer chemicals and materials. The Centers for Disease Control-sponsored National Conversation on Chemical Exposures (2011) came to similar conclusions, as it called for new tools to evaluate alternatives to chemicals of concern. Four important factors leading to a slow transition in chemicals management include the following:

Advancing Science and Evaluation Frameworks

Scientific tools that allow scientists, regulators, and other decision makers to better understand chemical toxicity and potential exposures are expanding. A  significant investment in “21st-century toxicology” would help to bring about a rapid, relatively inexpensive way of evaluating if and how chemicals may cause harm at the cellular level. When combined with increasing knowledge about how chemical structure impacts toxicity, new rapid chemical tests, and enhanced computing power, this effort will allow scientists to gain a faster, more holistic picture of all the available evidence to weigh chemical toxicity and potential for exposure (National Research Council 2007). New tools for chemical prioritization and hazard assessment will also allow

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researchers to more rapidly categorize chemicals as being of either higher or lower concern, which will help to facilitate decision making (Tickner 2012). Such information can feed into new frameworks for evaluating and comparing chemical hazards and designing safer chemistries. One decision-making framework that is gaining importance in regulatory policy as well as in the business world is alternatives assessment. Alternatives assessment is the process for identifying and comparing potential chemical and nonchemical alternatives that could replace chemicals or technologies of concern on the basis of their hazards, performance, and economic viability (Rossi et al. 2006; Davies et al. 2013). In contrast to traditional risk assessment, which focuses on evaluating the safety of a single option, alternatives assessment is a solutions-oriented approach that supports the informed substitution of chemicals of concern. Most chemical users are not looking for a particular chemical but rather an option that performs the particular function or service in a cost-effective manner. In some cases, the particular function (e.g., antimicrobial hand soaps) may not even be necessary. If a safer, feasible alternative is available, it becomes less necessary to understand the full mechanisms of toxicity of a material. The search for safer alternatives can also cause a convergence of interests around innovation in reducing toxic chemical use, whereas the current model almost always leads to growing controversy and inaction that benefits neither health nor the private sector. In many cases, safer alternatives may not be available. In these cases, “green chemistry” innovations will be necessary. Green chemistry is an approach to chemical and production process design that reduces or eliminates the generation of hazardous materials during the manufacture, design, and application of chemistry through the application of twelve design principles (Anastas et al. 1998). New science on chemical structure and toxicity can thus be applied not only to identify chemicals that are problematic and should be regulated but also in the design process to identify safer materials (Schug 2013).

New Policies in Europe and at the State Level

While the federal government has been slow to reform decades old policies, such as the Toxic Substances Control Act, the European Union and U.S.  state governments have been the innovators in designing policies to restrict chemicals of concern and support the application of safer alternatives. The European Union and several member countries have long had policies that support substitution of specific chemicals of concern (Geiser et al. 2003). The passage of the European Union’s Registration, Evaluation, and Authorization of Chemicals (REACH) legislation in 2003 represented a wholesale revamping of chemicals management policy to respond to many [ 176 ] Tickner

of the same limitations previously noted. REACH requires that chemical manufacturers and importers provide data on chemical toxicity to authorities. It also requires that chemical manufacturers and importers understand how their chemicals are used through their supply chains and communicate information on hazards and exposures. For chemicals of high concern, such as chemicals that cause cancer, persist or bioaccumulate in the environment, or disrupt endocrine systems, companies must seek an “authorization” for their continued use, thus demonstrating that there is no safer alternative or there is an economic or social reason to continue use. To receive authorization, companies must complete an alternatives assessment and substitution plan (Fasey 2008). Momentum for policy changes in Europe fueled a range of new chemicals policy development at the state level in the United States. In the 2009–2010 state legislative session, about 350 bills related to chemicals were introduced at the state or local level. Single chemical restrictions on chemicals such as BPA, brominated flame retardants, and phthalate plasticizers have expanded to include requirements to evaluate alternatives to specific problem chemicals; chemical prioritization processes, mandatory reporting, and substitution for chemicals of concern to children in products; requirements for purchasing lower hazard cleaning chemicals; and, most recently, regulations in California requiring evaluation of alternatives for chemicals used in products of concern (Tickner 2012).

Increased Consumer Understanding and Pressure from Advocates

Increased media attention to chemicals, such as BPA, phthalates, mercury, and brominated flame retardants, has led to stronger public pressure for substitution with safer chemicals. The increased media and consumer attention is a direct result of more sophisticated advocacy organizing around toxics. Advocates have formed a number of broad coalitions at the state level, bringing together groups as diverse as medical professionals, health-affected communities (e.g., cancer groups), mothers’ organizations, workers, and traditional environmental groups to advocate for policy change (Davies 2013). They have developed tools to inform the public about chemical hazards and safer alternatives such as Healthystuff.org, the Skin Deep database, and the Good Guide.

Increasing Marketplace Pressure

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image. These brands generally do not have a strong interest in particular chemistries and can distinguish themselves in the marketplace by acting in a precautionary manner. Advocacy pressure, combined with consumer health concerns and increasing regulatory pressure, is leading many brands to exert their own market influence to demand safer chemicals in their supply chains. For example, Greenpeace has successfully obtained commitments from major footwear and apparel brands to eliminate a range of toxic chemicals from their supply chains by 2020 by focusing on the pollution that suppliers to their firms emit in China (Zero Discharge of Hazardous Chemicals 2013). Large retailers like Walmart require that chemical product suppliers provide information on chemical ingredients and in some cases substitute problem chemicals with safer alternatives. Some advocacy groups and businesses are developing tools and frameworks to support companies in evaluating and implementing safer materials, such as the PHAROS project of the Healthy Building Network, the Clean Production Action Green Screen and Biz-NGO Guide to Safer Chemicals, the SC Johnson Greenlist, the Nike Material Sustainability Index, and the Outdoor Industry Association Chemical Management Framework. These activities demonstrate that businesses will play a central role in driving the transition to safer chemistry. Government can support that role by providing tools, criteria, and appropriate incentives and disincentives (Tickner et al. 2011).

CONCLUSION—THE NEED FOR COMPREHENSIVE CHEMICALS POLICIES

There are a number of challenges to current chemicals management policies in the United States. We are seeing several transitions in our understanding of chemical uses, risks, and solutions—and we are seeing new drivers for safer chemicals. There has been a shift from concerns about a smaller number of larger-scale emissions to concerns about lower, dispersive exposures from many chemicals products. There have also been increased concerns about multiple categories of chemicals (including emerging contaminants such as pharmaceuticals and nanomaterials), as well as new interest in safer chemistry. These combined concerns and interests are causing a shift in chemicals science and policy. There is great interest in transitioning from a chemical-by-chemical risk assessment and a “control or phase-out” approach to chemicals management to a phase-in approach that focuses on identifying and stimulating the development of safer chemicals and products.

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The current ways in which we manage chemicals in society is incompatible with health, innovation, or sustainability. While the efforts and drivers noted above are a critical step forward in more effectively addressing chemical risks, there is a critical need for new, broader, and proactive approaches to chemicals management, which could be termed “comprehensive chemicals policy.” Comprehensive chemicals policy starts with a bold goal for the future—of transitioning to safer chemicals within a generation (Geiser 2011). Such policies would be: • Integrated. They regulate all chemicals as chemicals and not by product use or media. They focus on understanding the intrinsic hazards of chemicals from their production, use, and disposal regardless of law or jurisdiction. • Transparent and information rich. They ensure the transparent flow of good information on chemical uses, hazards, exposures, and alternatives through supply chains and to the public. • Efficient. They establish robust processes that use the best available science to allow rapid chemical assessment, prioritization, and decision making without getting bogged down in detailed debates over mechanisms. • Proactive, preventive, and innovative. They focus on hazard elimination at the source and establish alternatives assessment processes that support the transition from higher hazard to lower hazard substances. They support innovation in design of newer, more environmentally compatible, and sustainable chemicals and materials. In this regard, the fact that a chemical causes human or ecosystem harm or builds up in our environment should be considered a design flaw, similar to when a bridge collapses. Toxicity reduction should be considered as important as cost and performance in the design phase of chemicals and materials (Geiser 2011). The BPA case shows that not only do we need a change in policies; we also need a change in chemicals science. We need to move from a use of science that is primarily “knowledge-based” to one that is “solutions-oriented” (Sarewitz et  al. 2010). While detailed scientific research on mechanisms of toxicity is important and valuable, the focus on problems is often at the expense of investigations that focus on solutions. To define problems without a comparable effort at finding solutions greatly diminishes the value of environmental science. A  “sustainable solutions agenda” seeks not only to characterize the evidence on hazards but also on what opportunities exist for steering the design, production, and use of technologies

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away from damage (Sarewitz et al. 2010; National Research Council 2012). In this respect, the detailed knowledge gained from studying how chemicals affect cells is used in the design of safer chemistries. The question to answer is: When do we know enough to act to prevent hazards in the first place? This is a function not only of the hazard and magnitude of exposure but also of the availability of options for prevention. The focus of chemicals science (an applied science), hence, is on intervention points rather than full knowledge, and, as such, it brings science and action together. The case example of BPA demonstrates the need for a fundamentally new approach to chemicals science and policy. While there are increasing concerns about chemical exposures and subsequent health and ecosystem impacts, there is increasing acknowledgement of the problem and the need for new solutions. Our new solutions will not only have to lead to more sustainable chemicals used in particular products such as plastics, but they will also have to support the transition to safer and more sustainable products—ones that are healthier for workers, communities, and the environment (from their production through their use and disposal), are high performing and efficient, are economically viable, and support vibrant communities (Edwards 2009). A critical question is whether policymakers will simply make small but easier changes to the system or whether they will instead recognize the need for larger systems-level changes that may be more difficult to implement but result in more sustainable outcomes. REFERENCES Anastas, P.T., and J.C. Warner. 1998. Green Chemistry Theory and Practice. New York: Oxford University Press. Applegate, J. 2000. “The Precautionary Preference:  An American Perspective on the Precautionary Principle.” Human and Ecological Risk Assessment 6: 413–443. Canadian Environmental Law Association, and Lowell Center for Sustainable Production. 2009. “The Challenges of Substances of Emerging Concern in the Great Lakes Basin: A Review of Chemicals Policies and Programs in Canada and the United States.” Toronto and Lowell, MA: Authors. http://www.chemicalspolicy.org/downloads/IJC_FINAL92009.pdf Colborn, T., J.P. Myers, and D. Dumanoski. 1996. Our Stolen Future. New York: Dutton Books. Davies, C., M. Adams, E. Connor, E. Sommer, C. Baier-Anderson, E. Lavoie, et al. 2013. “U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Design for the Environment (DfE) Alternatives Assessment Program.” In Chemical Alternatives Assessments, edited by R.E. Hester and R.M. Harrison, 198–229. Issues in Environmental Science and Technology 36. London: Royal Society of Chemistry. Davies, K. 2013. The Rise of the U.S. Environmental Health Movement. Lanham, MD: Roman & Littlefield. Denison, R.A. 2007. “Not That Innocent:  A  Comparative Analysis of Canadian, European Union and United States Policies on Industrial Chemicals.”

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Environmental Defense and Pollution Probe. http://www.edf.org/sites/default/ files/6149_NotThatInnocent_Fullreport.pdf Edwards, S. 2009. “A New Way of Thinking:  The Lowell Center Framework for Sustainable Products.” Lowell:  Lowell Center for Sustainable Production, University of Massachusetts. http://www.sustainableproduction.org/downloads/LowellCenterFrameworkforSustainableProducts11-09.09.pdf European Environment Agency. 2001. “Late Lessons from Early Warnings:  The Precautionary Principle, 1896–2000.” Copenhagen:  Author. http://www.eea. europa.eu/publications/environmental_issue_report_2001_22 European Environment Agency. 2013. “Late Lessons from Early Warnings:  Science, Precaution, Innovation.” Copenhagen:  Author. http://www.eea.europa.eu/ publications/late-lessons-2 Fasey, A. 2008. “REACH Is Here: The Politics Are Over, Now the Hard Work Starts.” Lowell: Lowell Center for Sustainable Production, University of Massachusetts. http://www.chemicalspolicy.org/downloads/REACHisHere4-2008.pdf Geiser, K. 2011. “Redesigning Chemicals Policy:  A  Very Different Approach.” New Solutions 21: 329–344. Geiser, K., and J. Tickner. 2003. “New Directions in European Chemicals Policies.” Lowell: Lowell Center for Sustainable Production, University of Massachusetts. http://www.chemicalspolicy.org/downloads/newdirectionsfinal.pdf Hansen, S., A. Maynard, A. Braun, and J. Tickner. 2008. “Late Lessons from Early Warnings for Nanotechnology.” Nature Nanotechnology 3: 444–447. Kriebel, D., M.M. Jacobs, P. Markkanen, and J. Tickner. 2011. “Lessons Learned: Solutions for Workplace Safety and Health.” Lowell: Lowell Center for Sustainable Production, University of Massachusetts. http://www.sustainableproduction.org/downloads/LessonsLearned-FullReport.pdf Lowell Center for Sustainable Production. 2007. “Clean Tech: An Agenda for a Healthy Economy.” Lowell, MA:  Author. http://www.sustainableproduction.org/downloads/UMLCleanTechDec2007.pdf Michaels, D. 2008. Doubt Is their Product: How Industry’s Assault on Science Threatens Your Health. New York: Oxford University Press. National Conversation on Public Health and Chemical Exposures. 2011. “Addressing Public Health and Chemical Exposures:  An Action Agenda.” Washington, DC:  RESOLVE. http://www.nationalconversation.us/docs/ national-conversation-document-library/national-conversation-action-agenda. pdf?Status=Master National Research Council. 2007. Toxicity Testing in the 21st Century:  A  Vision and a Strategy. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. National Research Council. 2012. Science for Environmental Protection: The Road Ahead. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. Rossi, M., J. Tickner, and K. Geiser. 2006. “Alternatives Assessment Framework of the Lowell Center for Sustainable Production.” Lowell: Lowell Center for Sustainable Production, University of Massachusetts. http://www.chemicalspolicy.org/ downloads/FinalAltsAssess06.pdf Sarewitz, D., D. Kriebel, R. Clapp, C. Crumbley, P. Hoppin, M. Jacobs, et al. 2010. The Sustainable Solutions Agenda. Lowell: Lowell Center for Sustainable Production, University of Massachusetts. http://www.sustainableproduction.org/downloads/SSABooklet.pdf Schug, T.T., R. Abagyan, B. Blumberg, T.J. Collins, D. Crews, P.L. DeFur, et al. 2013. “Designing Endocrine Disruption Out of the Next Generation of Chemicals.” Green Chemistry 15: 181–198. Ch e m i c a l s P ol i c y i n t h e U n i t e d S tat e s  

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Thornton, J. 2003. “Chemical Policy and the Precautionary Principle:  The Case of Endocrine Disruption.” In Precaution, Environmental Science and Preventive Public Health, edited by J. Tickner, 103–126. Washington, DC: Island Press. Tickner, J., and M. Coffin. 2011. “Drivers of Business Leadership in Advancing Safer Chemicals and Products:  Challenges and Opportunities.” In The Business of Sustainability: Trends, Policies, Practices and Stories of Success, I, II, III, edited by S.G. McNall, J.C. Hershauer, and G. Basile, vol. II, 123–143. New York: Praeger Press. Tickner, J., and Y. Torrie. 2008. “Presumption of Safety: Limits of Federal Policies on Toxic Substances in Consumer Products.” Lowell: Lowell Center for Sustainable Production, University of Massachusetts. http://www.chemicalspolicy.org/ downloads/UMassLowellConsumerProductBrief.pdf Tickner, J.A. 2011. “Science of Problems, Science of Solutions or Both? A Case Example of Bisphenol A.” Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 65: 649–650. Tickner, J.A. 2012. “From Reactive Chemicals Control to Comprehensive Chemicals Policy: An Evolution and Opportunity.” In Patty’s Toxicology, 6th ed., edited by E. Bingham and B. Cohrssen, 29–47. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. Tickner, J.A., K. Geiser, C. Rudisill, and J.N. Schifano. 2013. “Alternatives Assessment in Regulatory Policy:  History and Future Directions.” In Chemical Alternatives Assessments, edited by R.E. Hester and R.M. Harrison, 256–295. Issues in Environmental Science and Technology 36. London: Royal Society of Chemistry. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Cancer Institute, President’s Cancer Panel. 2008–2009. “Environmental Cancer Risk: What We Can Do Now.” Washington, DC:  Author. http://deainfo.nci.nih.gov/advisory/pcp/annualReports/pcp08-09rpt/PCP_Report_08-09_508.pdf US Food and Drug Administration: Bisphenol A (BPA): Use in Food Contact Application. Accessed April 26, 2014 at http://www.fda.gov/newsevents/publichealthfocus/ ucm064437.htm U.S. Government Accountability Office. 2007. Chemicals Regulation:  Comparison of U.S. and Recently Enacted European Approaches to Protect Against the Risk of Toxic Chemicals. GAO-07-825. Washington, DC: Author. U.S. House of Representatives. 2007. H.R. 2850, Green Chemistry Research and Development Act of 2007, 100th Congress. Washington, DC. U.S. House of Representatives. 2010. H.R. 5116, An Act to Invest in Innovation Through Research and Development, to Improve the Competitiveness of the United States, and for Other Purposes (COMPETES), 111th Congress, Washington, DC. Wilson, M.P., D.A. Chia, and B.C. Ehlers. 2006. “Green Chemistry in California:  A  Framework for Leadership in Chemicals Policy and Innovation.” Berkeley:  California Policy Research Center. http://coeh.berkeley.edu/docs/ news/06_wilson_policy.pdf Wilson, M.P., S.K. Hammond, M. Nicas, and A.E. Hubbard. 2007. “Worker Exposure to Volatile Organic Compounds in the Vehicle Repair Industry.” Journal of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene 4: 301–310. Zero Discharge of Hazardous Chemicals. 2013. “Roadmap to Zero Discharge of Hazardous Chemicals.” http://www.roadmaptozero.com/

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CHAPTER 13

Politics in a Bottle: BPA, Children’s Health, and the Fight for Toxics Reform JODY A . ROBERTS

T

he nationwide legal uprising against the chemical bisphenol A (more popularly known as BPA) began in Minnesota in 2009 when the state legislature there voted to ban the substance from children’s products— including sippy cups and baby bottles.1 Grassroots activism aimed at instituting local and state-level legislation banning BPA in children’s products has since escalated as new players in the world of toxics activism have emerged with demands to remove the controversial chemical from products designed for use by children. Frustrated with inaction at the federal level following scores of health studies, a slew of ambiguous regulatory reviews, and staunch efforts by lobby organizations, these new groups have taken their fight about BPA and health to states, counties, cities, and local municipalities. As of this writing, eleven U.S. states now have legislation banning or restricting the use of BPA in products for kids.2 These actions in the United States followed actions taken by Canada to first identify BPA as a minimal health hazard to children (in 2008) and then to later officially recognized BPA as toxic (in 2010), a declaration that requires government action.3 Indeed, all of this action at the state level is having the intended effect: The federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced in July of 2012 that BPA could no longer be used in baby bottles and children’s drinking cups.4 But that pronouncement has done little to quell the debate. As the president of the National Research Center for Women and Families noted about the July 2012 decision: “[The FDA is] instituting a ban that is already in effect voluntarily.” The sentiment is congruent with the

statements made by the American Chemistry Council (the nation’s largest lobby group for the chemical industry) following the announcement. According to the statement, the American Chemistry Council requested that the FDA take action because of the patchwork of legislation taking shape at the state level and that had already encouraged most manufacturers to simply stop using BPA in these products (Tavernise 2012). And so, nearly six months later, the year 2012 closed out with more studies, more reporting, and more controversy. BPA has become the poster child for a deeper concern over the changing states of knowledge about how synthetic chemicals, bodies, and environments interact and the politics of the regulatory system that governs these interactions. In this chapter, I offer a different approach to the history of BPA and children’s health that situates this public controversy more squarely within an evolving context of chemical regulation and health in the United States over the past several decades. I focus on just a few key episodes that help to frame our perspective on the drama playing out in our newspapers, scientific journals, conferences, and deliberative bodies. Specifically, I  draw on interviews conducted with former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) staff working in the Office of Toxic Substances whose experiences help to highlight why and how this controversy has evolved. This picture is meant to supplement, not supplant, the great work that others (especially Sarah Vogel5) have done to elucidate the history of BPA and its relationship to the regulation of chemicals in the United States.

1991: THE END OF THE TOXIC SUBSTANCES CONTROL ACT

On October 18, 1991, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit handed down its long-awaited decision to the case Corrosion Proof Fittings v.  The Environmental Protection Agency.6 In that decision, the Court ruled that the EPA’s attempt to prohibit the manufacture, importation, and distribution of asbestos under the authority of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) had failed on the basis of “substantial evidence.” The decision followed a meticulous—and expensive—ten-year rule-making process during which the agency had amassed by some estimates 100,000 pages of evidence outlining the harms of asbestos in commerce and created a cost-benefit analysis so thorough that the Office of Management and Budget (the office charged with vetting the economics of regulatory rules and procedures) used it as a model for how rule-making ought to be done. The decision has been called “a legal and public health disaster.”7 More immediately, the ruling effectively killed the TSCA.8

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TSCA was born as a bureaucrat’s dream as a way of bringing order to the fractured, disorganized, and wholly incomplete ways in which regulations in the United States govern chemicals in commerce. When the Nixon administration submitted the statute for Congressional debate in 1971, chemicals were overseen by a patchwork of laws like the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), administered by EPA, and the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, administered by the FDA. But these statutes left uncounted and unaccounted for an unknown number of chemicals in commerce. When J. Clarence “Terry” Davies proposed the idea of a chemicals law while working in Nixon’s Council on Environmental Quality, he had hoped the law would be a “queen statute” that would provide a legal framework for unification that transcended inter-/intra-agency divisions and media (e.g., air and water) based thinking. Instead, the statute that emerged from Congress in 1976 played the role of “gap-filler”: It deferred to the other statutes whenever possible and assumed authority only as a last resort.9 Under this and other onerous signs, the EPA set about testing the legal authority of TSCA. As a statute with few explicit requirements, much of the implementation plan fell to the first EPA assistant administrator given oversight of TSCA, Steve Jellinek.10 Under Jellinek—and his deputies— the EPA developed a comprehensive database of known chemicals in commerce. It developed and implemented a system for new chemicals to be added to the inventory, and it established an inter-/intra-agency working group on chemicals. Agency officials understood that the most difficult provision of TSCA to implement would be Section 6, the authority granted to the agency to restrict or prohibit a chemical in commerce. As the 1970s came to a close, Jellinek closed in on his target chemical for testing Section 6—asbestos. It was an obvious case that could draw on thousands of already published studies without the agency needing to call for studies of its own. Nonetheless, officials would take their time to develop a meticulous case against asbestos, as they knew that this might be their best (and only) shot to prove TSCA had teeth. Following the change in administration in 1981, subsequent office directors and assistant administrators continued to pursue the case against asbestos. Their efforts came to a head in 1989 when Charles L. “Chuck” Elkins (then director of the Office of Toxic Substances) delivered the completed rule for submission to the EPA administration’s final approval.11 The decision by the Fifth Cicruit Court in 1991 to reject the asbestos rule sent shockwaves through the Environmental Protection Agency— particularly the Office of Toxic Substances. Cleaning up the Office in the wake of the asbestos decision fell to Mark Greenwood, Elkins’ successor.

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The ruling by the courts delivered more than a legal blow to the office. Morale plummeted. Agency leaders realized they no longer had leverage in their negotiations with chemical producers, suppliers, and distributors. Leadership shifted efforts toward voluntary programs, setting up new science and innovation-focused initiatives like Design for Environment and the Green Chemistry Program within the EPA. What little attention had ever been devoted to TSCA now dissipated and concentrated on the efforts that could be made to update the pesticides law (FIFRA) and to utilize the new Pollution Prevention Act (passed in 1990 and placed within the same office as TSCA and FIFRA).12

1991: THE BIRTH OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL ENDOCRINE DISRUPTOR HYPOTHESIS

In late July 1991, twenty scientists from across disciplines and institutions met in Racine, Wisconsin, at the Wingspread Conference Center. Brought together by Theo Colborn (a senior scientist at World Wildlife Fund) and John Peterson “Pete” Myers (director of the W. Alton Jones Foundation), the group discussed the interesting—and disturbing—trends their collective research pointed toward (Krimsky 2000, pp.  24–28). Each had been investigating some element of the relationship between exposure to synthetic chemicals in the environment and compromised sexual development in a target species. Working in isolation, each grappled with what the data seemed to be indicating—that exposures to certain chemicals at levels previously deemed irrelevant by toxicologists were having profound effects on the reproductive systems of exposed species. When she looked across the different fields, Colborn had been able to see what none of the researchers could see individually. Bringing everyone to Wingspread would give everyone an opportunity to see the confluence of data that had driven Colborn to organize the meeting. The meeting resulted in a consensus statement by those in attendance: “Statement from the Work-Session on Chemically Induced Alterations in Sexual Development:  The Wildlife/ Human Connection.”13 In the year leading up to the meeting, Colborn had been working at the W. Alton Jones Foundation. Fed a steady stream of data from a variety of scientific journals, Colborn began to see a pattern linking environmental exposures to certain synthetic chemicals and the resulting dramatic effects on species in the wild. Her work, and the resulting consensus statement, laid the foundation for what has become popularly known as environmental endocrine disruption (and thus the moniker of the endocrine disrupting

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chemical). The idea that environmental exposures—or environmentally relevant doses—could interact with and disrupt the development of the endocrine systems of organisms small and large profoundly changed scientific and regulatory understandings of chemical safety/risk. In particular, it upset contemporary toxicological thinking, testing, and regulating in three important ways: It disrupted the narrative of dose in relationship to toxicological harm; it offered a new set of possible health outcomes associated with exposure; and it redefined who might be included in a so-called vulnerable population. Modern toxicology works on the basis of two suppositions: It is the dose that makes the poison, and the relationship between dose and response is linear. Environmental endocrine disruption research questions both tenets of this foundation, as it argues instead that timing may be at least as important as the dose and that the dose necessary to create an adverse effect is not linear but instead might look much more like a “U”— an effect referred to as hormesis (Vogel 2008b). Both of these arguments follow from an alternative perspective on toxicology that emerges from multiple disciplines but draws heavily on endocrinology, developmental biology, and pharmacology. In these scientific worlds, organisms interact with chemicals (endogenous as well as exogenous) in more systemic ways involving sensitive feedback loops, developmental signaling, and gene– environment interactions—all of which operate in response to chemical “dosing” far below what has typically been taken to be the realm of toxicological concern. Because growth and development in organisms occur at irregular periods in their lives, sensitivity to chemicals that might disrupt these developmental pathways means that organisms might be more sensitive to certain doses at specific moments in their lives (rather than having an inherent and uniform response to a chemical exposure across the lifespan). In humans, these moments are marked by periods of hormonally directed growth and development (e.g., as a fetus, in early infancy, and during puberty).14 Modern toxicology (and, more important, the relationship between toxicology and regulation) also has as its focus a few specific targeted adverse outcomes. As most chemical/health regulations developed between the 1950s and the 1970s, the emphasis was on three categories: carcinogens, mutagens, and reproductive toxicants. The introduction of new possible health outcomes complicates this already messy picture by further straining the fabric connecting observable health outcomes and the ability to regulate a substance because of the possible effects. For instance, rather than “simply” regulating a substance as a possible human carcinogen (drawing on a relatively reliable testing regime to validate this label), regulators now

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face a toxicological profile that suggests exposure to a chemical at a specific time might result in anything from chemically induced reproductive disorders (including changes to the reproductive physiology and/or damage to the system that regulates this system) to obesity to increased risk of cardiac disease—and that’s just the possible human effects. In animal populations, studies focus on these health outcomes as well as behavioral disruptions in parenting, nesting, and the like. What’s worse, the scientific literature also suggests these effects may not manifest themselves for multiple generations or only in response to gene–environment triggers. Navigating a path through this changing landscape of relevant disciplinary sciences has made the previously complicated task of regulating possible problematic chemicals nearly impossible.15 Changes in ideas of dose/timing and possible health outcomes has also moved the focus of attention from more historically “typical” populations of concern—such as workers—toward other vulnerable populations in the general public—such as children, mothers, and fetuses. Regulations emerging out of the 1970s context had heavy and important support from labor organizations. This was because those interested in filling the knowledge gap associated with exposure to commercial chemicals still viewed this population as the one most intimately at risk—and that was indeed the case. But as our understanding of exposure has changed, new at-risk populations began to emerge. The most prominent among these has been children—and through extension and relation, women of child-bearing age and developing fetuses. These changes have had a profound effect not only on how scientists and regulators think about safety and risk but also on who participates as a vocal advocate in the public debates about exposure and health.

1996: THE FOOD QUALITY PROTECTION ACT

The early architects for the TSCA had relied on the already existing pesticides regulation (FIFRA) to provide a statutory framework for how regulation of chemicals in commerce writ large might operate.16 That model never quite fit for TSCA, but in the early 1990s regulators again turned to pesticides regulations as an opportunity to lay the foundation for a new approach to assessing and managing the risks of chemicals. Architects of the Food Quality Protection Act had hoped that revisiting the link between pesticides and food might offer a new path for thinking about the regulation of chemicals in a post-TSCA world full of possible hazards from the still-emerging field of environmental endocrine disruption.17 Developers of

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the law seized on a window of opportunity that saw the possibility of using a review of food and pesticide practices to incorporate the science emerging from the world of endocrine disruption and lay the foundation for a new federal approach to chemicals. Working in the context of changing science and a presidential administration interested in rethinking government infrastructure, regulators swapped old tactics for what they hoped would be a new path forward. Until this time, the Delaney Clause required federal regulators to institute a zero tolerance for the introduction of any chemical known to be a carcinogen into any foodstuffs or food packaging. To some, the little-used clause represented more of a bureaucratic hurdle than an approach to risk management. More important, it represented an approach to chemical safety that privileged and prioritized cancer above other health outcomes. In a move that alienated many in the health advocacy world, the new law would end the Delaney Clause and replace it with a framework designed to develop standardized approaches to assessing, evaluating, and regulating possible endocrine disrupting chemicals.18 The new law required the EPA to work quickly to establish advisory and working groups to develop standardized approaches to this new science. Fundamentally, experts realized that the key pieces missing from this new approach—validated models for assessing exposure, toxicity, and problems associated with exposure to multiple chemicals (or the problem of synergistic effects)—would prevent any intention of the government from adequately using this new information. And so the law required the agency to move quickly. But the models being replaced developed over decades and were far simpler in comparison to these new demands. And so it was that multiple deadlines associated with endocrine disruption laid out in Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA) came and went as scientific complexity became compounded with resource scarcity. Efforts to develop an adequate infrastructure for incorporating endocrine disruption and these new sciences of exposure and toxicity never quite died. The EPA programs established by the statute continue to operate—if slowly—waiting for additional resources and continuing to provide a space for conversation about how chemicals might be managed in the future.

2009: REFORMING TSCA

In 2010, for the first time since Congress authorized TSCA in 1976, both chambers introduced legislation to their respective committees to overhaul

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the aging chemical statute. Led by Senator Lautenberg of New Jersey and Representative Henry Waxman of California, the effort to reform and/or replace TSCA built on the changes that had begun to surface in the 1990s and that only grew over the next decade and more.19 While the EPA’s endocrine disruptor screening program didn’t deliver on time what had been required, it did continue to generate and support new research and tools for incorporating this science into regulatory health decision making. And in the most recent years, the endocrine disruptor screening program—in overlapping with renewed efforts to reform toxics laws—has taken on renewed importance and prominence in helping its statutorily handicapped agency to find old tools to apply in new contexts, for instance, by identifying chemicals of concern and having these lists overlap significantly with the chemicals most prominently studied for their endocrine disrupting characteristics and their high likelihood of exposure to vulnerable populations, such as children.20 But the efforts to reform TSCA in the context of concern about chemicals like BPA and the threats they may pose to children and other vulnerable sub-populations have been buoyed by at least three additional critical factors. First, the new instrumental and analytical capabilities that were developed for tracking traces of chemicals throughout the environment and into the broad human population have changed the nature of the arguments about exposure, risk, and safety (Vogel and Roberts 2011). As new techniques became available for measuring traces of these chemicals of concern in human samples—blood, urine, breastmilk, fat tissue, amniotic fluid, placental tissue, and more—exposure became a more intimate term. Over the course of the 1990s and into the early 2000s, the reliability and standardization of these practices led to new reports from government and nongovernmental organizations. Beginning in 2001, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention started publishing biannual reports on human biomonitoring as a part of their National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. While the first of their reports focused on a scant twenty-six chemicals found in human biosamples, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now reports on exposure data related to more than 200 chemicals—from old hazards like lead and arsenic to new chemicals of concern like flame retardants and plasticizers (e.g., BPA).21 The availability of these studies and similar (less official studies) by environmental nongovernmental organizations such as the Environmental Working Group pinned this population-scale data onto specific people, making the connection between broad-based biomonitoring and personal exposure all the more visible.22 Besides drawing attention to a topic

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typically left to inside the beltway bureaucrats, projects like those by the Environmental Working Group helped to galvanize a new kind of toxics activist—the young, educated women of child-bearing age (either already mothers or within the same age bracket) who could understand the link between a study demonstrating the drop of a synthetic chemical in the blood of a new mom and the precipitous rise in the blood of the nursing newborn. And they could use their power to mobilize in Washington and in Walmart. But mobilizing in Walmart depended on the availability of an alternative. “BPA-free,” “phthalate-free,” and “chemical free” alternatives accordingly began sprouting up seemingly overnight. Some of this was made possible by the existence of already-existing alternatives. But the strength of these new market possibilities also hints at the changes taking place behind the scenes in the world of materials development. Polymers are being designed in different ways today than they were in the heyday of new plastics in the post-WWII boom. Part of this is a disciplinary shift within the sciences—polymers are being developed by polymer scientists, not organic chemists, and polymer scientists think differently about what is possible and what is not. And those younger scientists developing these new materials are more likely to have come of age in their training with some broader exposure to the growing concepts of sustainability and green chemistry. Hence, they are more likely to incorporate these ideas into their work. Companies are getting smarter too. Aggressive political lobbying in Washington, it turns out, does little to protect corporate interests from an increasingly involved and concerned supply chain linking manufacturers to distributors to retailers. Corporate lobbyists might be able to stall action in Washington, but they haven’t figured out a way to stall Walmart. And both manufacturer and retailer are increasingly aware of the ability of everyday citizens to sway markets through new mobilization tools not available in the 1970s and 1980s—including everything from web-based activism to social media tools. All of this adds up to a very different game of assessing and managing risks related to chemical exposures in the 21st century. While the efforts just a few years earlier to push for a “Kids Safe Chemical Act” were aimed explicitly at protecting children from the emerging harms related to these possible exposures, most know the real change will come in the form of a new holistic approach to chemicals—whether through a reformed TSCA or by piggybacking on the European REACH system. Whatever the outcome, the solutions offered will look far less like their progenitors developed in the 1970s and more like the toolkit developed in the decades since then.

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CONCLUSION

What do these four episodes from history tell us about the governance of chemicals in the United States? There are at least three important lessons that we can take and apply to our thinking about the contexts within which we now operate. Lesson 1:  These episodes are linked but not necessarily causally. For example, the controversy surrounding BPA is not a direct result of TSCA (its perceived successes and failures), but the two stories are inextricably connected in relational ways. By offering four different micro-stories, I hope to disrupt linear storytelling that might prematurely link any two of these events exclusively before a more robust historical and contemporary context can be constructed. These episodes begin to highlight the complex changes in the technical, legal, and political landscape that occurred and how each has contributed to our current situation. Lesson 2: Developing a system of chemical governance for the 21st century cannot be a simple matter of “fixing” what was created nearly half a century earlier. Rather, we need to take into account the full life history of these systems to account for both their emergence and their continued evolution. Advocates who would fight to reform TSCA simply on the basis of how the statute was/is written will miss how the law actually lives—through its use and interpretation. This is important to keep in mind because it means the points of entry for intervention are and must be multiple. For instance, many advocates have focused on the ways in which confidential business information as a category has prevented access to important health and safety information. It’s true. But the current difficulty is a result of both how the law is written and how it is perceived and enacted within the EPA. Both can be addressed in reform efforts—singularly or coupled. Likewise, the agency’s failure to ban asbestos under Section 6 of TSCA has been interpreted widely as the end of the EPA’s authority to regulate chemicals. This is not legal fact; it’s cultural fact. Indeed, in the years 2010–2012 under EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, much has been done to challenge this cultural fact by reasserting legal authority provided by the law. Additionally, an examination of the places where the agency has sought to reassert its powers—the construction of priority lists of chemicals that include many suspected endocrine disruptors—reflects just how much has changed since the inception of TSCA. Any new system will have to reflect the technical, legal, cultural, and political changes that have occurred over the past four decades. Lesson 3: Ultimately, whatever changes are made, any system constructed now to govern chemicals will fail. But that inevitable failure needs to be

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built into the system, not taken as a reason for not having one at all. Even if everything had gone as bureaucrats and activists had hoped in the 1970s, TSCA would have failed. We know things now about the chemicals we produce—where they go, what they do—that we simply didn’t know then. As a result, we ask different kinds of questions, which will lead to new information that we can’t possibly know now. Any system built now must balance the idealism of protection with the pragmatism of what’s possible—not simply from an economic standpoint as some advocates would argue but technically and epistemically. For instance, right now it is simply beyond our capability to even test for the possible synergistic effects of chemicals we encounter on a daily basis. But a look at history reveals the prevalence of the dialectic of regulations and technical ability. Most popular histories of regulation miss this point. They look at something like the continued lowering of acceptable levels of air and water pollutants and see only political and corporate interference. It’s certainly there. But there entangled with it also lies our ability to measure, think, and act in relation to these data points and these facts. What makes for a good law in this scenario is one that continues to evolve and adapt to these changes in the ontological and epistemological landscapes of risk, hazard, and toxicity. TSCA was not born a failure; it became a failure because nobody cared enough to keep using it—adapting it—in order to understand what it could and could not do. It was, as nearly all of our interviewees suggested, an orphaned statute. Any replacement must first and foremost overcome this obstacle—individuals and groups must remain interested. NOTES 1. S.F. No. 247, 2nd Engrossment—86th Legislative Session. 2009–2010. New Regulation to Phase Out Bisphenol A  from Infant Bottles and Children’s Cups. Minneapolis: Minnesota Department of Public Health. http://www.health.state. mn.us/divs/eh/risk/chemhazards/bpalaw.html 2. The list of states and municipalities with bans in place is available on the Safer States website: http://www.saferstates.com/2010/01/bisphenol-a.html 3. Health Canada, Bureau of Chemical Safety and Food Directorate, Health Products and Food Branch. 2008. Health Risk Assessment of Bisphenol A from Food Packaging Applications. P.C. 2010–1109 September 23, 2010, Order Adding a Toxic Substance to Schedule 1 to the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999. http://www. gazette.gc.ca/rp-pr/p2/2010/2010-10-13/html/sor-dors194-eng.html 4. Food and Drug Administration. 2012. “Indirect Food Additives:  Polymers.” Federal Register, July 17. https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2012/07/ 17/2012-17366/indirect-food-additives-polymers 5. See Vogel (2012, 2009, and 2008a) as entry points. 6. Corrosion Proof Fittings v. Environmental Protection Agency, 1991. 7. U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce, Subcommittee on Environment and Hazardous Materials (2006).

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8. 9. 10. 11.

TSCA: From the Perspective of Charles L. Elkins (2010). TSCA: From the Perspective of J. Clarence Davies (2009). Soon thereafter Jellinek also became responsible for FIFRA. TSCA: Elkins (2010); TSCA: From the Perspective of Steven D. Jellinek (2010); TSCA: From the Perspective of Victor J. Kimm (2011). 12. TSCA: From the Perspective of Mark A. Greenwood (2010). 13. See Krimsky (2000); Colborn et  al. (1996); Roberts and Dionisio (2009); and Roberts and McDonnell (2009). The statement can be found at http://www.ourstolenfuture.org/consensus/wingspread1.htm. 14. See, for example, Diamanti-Kandarakis et al. (2009). 15. See, for example, the summary of the state of the science offered by the World Health Organization (2002) as well as Diamanti-Kandarakis et al. (2009). 16. TSCA: Davies (2009); TSCA: Greenwood (2010). 17. TSCA: From the Perspective of James V. Aidala (2010). 18. TSCA: Aidala (2010); TSCA: Kimm (2011). 19. H.R. 5820 (2010). 20. See the EPA’s Existing Chemicals Action Plan (http://www.epa.gov/opptintr/ existingchemicals/pubs/ecactionpln.html). Note that several of the chemicals listed are known/suspected endocrine disruptors. 21. See Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2001, 2009, 2012). 22. See, for example, Environmental Working Group’s “Human Toxome Project” and the related research reports (http://www.ewg.org/sites/humantoxome/). REFERENCES Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 2001. “Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals.” Atlanta:  Author. http://www.cdc.gov/ exposurereport/ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 2009. “Fourth Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals.” Atlanta:  Author. http://www.cdc.gov/ exposurereport/ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 2012. “Fourth Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals, Updated Tables (September).” Atlanta:  Author. http://www.cdc.gov/exposurereport/ Colborn, T., D. Dumanoski, and J. Peterson Myers. 1996. Our Stolen Future. New York: Penguin Books. Colborn, T. 2009. “Interview with Jody A. Roberts and Elizabeth McDonnell.” Paonia, CO. Corrosion Proof Fittings v.  Environmental Protection Agency, 947 F.2d 1201 (5th Circuit 1991). Diamanti-Kandarakis, E., J.-P. Bourguignon, L.C. Giudice, R. Hauser, G.S. Prins, A.M. Soto, et  al. 2009. “Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals:  An Endocrine Society Scientific Statement.” Endocrine Reviews 30: 293–342. H.R. 5820. 2010. Toxic Chemicals Safety Act of 2010; Safe Chemicals Act of 2010. Krimsky, S. 2000. Hormonal Chaos: The Scientific and Social Origins of the Environmental Endocrine Hypothesis. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Myers, J.P. 2009. “Interview with Jody A. Roberts and Jen Dionisio.” Charlottesville, VA. Tavernise, S. 2012. “FDA Makes It Official:  BPA Can’t Be Used in Baby Bottles and Cups.” The New York Times, July 17.

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Toxic Substances Control Act:  From the Perspective of Charles L.  Elkins. 2010. Interview by Jody A. Roberts and Kavita D. Hardy, Washington, DC, April 9. Oral History Transcript 0643. Philadelphia: Chemical Heritage Foundation. Toxic Substances Control Act: From the Perspective of James V. Aidala. 2010. Interview by Jody A. Roberts and Kavita D. Hardy, Bergeson & Campbell, P.C., Washington, DC, May 20. Oral History Transcript 0660. Philadelphia:  Chemical Heritage Foundation. Toxic Substances Control Act:  From the Perspective of J.  Clarence Davies. 2009. Interview by Jody A.  Roberts and Kavita D.  Hardy, Washington, DC, October 30. Oral History Transcript 0640. Philadelphia:  Chemical Heritage Foundation. Toxic Substances Control Act:  From the Perspective of Mark A.  Greenwood. 2010. Interview by Jody A. Roberts and Kavita D. Hardy, Ropes & Gray, LLP, Washington, DC, February 26. Oral History Transcript 0644. Philadelphia: Chemical Heritage Foundation. Toxic Substances Control Act:  From the Perspective of Steven D.  Jellinek. 2010. Interview by Jody A.  Roberts and Kavita D.  Hardy, Chemical Heritage Foundation, Philadelphia, PA, January 29. Oral History Transcript 0653. Philadelphia: Chemical Heritage Foundation. Toxic Substances Control Act: From the Perspective of Victor J. Kimm. 2011. Interview by Jody A. Roberts and Kavita D. Hardy, Ropes & Gray, LLP, Washington, DC, February 3.  Oral History Transcript 0679. Philadelphia:  Chemical Heritage Foundation. U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce, Subcommittee on Environment and Hazardous Materials. 2006. Legislation to Implement the POPS, PIC, and LRTAP POPs Agreements. 109th Congress, 2nd session, pp. 89– 95. Testimony of E. Donald Elliott. Vogel, S.A. 2008a. “Battles over Bisphenol A.” Washington, DC: Project on Scientific Knowledge and Public Policy, George Washington University. http://defendingscience.org/case-studies/battles-over-bisphenol Vogel, S.A. 2008b. “From the ‘Dose Makes the Poison’ to the ‘Timing Makes the Poison’:  Conceptualizing Risk in the Synthetic Age.” Environmental History 13: 667–673. Vogel, S.A. 2009. “The Politics of Plastic:  The Making and Unmaking of Bisphenol A Safety.” American Journal of Public Health 99: S559–S566. Vogel, S.A. 2012. Is It Safe? BPA and the Struggle to Define the Safety of Chemicals. Berkeley: University of California Press. Vogel, S.A., and J.A. Roberts. 2011. “Why the Toxic Substances Control Act Needs an Overhaul, and How to Strengthen Oversight of Chemicals in the Interim.” Health Affairs 30: 898–905. World Health Organization. 2002. “Global Assessment of the State of the Science of Endocrine Disruption.” Geneva:  International Programme on Chemical Safety.

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CHAPTER 14

Of Baby Bottles and Bisphenol A: Debates about the Safety of an Endocrine Disruptor SAR AH A . VOGEL

I

n a 2009 episode of The Simpsons, Marge Simpson baked what she considered the ultimate healthy, socially conscious, safe snack food: “homemade, organic, nongluten, fair-trade zucchini cupcakes.” Proudly presenting the cupcakes to her daughter’s playgroup, Marge was asked what kind of butter she’d used. “None!” she exclaimed; she had baked the cupcakes in a nonstick pan. But Marge’s beaming pride quickly dissolved into embarrassment when she learned of her apparent eco-stupidity. Marge didn’t know that nonstick pans were made with PFOA (perflurooctanoic acid). “There is only one thing more dangerous than PFOAs, Marge,” one mother declared. “Plastics made with BPAs. Never, ever let your child near any product with the number 7.” At that moment, a child tips a cup up to his mouth revealing the number 7 on the bottom of the cup. The mothers scream in unison and run hysterically out of the house.1 Bisphenol A  (or BPA) had become a three-letter household word. The chemical, used for over a half-century in plastics, was now at the center of a contentious scientific and political debate as well as fodder for prime-time cultural satire. Was BPA safe? On the one hand, a growing number of researchers, championed by environmental and health advocates, point to a growing body of research suggestive of serious health risks of BPA. This includes animal research on low-level effects of BPA exposure on prostate and mammary gland

development and neurobehavioral function and development; a small but growing body of epidemiological research on BPA exposures and cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and social behavioral problems; and evidence of widespread, low-level human exposure including in pregnant women (vom Saal et al. 2007; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 2008). On the other hand, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and its counterpart in Europe, the European Food Safety Authority, maintain that the levels in food are low enough to be considered safe for all humans. These are the U.S. and European agencies responsible for regulating BPA in food due to its use in plastic containers and resin liners in food cans. For their part, the chemical and plastics industries wholeheartedly support this conclusion (Beronius et al. 2010). The most simplified caricature of this controversy boils down to a binary question of whether BPA is safe with the solution similarly turned into a dichotomous choice: Ban it or dismiss the concerns all together. And yet this simplistic narrative overlooks a central tension at the root of this chemical debate. Faced with rapidly changing knowledge about the relationship between exposure to very low concentrations of industrial chemicals, like BPA, found in the human body and chronic disease, how should chemical safety be defined and health risks of exposure effectively managed?

TOP-DOWN TO BOTTOM-UP APPROACHES TO CHEMICAL RISK

Historically, the assessment of chemical risks has relied on large animal studies that expose animals to high doses of a chemical and observe discrete toxic effects (e.g., death, tumors, deformity, etc). The lowest dose at which a toxic effect is observed, or the level at which no toxic effect is observed, is then divided by a margin of safety—100, 1,000, or even 1 million—to derive a safety standard. Here, “safety” is defined within the context of toxicity. The first safety standard for BPA was set at 50 micrograms per kilogram in the late 1980s based on high-dose studies conducted in the late 1970s and early 1980s (Vogel 2009). BPA’s safety and, subsequently, its presence on the market and in the environment, went unquestioned until the late 1990s when research into its estrogen-like effects at low levels—levels well below the safety standard—began to raise very different questions about the ability of the chemical to interfere with normal reproductive, neurobehavioral, and metabolic development. This shift in research from high-dose testing of toxic effects to low-dose research of biological effects of exposure reflects a larger change in chemical testing in the late twentieth and early

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Table 14.1   TRADITIONAL TOP-DOWN TOXICITY TESTING VERSUS BOT TOM-UP BIOLOGICAL TESTING

Top-down toxicity testing

Chemical testing from the bottom-up

Uses high doses to determine toxic effects

Uses doses relevant to human exposure or that are defined as being biologically or

Observed effects are discrete indications of

physiologically active Effects observed include abnormal biological

toxicity, such as loss of body weight, death,

development or function, such as precancerous

malformation, miscarriage, and reduction in

lesions, altered glucose regulation, increase

organ weight

in fat cell development, or altered brain

Safety is defined at a margin below the toxic

development Safety might be defined as no significant

dose range

evidence of abnormal biological disruption associated with a critical disease pathway

twenty-first centuries. The study of chemicals is no longer exclusively the domain of toxicology and the observation of toxic effects—it is now part of the larger biological sciences and as such the study of disease development. As with most all industrial chemicals, the safety of BPA was derived from a top-down approach: Based on toxic effects observed at high doses, assumptions are projected about effects at low, untested doses in order to determine the exposure concentration one can confidently predict is safe for humans. Today, this approach is being turned on its head: With the ability to identify lower and lower doses and to test at lower levels of biological organization, researchers are, in effect, working from the bottom up. This includes testing lower and lower concentrations, exploring the biological mechanisms by which a chemical interacts with the cell, and turning more explicitly to the development of the organism by exposing animals during fetal development to understand how chemicals disrupt normal pathways that might lead to disease later in life. (See Table 14.1.) The BPA debate strikes at the heart of a fundamental challenge facing the regulation of chemicals today given this transformation in research: How should an acceptable level of risk be determined? At its most basic formulation it is a question of whether acceptable risks and safe levels of exposure will be derived from observed effects at high, toxic exposures or abnormal biological effects of low-dose exposures. Are adverse effects narrowly defined as toxic effects, or do they include alterations of the reproductive system and behavior? What doses should be included in testing chemicals? Should inquiry begin from the top down or the bottom up?

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The traditional regulatory framework for defining safety standards rests on the toxicity-based approach and the assumption that below toxic thresholds margins of safety can be established. Shifting the scientific inquiry to a bottom-up approach is destabilizing the logic informing regulation and decision making. For chemical producers, this uncertainty and instability are unwelcomed because keeping markets open and growing relies on a consistent understanding of risk and an assurance of safety, as well as the acceptance of everyday exposures to chemicals, including BPA. Such demand for consistency in the face of a new paradigmatic approach to defining safety has generated considerable conflict over whose science is sound, what approach is relevant for regulatory assessments, and, in the end, whether a chemical, like BPA, presents a serious health risk.

WHY BPA?

BPA is a lightning rod for debate about the safety of chemicals in consumer products today due to two intersecting characteristics:  first, its tremendous economic success and utility, primarily in plastics, that has resulted in its widespread use and ubiquity in exposure; and second, its ability to disrupt hormone regulation, particularly estrogen. Production of BPA grew precipitously after the Second World War for use in two plastics: epoxy resins, which are powerful adhesives, and polycarbonates, which are hard, clear, heat-resistant plastics. As polycarbonates increasingly replaced metal in construction and automotive parts and found new uses in compact discs and computers in the 1970s and 1980s, BPA production in the United States ballooned (Hall 1970; “PC Looks at Lenses” 1970). Demand for polycarbonate resin alone in the United States increased 114% between 1977 and 1986, from 161  million pounds to 345 million pounds (Antosh 1987). In the United States in 1985, close to 1 billion pounds of BPA were produced (“BPA Production in 1985” 1985). By the end of the 20th century, BPA production in the United States topped 2 billion pounds and global production was near 6 billion pounds (Greiner et al. 2004, pp. 1–37; Kirschrer 2004, p. 27). BPA’s economic success helped to bring the chemical into the industrial market and increasingly into the consumer market. BPA came into the home and workplaces, including the scientific lab, where polycarbonates replaced glass flasks, Petri dishes, animal cages, and water bottles. The chemical became widespread in the consumer market through its use in food packaging and containers, notably reusable water and baby bottles and epoxy resins used to line canned food. As markets grew, we were becoming

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what we make. The industrial chemicals used to make the products around us were also becoming part of our bodies with potential impacts on how we develop and function. It was BPA’s high production volume that brought it to the attention of federal researchers in the United States during the late 1970s. A series of regulatory tests were conducted on the chemical to evaluate its carcinogenicity, reproductive toxicity, and development toxicity, the results of which were used to establish a safety standard by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in the late 1980s. Use of BPA has been permitted for use by the FDA since the late 1950s as an indirect food additive (later defined as a food contact substance); however, such use never required toxicity testing given the presumed low levels at which the chemical contaminated food. Moreover, once approved for use by the FDA, the chemical can be used by anyone without additional agency approval (Vogel 2013, pp. 81–83). The risks of low levels of BPA and the presence of the chemical in food and the environment didn’t become visible to researchers (and later the general public) until the 1990s when researchers at Stanford University first recognized and published their findings that BPA had leached from the polycarbonate flasks used in their lab. BPA’s presence was made known to the Stanford researchers because of its estrogen-like activities (Krishnan et al. 1993). Though BPA’s estrogenicity was first identified in the 1930s, the publication of the events in the Stanford laboratory brought it to the attention of a growing field of researchers studying the health effects of exposure to environmental estrogenic compounds and endocrine disrupting chemicals more broadly (Vogel 2009). Since the rediscovery of its estrogenicity in the mid-1990s, hundreds of studies have explored the physiological effects of BPA and the mechanisms by which it acts in mammals (World Health Organization 2011). The central question posed by researchers in the field of endocrine disruption has largely been: What are the long-term developmental effects of exposure to “low doses” of hormonally active chemicals during key periods of development? This represents an inversion of the traditional toxicological approach to evaluating toxicity. Certainly the study of toxicology includes consideration of developmental effects, particularly malformations or birth defects that occur at high, toxic doses. In contrast, the study of endocrine disruption examined biological effects at lower and lower doses and involved researchers from multiple disciplines outside of toxicology—endocrinology, molecular biology, physiology, and genetics. At issue with the research exploring low-level, developmental exposures and endocrine-mediated effects is not whether the levels at which humans are exposed to BPA every day are toxic but whether such exposures result in

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abnormal biological development or function that leads to disease later in life. In the case of BPA, studies have examined the effects of very low-level exposures during early development including neurobehavioral abnormalities, reproductive abnormalities (e.g., testes and uterine development, sperm motility and count), breast and prostate developmental abnormalities including precancerous lesions, disrupted glucose metabolism and pancreatic function associated with diabetes, and altered fat tissue development associated with obesity (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 2008; World Health Organization 2011). Additionally, the mechanism by which BPA might disrupt different biological systems—its estrogenicity and, more broadly, debates concerning its classification as an endocrine disrupting compound—has informed the direction of the emergent research on the chemical and the subsequent political controversy regarding its safety. What does it mean to say that BPA is an endocrine disrupting chemical? Can endocrine disrupting chemicals be safe at low concentrations? These seemingly simple questions remain unresolved, and, in large part, the struggle to answer them is playing out within the public sphere.

BPA AS AN ESTROGEN AND AN ENDOCRINE DISRUPTOR

Basic understanding of BPA’s estrogenicity dates back to the 1930s, not long after endogenous estrogen was first isolated and chemically identified (Dodds and Lawson 1936). By the 1940s and early 1950s, with the development of synthetic forms of estrogen, drug producers rapidly expanded the hormone’s market by promising women that estrogen would restore their youth and beauty, prevent miscarriage, and treat menstrual abnormalities. In the 1960s and 1970s, estrogen was purported to protect women from cardiovascular disease and cancer (Watkins 2007). And yet, time and time again over the second half of the 20th century, estrogen’s drug use was abandoned due to the serious health risks in women and their children. Failed expectations and unheeded dangers of estrogen are part of the story of diethylstilbestrol (DES), the first synthetic (nonsteroidal) estrogen and hormone replacement therapy. DES was given to pregnant women from the 1940s until it was banned at the beginning of the 1970s due to its carcinogenic effects in children exposed during fetal development. It was also given to poultry and cattle to increase meat production. Due to its detection in edible tissue and evidence of its carcinogenicity, all uses (e.g., in feed and implantation) were eventually banned by the end of the 1970s (Marcus 1994; Langston 2010).

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Some researchers and advocates who have warned about the dangers of endocrine disrupting chemicals frequently refer to the story of DES as a cautionary tale and a reason to ascribe to the precautionary principle (Iberreta and Swan 2001). What the story of DES and the complexity of our understanding of estrogens demonstrate is not simply that early evidence of serious adverse effects was ignored when it should have been heeded. The bigger picture is that both timing and dose are critical in evaluating risks of endocrine active compounds. This emphasis on how risk is defined— whereby a more robust understanding of risk takes into account the timing of exposure and the effects at low, nontoxic levels—is the important lesson in the story of DES. The similarity between BPA and DES is not in the mechanism by which the compounds act in the body. That is, BPA’s estrogenicity doesn’t make it an endocrine disruptor. It is an endocrine disruptor because it adversely impacts biological development and function that lead to disease. Further, it turns out that while BPA is estrogenic—and more potently so when it binds with receptors on the cell membrane (as opposed to the nuclear receptor)—there is good evidence that its biochemical activities are very complex and include other receptor systems (e.g., androgens, thyroid, glucocorticoid, and many other signaling systems). This means that evaluating effects based on assumptions of consistency with estrogenic responses may be inappropriate for certain systems (World Health Organization 2011). This realization adds an additional layer of complexity for determining what adverse effects would be anticipated from BPA exposure. Arguing for a precautionary decision that would allow for the market restriction of BPA before incontrovertible evidence of adverse human impacts is determined represents a morally defendable position. But it’s important to note that calling for a precautionary approach ignores the contemporary conflict represented by the BPA debate between a top-down traditional toxicology approach and a bottom-up approach to defining a chemical’s risk to health. As such, calling for a precautionary approach to BPA fails to inform the solution for hundreds of other chemicals that might exhibit estrogenic or other endocrine activities or that, through other mechanisms, adversely disturb normal biological functions and development that result in disease. In the absence of consensus about how to evaluate and measure chemical risks of endocrine disruptors, state legislators and retail companies have taken action on BPA, specifically by banning it from baby bottles. While state lawmakers and retailers have taken a more precautious approach to managing BPA’s risk, regulatory agencies in the United States and Europe maintain that the chemical is safe at levels of exposure that

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occur through the food supply. Unfettered by legal demands for demonstrating risk, lawmakers and retailers can take actions based on politically persuasive arguments. Regulators, on the other hand, must present a scientifically defensible assessment of the risks that can withstand judicial review. Today that process for risk assessment largely continues to follow a top-down method for evaluating toxicity and defining safety.

BANNING BPA AND DEFENDING ITS SAFETY

Beginning in 2005, researchers began to publicly advocate for a new risk assessment of BPA by arguing that the chemical exhibited adverse effects at levels below the regulatory safety standard (vom Saal and Hughes 2005). Environmental advocates organized to introduce the first of what would become a number of state bans of BPA. Bills were introduced in multiple states that called for bans on BPA baby bottles and children’s products. Today, twelve states have limited bans on BPA focused on uses in baby bottles and children’s products (Belliveau 2010). Baby bottles provided a highly compelling and powerful marketing message for an anti-BPA campaign:  BPA products are harming the most vulnerable among us. Consumer pressure combined with the immediate availability of market  alternatives led retailers like Walmart to pull BPA-based polycarbonate bottles from shelves (Layton 2009). The combined market pressure from retailers and state legislatures and the availability of alternatives, like glass, metal, and alternative plastics, quickly closed the market for BPA-based polycarbonate in the baby bottle and sports water bottle sector. In 2012, the American Chemistry Council, the chemical industry trade association, petitioned the FDA to pull BPA’s approval for this specific use due to “market abandonment,” and the agency complied (American Chemistry Council 2012). This regulatory decision, however, was based on a shift in the market rather than a decision by the FDA—or its European counterpart, the European Food Safety Authority— that the chemical poses an unacceptable risk to human health. Therefore, despite limited bans on BPA in polycarbonate plastics used in water and baby bottles, regulatory agencies around the world continue to maintain that BPA is safe. This position has largely maintained the market for BPA outside of its particular use in polycarbonate bottles, including its continued use in epoxy resins used to line food cans. What accounts for the consistency of the conclusions among regulators in Europe and the United States is a shared process for evaluating the existing evidence on BPA.

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Fundamentally, risk assessments that have more heavily relied on, or weighted, industry safety studies—studies that follow standardized toxicity testing methods—conclude that BPA is safe at current exposure levels (Beronius et  al. 2010). These studies follow the traditional top-down approach to identifying toxic effects and determining a safety standard based on high-dose observations. Conversely, assessments of the literature that have raised the level of concern have incorporated academic, nontraditional, and nonstandardized studies. Those studies tend to focus on evaluating the effects of low doses during early development on more subtle endpoints, such as glucose regulation, mammary gland organization, or precancerous lesions in the prostate—effects not measured in the standardized tests for reproductive toxicity or carcinogenicity (vom Saal et al. 2007). For example, urologist Gail Prins at the University of Illinois has been studying the effects of very low doses of BPA on the developing prostate since the early 2000s. Prins began investigating how BPA might interfere with the hormonal imprinting of cells—the first interactions between a hormone and its receptor at critical periods of development, interactions that inform the signaling or communication capacity of the cell. With a somewhat mechanistic understanding of BPA, Prins and her research team examined the effects of very low doses of BPA during a critical period of prostate development and reported that exposed animals developed precancerous lesions, widely considered precursors to cancer in humans (Ho et al. 2006). These findings were discredited in regulatory assessments and industry-funded evaluations of the scientific literature because Prins and her team had exposed the animals through a nonoral route of exposure (Gray et  al. 2004; Goodman et al. 2006). The principle reasoning behind the skeptics’ argument is that the main route of exposure in humans is oral, and oral intake results in considerable detoxification of the compound through the liver. Prins countered this argument with data that demonstrated that while the different routes of exposure have different metabolism, the low levels she used in her prostate studies given by injection reached an internal dose that is relevant to levels detected in humans. In this regard, she and other BPA researchers argue that the doses they use are more relevant to the human experience than high-dose studies that expose animals orally. The most important exposure variable, therefore, would be the internal dose, regardless of the delivery method (Prins et al. 2011). In the debate about the research on BPA, what constitutes relevant and reliable research for assessing risk has drawn a battle line between traditional toxicity testing using standardized, top-down methods and low-dose, bottom-up research. The line is often blurred between

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the legitimate criticism of research—a central aspect of the scientific knowledge-making process—and the nitpicking data so as to seed doubt and discredit a study. Doubt and criticism of BPA research and defense of its safety has been expressed most vocally by the producers of the chemical, whose interest is principally in maintaining and expanding markets for its use. Widening the scope of scientific investigation into the low-dose effects of BPA disrupts the assumption of its safety and in turn the future of the market for BPA and potentially other chemicals. In this respect, it is in the interests of the chemical producers to defend a risk assessment process that continues to define safety from the top down, and the producers accordingly rely on definitions of adversity that adhere to traditional understandings of what is a toxic effect. When consensus on the meaning of adversity falters, as it has in the debate about BPA’s safety, markets get destabilized not just for this chemical but potentially for hundreds if not thousands of others.

IS IT SAFE? ADDRESSING STRUCTURAL PROBLEMS

To change the regulatory safety standard for BPA, regulators demand a high level of certainty of risk and strong correlation to adverse harm in humans. In this case, however, the complexity of BPA’s known mechanisms of action—combined with the challenge of determining how biological changes and disruptions very early in life (particularly during prenatal programming) contribute to multicausal chronic diseases that appear later in life—render any simplistic causal relationships between exposure and disease increasingly difficult. Without a means for navigating this complexity and providing multiple options for risk reduction and decision making under uncertainty, we are left with intractable regulatory inaction and continued exposure to hazardous chemicals. There are a number of larger lessons to be drawn from the BPA controversy. First, the solution to uncertainty of the chemical’s risks is not a precautionary ban without additional changes in science policy and regulatory decision making. The problem of regrettable substitution—whereby an equally or more hazardous chemical replaces the banned substance— illustrates the acute limitations of bans as a means for reducing risks absent larger reforms. For instance, one replacement for BPA in thermal papers used in receipts is BP-S, which is also estrogenic (Liao et al. 2012). Removing BPA from the market only to replace it with a substance that turns out to be equally problematic or worse undermines public health and distorts any market incentive for improving the safety of a product.

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Second, as research on environmental chemicals shifts to a bottom-up approach that considers real-world exposure levels, diseases of public health importance (like diabetes, heart disease and obesity, and exposures during vulnerable periods in development) unique approaches to risk assessment will be necessary. Here, proper risk assessment will need to contend with nontraditional toxicity studies and incorporate them into comprehensive reviews of the research. All of this of course presupposes a demand for chemical testing and safety assessments, which in itself requires legislative reforms, including of the Toxic Substances Control Act—a discussion that falls outside the scope of this chapter (Phillip 2006; Denison 2009; Vogel and Roberts 2011). If indeed the paradigm of chemical testing is shifting from a high-dose to a low-dose approach, how can regulators adjust to such a transformation given the inevitable trade-offs and the strong opposition to change by the regulated industry? Here, BPA may serve as an example or at least provide a stepping stone to a new approach. In 2009, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the FDA established the BPA Consortium designed to bridge traditional toxicity testing and low-dose risks of endocrine disruptors. The objective of this multicentered research is to address critiques of low-dose research (viz., that this research relies on small sample sizes of animals and nonoral routes of exposure) and traditional testing methods that use high doses and fail to evaluate appropriate endpoints. For example, studies within this consortium examine a very wide range of doses—high and low doses—and orally expose a large number of animals. In order to evaluate a wide range of endpoints, tissues from the animals have been shared with a consortium of academic researchers from around the country who meet regularly to share results (Birnbaum et al. 2012). While this is a laudable effort to resolve the persistent uncertainty and debate about BPA’s safety, it remains uncertain as to whether it will serve as an example for how future chemical testing should occur. Clearly, not every chemical can be as extensively tested as BPA. But the effort to incorporate a bottom-up approach into a more traditional testing format represents an effort to transition between the two paradigms of chemical testing. Today we are all exposed to hundreds of different industrial chemicals, including BPA. With new tools for investigating the biological activity of chemicals at lower and lower concentrations, scientific research is opening a vast new terrain of insight into human biology and demanding a transition in how we evaluate risk. This new insight includes understanding of how even very low levels of chemicals, like BPA, can impact multiple biological systems with complex effects over the lifespan of an individual and the population. Determining chemical safety today is not as simple

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as determining that chemical X causes toxic effect Y at a high dose. The new world of disease risk involves complex causal models, probabilities of risk, and the recognition that chemical exposures, including to BPA, may be important risk factors for disease development. NOTE 1. The Simpsons, “Pranks and Greens,” season 21, episode 6, aired November 22, 2009, FOX Television. REFERENCES American Chemistry Council. 2012. “Filing of Food Additive Petition.” Federal Register, February 17. http://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2012/02/17/2012-3744/ american-chemistry-council-filing-of-food-additive-petition#h-4 Antosh, N. 1987. “From Hard Hats to Baby Bottles: Tough Plastics Spurs Expansion at Area Plants.” Houston Chronicle, July 5. Belliveau, M. 2010. “Healthy States:  Protecting Families from Toxic Chemicals While Congress Lags Behind.” Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families, November 17. http://blog.saferchemicals.org/2010/11/healthy-states-protecting-families-f rom-toxic-chemicals-while-congress-lags-behind.html Beronius, A., C. Rudén, H. Håkansson, and A. Hanberg. 2010. “Risks to All or None? A  Comparative Analysis of Controversies in the Health Risk Assessment of Bisphenol A.” Reproductive Toxicology 29: 132–146. Birnbaum, L.S., J.R. Bucher, G.W. Collman, D.C. Zeldin, A.F. Johnson, T.T. Schug, et al. 2012. “Consortium-Based Science: The NIEHS Multipronged Collaborative Approach to Assessing the Health Effects of Bisphenol A.” Environmental Health Perspectives 120: 1640–1644. “BPA Production in 1985 Expected to Exceed Record. 1985.” Chemical Marketing Reporter, December 2: 14. Denison, R. 2009. “Ten Essential Elements in TSCA Reform.” Environmental Law Reporter 39: 10020–10028. Dodds, E.C., and W. Lawson. 1936. “Synthetic Oestrogenic Agents without the Phenanthrene Nucleus.” Nature 137: 996. Goodman, J.E., E.E. McConnell, G.I. Sipes, R.J. Witorsch, T.M. Slayton, C.J. Yu, et  al. 2006. “An Updated Weight of the Evidence Evaluation of Reproductive and Developmental Effects of Low Doses of Bisphenol A.” Critical Reviews in Toxicology 36: 387–457. Gray, G.M., J.T. Cohen, G. Cunha, C. Hughes, E.E. McConnell, L. Rhomberg, et  al. 2004. “Weight of the Evidence Evaluation of Low Dose Reproductive and Developmental Effects of Bisphenol A.” Human Risk Assessment 10: 876–921. Greiner, E., T. Kaulin, and G. Toki. 2004. “Bisphenol A.” In Chemical Economics Handbook, 1–37. Stanford, CA: Stanford Research Institute. Hall, A. 1970. “Polycarbonate Shoots for 150 Million by 1980.” Modern Plastics, October: 76–78. Ho, S.M., W.Y. Tang, J.B. de Frausto, and G.S. Prins. 2006. “Developmental Exposure to Estradiol and Bisphenol A Increases Susceptibility to Prostate Carcinogenesis and Epigenetically Regulates Phosphodiesterase Type 4 Variant 4.” Cancer Research 66: 5624–5632. Iberreta, D., and S.H. Swan. 2001. “The DES Story:  Long-Term Consequences of Prenatal Exposure.” In Late Lessons from Early Warnings:  The Precautionary

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Principle, 1896–2000, edited by P. Harremoës, D. Gee, M. MacGarvin, A. Stirling, J. Keys, B. Wynne, et al., 84–92. Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities. Kirschrer, M. 2004. “Chemical Profile: Bisphenol A.” Chemical Market Reporter 266: 27. Krishnan, A.V., P. Stathis, S.F. Permuth, L. Tokes, and D. Feldman. 1993. “Bisphenol-A:  An Estrogenic Substance Is Released from Polycarbonate Flasks during Autoclaving.” Endocrinology 132: 2279–2286. Langston, N. 2010. Toxic Bodies: Hormone Disruptors and the Legacy of DES. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Layton, L. 2009. “No BPA for Baby Bottles in U.S.” Washington Post, March 6. Liao, C., F. Liu, and K. Kannan. 2012. “Bisphenol S, a New Bisphenol Analogue, in Paper Products and Currency Bills and Its Association with Bisphenol A  Residues.” Environmental Science and Technology 46: 6515–6522. Marcus, A.I. 1994. Cancer from Beef:  DES, Federal Food Regulation, and Consumer Confidence. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. “PC Looks at Lenses Sees Bright Prospect.” 1970. Modern Plastics, September: 82–83. Phillip, M.E. 2006. “Obstructing Authority:  Does the EPA Have the Power to Ensure Commercial Chemicals are Safe?” Environmental Health Perspectives 114: A706–A709. Prins, G.S., S.H. Ye, L. Birch, S.M. Ho, and K. Kannan. 2011. “Serum Bisphenol A  Pharmacokinetics and Prostate Neoplastic Responses Following Oral and Subcutaneous Exposures in Neonatal Sprague-Dawley Rats.” Reproductive Toxicology 31: 1–9. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 2008. NTP-CERHR Monograph on the Potential Human Reproductive and Developmental Effects of Bisphenol A. NIH Publication 08-5994. Washington, DC: Author. Vogel, S.A. 2009. “The Politics of Plastics:  The Making and Unmaking of Bisphenol A Safety.” American Journal of Public Health 99: S559–S566. Vogel, S.A. 2013. Is it Safe? BPA and the Struggle to Define the Safety of Chemicals. Berkeley: University of California Press. Vogel, S.A., and J.A. Roberts. 2011. “Why the Toxic Substances Control Act Needs an Overhaul and How to Strengthen Oversight of Chemicals in the Interim.” Health Affairs 30: 898–905. vom Saal, F.S., B.T. Akingbemi, S.M. Belcher, L.S. Birnbaum, D.A. Crain, M. Eriksen, et al. 2007. “Chapel Hill Bisphenol A Expert Panel Consensus Statement: Integration of Mechanisms, Effects in Animals and Potential to Impact Human Health at Current Levels of Exposure.” Reproductive Toxicology 24: 131–138. vom Saal, F.S., and C. Hughes. 2005. “An Extensive New Literature Concerning Low-Dose Effects of Bisphenol A Shows the Need for a New Risk Assessment.” Environmental Health Perspectives 113: 926–933. Watkins, E.S. 2007. The Estrogen Elixir: A History of Hormone Replacement Therapy in America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. World Health Organization. 2011. “Toxicological and Health Aspects of Bisphenol A.” Geneva:  Author. http://www.who.int/foodsafety/chem/chemicals/bisphenol/ en/index.html

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PART FOUR

Ecosystem Management: Protecting Nature and Livelihoods

CHAPTER 15

Biological Invasions: Impacts, Management, and Controversies DANIEL SIMBERLOFF

INTRODUCTION

A biological invasion occurs when a species introduced deliberately or inadvertently by humans establishes a population far from its native home, maintains itself without human assistance, and spreads beyond the point of introduction (Richardson et al. 2000). Some definitions (e.g., President Clinton’s Executive Order 13112 of 1999) require that the spreading species have a harmful impact, but this is not a part of biologists’ definition. The rare occasions on which a species arrives on its own and spreads in a distant location—such as the African cattle egret reaching the New World—do not qualify as invasions. Although some invasions (e.g., ship rats on Mediterranean islands) occurred thousands of years ago (Ruffino and Vidal 2010), the major surge began with the European discovery and colonization of the New World, which initiated the widespread intercontinental movement of animals, plants, and humans known as the Columbian Exchange. Early explorers and colonists observed European plants in North America by the 17th century, and by the 19th century biogeographers routinely classified species as native, introduced, or of unknown origin (Chew and Hamilton 2010), but few concerned themselves with impacts of introduced species. A remarkable 1958 book for a lay audience by English ecologist Charles Elton, The Ecology of Invasions by Animals and Plants, described many invasion impacts. It is often cited as having founded the modern field of invasion biology (see

Elton 2000). In fact, it was ahead of its time and had little effect. Rather, a project in the mid-1980s of the international Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment engaged hundreds of scientists in an attempt to understand why only certain invasions led to impacts and how to minimize these (Simberloff 2010a). These efforts led to the rapid growth of a distinct science, invasion biology, and today thousands of researchers annually publish hundreds of papers on invasions.

INVASION IMPACTS

Invasions are idiosyncratic, and the routes to some impacts are so tortuous that one would never have predicted them. A  classic example began with the 1916 introduction of kokanee salmon to Flathead Lake, Montana, through the accidental mixture of their eggs with those of sockeye salmon (which had been stocked by state authorities for sport-fishing). The kokanee thrived to the extent that their spawning attracted predators, including bald eagles and grizzly bears. Opossum shrimp were later introduced in the 1970s to increase kokanee reproduction, and while the shrimp greatly depressed populations of the aquatic arthropods that serve as their prey, they also reduced the numbers of kokanee prey. The kokanee population crashed, with ensuing declines of bald eagle and grizzly bear populations (Ellis et al. 2011). Despite the idiosyncrasies, most invasion impacts fall into a few categories. From an ecological standpoint, the most important are those that transform entire ecosystems, thereby affecting many species simultaneously. Most such “game-changing” invasions involve modified fire regimes, nutrient cycles, or physical structure. Several individuals introduced Australian paperbark to south Florida in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, where they were intended to serve as attractive ornamentals or potential sources of timber (Dray et al. 2006). Subsequent invasion by this species exemplifies a transformative ecosystem change wrought by a new fire regime. Paperbark has spongy bark and highly flammable leaves and litter. It burns frequently and at high temperatures, which devastates native sawgrass and muhly grass maladapted to such conflagrations. Paperbark itself, having evolved adaptations to fire, thrives and is transforming meadows into forests, with concomitant changes in the animal species that had inhabited the region (Schmitz et al. 1997). This impact is now exacerbated by the recent invasion into the region of Old World climbing fern, which transmits ground fires into the canopy of paperbark and remaining native trees.

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Other ecosystem-transforming invasions include the introduction of nitrogen-fixing plants into areas previously lacking such species. For instance, firebush, an Atlantic nitrogen-fixing shrub that was introduced to Hawaii in the 1920s to reforest abandoned sugar plantations (Whiteaker and Gardner 1985) is gradually fertilizing a previously nitrogen-poor environment (Vitousek et al. 1987). The volcanic soils on the relatively young Big Island have led to the evolution of native plants highly adapted to low nutrient levels and have inhibited invasion of natural areas by many plants locally introduced as ornamentals or for agriculture or ranching. This barrier is being removed by the activities of firebush—nitrogen and water content of the canopy have doubled in some invaded areas (Asner and Vitousek 2005)—and the prospect looms of a massive invasion by previously restricted plants. The impact of North American beavers introduced to Tierra del Fuego (an archipelago on the southern tip of South America) in 1947 exemplifies physical structural changes that reverberate throughout an entire ecosystem. By cutting trees and building dams, beavers have transformed southern beech forests into meadows, facilitated the spread of many previously restricted exotic plants, and thereby have changed the habitat in a way that affects all the animals that had previously occupied the forest (Lizarralde et al. 2004; Anderson et al. 2006). Other impacts do not change entire ecosystems but drastically affect particular species or groups of them, in some instances driving them to extinction. Ugandan officials introduced Nile perch to Lake Victoria in the 1950s and 1960s to increase fishery production and establish a sport-fish industry (Pringle 2011). This predator has been the main reason more than 200 native fish species are now extinct (Pringle 2011). The eastern gray squirrel of North America was repeatedly introduced to Great Britain in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, probably as an attractive curiosity (Long 2003). This squirrel has greatly reduced populations of the native red squirrel in Great Britain by outcompeting it for nuts and by transmitting squirrelpox virus, a pathogen to which the gray squirrel is resistant and the red squirrel highly susceptible (Rushton et al. 2006). Other introduced pathogens that have devastated susceptible native species include crayfish plague brought to Europe with resistant North American signal crayfish and red swamp crayfish (Gherardi 2007), as well as avian malaria brought to Hawaii with Asian songbirds (van Riper et al. 1986). An introduced pathogen that attacks a dominant plant species can indirectly transform an entire ecosystem, as chestnut blight did by eliminating all chestnut trees from eastern North America during the first half of the 20th century (Freinkel 2007). Introduced herbivores can also virtually eliminate particular species—current examples of this in eastern North American forests

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are the Asian hemlock woolly adelgid (Ellison et  al. 2005)  and emerald ash borer (Poland and McCullough 2006). Introduced species have often hybridized with native species; if the introduced population is much larger, hybridization can lead to a sort of genetic extinction of the native lineage. For example, the continued existence of both the New Zealand grey duck and the native Hawaiian duck are threatened partly by hybridization with introduced North American mallards (Rhymer and Simberloff 1996). Many introduced species remain inconspicuous and restricted to their initial sites of introduction for an extended period before suddenly spreading across the landscape. For instance, Brazilian pepper was an infrequent ornamental in south Florida beginning in the late 19th century, but it rapidly expanded to become the most invasive plant in the state beginning in the 1940s, probably because of a lowered water table induced by withdrawals for agriculture and residences (Ewel 1986). Other times, what triggers an invasion after a long lag is as yet undetermined, as in the spread of Old World giant reed in California, present since the early 19th century but not invasive until over a century later (Dudley 2000). In several cases, a lag ends when a second introduction occurs that aids a previously introduced species. For example, Asian ornamental fig trees were long present in south Florida but never invasive until the wasps that are their obligatory pollinators arrived. One fig, the Chinese banyan, then became an aggressive invader (Kauffman et al. 1991). The Chinese banyan invasion is a special case of the phenomenon known as “invasional meltdown,” in which the joint impacts of two or more invaders exceed the sum of those that would have been caused by each individually (Simberloff 2006). A rapid recent development is the discovery, by molecular genetic techniques, that several damaging invasions have resulted from the introduction of new genotypes to a population that had already been present but innocuous. Common reed had long existed on both coasts of the United States, but it spread explosively and became a weed of wetlands only in the last 150 years after new genotypes arrived (probably in soil ballast of ships) and then spread with the expansion of railroads in the late 19th century (Saltonstall 2002). Introduced pathogens can be a major threat to public health. West Nile virus, for instance, came to the United States in 1999 (probably from a bird or mosquito inadvertently brought from the Middle East). The initial human toll was not great, though the death of many birds made it clear that a new invasion had occurred. Because many bird and mosquito species can vector this virus, it spread quickly to the West Coast. The problem was exacerbated by the invasion of an Asian mosquito (Aedes japonicus) particularly adept at transmitting West Nile. Just a single outbreak in 2003 in

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Louisiana sickened 329 people and cost over $20 million (Zohrabian et al. 2004; Yiannakoulias and Svenson 2007). Another mosquito-borne virus, chikungunya, native to tropical Africa and Asia, invaded the Indian Ocean island of La Réunion in 2006 and was rapidly spread by the introduced Asian tiger mosquito. Medical costs to date are over $60 million, and the cost of lost productivity exceeds $25 million (Soumahoro et al. 2011). Many invasions have damaged human enterprises as well as the environment. For instance, the potato blight, a South American fungus-like pathogen, first invaded North America, then reached Europe in the 1840s and caused famine in Ireland (Goodwin et al. 1994). Introduced weeds alone are believed to cause $28 billion annually in crop damage in the United States, while introduced insects and mites cost another $16 billion and introduced pathogens another $23 billion (Pimentel et al. 2000). On the other hand, agriculture has benefited enormously from introductions. The seven leading crop plants in the United States are all introduced (U.S. Department of Agriculture 2012). This is one of several ways in which introduced species benefit the environment or humankind. Some nations have thriving forestry industries largely because of introduced tree species, such as the North American Monterey pine in Chile (Toro and Gessel 1999). Several introduced species even serve conservation purposes. For instance, in one California suburban area, 40% of the butterfly species use only introduced plants as hosts (Shapiro 2002). A final point about impacts is that whether they are harmful, beneficial, or neutral is a matter of perspective. Black-tailed deer introduced to Haida Gwaii (the Queen Charlotte Islands) off the Pacific coast of Canada have devastated dominant tree species, thus transforming much of the native plant and animal community to the dismay of conservationists and many inhabitants. However, they provide meat as well as recreational hunting, and some residents object fiercely to consideration of removing them (Simberloff 2008). Similarly, giant hogweed, native to the Caucasus, was introduced to Europe and North America in the 19th century as a spectacular ornamental, and its propagation is still advocated by some garden architects because of its beauty (Clément 2002), even as it is deplored by conservationists because of its invasiveness and by many because it causes severe phytophotodermatitis (a skin condition; Hejda et al. 2009).

MANAGEMENT OF INVASIONS

Introduced species can be managed at three stages. First, they can be prevented from entering. If they enter and establish populations, they can be

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detected quickly and perhaps eradicated. If they become invasive—that is, spread widely—they can occasionally still be eradicated, or they can be subjected to ongoing “maintenance management” to keep their populations low, thus minimizing impact. Keeping non-native species from being introduced in the first place requires stringent regulation of planned introductions and constricting pathways that bring unplanned introductions, such as untreated timber that may carry insects or pathogens. The 1993 Convention on Biological Diversity (“Rio Convention”) states that “as far as possible and as appropriate,” each signatory nation shall “prevent the introduction of, control or eradicate those alien species which threaten ecosystems, habitats or species.” However, most nations have done little to implement this part of the Convention. New Zealand leads the way with mandatory risk-based consideration of any proposed introduction and also tight border security to prevent smuggling or unintended introductions. Australia also has invested heavily in limiting invasions, though specific regulations differ among the states. Both Australia and New Zealand also heavily publicize the threat posed by invasions (Meyerson and Reaser 2002). The United States is much more lax. Deliberate introductions are subject to quarantine to ensure they do not carry hitchhiking pests or pathogens, but most species can be imported, with no risk assessment, so long as they are not on one of two black lists. The animal black list was established by the Lacey Act of 1900 and is an inadequate, reactive instrument (Fowler et al. 2007). It lists very few species, with most added after they had already invaded. The plant analog to the Lacey Act is the Federal Noxious Weed Act of 1974, superseded in 2000 by the Plant Protection Act (Appleby 2005). Approximately 100 species are on the associated black list, a tiny fraction of the number of plants known to be invasive in various parts of the world. In short, Congress has not effectively regulated introductions. This shortcoming is widely recognized by legal scholars (e.g., Miller 2004) as well as environmentalists (e.g., Windle 2011). President Clinton’s Executive Order 13112 of 1999 attempted to begin to rectify this situation, as it mandated the creation of a national management plan that would coordinate activities of federal agencies and facilitate interactions with state agencies and other stakeholders dealing with introduced species. Unfortunately, little has been accomplished under its aegis, largely because the coordinating body created by the Executive Order is woefully underfunded and federal agencies have been loath to give up their existing programs in favor of joint activities. In a nation as large as the United States, the introduction of species from one region to another can trigger invasions just as readily as can an

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introduction from overseas. For instance, smooth cordgrass from the East Coast has been a damaging invader in the San Francisco region (Ayres et al. 2004). However, except for embargoes on moving produce interstate, which were designed to protect agriculture, states that have attempted to regulate movement of other species from within the United States have been hindered by the Interstate Commerce Clause of the Constitution, which also limits the ability of states to prevent hitchhiking organisms from arriving on commercial goods. The regulatory framework in Europe is even less effective, with different nations having very different regulations on what planned introductions are permitted and also different degrees of commitment to enforcing those regulations. There are few if any attempts to constrict pathways that might bring unintended introductions. Eradication—complete removal of every individual of an invasive population—has seen some famous and damaging failures, such as the fourteen-year failed effort in the southeastern United States to eradicate the South American red imported fire ant. This endeavor did little to impede its spread and harmed many nontarget species (Buhs 2004). The broad-spectrum insecticides used in the campaign reduced populations of native ants and other species that might have impeded the fire ant, and insecticides were also unable to lower fire ant reproductive rates in the field sufficiently to hinder their spread. Rachel Carson, already engaged in research and writing about the environmental dangers of pesticides, quickly entered a vigorous public debate triggered by the beginning of the spraying in the eradication campaign (Lear 1997). The campaign became one of the featured targets in Carson’s book Silent Spring, which played a key role in generating an environmental movement. However, many eradication campaigns have succeeded, such as those targeting the Oriental fruit fly on Guam, the melon fly in the Ryukyu Archipelago, the African mosquito that vectors malaria in 31,000 square kilometers of Brazil, nutria in Great Britain, and the Caribbean black-striped mussel in Darwin Harbor, Australia (Simberloff 2009). Recently, rinderpest was eradicated from Africa (McNeil 2011). The criteria for successful eradication include sufficient resources to see the project through to completion, adequate lines of authority to compel cooperation, and enough knowledge of the target species to have indicated a vulnerable point in its life cycle (Simberloff 2003b). When eradication fails or is not attempted, many technologies have been used for maintenance management. Broadly, these fall into three categories: mechanical/physical control, chemical control, and biological control. Common to all three is that they target particular species and work at the population level. All three technologies have scored some striking

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successes, but they have also seen failures and, on occasion, unexpected or harmful side effects. Eurasian musk thistle is well controlled in Kentucky state parks and preserves by frequent hand-pulling by DUI offenders (Simberloff 2009), while European beachgrass has been cut back and maintained at acceptable levels in a California wildlife refuge largely through physical removal by refuge personnel and prison crews (Pickart and Sawyer 1998). A  South African public works program, Working for Water, has cleared a million hectares of invasive trees and shrubs, mainly by manual labor. Many of today’s pesticides and herbicides, when used properly, are effective and have minimal nontarget impacts. Under certain circumstances, even a short-term risk of nontarget impacts might be acceptable. For instance, after Florida was infested by South American water hyacinth, mechanical harvesters and introduced biological control agents failed to prevent its spread. The infestation was later reduced from 51,000 hectares to 2,000 hectares by use of 2,4-D, a synthetic growth regulator and component of Agent Orange. Although initial reduction required large amounts of 2,4-D, soon ongoing maintenance management required less than 1% of the amount originally used (Schardt 1997). On Christmas Island, the broad-spectrum pesticide fipronil devastated populations of the introduced yellow crazy ant, which was on course to extinguish the famed endemic red land crab (Boland et al. 2011). Although the nontarget impacts of fipronil suggest that a better long-term solution is needed, this operation bought time for a rapidly disappearing iconic species. Chemical baits have also been a key feature of successful maintenance management campaigns against invasive mammals, such as the brushtail possum in New Zealand, with nontarget impacts increasingly minimized by well-designed delivery devices. Chemicals are often used in concert with mechanical means of invasion management. For instance, in south Florida, an ongoing successful campaign to reduce paperbark has used aerial spraying of herbicides combined with manual felling of trees and application of herbicide to stumps (Laroche and McKim 2004). However, two problems bedevil long-term management by chemicals. First, target species evolve resistance to chemicals—some introduced insect pests now resist several classes of insecticide. Second, chemicals are expensive, which limits their long-term use in situations where they are not protecting a market crop. Thus, even aside from a frequent, almost instinctive “chemophobia” on the part of many conservationists (Williams 1997), cost alone prevents extensive continuing use of chemicals for conservation purposes. Biological control—the introduction of natural enemies of an invasive species—is the third traditional maintenance management tool.

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Many agricultural pests have been well controlled by this means, as have some aquatic weeds. Although biological control is perceived as a “green” alternative to chemicals, in fact, some early biological control introductions have themselves become invasive and caused tremendous damage. For instance, the small Indian mongoose, which was introduced to many islands to control rats (Hays and Conant 2006), and the rosy wolf snail, which was introduced widely in the Pacific to control the giant African snail (Cowie 2002), have both caused many extinctions of native species. These are generalist feeders, and modern biological control practitioners generally eschew use of such species in favor of natural enemies with narrow host ranges (optimally, host-specific to the target pest) in order to minimize the likelihood of nontarget impacts. Host-testing for potential biological control agents of introduced plants generally suffices today to prevent introductions with a high probability of nontarget impacts. Tests of potential biological controls for insect pests such as the emerald ash borer and hemlock woolly adelgid are not nearly as comprehensive (Simberloff 2012b). As noted above, the primary methods of maintenance management— physical/mechanical, chemical, and biological control—are all aimed at particular invasive species, and of course they are also reactive, as they are all applied after the invasion has already occurred. In the 1990s, the idea of managing entire ecosystems proactively for various purposes, including invasive species prevention and management, became popular among conservation biologists and resource agencies. This strategy developed largely in response to the observation that managing single species after single species was inefficient and costly. With respect to invasions, the guiding principle of ecosystem management is that the maintenance of natural processes, such as fire regimes and nutrient cycles, would likely favor native species that have evolved in response to those processes and disfavor introduced species that have not. Several observations of heavily invaded habitats support this view. For instance, a lowered water table facilitated the massive invasion of south Florida by both Brazilian pepper and paperbark (Ewel 1986), and frequent low-intensity fires to which native plants are adapted keep many introduced plants from invading longleaf pine-wiregrass communities in the South (Simberloff 2004). Unfortunately, for virtually any type of ecosystem, some non-native species are sufficiently well-adapted to invade. For instance, longleaf pine-wiregrass systems are beginning to be invaded by Asian cogongrass (Simberloff 2004). To date, ecosystem management as a method to prevent or to minimize extinctions has rarely been implemented.

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CONTROVERSIES AROUND INVASIONS AND INVASION BIOLOGY

Criticism of invasion biology and management originally came from historians, philosophers, and sociologists who were outside of biology (e.g., Tsing 1995, Pauly 1996, Sagoff 1999; see Simberloff 2003a). More recently, a small number of ecologists have criticized the entire enterprise of managing introduced species (Davis et  al. 2011). One charge is that most introduced species are not harmful, and some are beneficial, so stringent regulatory measures are unwarranted and publicity about invasions is overblown. It is true that most introduced species are not known to be harmful, although this does not automatically mean that, as a class, they do not warrant careful scrutiny. After all, some invasions have been enormously harmful. By analogy, most bacteria are not known to harm human health or other interests; some are even useful (e.g., bacteria that aid plants to fix nitrogen or help farmers to make cheese). Nevertheless, we pay close attention to bacteria, and we publicize those that cause diseases. Also, we do not know of harm caused by most invaders, but we also know that many problems arose after long delays during which invaders appeared innocuous. For instance, introduced plants in Europe typically continue to spread for 150 to 400 years (Williamson et al. 2009; Gassó et al. 2010). The argument that most introduced species do not cause damaging invasions is sometimes accompanied by the observation that some native species begin to spread similarly to introduced invasives and may even be perceived as ecologically damaging. This is true, but such “native invasions” happen much less frequently than do invasions of introduced species. In the United States, introduced plant species are forty times more likely to become invasive than are native species, and when the latter do act like invasives, this is almost always precipitated by some other human activity, like fire suppression or overgrazing (Simberloff et al. 2012). Critics have pointed out that, in some locations, the establishment of introduced species has equaled or even surpassed extinction of native species, so that biodiversity is unchanged or even increased. For instance, for bird species on oceanic islands worldwide, the number of species has tended to remain approximately constant, even as many native species have been extinguished by human impacts (hunting and habitat change) and introduced predators (Sax et al. 2002). At the same time that introduced species have kept biodiversity constant in certain locales (or, in some instances, even increased), however, there is a global decrease in biodiversity. This is because the island species that have disappeared were found nowhere else, while the introduced species that have replaced them are

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common elsewhere and have often been introduced in many places. For instance, of 114 native Hawaiian bird species present when humans first arrived 1,000 years ago, at least 66 are now extinct. On the other hand, 53 introduced species from all over the world have established populations (Simberloff 2010b). While a birdwatcher can see species from five continents on the campus of the University of Hawaii, he or she can see only one native bird species (at most). It is hard to view this exchange as conferring a net ecological benefit. Invasion biologists and managers have also been taken to task on the grounds that antipathy toward invasive species is xenophobic or nativist (Simberloff 2003a). This charge takes two forms. The stronger form, leveled by several social scientists and landscape architects, is that activities against invasive species actually do reflect underlying xenophobia. The weaker form is that, whatever the underlying motives, actions against invasive species and some of the terminology used to describe them encourage xenophobia. As an example of the stronger claim, historian Philip Pauly (1996) drew a parallel between increasingly restrictive U.S. immigration policies, such as the implementation of national quotas in 1921 and the Immigration Act of 1924, and the earliest American restrictions on importing plants and animals, such as the Lacey Act of 1900 and the Plant Quarantine Act of 1912. During the early 20th century prejudice against foreigners was rampant in United States, and the immigration laws reflected that prejudice. However, aside from their approximate synchrony, Pauly presents no evidence for a linkage between the immigration laws and laws on importing plants and animals. Nevertheless, he argues that “attitudes towards foreign pests merged with ethnic prejudices: the gypsy moth and the oriental chestnut blight both took on and contributed to characteristics ascribed to their presumed human compatriots.” In fact, laws dealing with invasive species were drafted in response to specific effects on agriculture, forestry, and nature; devastating impacts of the chestnut blight and the gypsy moth were obvious to scientists and the public alike (Coates 2011). As for the weaker charge—that negative publicity about invasions leads to anti-immigrant sentiment, regardless of whether the concern about invasions is warranted on ecological grounds—evidence is lacking. It would be surprising if some immigrants did not feel uncomfortable about florid language often used to describe invaders, especially in news media reports. A blog lamenting a project to remove invasive plants in Florida captures this concern: “If we follow that reasoning a little further, we should probably also get rid of the Haitians, the Cubans, the Canadians, and all the people from New Jersey—they are all ‘non-native’ ” (Ellis 2010). Sociologist Brendon Larson (2005) has raised another concern about invasion terminology,

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namely the frequent use of military metaphors: “advancing front,” “beachhead,” “bridgehead,” “war against invasives,” “battle against species X,” “targeting species Y,” and the like. His claim is that these metaphors are imprecise, so they impede understanding of invasions, and they also foster xenophobia (after all, wars are generally against a “foreign” enemy). However, all metaphors are to some extent imprecise. Moreover, humans are driven to use them in all disciplines (Lakoff and Johnson 1999). Almost all the same metaphors are also used in public health, where we mount a “war” against cancer and disease X is “public enemy number 1,” which must be stopped or slowed, with vaccination and various sanitary improvements as major “weapons.” Even Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace in the 19th century used military metaphors for biological invasions (Simberloff 2010a). Whether such language actually fosters xenophobia would require detailed research by psychologists and sociologists that has not yet been performed. Because of the spread of a few invasive species—the plant and animal “weeds”—and the decline of natives, nature writer David Quammen (1998) coined the metaphor “planet of weeds” to describe his vision of the world in a few centuries. His metaphor suggests it is futile to try to stop invasions because the forces that cause them—especially international trade and travel—are growing inexorably. Others have echoed this notion that it is futile to fight invasions because of the continued growth of forces that bring them, especially international travel and trade. Particularly striking is the recent proclamation by Mark Gardener, director of the Charles Darwin Research Station in the Galapagos Islands, that much of the long, expensive effort to control non-native species there is a losing battle and should be abandoned. “It’s time to embrace the aliens,” he says. Pointing to an invader from Asia, he added, “Blackberries now cover more than 30,000 hectares here, and our studies show that island biodiversity is reduced by at least 50% when it’s present. But as far as I’m concerned, it’s now a Galapagos native, and it’s time we accepted it as such” (Vince 2011). Such pessimism is unwarranted. Of course, if there is no way a population can be eradicated, we should not try. But, as noted above, many eradication campaigns that would have seemed hopeless just twenty years ago have succeeded. The Galapagos campaign that Gardener deems a failure is, ironically, rife with successes. At least twenty-seven invasive species have been eradicated from the Galapagos, including feral goats and pigs from large islands (Simberloff et  al. 2011). The Galapagos have also seen successes in maintenance management, such as control of the cottony cushion scale by the Australian vedalia lady beetle (Simberloff et al. 2011).

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Many campaigns to eradicate or manage mammal invaders, and even a few invasive birds, have been bitterly opposed by advocates of animal rights on the grounds that humans have no right to kill sentient animals, or, if they have the right to do so, the methods used are inhumane. Even eradication of such a widely hated invader as a ship rat has been controversial (Simberloff 2012a). It may be impossible to reconcile animal rights advocates with the idea of killing introduced animals, even if the latter are causing species extinctions. Some philosophers believe the rights of individual sentient animals trump any rights of collective entities, even the right of species to exist. Others disagree and grant species a right to exist that trumps an individual’s right to life (Simberloff 2012a). Even if one concedes the need to eradicate or control sentient animals by killing them, everyone wants this done humanely. Sometimes, however, there is simply no feasible humane solution—in certain circumstances managers have had to use snares for pigs and chemical baits that cause a painful death, like 1080 or brodifacoum for rats or brushtail possums. There is no way around this problem except continued technological improvements, but these are usually slow, and the impact of some invasions is sometimes irrevocable and very rapid. Finally, while managing entire ecosystems to retain important natural features would surely impede invasions, this cannot be treated as a silver-bullet solution that replaces single-species management. Resources are increasingly extracted from many ecosystems, and they are also changed in other ways, as by construction. There is a limit to how much we can manage such ecosystems to resemble pristine ones. And it takes substantial research to understand which features of intact ecosystems favor native species and hinder invasive ones. Such research has been conducted for few ecosystems. Further, intact ecosystems are occasionally invaded, even if less than disturbed ones. No matter which set of conditions maintains an intact system, some non-native species will be able to thrive in it, just as cogongrass invades longleaf pine forests. Ecosystem management also spawns its own controversy. Conservationists fear that the goal of maintaining ecological processes to implement this new approach to resource management can be a Trojan horse: It could allow the abandonment of highly species-specific, successful, yet expensive programs to save certain species on the grounds that these programs are old-fashioned and inefficient (Simberloff 1994). Certainly, maintaining or recreating natural physical processes has proven to be a useful tool in several ecosystems, and abuse of the concept through abandonment of other successful approaches can be prevented or at least publicized, but ecosystem management will not suffice as the lone tool to prevent and manage invasions.

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Pringle, R.M. 2011. “Nile Perch.” In Encyclopedia of Biological Invasions, edited by D. Simberloff and M. Rejmánek, 484–487. Berkeley: University of California Press. Quammen, D. 1998. “Planet of Weeds.” Harper’s Magazine 275: 57–69. Rhymer, J., and D. Simberloff. 1996. “Extinction by Hybridization and Introgression.” Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 27: 83–109. Richardson, D.M., P. Pyšek, M. Rejmánek, M.G. Barbour, D.F. Panetta, and C.J. West. 2000. “Naturalization and Invasion of Alien Plants: Concepts and Definitions.” Diversity and Distributions 6: 93–107. Ruffino, L., and E. Vidal. 2010. “Early Colonization of Mediterranean Islands by Rattus rattus: A Review of Zooarcheological Data.” Biological Invasions 12: 2389–2394. Rushton, S.P., P.W.W. Lurz, J. Gurnell, P. Nettleton, C. Bruemmer, M.D.F. Shirley, et al. 2006. “Disease Threats Posed by Alien Species: The Role of a Poxvirus in the Decline of the Native Red Squirrel in Britain.” Epidemiology and Infection 134: 521–533. Sagoff, M. 1999. “What’s Wrong with Exotic Species? Report from the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy 19: 16–23. Saltonstall, K. 2002. “Cryptic Invasion by a Non-Native Genotype of the Common Reed, Phragmites australis, into North America.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 99: 2445–2449. Sax, D.F., S.D. Gaines, and J.H. Brown. 2002. “Species Invasions Exceed Extinctions on Islands Worldwide:  A  Comparative Study of Plants and Birds.” American Naturalist 160: 766–783. Schardt, J.D. 1997. “Maintenance Control.” In Strangers in Paradise. Impact and Management of Nonindigenous Species in Florida, edited by D. Simberloff, D.C. Schmitz, and T.C. Brown, 229–244. Washington, DC: Island Press. Schmitz, D.C., D. Simberloff, R.H. Hofstetter, W. Haller, and D. Sutton. 1997. “The Ecological Impact of Nonindigenous Plants. In Strangers in Paradise:  Impact and Management of Nonindigenous Species in Florida, edited by D. Simberloff, D. Schmitz, and T. Brown, 39–61. Washington, DC: Island Press. Shapiro, A.M. 2002. The California Urban Butterfly Fauna Is Dependent on Alien Plants. Diversity and Distributions 8: 31–40. Simberloff, D. 1994. “How Forest Fragmentation Hurts Species and What to Do about It.” In Sustainable Ecological Systems, edited by W.W. Covington and L.F. DeBano, 85–90. Fort Collins, CO: Rocky Mountain Forest and Range Experiment Station, U.S. Department of Agriculture. Simberloff, D. 2003a. “Confronting Introduced Species:  A  Form of Xenophobia?” Biological Invasions 5: 179–192. Simberloff, D. 2003b. “Eradication—Preventing Invasions at the Outset.” Weed Science 51: 247–253. Simberloff, D. 2004. “Community Ecology: Is it Time to Move On?” American Naturalist 163: 787–799. Simberloff, D. 2006. “Invasional Meltdown Six Years Later—Important Phenomenon, Unfortunate Metaphor, or Both?” Ecology Letters 9: 912–919. Simberloff, D. 2008. “Science and the Management of Introduced Species.” In Lessons from the Islands: Introduced Species and What They Tell Us about How Ecosystems Work, edited by A.J. Gaston, T.E. Golumbia, J.-L. Martin, and S.T. Sharpe, 123– 134. Ottawa: Canadian Wildlife Service, Environment Canada. Simberloff, D. 2009. “We Can Eliminate Invasions or Live with Them!—High-Tech and Low-Tech Success Stories.” Biological Invasions 11: 149–157.

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CHAPTER 16

The Aliens in Our Midst: Managing Our Ecosystems BANU SUBR AMANIAM

I

begin with a central and profound insight of the feminist and cultural studies of science: that nature and culture, science and society, and biology and the social are not binary opposites. Rather, they are co-constituted and co-produced. We need to go beyond the idea of nature shaping culture and culture shaping nature and move toward an understanding where nature and culture are seen as inextricably interconnected and indeed as constitutive of each other. Instead of the binary formulation of nature and culture, we should begin thinking in terms of Donna Haraway’s (1999) memorable phrase naturecultures. There is no nature and culture, only naturecultures. I use the field of invasion biology as an illustrative case in point. It will come as no surprise to readers of this volume that we live in times of numerous environmental crises, in particular perceived crises of our ecosystems. While there are many sites and sources of the problems that have been identified, one prominent source in the biological and popular literature is that of invasive species. It is argued that some exotic and foreign species are entering the nation, growing and reproducing aggressively and in the process destroying native habitats and landscapes. The central problem is seen as a proliferation of exotic and foreign species, and the solution proposed is the eradication of these species in order to save native ecosystems. As Preston and Williams (2003) sum up: “Invasive alien species are emerging as one of the major threats to sustainable development, on a par with global warming and the destruction of life support systems.” Considered as biological “pollutants,” invasive species are seen as a major

threat (Simberloff 2000) and a costly “catastrophe” for native biodiversity (McNeely 2001). They are seen by the National Wildlife Foundation as a “major threat” to biodiversity, second only to habitat loss and degradation, and the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources has similarly described them as a “major cause” of biodiversity loss throughout the world.1 Politicians and environmental activists alike call for immediate action (Carlton 1999). Invasive species have been recognized as a major threat by the United Nations and almost every national and state government (Simberloff 2000). Each has its own invasive species program to monitor and control the spread of invasives. The Rio Convention on Biological Diversity (1992) recognized the threat of invasive species. There are now global invasive species programs at the United Nations and other international organizations. The U.  S. government has declared invasive species as a “critical problem.”2 In 1999 a Presidential Executive Order (EO 13112) resulted in the formation of the Federal Invasive Species Council, co-chaired by the Secretaries of the Interior, Agriculture and Commerce.3 Every state government in the United States has an invasive species program, and “most wanted” invasive species lists are now ubiquitous. The public attention is likewise striking and strident. Newspaper articles, magazines, journals, and websites all demand quick action to stem the rise of exotic biota (Subramaniam 2001). Newspapers and media outlets regularly report on local “threats.” There are books, journal issues, and indeed entire journals, like Biological Invasions, devoted to this field. Indeed, over the past three decades, there has been a huge explosion of work on invasive plant species. The frenzied alarm has been sounded by groups on the right and left, environmentalists and nonenvironmentalists alike. At the level of research and policy, this is a fertile area. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, state governments, and National Science Foundation committees—as well as environmental groups such as Nature Conservancy and Sierra Club—all have invasive species programs. Environmental and local plant societies successfully engage their citizens to give up their weekend to help destroy foreign species and/or introduce native plants and animals into local habitats (Neyfakh 2011). Looking through biological journals and popular magazines and newspapers, it would seem that biologists and nonbiologists, environmentalists and nonenvironmentalists, scientists and lay citizens are in agreement about the problem of foreign species. Most cities and states have advisories on desirable and undesirable plants for the household garden. In short, from the president on down, government and local agencies and the public have been calling for urgent action, usually using militaristic language (Larson

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2005) urging us to “fight the invaders” and defend the nation against the “growing threat from non-native species” (Herbert 1998). While this campaign against foreign species rages on, a growing number of academics and activists are pointing out the problem of this formulation of foreign species as inherently “evil” and as the source of the problem of our ecosystems (Milton 2000; Sagoff 2000; Slobodkin 2001; Subramaniam 2001; Theodoropoulos 2003; Brown and Sax 2004; Colautti and MacIsaac 2004; Brown and Sax 2005; Gobster 2005; Sagoff 2005; Coates 2006; Larson 2007; Warren 2007; Davis 2009; Davis et al. 2011). Why? In order to better understand the breadth and depth of these critiques, we need to move to think natureculturally and reinvigorate understandings of ecosystems that place humans and their complex histories squarely within ecosystems in both how we understand environmental problems and their solutions (Odum 1997; Larson 2007). Indeed a version of this debate was played out on the pages of Nature in 2011 (Davis et al. 2011; Simberloff et al. 2011).

NATURE IN-PLACE AND NATURE OUT-OF-PLACE

As it turns out, the idea of native and foreign plants emerges largely through nationalistic ideas of wanting to define national flora. The concept of “nativeness” was first outlined by English botanist John Henslow in 1835 and was soon adapted to define “a true British flora” (Davis et al. 2011). As with all binaries, the category “true” simultaneously articulates what is “not true,” and the now familiar binary of the native/alien emerged, although no general policy about native/aliens developed. In recent decades, the renewed interest in plant invasions can be traced to Charles Elton’s 1958 book The Ecology of Invasions, though “invasion biology” emerged as a discipline of its own only around the 1970s (Davis 2009). It is important to note that we have historically imagined our relationship with the biota of the world in numerous and diverse ways. In his influential book Ecological Imperialism, Alfred Crosby (1986) argues that the roots of European domination of the Western world lie in their creating “New-Europes” wherever they went, especially in North and South American, Australia, and New Zealand. Rather than thinking of European domination as the result of technology, Crosby argues that we should understand it as simultaneously biological and ecological. Where Europeans went, their agriculture and animals went; they thrived, and indigenous and local ecosystems collapsed. This vast migration of species ushered in a bioinvasion of mass proportions by the conquerors’ animals, plants, weeds, and germs, thus yielding a “great reshuffling” (Crosby 1986; Weiner 1996; McNeely 2001; Warren 2007).

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Some plants were now ubiquitous across the globe; as Crosby remarks, “the sun never sets on the empire of the dandelion.” Over the past decade, I have followed with great interest the explosion of work and the sustained panicked campaigns decrying the influx of foreign and exotic species, especially the ones that are invasive. These campaigns highlight the erosion of native and local habitats and the destruction of nature. Books and articles have proliferated into a veritable industry against invasive and exotic plants. Alongside the panic on invasive species of plants and animals are the hotly debated politics on human immigration into the United States. What are particularly striking to me are the remarkable parallels between the campaigns against human immigrants and those of foreign plants and animals (Subramaniam 2001). Like human immigrants, alien plant and animals are seen as “other,” looking different, even ugly, and definitely not from here (Robichaux 2000). They are seen as unhygienic and germ-ridden, and colonial and racist narratives of dirt, disease, and hygiene abound in these narratives. Like humans, a characteristic hallmark of invasive species is their supposed aggressive reproductive capacity. The repeated and familiar trope of third-world female hyperfertility, rampant overpopulation, and the ensuing resource depletion, aesthetics, and poverty haunt narratives of foreign plants/animals and humans. Repeatedly, alien plants are characterized as aggressive, uncontrollable, prolific, invasive, and expanding. One article sums it succinctly:  “They Came, They Bred, They Conquered” (Bright 1999). Despite the aggressive reproduction, they are seen as silent and stealthy, often invisible and ignored. E.O. Wilson states:  “Alien species are the stealth destroyers of the American environment” (McDonald 1999). Articles remind us that alien plants are “evil beauties”—that while they may appear to look harmless and even beautiful, they are evil because they destroy native plants and habitats (Cheater 1992). Their persistence and ability to withstand extreme situations makes them difficult to eradicate. Finally, there is the charge of irreversibility:  Once these plants gain a foothold, they never look back. Singularly motivated to take over native land, aliens become disconnected from their homelands and will never return and are, therefore, “here to stay” (Cheater 1992). In each of these parallels, alien/ foreign species are presented as “problems” and native species as “victims.” Paralleling human immigration, this rhetoric proposes the need to protect natives from the aliens. Paralleling human immigration, we hear calls to “fence” borders and develop policies to keep alien/exotic flora and fauna out of the nation and eradicate them within. It would appear that environmentalists worry about foreign plants and animals and anti-immigration activists worry about human immigration, with little interaction between

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them. Yet in tracking the rhetoric between humans and plants and animals, it is evident that xenophobic rhetoric gains force as it travels between anti-immigrant rhetoric of human migrants and the rhetoric of biological invasions of plants and animals (Subramaniam 2001). Suddenly, across sites, the “alien” is now rendered the problem and the “native” the victim. Is this panic entirely about our concern for the natural world and a fast-changing ecosystem? Here, history should give us pause because it turns out that there is a pattern to when xenophobic narratives emerge. We should remember that our anxieties about social incorporation, associated with expanding markets, increasingly permeable borders, growing affordability for transport, and mass immigration, have historically spilled into our conceptions of nature. For example, Nancy Tomes (2000) documents how our panic about germs has historically coincided with periods where groups perceived as “alien” and difficult to assimilate were engaged in heavy immigration to the United States. She documents these germ panics in the early 20th century in response to the new immigration from eastern and southern Europe and in the late 20th century, to the new immigration from Asia, Africa, and Latin America. I theorize that the recent hyperbole about alien species is embedded within a similar panic period over changing racial, economic, and gender norms in the country (Subramaniam 2001). The globalization of markets, the global production and consumption of goods, and the real and perceived lack of local control feed nationalist discourse. September 11, the specter of terrorism, and a volatile globe have intensified emotions and rhetoric. Since the financial crisis, a weak economy and high anxieties about unemployment (coupled with outsourcing and the movement of production abroad) have only heightened the stakes. These shifts continue to be interpreted by some elements of both the right and the left as a problem of immigration. Immigrants and foreigners—the product of the “global”— continue to be used as scapegoats for the problems in the “local.” These shifts and trends are evident in the national rhetoric surrounding alien and exotic plants and animals (Subramaniam 2001). The fear of invasions is not unique to our time or nation. Rather, there is a long and indeed global history of invoking the concept of invasiveness, and in all these cases the idea of the invasive has gone hand in hand with particular political and social problems. For example, during colonial rule in India, the British used the rhetoric of invasive plants to manage plants and through new regulations on plants also disciplined and contained their colonial subjects (Iqbal 2009). Similarly, the links between plant control, gardening, horticulture, and human control through eugenics are well documented. The idea of “gardening states,” promoted in Nazi Germany,

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which concerned itself with “eliminating bad weeds from the national garden and thereby constructing sharply exclusionary national identities,” is not accidental (Mottier 2008). After all, horticulture and agriculture are all rooted in the idea of “culture” (Cardozo and Subramaniam 2008). The links between plant/animal control and human control are well documented; perfection in gardens and peoples are rooted in an ongoing struggle against “difference” (Mottier 2008). The control of human populations has always been linked to the health of the environment. History reminds us that the roots of conservation biology are deeply intertwined in the history of eugenics—the fear that the black and brown hordes will come knocking on the doors of a “white nation” has a long history and persists today in the discourses around environmental refugees of climate change (Stern 2005; Hartmann 2010). This fear of the outsider has brought in a pervasive nativism that permeates conservation biology (Paretti 1998). Nativism strongly grounds most of the literature against biological invasions, as seen in the idea of “Going Local: Personal Actions for a Native Planet” (Van Driesche and Van Dreische 2000). Such rhetoric conjures up a vision where everything is in its “rightful” place in the world and where everyone is a “native.” Even in the most progressive visions of the environment, however, the true natives, of course, are the white settlers who reached the Americas to displace the original natives.

DEFINING NATIVE AND EXOTIC

The interconnections between nature and culture run deeper than the xenophobia that may span our view of foreign plants, animals and humans. The very definitions of what constitutes a native or an exotic plant are problematic. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, “Invasive plants are introduced species that can thrive in areas beyond their natural range of dispersal. These plants are characteristically adaptable, aggressive, and have a high reproductive capacity. Their vigor combined with a lack of natural enemies often leads to outbreak populations.”4 All definitions of invasive species highlight their foreign origin, their aggressive growth, and hyperfertility. Biologically speaking, it is important to note that the categories of native/exotic are not as easy or clear-cut (Helmreich 2009). More central to issues of native/exotic plants are questions of what gets to be called a “native” species. Which year marks the cut-off point to demarcate the native from the foreign? Given that the majority of U.  S. Americans are immigrants themselves, the reinvention of the “native” as the white

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settlers and not “Native Americans” is striking. The systematic marginalization and disenfranchisement of “Native Americans” makes the irony all the more poignant. What is most disturbing about projecting anxieties attending contemporary politics onto alien/exotic plants is that other potential loci of problems are obscured. Thus blaming the foreign origins of a plant or animal rather than the contexts of invasion misidentifies the problem. The language of invasive species misidentifies the problems that face us and misplaces and displaces the locus of the problem. It scapegoats the foreign for a problem they did not create and whose removal will not solve the problem. The problem is not the foreign species per se but rather human overdevelopment that has created ecological disturbances and changing ecosystems and species composition (Mack et  al. 2000; Hierro et  al. 2006). Fundamentally, weeds are often early successional species that thrive in newly upturned earth. Furthermore, alien species do not do well in all contexts—they appear to thrive in habitats with low species diversity, areas with high heterogeneity in habitats, and, most important, disturbance. This explains why there are huge numbers and quantities of European weeds that took root in the United States while hardly any U.S. weeds appeared in Europe in the same historical period. Invasibility emerges; it isn’t a characteristic of species, and, as such, it has to be understood as a response to particular ecological habitats (Marvier 2004). Indeed, species that are “invasive” outside their native ranges are unlikely to be so within their home ranges (Hierro et al. 2006). Let us not forget that disturbance also alters species composition among native species, and native species can also be invasive. A displacement of the problem on the intrinsic “qualities” of exotic/alien plants and not on their degraded habitats produces misguided management policies. Rather than preserving land and checking development, we instead put resources into policing boundaries and borders while blaming foreign and alien plants for an ever-increasing problem. Unchecked development, weak environmental controls, and the free flow of plants and animals across nations all serve certain economic interests in contemporary globalization. Displacement of blame onto foreigners does not solve the problem of the extinction of species and the degradation of habitats. By way of a solution, the recurring call for a return to a native nature is also problematic. The idea of a static “native” nature that we should preserve forever is contrary to biological processes. Shifts in species composition have been ubiquitous in evolutionary history and should not surprise us. While there have been many “apocalyptic” scenarios of invasions proclaimed in the news, the major extinction threats are not backed by data (Davis et  al. 2011). Most campaigns to eradicate invasive species simply

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have not worked. Rather, in contrast, new arrivals can often help an ecosystem rather than hurt it; alien species have often increased biodiversity while helping local habitats and native insects and birds flourish (Sagoff 2000; Sagoff 2005; Davis et  al. 2011; Neyfakh 2011). The anti-invasive species campaigns thus mischaracterize native/alien. Most Americans do not realize that many of their prized flora and fauna are foreign in origin. Mark Sagoff (2000) points out that the broad generalizations of exotic/ alien plants obscure the heterogeneity of the life histories, ecologies, and contributions of native and exotic plants. For example, he points out that nearly all U.S. crops are exotic plants while most of the insects that cause crop damage are native species. Indeed, some native species, such as the Colorado pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae), have proven to be invasive and have caused great damage while foreign species like honeybees are economically valuable (Raffles 2011). The ring-necked pheasant (the state bird of South Dakota), purple lilac (the state flower of New Hampshire), and red clover of Vermont are all foreign in origin (Davis et al. 2011; Neyfakh 2011). The categories of native and exotic house too much diversity to be useful criteria for ecosystem management. Classifying organisms by their “adherence to cultural standards of belonging, citizenship, fair play and morality does not advance our understanding of ecology” (Davis et  al. 2011). We need to remember that human disturbance is not new and in some parts of the world is many centuries old. Ecologists argue that in some areas that have been disturbed for hundreds of years, plant and animal communities have evolved to create new ecological equilibria (Pringle et al. 2009). In restoring nature to an arbitrary past, why do we only want to restore the plant/animal world and not the human world to its original configurations? This is especially troubling since most invasive species did not magically migrate but were rather introduced by humans (Marinelli and Randall 1996). Indeed, we should understand invasions as invited invasions (Cardozo and Subramaniam 2013). Yet why are the solutions always only about flora and fauna? To what lengths will we go to “restore” our world to some nostalgic imagined vision of the past? Whose nostalgia? As Mark Thompson (2011) points out, while invasive species do damage, so do roads and “green” bioenergy plants that have being erected in service of our communities. As a field, restoration ecology has embraced biological, mechanical, and chemical interventions with gusto. Small orange flags dot many of our landscapes, where they mark sites of our increasingly herbicide-ridden landscapes. Will we chemically bombard ourselves to satisfy our nostalgia? What does it mean to restore our world to 1985 or 1945 or 1490, at the cost of polluting our soil and groundwater, only to artificially manage a vision of a nature of yesteryear? What are we saving and for whom?

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TOWARD NATURECULTURAL ECOLOGIES: NATURECULTURES AS DYNAMIC

I want to be clear that I am not without sympathy or concern about the destruction of habitats, which is indeed alarming. We need to publicize and spread awareness about the destruction of species and habitats. However, in our zeal to draw attention to the loss of habitats, we should not feast or feed on the xenophobia rampant in a changing world. Invasive species rhetoric focuses less on the human-made ecological contexts and degradation of habitats and more on alien/exotic plants and animals as the main and even sole problem. Indeed, while we may all agree that only some species cause problems for the environment, and while officials may agree that only a few individuals are likely to ever resort to terrorism, the deeper political and philosophical question is:  What do we do with the “other” others? What of the benign aliens or even those who enrich our world? Does nature have to be in place? Where do we locate human and biotic variation in the grand scheme of life? Are all alien species to be marked? Suspected? The very act of labeling humanity and biota into two categories—native and alien—immediately marks the presumed good from the possible evil. As long as we cannot see human and biotic variation as a continuum in its rich and grand diversity and instead see variation as a binary difference between native/alien and good/evil, our quest for an inclusive, ethical world is lost. Even within the realm of the natural or biological, as we look more deeply, we can see that there are other biological characteristics that better explain the success of some species over others. Many ecologists and conservation biologists have developed alternate models and disagree sharply with the dominant framework of conservation biology (Larson 2007; Davis et al. 2011). In considering biological factors, we ought to embrace a more dynamic and pragmatic approach, focus on the biology and ecological characteristics of species, and study their function in their ecosystem rather than conduct litmus tests on their geography of origin (Chew and Hamilton 2011; Davis et al. 2011; Larson 2007). Plants and animals, like humans, also need a “thoughtful and inclusive response” (Raffles 2011). However, as I have argued, invasive species is not a “natural” problem alone; it is deeply embedded in the histories and cultures of human populations. Studying “naturecultures” means being cognizant of how science and the humanities are embedded in naturecultural contexts. Therefore, our response must not be just about the biological but also about understanding invasive species as located in their naturecultural histories. Yet just as science does not mirror nature, we must not reduce science

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to mirroring politics either (right or left). Both the cultural and scientific worlds house diverse and heterogeneous views with a long tradition of dissent. We have to realize that nature is not that imagined nostalgia for a mythical yesteryear but rather an evolving entity, in and of ourselves. Whether we like it or not, we are defining nature through our action. In a naturecultural world, humans are part of the ecosystem. Taking this stance is not about falling back on an anarchic world where anything goes in the name of a free market or globalization. Rather, it is about taking responsibility for the world we live in and for us, as a community, to define the values that will guide us in our relationship with the natural world. Rhetoric about “natives” supports antidemocratic politics and ultimately yields less than maximally reliable sciences. “Naturecultures” force us to simultaneously attend to and transform both societies and the sciences that are dedicated to such projects, thus yielding more maximally objective and democratic results. The heart of a naturecultural view is that invoking a nostalgic nature of yesteryear to “return” to is an arbitrary and ahistorical position. Naturecultures must be a democratic project, grounded in an imagination of the natures and cultures we want to live in. The natural should be understood to be the naturecultural that it is—shaped by its inhabitants. If we want to return to a nature of 1900, let us be honest in the political, ideological, or aesthetic reasons that guide us rather than invoking some mythical pure nature of yesteryear. We do not need to resort to the naïve and powerful tropes of a fear of the foreign and alien or the calls for a nostalgic mythical past. This is the naturecultural world that can await us. If we do not act, a dynamic naturecultural world fueled with false nostalgia, irresponsible ecological management, overexploited landscapes, overdeveloped lands, and rampant consumerism will surely hurtle us along our current environmental course. The dire crisis of climate change, fast-changing plant and soil communities, among many others is surely all the evidence we need.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank Jim Bever, Peggy Schultz, Sam Hariharan, Angela Willey, and two anonymous reviewers for their generous feedback. NOTES 1. See, for example, Department of Natural Resources: http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/ invasives/faq.html and National Wildlife Federation:  http://www.nwf.org/ What-We-Do/Protect-Wildlife/Invasive-Species.aspx

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2. http://www.fws.gov/invasives/pdfs/NationalStrategyFinalRevised05-04.pdf 3. http://www.invasivespecies.gov/index.html 4. U.S. Department of Agriculture. National Agricultural Library. http://www.invasivespeciesinfo.gov/plants/main.shtml#.UEpMyZbfLTo REFERENCES Bright, C. 1999. “Invasive Species: Pathogens of Globalization.” Foreign Policy 116: 14. Brown, J.H., and D.F. Sax. 2004. “An Essay on Some Topics Concerning Invasive Species.” Trends in Ecology and Evolution 16: 460–465. Brown, J.H., and D.F. Sax. 2005. “Biological Invasions and Scientific Objectivity: Reply to Cassey et al.” Australian Ecology 30: 481–483. Colautti, R.I., and J.J. MacIsaac. 2004. “A Natural Terminology to Define ‘Invasive’ Species.” Diversity and Distributions 10: 135–141. Cardozo, K., and B. Subramaniam. 2008. “Genes, Genera, and Genres:  The NatureCulture of BioFiction in Ruth Ozeki’s All Over Creation.” In Tactical BioPolitics: Art, Activism, and Technoscience, edited by B. da Costa and K. Philip, 269–288. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Cardozo, K., and B. Subramaniam. 2013, February. “Assembling Asian/American Naturecultures:  Orientalism and Invited Invasion.” Journal of Asian American Studies 16(1): 1–23. Carlton, J.T. 1999. “A Journal of Biological Invasions.” Biological Invasions 1: 1. Cheater, M. 1992. “Alien Invasion:  They’re Green, They’re Mean, and They May Be Taking Over a Park or Preserve Near You.” Nature Conservancy 42: 24–29. Chew, M.K., and A.L. Hamilton. 2011. “The Rise and Fall of Biotic Nativeness: A Historical Perspective.” In Fifty Years of Invasion Ecology, edited by D.M. Richardson, 35–47. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell. Coates, P. 2006. American Perceptions of Immigrant and Invasive Species: Strangers on the Land. Berkeley: University of California Press. Crosby, A.W. 1986. Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900. New York: Cambridge University Press. Davis, M. 2009. Invasion Biology. New York: Oxford University Press. Davis, M.A., M.K. Chew, R.J. Hobbs, A.E. Lugo, J.J. Ewel, G.J. Vermeij, et  al. 2011. “Don’t Judge Species on Their Origins.” Nature 474: 153–154. Gobster, P.H. 2005. “Invasive Species as Ecological Threat: Is Restoration an Alternative to Fear-Based Resourced Management?” Ecological Restoration 23: 261–270. Haraway, D. 1999. How Like a Leaf:  An Interview with Thyrza Nichols Goodve. New York: Routledge. Hartmann, B. 2010. “Rethinking Climate Refugees and Climate Conflict:  Rhetoric, Reality and the Politics of Policy Discourse.” Journal of International Development 22: 233–246. Helmreich, S. 2009. Alien Ocean:  Anthropological Voyages in Microbial Seas. Berkeley: University of California Press. Herbert, J.H. 1998. “Feds to Fight Invaders.” ABC News, February 3. Hierro, J., D. Villare, O. Eren, J.M. Graham, and R.M. Callaway. 2006. “Disturbance Facilitates Invasion: The Effects are Stronger Abroad than at Home.” The American Naturalist 168: 145–156. Iqbal, I. 2009. “Fighting with a Weed: Water Hyacinth and the State in Colonial Bengal, c. 1910–1947.” Environment and History 15: 35–59. Larson, B. 2005. “The War of the Roses: Demilitarizing Invasion Biology.” Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 3: 495–500.

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Larson, B. 2007. “An Alien Approach to Invasive Species:  Objectivity and Society in Invasion Biology.” Biological Invasions 9: 947–956. Mack, R., D. Simberloff, W.M. Lonsdale, H. Evans, M. Clout, and F.A. Bazzaz. 2000. “Biotic Invasions:  Causes, Epidemiology, Global Consequences and Control.” Issues in Ecology 5: 1–12. Marinelli, J., and J.M. Randall. 1996. Invasive Plants:  Weeds of the Global Garden. New York: Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Marvier, M., P. Kareiva, and M. Neubert. 2004. “Habitat Destruction, Fragmentation, and Disturbance Promote Invasion by Habitat Generalists in a Multispecies Metapopulation.” Risk Analysis 24: 869–878. McDonald, K.A. 1999. “Biological Invaders Threaten U.S. Ecology.” Chronicle of Higher Education 45: A15. McNeely, J. 2001. “Invasive Species:  A  Costly Catastrophe for Native Biodiversity.” Land Use and Water Resources Research 1: 1–10. Milton, Kay. 2000. “Ducks out of water:  Nature conservation as boundary maintenance.” In Natural Enemies: People-Wildlife Conflicts in Anthropological Perspective, edited by John Knight, 229–246, New York: Routledge. Mottier, V. 2008. “Eugenics, Politics and the State:  Social Democracy and the Swiss ‘Gardening State.’ ” Studies in the History and Philosophy of Biology & Biomedical Sciences 39: 263–269. Neyfakh, Leon. 2011. “The Invasive Species War,” The Boston Globe, July 31. Odum, E.P. 1997. Ecology:  A  Bridge Between Science and Society. Sunderland:  Sinauer Associates. Paretti, J. 1998. “Nativism and Nature: Rethinking Biological Invasions.” Environmental Values 7: 183–192. Preston, G., and L. William. 2003. “Case Study:  The Working for Water Programme: Threats and Successes.” Service Delivery Review 2: 66–69. Pringle, A., J. Bever, M. Gardes, J. Parrent, M. Rillig, and J. Klironomos. 2009. “Mycorrhizal Symbioses and Plant Invasions.” Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics 40: 699–715. Raffles, H. 2011. “Mother Nature’s Melting Pot.” The New York Times, August 7. Robichaux, M. 2000. “Alien Invasion:  Plague of Asian Eels Highlights Damage from Foreign Species.” The Wall Street Journal, September 27. Sagoff, M. 2000. “Why Exotic Species Are Not as Bad as We Fear.” Chronicle of Higher Education 46: B7. Sagoff, M. 2005. “Do Non-native Species Threaten the Natural Environment?” Journal of Agricultural Environmental Ethics 18: 215–236. Simberloff, D. 2000. “Introduced Species:  The Threat to Biodiversity and What Can be Done.” BioScience, December. http://www.actionbioscience.org/biodiversity/ simberloff.html?print Simberloff, D., J. Alexander, F. Allendorf, J. Aronson, P.M. Antunes, S. Bacher, et al. 2011. “Non-natives: 141 Scientists Object.” Nature 475: 36. Slobodkin, L.B. 2001. “The Good, the Bad and the Reified.” Evolutionary Ecology Research 3: 1–13. Stern, A.M. 2005. Eugenic Nation:  Faults and Frontiers of Better Breeding in Modern America. Berkeley: University of California Press. Subramaniam, B. 2001. “The Aliens Have Landed! Reflections on the Rhetoric of Biological Invasions.” Meridians:  Feminism, Race, Transnationalism 2: 26–40. Thompson, M. 2011. “Comments to Davis et al.” Nature 474: 153–154.

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Theodoropoulos, D.I. 2003. Invasion Biology:  Critique of a Pseudoscience. Blythe, CA: Avvar Books. Tomes, N. 2000. “The Making of a Germ Panic, Then and Now.” American Journal of Public Health 90: 191–199. Van Driesche, J., and R. Van Dreische. 2000. Nature out of Place: Biological Invasions in the Global Age. Washington, DC: Island Press. Warren, C.R. 2007. “Perspectives on the ‘Alien’ and ‘Native’ Species Debate: A Critique of Concepts, Language and Practice.” Progress in Human Geography 31: 427–446. Weiner, H. 1996. “Congress Threatens Wild Immigrants.” Earth Island Journal 11 (4).

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CHAPTER 17

Controversies in Aquatic Sciences JUDI T H S. WEIS

T

he aquatic sciences have their share of scientific controversies. In some cases the controversy is the classic situation of economic benefit versus environmental protection; in other cases it involves “genuine” scientific debate over uncertainties of the science or debate over what management option is optimal. This chapter discusses two pollution cases that pit scientists from universities or government agencies against those supported by the industry responsible for the pollution. Additional controversies that are also discussed are a disagreement over management options for shoreline protection, and a scientific disagreement over uncertainties in data on fish populations, which is usually the reason for controversies over fisheries.

POLLUTION

Controversies over effects of pollution often focus on how much (what concentration) of a chemical is needed to produce a certain harmful effect. Chemical companies tend to argue that levels of a chemical found in the environment are too low to cause problems, while environmentalists typically contend that lower levels can be harmful. One chemical about which there is sometimes controversy is oil. In the case of oil spills, debate commonly centers on how long the effects of pollution last. Oil degrades over time, resulting in less oil in the environment. The critical issue here is: When does this degradation reach a point where spilled oil is no longer harmful?

Oil is a complex combination of various hydrocarbons that generally floats on water, although some lighter-weight components (the water-soluble fraction) dissolve. Weathering is a process that takes place in the air and water, in which the lightweight components evaporate, thus leaving the heavier components (e.g., tar), which have traditionally been viewed as less toxic. When oil comes into shallow water and marshes, it can coat and smother resident communities. It can sink below the surface of beaches and marshes and remain there for many years. Oil in marsh sediments undergoes some microbial breakdown but very slowly. Effects of a small oil spill (190,000 gallons of number 2 fuel oil) in Falmouth, Massachusetts, in the late 1960s lasted for over a decade, according to Sanders et al. (1980). Since this spill occurred in an area that had been intensively studied prior to the spill, the information from this team of Woods Hole scientists was particularly useful, though hotly contested by the oil companies. Fiddler crabs in the Falmouth area were particularly sensitive to the effects of the oil spill. Their burrows did not go straight down; rather, they leveled off horizontally. When winter came to Falmouth, the fiddler crabs there could not retreat below the freezing zone and froze to death. Culbertson et al. (2007) revisited the site more than thirty years later and found that there is still much undegraded oil 10 to 14 cm down in the sediments. They noted that fiddler crab burrows in oiled areas were shorter, often turned laterally or upward below 10  cm, thereby avoiding the oil. Crabs also showed delayed escape responses, lowered feeding rates, and reduced population density, indicating long-term, multigenerational consequences of oil in salt marshes. More recently, there has been debate over the effects of spilled oil from the Exxon Valdez, which in 1989 was the biggest oil spill in history. Eleven million gallons of crude oil were spilled in Prince William Sound, Alaska, and millions of organisms died. Again, the controversy is over how long the effects persisted. In a cold environment, oil degrades much more slowly than in warmer regions, and, as stated by Peterson et  al. (2003), many effects persisted for well over a decade. However, Page et al. (2002) have found that residues on oiled shorelines rapidly lost toxicity via weathering as measured by a standard amphipod bioassay. Total sediment polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH)—the most toxic oil components—concentrations greater than 2,600 parts per billion (ppb) were highly toxic at the outset, but by 1999 the average concentration in sediments at oiled sites was well below this (to put this in perspective, a ppb is equivalent to one drop in one of the largest tanker trucks used to haul gasoline). Likewise, Harwell and Gentile (2006), in research funded by Exxon, looked at the

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data on the effects of the Exxon Valdez spill and concluded that residual oil no longer posed an ecological risk. There has been ongoing controversy over the toxicity of weathered oil to fish embryos. Heintz et al. (1999), from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), incubated pink salmon embryos under three conditions: direct contact with oil-coated gravel, effluent from oil-coated gravel, and direct contact with gravel coated with very weathered oil (VWO). Mortalities and PAH accumulation in embryos that were in direct contact with the oil and those exposed only to the effluent were similar, showing that direct contact with the oil was not necessary to cause harm. Deaths of embryos exposed to 1.0 ppb PAH from VWO were significantly higher than controls, but deaths of embryos exposed to the same concentration of less weathered oil were not higher than controls, indicating that the heavier PAHs that remained in VWO were the most toxic. Delayed effects—that is, effects seen long after the exposure took place— were noted by Heintz et al. (2000). In this case, pink salmon exposed to an initial concentration of 5.4 ppb PAH as embryos had reduced marine survival as adults compared to unexposed salmon. Juveniles that survived embryonic exposure to doses as low as 18 ppb PAH had reduced growth later in life, which could account for the reduced marine survival of the released fish. While numerous studies demonstrate PAHs from weathered crude oil affect fish embryos at 0.5 to 23 ppb, this has been challenged by studies that claim much lower toxicity of weathered PAHs while also providing evidence that direct contact with oil droplets is required for toxicity. Brannon et al. (2009) reported no toxicity in pink salmon embryos until very high concentrations were reached—1,500 ppb. They stated that after a spill, hydrocarbons drop below toxic levels over a few weeks, regardless of oiling level. NOAA scientists Carls and Meador (2009) reviewed published studies and concluded differently: that studies demonstrate high toxicity of weathered oil; that embryos accumulated dissolved PAHs and were damaged; and that confounding factors were inconsequential. Weathering caused toxicity to increase because the persistent high molecular weight PAHs that remain are more toxic to fish embryos than the low molecular weight PAHs that evaporate. Bue et  al. (1998) found transgenerational effects—effects on the next generation of organisms—from the oil in Prince William Sound, which suggests that chronic damage occurred to some populations of pink salmon. They collected eggs and sperm from adults returning to both contaminated and uncontaminated streams, transported the gametes to a hatchery where crosses were made, and incubated the embryos under identical

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environmental conditions. Much higher embryo mortality was seen for embryos originating from the oil-contaminated lineages in 1993 but not in 1994 or 1995. Years after the publication of Heinz et al. (1999), Exxon-funded scientists wrote a letter to the editor of the journal (Page, Neff, et  al. 2012b) criticizing details of the study and contending that a dose-response plot presented in a figure did not demonstrate PAH causality for VWO because the dose, (defined as the total extractable oil in the VWO gravel at the start of the exposure), did not reflect the “bioavailable” dose, measured as PAHs in water or tissue. They said that embryo injury may have been from exposure to other stressors (e.g., products of microbial degradation of oil). In response, Heintz et al. (2012a) replied that when they originally published the work, the concept that high molecular weight PAHs could cause embryo malformations at such low concentrations was novel. Since then, the sensitivity to low ppb concentrations of PAHs in water has been confirmed for fish embryos exposed to oiled sediments, to dissolved mixtures of PAHs, and to specific high molecular weight PAHs dissolved in water. They reiterated that the most toxic components of oil are the most environmentally persistent and become more concentrated as oil weathers because less toxic components are lost. Heintz et al. stated that Page et al. ignored a substantial body of literature over the past twelve years that supported the original work done by Heintz et al. Page, Neff, et al. (2012a) submitted a rejoinder complaining that in the original paper, Heintz et al. had measured PAH in the water on a different day than they had examined embryos for effects. Heintz et al. (2012b) replied that it was not important to measure mortality on the same day. They reiterated that effects of low concentrations of PAH in VWO were comparable to those of high PAH concentrations from less weathered oil, so the heavy PAHs in VWO must be responsible. They repeated that since 1999, many other papers have supported their findings. Not content with letters to the editor, Page, Boehm, et al. (2012) wrote an article criticizing Heintz et al., pointing out that the studies did not establish consistent dose-response or show that dissolved PAH alone from the weathered oil caused the effects on fish embryos at low ppb concentrations. They advised that these studies should not be relied on for decision making when assessing risks of PAH exposures to fish embryos. The controversy will continue when a body of work on effects of the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico is published, but one early study by Whitehead, Dubansky, Bodinier, Garcia, et al. (2012) shows altered gene expression, protein expression, and tissue morphology in resident killifish (Fundulus heteroclitus) in the Gulf. This article prompted a letter to the editor by BP-funded Jenkins et al. (2012) stating that Whitehead et al.

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did not demonstrate an exposure-response relationship with levels in the water and that other chemicals such as polychlorinated biphenyls or dioxin could have caused the effects. Whitehead, Dubansky, Bodinier, Roach, et al. (2012) replied that oil does not remain in the water but rather binds to sediments. Whitehead et al. moreover argued that the sites with the most oil in the sediments were the ones with the greatest effects. Furthermore, they said, there is no evidence that polychlorinated biphenyls or dioxin had been spilled at that site.

Atrazine and Amphibians

There is particular concern about chemicals that, even at extremely low concentrations, alter the development and functioning of animal endocrine systems and affect reproduction. These chemicals are called endocrine disruptors and may have different effects depending on the concentration and life stage at which the animal is exposed. Their effects may not be seen for many years after exposure. They may mimic natural hormones or inhibit them, so that reproduction may be disrupted or intersex offspring may be produced. Atrazine, the most commonly used herbicide in the United States, appears to interfere with sexual development in amphibians. Amphibians are of particular concern because they are in decline worldwide. Tyrone Hayes of the University of California at Berkeley has conducted numerous studies and has found that atrazine interferes with gonad differentiation in male amphibians. In the lab, doses as low as 0.1 ppb produced abnormal gonads in South African clawed frogs (Xenopus laevis; Hayes et al. 2002). Hayes’s data has been criticized because he lumped together different responses (e.g., hermaphroditism and a lack of pigmentation in ovaries) as a single effect. Other studies have shown low-dose effects and altered sex ratios in other species (Orton et al. 2006; Oka et al. 2008; Storrs-Mondez and Semlitsch 2010). Atrazine was up for reregistration by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 2003. The agency decided to reregister the compound because it concluded that the studies did not provide enough evidence to prove that atrazine causes consistent effects on amphibian development. It stated that dose-response relationships for aromatase (an enzyme that converts androgens to estrogens) and gonadal abnormalities were problematic. In contrast, based on the same data, the European Union took a more precautionary approach and banned atrazine. Hayes was originally funded by Syngenta, the manufacturer of atrazine, but after he submitted his findings they dropped him. Syngenta then funded

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other scientists, including Carr et al. (2003), who—while being unable to reproduce the low-dose effects found by Hayes—did see effects at 25 ppb. Other Syngenta-funded studies reported no effects on sex ratios, gonad structure, abnormal testes, or intersex (Hecker et  al. 2005; Jooste et  al. 2005; Du Preez et al. 2008). These studies did not include positive controls (treatment with estrogens), so it is possible that the frogs used may have been incapable of responding to hormones. Some of the studies featured tadpoles who were fed too little, didn’t have their water changed often enough, and were raised in crowded tanks that were too small, so there were many deaths in the controls, which were late to metamorphose. Hayes (2004) stated that the data presented to the EPA by the Syngenta-funded panel (and touted in the popular press) was unreliable since it suffered from contaminated laboratory controls; high mortality; inappropriate measurements of hormone levels in stressed, sexually immature animals during nonreproductive seasons; and contaminated reference sites. One of the Syngenta-funded studies, undertaken by Jooste and colleagues, found oocytes in the testes of male controls (an abnormal condition), implying that the controls were contaminated with atrazine or another endocrine disruptor or that the strain of frogs used was abnormal to begin with. However, a study by Kloas et al. (2009) did include a positive control that evoked responses while atrazine did not. This study used a new strain of Xenopus, a genus of aquatic frogs, from Chile that an EPA panel suggested might be less sensitive to environmental chemicals and suggested that further work be done. Oka et al. (2008) used wild-type X. laevis tadpoles and found no hermaphroditic frogs or increase in aromatase but did see an increase in female frogs as the atrazine level increased. Ecological field studies have also been controversial. While Hayes et al. (2003) found associations between atrazine use and gonad abnormalities in frogs in the field, as with all field studies there were many confounding factors, and the relationships they found were weak. Syngenta-funded field studies (Smith et al. 2003) found hermaphroditic frogs in both corn-growing and noncorn-growing areas in Africa and concluded hermaphroditism is a natural condition. However, atrazine levels in the noncorn-growing regions were high—four times above the threshold. As a result, the study lacked a meaningful control. The controversy continues. It is possible that different strains respond differently to atrazine exposure. Hayes et  al. (2011) reviewed the literature and found endocrine disrupting effects of atrazine in different classes of vertebrates. Atrazine produced lesions in the testes and reduced sperm counts in fishes, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals, and induced feminization in fish, amphibians, and reptiles. These effects were specific and

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consistent across vertebrate classes. Rohr and McCoy (2010) performed a meta-analysis examining the results of published studies of effects of ecologically relevant levels on amphibians and fish and found that atrazine altered gonadal morphology in seven of ten studies, spermatogenesis in two of two studies, and sex hormone concentrations in six of seven studies. Aromatase was increased in only one of six studies. Effects on reproductive success and sex ratios remain uncertain, according to their analysis. Thus it appears that in most of the studies that have been done, potent effects of atrazine on the endocrine and reproductive system of amphibians have been substantiated. However, with less than definitive findings in some studies, the controversy is far from over. Whether the EPA will eventually change its decision is unknown; in the meantime, amphibians and other creatures are continuing to be exposed to a damaging endocrine disrupting herbicide.

COASTAL MANAGEMENT—SHORELINE EROSION

Humans seem to have an affinity for coasts and shorelines. More and more of the population lives in coastal areas, where houses and infrastructure have been constructed close to shorelines. However, shorelines are continually eroded by the natural movement of water, waves, and wind. Erosion is especially severe along ocean beaches, but it also occurs in the quieter waters of estuaries, where storms and winds can erode the edges of salt marshes. This is a natural process, one that that has been going on for millennia, long before humans were around to observe it, and will undoubtedly continue after we are no longer around. The typical human response to eroding shorelines is to construct a hardened edge that cannot erode. Much of the U.S. coastline has been hardened to protect against damage to infrastructure. Over 50% of some coastlines in California, Virginia, and Maryland have had their natural soft habitats replaced by hard surfaces. Hardening can take the form of sea walls (massive concrete structures), revetments (sloping structures made of rocks, also known as rip-rap), or bulkheads (vertical retaining walls, generally made of wood that has been chemically treated to resist rot). Hardened shorelines are ubiquitous in urban areas where they are the dominant shoreline. In less developed areas, coastal landowners typically view any loss of land as undesirable. Accordingly, these landowners often construct erosion-control structures, edifices that do not allow marshes and beaches to move inland in response to sea-level rise and will eventually result in the loss of these environments. Hardened shorelines protect infrastructure

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but amplify wave action—water bounces off the hard surface with enough energy to scour away the sand. Sediments at the base of the structure are swept away when the high tide washes against it, causing the water to become progressively deeper. While these structures can protect a piece of property, they will produce increased erosion on nearby nonhardened properties because wave energy is reflected off the hard walls. As the intertidal zone and shallow water zone disappear, so do the plants and animals that depend on the normally sloping intertidal zone for habitat (many of which use this shallow zone as a refuge against predators that cannot come into the shallows). Replacing the slope with a hard vertical structure removes this habitat and leads to the loss of tidal wetlands and associated animals. These structures generally increase the rate of coastal erosion, remove the ability of the shoreline to carry out natural processes, and provide little habitat for estuarine species. Where there is low to moderate wave energy, hardened structures are usually not necessary. To counteract the negative effects of shoreline hardening, “living shorelines” can be built that use native plants, stone, and sand to deflect wave action, conserve soil, and provide better habitat. Living shorelines use natural ecosystems to absorb wave energy without causing erosion. They involve planting native wetland grasses, shrubs, and trees along the water line. Plantings can be coordinated with materials, such as manmade coconut-fiber rolls (or “biologs”), that protect vegetation and soils. Living shorelines stand up fairly well to wave energy and are best used in areas with low to medium wave action. Having the appropriate shallow slope is an important feature, but in many locations, property owners do not own enough land to create the desired shallow slope. In these cases, rip-rap structures made from rock can be used. Larger diameter rocks (3 to 6 ft or 1 to 2 m) are less likely to be shifted by wave action than smaller rocks. Rocks will settle and will also erode; however, they are also likely to become vegetated, which will increase their aesthetic appeal and help stabilize the shoreline (Florida Sea Grant 2013). Living shorelines do not sever natural processes or connections between uplands and aquatic areas. Advocates claim that living shorelines reduce bank erosion, provide an attractive natural appearance, and improve marine habitat, water quality, and clarity (NOAA 2013). They were designed to use natural methods such as replanted native marsh grasses and oyster reefs to stabilize eroding shorelines and have been supported by many environmental groups and government agencies as a “green” alternative to bulkheads and other “armoring” practices (techniques that use physical structures to protect shorelines) in low-energy environments. They tend to have a positive effect on biota (Davis et al. 2008). As a case in point, in North Carolina, building rock sills in the low marsh to stabilize marsh

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elevations had negative effects on benthic algae but did not affect marsh cordgrass growth (O’Connor et al. 2011). At a site in Chesapeake Bay, where a bulkhead was taken down and replaced with a living shoreline, densities of some species (mummichog, grass shrimp, pumpkinseed) increased after only two months. However, not all living shorelines are equivalently “living” or beneficial to the environment. According to a report by Pilkey et al. (2012), the increasing use of hard structures (e.g., rocks) to reduce erosion in living shorelines may not be environmentally better than bulkheads. These researchers surveyed sites from Maryland to Texas and found many miles of living shorelines that were armored with hard structures. The intent of hardening is supposedly to deflect waves and provide protection until new grasses or oyster reefs can take hold. But, once installed, the hard barriers were rarely removed. The authors are concerned that the use of hard structures in these living shorelines will cause environmental damage, provide a false sense of accomplishment, and shift the focus away maintaining natural shorelines. They think that the term “living shoreline” is being used to describe a variety of projects from vegetative stabilization to massive rock revetments with minimal planting of marsh grasses that do not belong to the same category of erosion-prevention mechanism. In many instances, efforts to substitute natural vegetation for hard structures have been replaced by efforts to use hard structures:  rocks, revetments, and breakwaters. Pilkey et al.’s report emphasizes that advocates of living shorelines should develop a clear definition of an ecologically sound living shoreline. Without guidelines, companies can capitalize on “green”-sounding terminology by building traditional seawalls with just a touch of living material. The authors encourage reassessment of what “limited” use of rock means and point out that lessons learned from the use of seawalls, revetments, and groins on ocean shorelines—a practice that is now prohibited or restricted in many states—should not be ignored in estuaries. On the other hand, in urban areas where seawalls are necessary, efforts can be made to make them more compatible with intertidal organisms. For example, Browne and Chapman (2011) found that including three-dimensional structures on a wall, such as textured surfaces or concrete flowerpots, resulted in the flourishing of many new species (a doubling of species within months), including crabs, seaweeds, sea stars, sponges, worms, and snails on a Sydney, Australia, seawall. Some animals were found only on walls, some only in pots, and some in both habitats. While the biota were not as diverse as on a natural rocky shore, a big improvement over a standard smooth seawall was obvious. A similar project is underway in Seattle, Washington, where the city will be rebuilding its seawall with provisions for improving habitat.

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“Managed retreat,” the realignment of hard coastal structures (mostly seawalls), has also been identified as an adaptive strategy (Bulleri and Chapman, 2010). This involves dismantling shore defenses and moving them inland, preferably by taking advantage of natural topographic contours to reduce costs. This approach is feasible where there is the possibility of the shoreline being relocated inland, but in some cases this is not possible (e.g., if infrastructure is necessary, such as in lower Manhattan, or if multimillion-dollar homes are located at the water’s edge). One example of a managed retreat took place in Ventura, California, where a popular surfing area was restored by moving a bike path and parking lot inland. Since the mid-1980s, the Surfrider Foundation had been recommending relocation of the bike path inland to prevent the future need of a seawall and the destruction of a surfing area. However, the city initially opted to put boulders above the mean high tide line, which exacerbated erosion further down the coast, while the parking lot and bike path continued to erode. When the city applied for a permanent permit, the California Coastal Commission denied its request and recommended that the parties involved should work together to resolve the issue. The parties together ultimately developed a plan for Surfers Point that embraced sustainability, responded to the forces of the sea, restored habitat, and allowed people to enjoy one of California’s great beaches. In moving the parking area and bike path 60 to 100 feet further inland, the plan also involved using natural systems and engineering to improve storm-water quality, recycling asphalt and concrete to create permeable parking areas, and placing over 40,000 cubic yards of local river cobble beneath the former parking lot to create a flexible natural structure to withstand beach scour and restore the beach (Barboza 2011). This phase of the project was completed in the summer of 2011. A complementary project, which was planned but not yet undertaken, is a restoration related to the obsolete Matilija Dam, located 16 miles (25 km) up the Ventura River. Removal of this dam will restore natural watershed processes since the ocean beach is starved for sediments that are trapped behind the dam. Without this associated project, it is likely that the sand on the new beach will erode and leave the rocks behind. Removing the dam upstream will replenish the natural coastal sediment supplies and provide fish passage to the historical spawning streams of the endangered southern steelhead trout (Jenkin 2002). Proper management of eroding coastlines will become increasingly important with sea-level rise. Many areas are already developing plans to cope with inevitable encroachment of the seas onto land. While hardened structures are probably necessary in areas such as lower Manhattan, which was underwater during Superstorm Sandy, in other regions, a

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better approach would be living shorelines and managed retreat. The term “retreat” is unfortunate, as it implies “defeat.” But in the case of the oceans, people should realize sooner rather than later that we cannot win against nature.

FISHERIES

Commercial fishing provides the public with a source of food, but unlike food from land, which is raised in captivity (agriculture), a fishery involves the capture of wild animals. With technological progress over centuries, fishing has become more and more efficient, and we are able to capture greater numbers of fish to feed a growing population. However, in many cases, populations of fish in the oceans have been severely reduced (overfishing). Consequently, fishing has come under regulation to control the numbers caught and to conserve fish populations. The goal of a fishery should be a “sustained yield,” whereby fishers take a limited amount so that the same amount of fish can be taken from the fishery in future years. Fisheries have always been controversial; scientists and conservationists support lower limits on the amount a fishery is allowed to catch, while commercial fisheries aim to maximize profits in the short term. The problem with fish, unlike forests, for example, is that one cannot see them and know with confidence how many there are. Scientists have to rely on sampling, extrapolation, and modeling to get an idea of how big a population is. These techniques, called stock assessments, have large margins of uncertainty, so management decisions about setting catch limits have to weigh the economic concerns of the fishing industry against uncertain population estimates. They often act on financial calculation to the detriment of the fish. Fish populations are also affected by environmental conditions, which can reduce their numbers, so accurate stock assessments are vital. The uncertainty of stock assessments and the reluctance of regulators to set strict catch limits without definitive information have led the populations of some fish to crash, which has resulted in huge economic consequences. For example, by the 1990s, Atlantic cod stocks in the Gulf of Maine had declined to such a degree that fishing had to be banned, and industry suffered major economic losses when fishing was stopped. The recovery of some cod populations in the Gulf of Maine in the absence of fishing is taking a very long time. In 2008, the National Marine Fisheries Service stock assessment indicated a recovery was underway, and increased fishing was allowed, but in late 2011, a new stock assessment for Gulf of Maine cod found that the stock had declined unexpectedly, making major

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reductions in catch limits necessary for the 2012 fishing year, as required by government regulation. Reductions in catch limits for 2013 have been even greater. Possible reasons for the slow recovery of healthy cod populations are hotly debated. The situation has brought renewed emphasis to the urgent need for accurate stock assessments to inform management decisions—if the science is up to the task. Normally, fisheries managers and policymakers ignore environmental stressors (climate change, eutrophication, invasive species, habitat loss/degradation, etc.) and focus on limiting fish mortality to optimize sustainable harvests (assuming optimal environmental conditions). As environmental changes occur, these other stressors, as well as ecological interactions with other species, need to be addressed. There is good news on the technological front: New low-frequency sonar technologies might at last allow scientists to “see” the fish under the water and get better real-time estimates of the populations. While controversies over catch limits when the population size is uncertain have mostly pitted the fishing industry against conservationists, a dispute among scientists took place a few years ago. In 2006, based on a four-year study of fish populations, catch data, and fisheries collapses, an international group of ecologists and economists warned that the world could run out of seafood by 2048 if steep declines in marine species continue at current rates (Worm et al. 2006). They found that by 2003, 29% of all fished species had collapsed, meaning they were 90% below their historic maximum catch levels. The rate of population collapses has accelerated. For example, in 1980, 13.5% of fished species had collapsed, even though fishing vessels were pursuing 1,736 fewer species then. Today, the fishing industry harvests 7,784 species commercially. When this group of ecologists and economists analyzed the catch data, they saw a smooth line going downward, which, extrapolated into the future, hit 100% collapse at 2048. The authors concluded that overfishing, pollution, and other environmental factors are wiping out species around the globe and that in another generation the world could be without seafood. This paper attracted considerable attention from the media. It is not surprising that industry would dispute these predictions, but American fishery management officials and academics also criticized the findings, since countries such as the United States and New Zealand have taken steps to halt the depletion of their commercial fisheries and many species are now fished sustainably. Steve Murawski and his colleagues from the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) said that only 20% of the U.S. stocks were overfished and that fish catch is not a good proxy for fish abundance, particularly for managed stocks that are regulated and

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rebuilding. Many biological, economic, and social factors as well as management decisions determine catches; low catches may occur even when stocks are high (e.g., due to low prices or restrictive management practices) and vice versa. Murawski, et  al. (2007) presented an example of the Georges Bank haddock, in which the highest catch was in 1965 at 150,362 tons (during a period of intense fishing). In 2003, the haddock catch was only 12,576 tons, which Worm et al. (2006) would classify as collapsed. However, according to stock assessment data estimates, the total magnitude of the spawning biomass in 2003 was 91% of what it was in 1965, which indicates that the stock was not overfished (even in 2003). They concluded that the catch data Worm et al. used is prone to misrepresentation of the true status of populations and that their assessment of world fisheries is equally flawed. Ray Hilborn, a fisheries biologist at the University of Washington, also severely criticized the study (fisheries scientists tend to see marine ecosystems as a resource to be used, while marine ecologists usually value pristine habitats). Hilborn (2007) stated that the use of catch data to indicate stock status is misleading for several reasons. Among them, the catch may be low due to management restrictions, and healthy, well-managed stocks may be classified as collapsed. Many stocks naturally fluctuate dramatically in abundance, and the longer the dataset, the chances that any particular low catch level will be below 10% of the historical high catch become greater. Many dramatic declines in catch result from political or market forces, such as the declaration of the 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zone, which reduces the total catch by prohibiting foreign vessels from fishing in U.S. waters. Hilborn declared that Worm et al. (2006) should have demonstrated that their index of collapse corresponded to stock abundance, which is not the case for U.S.  fisheries, which are well-managed; the proportion of stocks classified as overfished is declining, not increasing. Worm et al. (2007) replied to these criticisms, and while they agreed that precise biomass data are preferable, they also argued that this data is rarely available. They mentioned that NMFS’s own data show that full recovery is still uncommon and agreed that destructive trends can be turned around and that rebuilding efforts need to be strengthened. They also agreed that intensive management was able to reverse the losses after haddock stocks collapsed from foreign overfishing in the 1960s and from domestic fleets in the 1980s. The first collapse was reversed by establishing a 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zone in 1977, while the second collapse was reversed by an emergency closure of half of the fishing grounds in 1994. Haddock biomass increased quickly in both cases, catches followed, and fishing again became economically viable. Worm et al.’s (2007) definition of collapse refers to a loss in catches of 90% below the historic maximum, and,

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according to this, the Georges Bank haddock stock collapsed from 1970 to 1977 and 1983 to 2003. Stock assessment data from NMFS similarly shows that stock biomass collapsed from 1970 to 1977 and from 1982 to 1997. The stock was considered overfished under NMFS rules from 1967 to 2002 and in 2004. Thus the catch records agreed with the stock assessments. Worm et  al. (2007) replied that their study had focused on the flows of goods and services from marine ecosystems to humans (i.e., food), so fish catches are the appropriate metric. They mentioned that other assessments of the status and trends of world fisheries used different approaches and data, yet all reached pessimistic conclusions. They advocated sustainable fisheries practices, pollution control, maintenance of essential habitats, and the creation of marine reserves, and they agreed with Hilborn’s emphasis on creating incentives for conservative harvest levels. The conflict continued a rancorous debate between marine ecologists and fisheries scientists about the status of the world’s oceans. But the following year, Hilborn and Worm and colleagues began meeting under the auspices of the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis at the University of California at Santa Barbara to discuss their differences. In an effort to create better databases that both groups considered reliable and informative, they met together with about twenty scientists from their respective disciplines (as well as graduate students) to learn why their different data sets or methods yielded different impressions of ocean ecosystems. They examined updated stock assessments, surveys, and statistical models of fish populations, and they also compiled a similar database of trawl surveys, a sampling of fish populations usually conducted by research vessels. In addition, they collected ecosystem models that show the interactions of various species in a particular fishery, and they examined the catch data that Worm et al. had used in the 2006 paper. Integrating these, they took a new look at the status and trends in world fisheries and ecosystems. A key conclusion at which they arrived was that minor changes in fishing practices could go a long way. The current practice is for fisheries scientists to set a target called maximum sustainable yield. Hilborn had already noted that it is more economical to fish somewhat less than this. The new findings showed that reducing fishing somewhat below this level offers biological benefits as well, including greater preservation of biodiversity. Hilborn and Worm now advocate a balance between extraction and conservation in order to manage the oceans for human use while maintaining biodiversity and the structure of ecosystems. They linked their different perspectives to provide an integrated assessment of the status, trends, and solutions in marine fisheries, and they also outlined the prospects for rebuilding depleted populations and restoring their ecosystems. Their joint

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study, published in Science (Worm et  al. 2009), found that in five of ten well-studied ecosystems, the average exploitation rate has declined and is now at or below the rate predicted to achieve maximum sustainable yield. However, 63% of assessed fish stocks worldwide still require rebuilding, and lower exploitation rates are needed to reverse the collapse of these vulnerable species. Fisheries and conservation objectives can both be achieved by combining management actions, including catch restrictions, gear modification, and closed areas. They noted that the impacts of international fleets and the lack of alternatives to fishing complicate prospects for rebuilding fisheries in many poorer countries, thus highlighting the need for a global perspective on rebuilding marine resources. Thus what started out as a major controversy over the predicted “end of fish” by 2048 led to agreements over most points through examining data from different fields of study. It should be noted that neither side in this debate had a vested economic interest in its outcome. Both sides advocate sustainable fisheries and healthy ecosystems and both value accurate science.

CONCLUSIONS

This chapter has analyzed four recent controversies in the aquatic sciences—two related to pollution, one to coastal management, and one to fisheries. The fisheries dispute of Worm and Holborn ended with a happy reconciliation and agreement by both sides as a result of examining all the relevant data and models. Both sides in this controversy desired the same thing, however—healthy fish populations. It is difficult to imagine a comparable coming together of the sides in the Atrazine or oil pollution “wars” because of vested economic interests on the part of companies. Pesticide manufacturers and oil companies have disproportionate resources (compared to academia and government) to hire scientists who will be able to find data that suggest minimal deleterious impacts of their products. It is surprising that in the many years after the Exxon Valdez spill, while there seems to be a general agreement about the low-dose toxicity of weathered oil to fish embryos, Exxon-funded scientists are still criticizing the NOAA studies. There is a pipeline of funding for them to continue this criticism. The downplaying of toxic effects by industry-funded scientists does not mean that their science is fraudulent. It merely means that they may not be looking hard enough for the most sensitive effects. I do not see these controversies ever ending. In contrast, the debates over coastal management regarding erosion and hard structures may eventually be ended by Mother Nature and climate change as shorelines disappear.

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CHAPTER 18

On an Economic Treadmill of Agriculture: Efforts to Resolve Pollinator Decline SAINAT H SURYANAR AYANAN

O

n your next stroll outdoors, you may come across a flowering plant, enjoy its beauty, and perhaps even taste its fruits. A wandering Homo sapiens, however, is probably not the flowering plant’s primary audience; an insect pollinator is more likely the one being wooed. Indeed, the vast biodiversity of flowering plants and insects on Earth is thought to be the result of a fruitful co-evolution over several million years between these organisms (Price 1997, pp.  239–258). Bees, wasps, butterflies, flies, and several other insects are also crucial in their role as pollinators for sustaining managed agricultural ecosystems (or agro-ecosystems; National Research Council [NRC] 2007). Honey bees (Apis mellifera), managed by beekeepers, are alone estimated to be responsible for over $15 billion worth of increased yield and quality in the United States annually (Morse and Calderone 2000). U.S.  growers rent an estimated 2  million beehives each year from beekeepers to pollinate over ninety different fruit, vegetable, and fiber crops (Delaplane and Mayer 2000; NRC 2007). In the first decades of the 21st century, public and scientific attention in the United States and elsewhere has been gripped by frequent reports of declines in populations of insect pollinators (e.g., Biesmeijer et al. 2006; NRC 2007), exemplified most dramatically by the news of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) among managed honey bees (vanEngelsdorp et al. 2009; Pettis and Delaplane 2010). While there are ongoing scientific and public debates over the extent to which the documented declines in insect

pollinators constitute a global “pollinator crisis,” whether agricultural productivity has actually declined due to these losses, and what the primary causal factors are, there is nonetheless a consensus that parts of North America and Europe continue to undergo worrying reductions in the diversity and abundance of multiple species of insect pollinators (Ghazoul 2005; Stefan-Dewenter et al. 2005; NRC 2007; Carvalheiro et al. 2013). In this chapter, I analyze the main kinds of efforts that are being taken by key institutional players to resolve the environmental problem of pollinator decline in the United States. I begin by outlining CCD in managed honey bees, which is emblematic of the broader pattern of pollinator loss. I  explain how CCD and the decline of pollinators are linked to transformations that have taken place in U.S. agriculture during the 20th century. I argue that among the spectrum of responses to perceived reductions in pollinator populations, one can broadly distinguish between two kinds of efforts:  restorative and substitutive. In the subsequent analysis, I  suggest that the ways in which responses to pollinator decline unfold are significantly constrained by the historically established structure of U.S. agriculture and that, as a result, in comparison to restorative efforts, substitutive ones are more likely to be adopted and be influential.

CCD, INSECT POLLINATOR DECLINE, AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF U.S. AGRICULTURE

Beginning in the winter of 2004–2005, many beekeeping operations across the United States, especially those involved in crop pollination, experienced unprecedented losses of between 30 and 90% of their beehives, fueled by a phenomenon that came to be called Colony Collapse Disorder (vanEngelsdorp et al. 2009; Pettis and Delaplane 2010). CCD-affected honey bees were reported to disappear from their beehives, thus leaving behind the queen and young bees. Surplus stores of honey and pollen, which would normally have been “robbed” by bees in neighboring beehives and by other insects, remained untouched for unexpectedly long durations in beehives with CCD (vanEngelsdorp et al. 2009). More than half a decade since beekeepers first saw their bees vanish, beehive losses remain troublingly high (vanEngelsdorp et al. 2011), with 2012–2013 being one of the worst years on record for managed honey bees and beekeepers (vanEngelsdorp et al. 2013). CCD is at the leading edge of a spiraling cascade of events that has increasingly plagued the U.S. honey bee industry over the past sixty years, during which time managed honey bee populations have halved (NRC 2007; Pettis and Delaplane 2010). Scientific studies suggest that no single factor

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is responsible for the decline in honey bees and other insect pollinators (U.S. Department of Agriculture [USDA] 2010a). The current consensus among scientists is that accelerated losses of honey bees are being caused by a complex combination of multiple factors, including parasitic mites, agricultural pesticides, beekeeper-applied chemicals, pathogens, and poor nutrition (USDA 2010a). However, uncertainty and controversy continue to swirl around which of these influences are more involved and how they might be interacting with other factors to cause the die-offs. Parallel to the downward trend in managed bee populations are declines of various unmanaged (“wild”) insect pollinators over the past sixty years (NRC 2007). As in the case of the honey bees, a mix of anthropogenic and nonanthropogenic factors, including shifts in landscape management practices leading to habitat degradation and habitat fragmentation, pesticide usage patterns, and other intensive farming practices, such as monocropping, are thought to play contributory roles (Spivak and Mader 2010). While most of the major agriculture crops grown in the United States, such as wheat, corn, and soy, are wind-pollinated and generally do not require insect pollinators,1 the area cultivated with pollinator-dependent “high-value” crops has been increasing appreciably since the latter half of the 20th century (NRC 2007). The decrease in populations of insect pollinators amid concurrent increases in the acreage under pollinator-dependent crops, coupled with a progressively increasing reliance for pollination on a single species of insect pollinators (managed honey bees) has led to an “unsustainable” situation (Spivak and Mader 2010). The present predicament of insect pollinators is intimately tied to the historical development of agriculture in the United States (Suryanarayanan and Kleinman 2013). Over the course of the 20th century, intensifying patterns of pesticide usage (Pimentel 2005) and increases in sizes of monocrop farming operations (USDA 2005) have fueled declines in the populations of previously abundant unmanaged insect pollinators (e.g., Cameron et al. 2011)  that provide “free” pollination services for growers. This situation has led growers to systematically turn to beekeepers for pollinating their crops. In turn, this has prompted the rise of “feedlot beekeeping” (Martin and McGregor 1973, p.  212), whereby thousands of beehives are transported on the backs of flatbed trucks to pollinate crops across thousands of miles, often at times of the year that were earlier considered unseasonal in a beehive’s life cycle. In order to keep beehives sufficiently strong and primed to pollinate all through the year, commercial beekeepers (whose primary source of livelihood is beekeeping) douse their beehives with pesticides, antibiotics, and other dietary supplements. And in the course of pollinating multiple crops, beekeepers directly expose their beehives to the

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very same industrial agricultural practices, including patterns of monocropping and pesticide usage (Spivak 2010) that have contributed to the decline of endemic, unmanaged insect pollinators.

KEY RESPONSES TO POLLINATOR DECLINE

CCD and the broader decline of insect pollinators have prompted diverse responses from key stakeholders in government, industry, academia, and civil society, ranging from skeptical denial to a variety of efforts aimed at resolving the problem. Broadly speaking, I  categorize stakeholders’ systematic efforts to solve the agroecological problem of pollinator decline as either restorative, that is, actions that promote a resurgence in populations of managed and unmanaged insect pollinators (e.g., through a shift to more pollinator-friendly habitats), or substitutive, which are geared toward developing technological innovations that could circumvent the reliance of agroecosystems on insect pollinators. These analytic categories are aimed at helping us think through the spectrum of efforts to respond to environmental problems such as pollinator decline; in actuality, any given effort probably reflects some mixture of the two categories. Through restorative efforts such as governmental conservation subsidies and environmental education initiatives, stakeholders seek to reverse pollinator decline by prompting individual growers, landowners, and citizens to shift toward more environmentally sustainable and pollinator-friendly agricultural practices and land management. Such endeavors are essential because they fuel a recognition that honey bees and other insect pollinators thrive in diverse floral landscapes and that various land management practices are playing a crucial role in their demise. For example, federal conservation subsidy programs, such as the Conservation Reserve Program, encourage eligible growers to establish pollinator-friendly wildflowers and shrubs on their farmlands by providing them with “annual rental payments” and “cost-share assistance” on the basis of contractual agreements that run for ten or fifteen years (USDA 2010b). Similarly, an increasing number of environmental initiatives, led by nonprofit coalitions, such as the North American Pollinator Protection Campaign, are making important efforts to draw the public’s attention to the plight of pollinators. Through the creation of cultural symbols such a “National Pollinator Week,” reading materials such as “planting guides,” and pollinator workshops, environmental educational initiatives prompt citizens to plant more pollinator-friendly gardens and adopt practices such as “integrated pest management,” which would presumably be less harsh on insect pollinators than prevalent practices.

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Through substitutive efforts, on the other hand, stakeholders seek to altogether skirt the problem of pollinator decline by developing novel technologies that could forego the biophysical dependence of agroecosystems on insect pollinators. For example, geneticists at the USDA and Zaiger Genetics, Inc. have developed hybrid varieties of self-pollinating almond trees that would not require honey bees for bearing fruit (USDA 2010c; Eddy 2011). The United States is the world’s largest producer and exporter of almonds, responsible for 80% of the world’s supplies. Almonds are a crucial niche market for U.S. agribusiness, and with close to 70% of all beehives in the United States congregating annually in California to pollinate almond trees, the almond pollination industry has also emerged as a key factor shaping honey bee health (NRC 2007; Burgett et al. 2010). For an agroindustry that has been imperiled by declining honey bee populations and increasing rental prices of beehives, commercially viable self-pollinating varieties of almond trees would be a God-send. The newly bred varieties are apparently commercially viable, with the Almond Board of California, which represents California’s almond industry, reportedly “pleased” with the “skin color, oil content, and most importantly, taste” of their nuts (USDA 2010c). Zaiger Genetics Inc.’s self-pollinating “Independence” variety has already taken off at several farmsites in California, with the manufacturer promising that growers could save as much as $200 to $300 per acre by eliminating the increasing costs of bees for almond pollination (Harvey 2012). According to Joe Traynor, a pollination broker in California, who acts as a contracted middleman between beekeepers and growers for a portion of the pollination fees, growers who adopt the Independence variety will still need bees but at a significantly lower number of beehives per acre (Traynor 2013). This trend toward “bee-free” varieties concerns some beekeepers, while others predict that the new self-pollinating varieties will never completely replace the prevalent pollinator-dependent variety and that even if they do, it will be several years before that happens (Eddy 2011). Such restorative and substitutive approaches to solving insect pollinator decline are fundamentally shaped by established government agricultural policy. Importantly, however, restorative efforts to encourage growers to shift to more pollinator-friendly practices are not especially profitable. Federal conservation subsidies provided to growers are negligible compared to payments that the U.S. government provides to growers of certain subsidized crops (Environmental Working Group  2012). Farm subsidies aim to help U.S. growers deal with unanticipated fluctuations in agricultural productivity and profitability due to variable weather, markets, and other factors. Most subsidy payments are based on the number of acres a grower plants of a few standard crops such as corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton, and rice (Bell

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2004; Environmental Working Group 2012). Between 1995 and 2011, while the government spent a whopping $219 billion toward subsidizing farm operations for their crop yields and revenue generation, the United States expended only about $37 billion on conservation subsidies. Significantly, a few farms, typically large ones, get a disproportionate share of these subsidies (Bell 2004). For example, between 1995 and 2012, just 10% of farms received 72% of all corn subsidies amounting to over $43 billion; among the top ten recipients was CHS Inc., a Fortune 100 firm and third-largest U.S. exporter of grain that additionally runs fuel refineries (Environmental Working Group 2012). Ironically, subsidies to growers encourage practices such as monocropping and associated patterns of pesticide and fertilizer usage that perpetuate the very same forms of intensive industrial agriculture that fueled pollinator decline in the first place. Sadly, this state of affairs is currently playing out in many parts of the upper Midwest in the United States, especially in Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota, where hundreds of thousands of beehives spend every summer before heading west on trucks to California’s almond orchards. Even as short-term Conservation Reserve Program agreements between landowners and the USDA expire, growers are finding it much more profitable to convert previously restored Conservation Reserve Program lands to intensively monocropped farms that are blanketed with corn or soy (Environmental Working Group 2013) than to facilitate conservation efforts. As a result, the amount of bee-friendly pasture under the Conservation Reserve Program has declined significantly since 2006 in these states, at rates that are comparable to very high deforestation rates in Brazil, Malaysia, and Indonesia (Wright and Wimberly 2013). In addition, the structure of U.S. agriculture poses a significant barrier to efforts to nurture more pollinator-friendly habitats. Those who do grow crops as their primary source of income are on an “economic treadmill,” where economic pressures from local and global competition, fluctuating crop prices, and a systemic push to maintain profits lead them to either “get big or get out” (Bell 2004, pp. 29–55). It is a dynamic that is conducive to the profitability of larger farming operations with greater reserves of capital and better access to new markets. The structure of incentives faced by growers means they must think about economic survival first and environmental sustainability second. Beyond pressures to increase size and capitalization, growers are turning to “production contracts” with big agribusiness to avoid the devastating effects of market fluctuations. In such contract or corporate farming operations, which although comprising a small fraction of U.S.  farms produce the bulk of the food commodities being sold in global retail markets, growers have become the equivalent of factory workers; they raise commodities

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over which they generally do not have ownership and have limited capacity to change prevalent agricultural practices (Lobao and Meyer 2001; Kirschenmann et al. 2008). Here, growers do not control their own farming practices. Their practices are shaped more by the economic considerations of consolidated agribusinesses firms, which are preoccupied more with the profit-making interests of far-off shareholders, the reduction of transaction costs, and the development of commodity chains than with the long-term health considerations of local natural resource bases and communities (Bell 2004; Kirschenmann et al. 2008). While this is not to suggest that small, independent farms have always attended to the health of the local environments and communities in which they are situated, it is to argue that insect pollinators and their associated ecosystems will remain jeopardized in an economic system that continues to reward disproportionately a few large and chemically intensive monocropping operations. Importantly, substitutive efforts are much more likely to be pursued in this context because they are consistent with the established system of high-capital, high-input, big industrial agriculture that arose over the 20th century. By decreasing the reliance of agroecosystems on vanishing insect pollinators, substitutive efforts enable agribusinesses to maintain their profit-maximizing farming practices that feature large monocrops and intensive levels of agrochemical inputs. As a result, through efforts such as the engineering of bee-free almonds, stakeholders perpetuate the very same unsustainable system of industrial agriculture that has fueled a raft of ecological problems (Altieri 2000), including pollinator decline. It could be argued that a shift to bee-free almonds would ultimately benefit honey bees; after all, the annual ritual of a majority of U.S.  beehives gathering to pollinate 810,000 acres of California’s almond-bearing monocrop has created a situation that is rife for the spread of a “perfect storm” like CCD (Burgett et  al. 2010; National Agricultural Statistics Service 2013). However, such a shift is likely to only displace commercial beekeepers and their beehives to other locations. It would not change the problematic circumstances under which growers are led to maintain large, chemically intensive, monocropping agroecosystems that are detrimental to insect pollinators in the vicinity. The industrial system of production has moreover contributed to a situation where a few big, migratory beekeeping operations own the majority of the nation’s bees and are responsible for most of its pollination needs (Daberkow et  al. 2009). Indeed, the structure of the U.S. beekeeping industry reflects similar trends of progressive concentration that have characterized the agricultural sector as a whole. Overriding economic priorities have also led commercial beekeepers onto a “chemical treadmill” (Spivak 2010). Here, a heady cocktail of pesticides

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to control parasitic mites, growth stimulants, and antibiotics is deeply intertwined with an agricultural context that keeps beehives moving in the short term while contributing to their overall demise in the long run. CONCLUSION

This chapter examined current efforts being taken to resolve the ongoing decline of insect pollinators. Restorative efforts, such as federal conservation subsidies and environmental education initiatives, are geared toward building pollinator populations by encouraging landowners and growers to adopt pollinator-friendly land management practices. By contrast, substitutive efforts are aimed at replacing the need for insect pollinators through technological innovations such as the Independence almond. I argued that both restorative and substitutive efforts are fundamentally shaped by the historically established structure of U.S.  agriculture. Here, government agricultural policies and economic pressures to “get big or get out” lead growers to adopt agricultural practices that have negative consequences for the long-term health of agroecosystems, including that of insect pollinators. In this context, substitutive efforts are likely to be more influential than restorative efforts, because they enable large industrial agricultural operations to continue with “business as usual.” As a result, substitutive efforts end up displacing the environmental problem of pollinator decline to other locations, while keeping in place an ecologically unsustainable system of industrial agriculture. The ongoing decline in insect pollinators and institutional responses to it are deeply intertwined with the ways in which we have come to organize the production, distribution, and consumption of our foods and fibers. As long as efforts to tackle the environmental problem of pollinator decline do not seriously address the social circumstances in which growers, beekeepers, and agribusiness firms are led to adopt pollinator-unfriendly practices, the problem of insect pollinator decline will not be truly resolved. Economic development need not be counter to ecological well-being; agribusiness, governmental agencies, and other stakeholders would do well to take heed of creative conversations that are already occurring about reconstructing U.S. agriculture (e.g., Bell 2004; Kirschenmann et al. 2008), so as to facilitate ecologically, socially, and economically sustainable practices that would nurture, rather than preclude, our interconnectedness with insect pollinators. At stake in projects to transform U.S.  agriculture is not just the sustainability of insect pollinators but also the long-term health of the ecological and social communities that we inhabit.

[ 266 ] Suryanarayanan

NOTE 1. The yield of some soy varieties can benefit from insect pollination (Delaplane and Mayer 2000, pp. 254–256). REFERENCES Altieri, M.A. 2000. “Ecological Impacts of Industrial Agriculture and the Possibilities for Truly Sustainable Farming.” In Hungry for Profit: The Agribusiness Threat to Farmers, Food and the Environment, edited by F. Magdoff, J.B. Foster, and F.H. Buttel, 77–92. New York: Monthly Review Press. Bell, M.M. 2004. Farming for Us All:  Practical Agriculture and the Cultivation of Sustainability. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Biesmeijer, J.C., S.P.M. Roberts, M. Reemer, R. Ohlemüller, M. Edwards, T. Peeters, et  al. 2006. “Parallel Declines in Pollinators and Insect-Pollinated Plants in Britain and the Netherlands.” Science 313: 351–354. Burgett, M., S. Daberkow, R. Rucker, and W. Thurman. 2010. “U.S. Pollination Markets:  Recent Changes and Historical Perspective.” American Bee Journal 150: 35–41. Cameron, S.A., J.D. Lozier, J.P. Strange, J.B. Koch, N. Cordes, L.F. Solter, et al. 2011. “Patterns of Widespread Decline in North American Bumble Bees.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108: 662–667. Carvalheiro, L.G., W.E. Kunin, P. Keil, J. Aguirre-Gutiérrez, W.N. Ellis, R. Fox, et  al. 2013. “Species Richness Declines and Biotic Homogenization Have Slowed Down for NW-European Pollinators and Plants.” Ecology Letters 16: 870–878. Daberkow, S., P. Korb, and F. Hoff. 2009. “Structure of the U.S. Beekeeping Industry: 1982–2002.” Journal of Economic Entomology 102: 868–886. Delaplane, K.S., and D.F. Mayer. 2000. Crop Pollination by Bees. New  York:  CABI Publishing. Eddy, D. 2011. “Bee Free Almond Tree.” Growing Produce, November 11. http://www. growingproduce.com/article/23991/bee-free-almond-tree Environmental Working Group. 2012. Farm Subsidy Database 2012. Washington, DC: Author. http://farm.ewg.org/region.php?fips=00000 Environmental Working Group. 2013. “Paradise Lost: Conservation Programs Falter as Agricultural Economy Booms.” Washington, DC:  Author. http://www.ewg.org/ research/paradise_lost Ghazoul, J. 2005. “Buzziness as Usual? Questioning the Global Pollination Crisis.” Trends in Ecology and Evolution 20: 367–373. Harvey, C. 2012. “New Almond Promises Independence from Bees.” The Business Journal, February 9.  http://www.thebusinessjournal.com/news/agriculture/ 770-new-almond-promises-independence-from-bees Kirschenmann, F., G.W. Stevenson, F. Buttel, T.A. Lyson, and M. Duffy. 2008. “Why Worry about the Agriculture of the Middle?” In Food and the Mid-Level Farm: Renewing an Agriculture of the Middle, edited by T.A. Lyson, G.W. Stevenson, and R. Welsh, 3–22. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Lobao, L., and K. Meyer. 2001. “The Great Agricultural Transition.” Annual Review of Sociology 27: 103–124. Martin, E.C., and S.E. McGregor. 1973. “Changing Trends in Insect Pollination of Commercial Crops.” Annual Review of Entomology 18: 207–226. Morse, R.A., and N.W. Calderone. 2000. “The Value of Honey Bees as Pollinators of U.S. Crops in 2000.” Bee Culture 128: 1–15.

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National Agricultural Statistics Service. 2013. “2012 California Acreage Report.” Washington, DC:  Author. http://www.nass.usda.gov/Statistics_by_State/ California/Publications/Fruits_and_Nuts/201305almac.pdf National Research Council. 2007. Status of Pollinators in North America. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. Pettis, J.S., and K.S. Delaplane. 2010. “Coordinated Responses to Honey Bee Decline in the USA.” Apidologie 41: 256–263. Pimentel, D. 2005. “Environmental and Economic Costs of the Application of Pesticides Primarily in the United States.” Environment, Development and Sustainability 7: 229–252. Price, P.W. 1997. Insect Ecology. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Spivak, M. 2010. “The Status of the European Honey Bee in the U.S.” In Managing Alternative Pollinators: A Handbook for Growers, Beekeepers and Conservationists, edited by E. Mader, M. Spivak, and E. Evans, 15–24. Ithaca, NY:  Natural Resource, Agriculture and Engineering Service. Spivak, M., and E. Mader. 2010. “The Business of Pollination.” In Managing Alternative Pollinators: A Handbook for Growers, Beekeepers and Conservationists, edited by E. Mader, M. Spivak, and E. Evans, 1–14. Ithaca, NY: Natural Resource, Agriculture and Engineering Service. Stefan-Dewenter, I., S.G. Potts, and L. Packer. 2005 “Pollinator Diversity and Crop Pollination Services Are At Risk.” Trends in Ecology and Evolution 20: 651–652. Suryanarayanan, S., and D.L. Kleinman. 2013. “Be(e)coming Experts: The Controversy over Insecticides in the Honey Bee Colony Collapse Disorder.” Social Studies of Science 43: 215–240. Traynor, J. 2013. “May 8, 2013—Almond Grower Newsletter.” http://apisenterprises. com/traynor/May%208,%202013%20Almond%20Grower%20Newsletter.pdf U.S. Department of Agriculture. 2005. The 20th Century Transformation of U.S. Agriculture and Farm Policy. Economic Information Bulletin No. 3. Washington, DC: Author. http://www.ers.usda.gov/media/259572/eib3_1_.pdf U.S. Department of Agriculture. 2010a. Colony Collapse Disorder Progress Report. Washington DC: Author. U.S. Department of Agriculture. 2010b. Conservation Reserve Program. Washington, DC: Author. http://www.fsa.usda.gov/Internet/FSA_File/annual2010summary. pdf U.S. Department of Agriculture. 2010c. “Self-Pollinating Almonds Key to Bountiful Harvests.” Agricultural Research Magazine, April. http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/ AR/archive/apr10/April2010.pdf vanEngelsdorp, D., J.D. Evans, C. Saegerman, C. Mullin, E. Haubruge, B.K. Nguyen, et al. 2009. “Colony Collapse Disorder: A Descriptive Study.” PLoS One 4: e6481. vanEngelsdorp, D., J. Hayes Jr., R.M. Underwood, D. Caron, and J. Pettis. 2011. “A Survey of Managed Honey Bee Colony Losses In the USA, Fall 2009 to Winter 2010.” Journal of Apicultural Research 50: 1–10. vanEngelsdorp, D., N. Steinhauer, K. Rennich, J. Pettis, E.J. Lengerich, D. Tarpy, et al. 2013. “Winter Loss Survey 2012–2013:  Preliminary Results.” Washington, DC:  U.S. Department of Agriculture. http://beeinformed.org/2013/05/ winter-loss-survey-2012-2013/ Wright, C.K., and M.C. Wimberly. 2013. “Recent Land Use Change in the Western Corn Belt Threatens Grasslands and Wetlands.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110: 4134–4139.

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CONTRIBUTORS

Thomas A. Birkland is the William T. Kretzer Professor of Public Policy at North Carolina State University, where he is also the associate dean for the Research and Engagement in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. At North Carolina State, he teaches courses on disaster policy and on the policy process. Dr. Birkland’s research is in theories of the policy process, focusing on agenda change, policy change, and learning. He is also an internationally known expert on policies related to natural disasters and industrial accidents. He is the author of After Disaster and Lessons of Disaster, as well as several scholarly articles. His recent interests have focused on whether and to what extent people and institutions learn from disasters and in refining and building on existing theories of the role of “focusing events” in promoting policy change and improvement. Before joining the NC State faculty, Dr. Birkland was an assistant and associate professor in the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy at the State University of New York, where he directed the Center for Policy Research. His PhD is in political science from the University of Washington in Seattle. Robert M. Chiles is a PhD candidate in the department of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Broadly, his research interests involve examining how institutions, discourses, and everyday lifestyles interdependently shape the key features of production/consumption relationships. Currently, he is exploring how the social legitimacy of meat has been disrupted and renegotiated in light of growing controversies over public health, sustainability, and animal treatment. He has also published research that analyzes the cultural politics of in vitro meat, a nascent technology whereby processed meat is grown from stem cells. He is the recipient of a Integrating Research Ethics and Scholarship Fellowship and an Advanced Opportunity Fellowship, both from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Graduate School, and he has also served on the board of directors for Madison Community Cooperatives, a local nonprofit dedicated to

affordable housing and multiculturalism. He received his undergraduate degree in philosophy and political science from Stanford University. Karen A.  Cloud-Hansen is a freelance editor specializing in biomedical publications. Dr.  Cloud-Hansen earned a PhD in microbiology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where her work focused on mechanisms of microbial pathogenesis and environmental reservoirs of antibiotic resistance genes. Annette AurÉlie Desmarais is Canada Research Chair of Human Rights, Social Justice and Food Sovereignty at the University of Manitoba. She is the author of La Via Campesina: Globalization and the Power of Peasants (Fernwood Publishing and Pluto Press, 2007), which has also been published in French, Spanish, Italian, Korean, and Portuguese. She coedited Food Sovereignty:  Reconnecting Food, Nature and Community (Fernwood Publishing and Food First, 2010) and Food Sovereignty in Canada: Creating Just and Sustainable Food Systems (Fernwood Publishing, 2011). Her articles have been published in the Journal of Peasant Studies, Journal of Rural Studies, Canadian Woman Studies/Cahiers de la Femme, and Human Geography. Prior to obtaining a PhD, she farmed for fourteen years in Saskatchewan, Canada. Belinda Dodson is an associate professor in the Department of Geography and director of the Graduate Program in Migration and Ethnic Relations at the University of Western Ontario. Born in Swaziland, she was educated in South Africa (BSc Honours, University of Kwazulu Natal) and the United Kingdom (PhD, University of Cambridge). Her research focuses on the linkages between migration, gender, and development, with a regional emphasis on southern Africa. Much of her work has been conducted through the Southern African Migration Program and African Food Security Urban Network, two multicountry research and policy networks with Canadian and southern African partners, for which her primary role has been conducting gender analysis. Allison Goebel has a PhD from the Department of Sociology at the University of Alberta. She is currently associate professor of environmental studies at Queen’s University in Canada. She is the author of Gender and Land Reform: The Zimbabwean Experience, published by McGill-Queen’s University Press in 2005, and numerous scholarly articles relating to land, gender, livelihoods, urban housing issues, and environments in southern Africa.

[ 270 ] Contributors

Seymour E.  Goodman is professor of international affairs and computing at the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs and at the College of Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology. He also serves as co-director of the Center for International Strategy, Technology, and Policy and as co-director of the Georgia Tech Information Security Center. Professor Goodman studies international developments in the information technologies and related public policy issues. He has over 150 publications and has served on many academic, government, and industry advisory, study, and editorial committees. He has conducted studies in the field of computing on all seven continents and about 100 countries. More than a dozen funders have supported his work, including the National Science Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Departments of Energy, Homeland Security, and Defense. He recently served as chair of the Committee on Improving Cybersecurity Research in the United States and is currently a member of the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board of the National Research Council of the National Academies of Science and Engineering. Professor Goodman was an undergraduate at Columbia University and obtained his PhD from the California Institute of Technology in 1970, where he worked on problems of applied mathematics and mathematical physics. Jo Handelsman is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor and Frederick Phineas Rose Professor in the Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology at Yale University. She served on the faculty at the University of Wisconsin–Madison from 1985 until moving to Yale in 2010. Her research focuses on the genetic and functional diversity of microorganisms in soil and insect gut communities. She is one of the pioneers of functional metagenomics, an approach to accessing the genetic potential of unculturable bacteria in environmental samples for discovery of novel microbial products, and she recently served as President of the American Society for Microbiology. In addition to her microbiology research program, Handelsman is also known internationally for her efforts to improve science education and increase the participation of women and minorities in science at the university level. Her leadership in education led to her appointment as the first president of the Rosalind Franklin Society; her service on the National Academies’ panel that wrote the 2006 report “Beyond Bias and Barriers: Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering”; her position as co-chair of a working group that produced the report to the President “Engage to Excel:  Producing One

Contributors  [ 271 ]

Million Additional College Graduates with Degrees in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics” about improving STEM education in postsecondary education; and her selection by President Barack Obama to receive the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring. At the end of 2012, Nature listed Dr. Handelsman as one of the “ten people who mattered this year” for her research on gender bias in science. Jim Handy is a professor and chair of the Department of History at the University of Saskatchewan. He has written extensively on agrarian social change and capitalism. His articles have been published in the Journal of Peasant Studies, Journal of Latin American Studies, Comparative Studies in Society and History, The Americas, and Hispanic American Historical Review, among others. He is the author of Gift of the Devil: A History of Guatemala (Southend, 1984) and Revolution in the Countryside: Rural Conflict and Agrarian Reform in Guatemala, 1944–1954 (University of North Carolina Press, 1994). He is currently working on a book titled The Menace of Progress and other publications concerning the history of ideas of political economy. Daniel Lee Kleinman is associate dean for social studies in the graduate school at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he is also a professor in the Department of Community and Environmental Sociology. Kleinman is the author of three books, including Impure Cultures: University Biology and the World of Commerce. His work has also appeared in a wide array of journals ranging from Issues in Science and Technology to Theory and Society. Among his current projects are investigations of emerging knowledge about and government regulation related to Colony Collapse Disorder, the malady associated with massive die-offs of honey bees, the commercialization of higher education, and the organizational dynamics of interdisciplinary scientific research. Ka Man Lai is Associate Professor of Biology at the Hong Kong Baptist University. She was a senior lecturer in Environmental Health Engineering and the director of the Healthy Infrastructure Research Centre at University College London. Dr. Lai received her first degree in biology and a Master’s degree in environmental science from Hong Kong Baptist University and Chinese University of Hong Kong, respectively. She graduated with a PhD degree in environmental pathways of endocrine disrupting substances in the aquatic environment from Imperial College London and worked as a research fellow on aerobiology and public health at the Harvard School of Public Health prior to joining University College London in 2005.

[ 272 ] Contributors

Nancy Langston is Professor of Environmental History in the Great Lakes Research Center and the Department of Social Sciences at Michigan Technological University. She has served as President of the American Society for Environmental History, Editor in Chief of Environmental History and King Carl XVI Gustaf Professor of Environmental Sciences at Umeå University in Sweden. She is the author of three books, including Toxic Bodies:  Hormone Disruptors and the Legacy of DES (Yale University Press, 2010). Frances Moore LappÉ is an author of eighteen books including the 3-million copy Diet for a Small Planet and her latest work, EcoMind: Changing the Way We Think to Create the World We Want. Her books have been translated into fifteen languages and her articles have been published by a wide range of periodicals, including The New  York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Nation, Huffington Post, and People. Ms. Lappé received the Right Livelihood Award in 1987, the James Beard Foundation “Humanitarian of the Year” Award in 2008, and the Nonino Prize in 2011. She has cofounded three organizations, including Food First:  The Institute for Food and Development Policy, the Small Planet Institute, and the Small Planet Fund. Ms. Lappé also advises numerous groups concerned with food and agriculture, including the World Future Council, of which she is a founding member, the International Commission on the Future of Food and Agriculture, and Earth Corps. Matthys P.  Levy is a founding principal and chairman emeritus of Weidlinger Associates, Consulting Engineers. He was born in Switzerland and graduated from the City College of New York and Columbia University, where he served as an adjunct professor. He is a frequent lecturer at universities, professional conferences, and public venues. Mr. Levy is the recipient of many awards, including the ASCE Innovation in Civil Engineering Award and the Egleston medal from Columbia University. He has published numerous papers in the field of structures, computer analysis, aesthetics, and building systems design; has illustrated two books; and is the coauthor of Why Buildings Fall Down:  Structural Design in Architecture; Why the Earth Quakes:  Earthquakes, Volcanoes & Tsunamis; and Engineering the City. His most recent book, Why the Wind Blows: A History of Weather and Global Warming, was published in 2007. Levy is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers, the American Society of Civil Engineers, and other professional societies. He is also a founding director of the Salvadori Center, an organization that serves youngsters by teaching

Contributors  [ 273 ]

mathematics and science through motivating hands-on learning about the built environment. Projects for which Levy was the principal designer include the Rose Center for Earth and Space at the American Museum of Natural History, the Javits Convention Center, and the Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York; the Georgia Dome in Atlanta and the La Plata Stadium in Argentina feature his patented Tenstar Dome. Mr. Levy has also served as an expert in forensic investigations, including the World Trade Center collapses in New York. Kelly Moore is an associate professor of sociology at Loyola University Chicago. She is the author of Disrupting Science: Social Movements, Scientists and the Politics of the Military (Princeton University Press, 2008); winner of the Robert K. Merton Prize from the American Sociological Association Section on Science, Knowledge, and Technology; and winner of the Charles Tilly Prize from the American Sociological Association Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements. She is coeditor of The New Political Sociology of Science (University of Wisconsin Press, 2006)  and is currently editing, with Daniel L.  Kleinman, The Handbook of Science, Technology and Society (Routledge). Her work has appeared in the American Journal of Sociology, Research in the Sociology of Organizations, and Theory and Society, as well as other journals and edited volumes. She has served on the editorial boards of the American Journal of Sociology and the American Sociological Review. She has also served as a program officer in the National Science Foundation Science, Technology and Society, and Ethics Education in Science and Engineering Programs (2011–2012). Jarrod m. Rifkind was a graduate student in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Some of his current research concerns how rapid developments in information technology are shaping both militaries and societies. In particular, he is interested in issues concerning information security and privacy. His other recent works examine the impact emerging technologies are having on combatants and the implications such effects have for the nature of conflict. Mr. Rifkind is a recipient of the National Science Foundation Scholarship for Service for his studies in cybersecurity; he has had professional experience in this field with the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Department of Homeland Security. He received his B.A.  from Northwestern University in international studies and German. Jody A. Roberts is the director of the Center for Contemporary History and Policy at the Chemical Heritage Foundation. He leads multiple projects that explore social, technical, and policy innovations for governing

[ 274 ] Contributors

molecules. Dr. Roberts received advanced degrees in science and technology studies from Virginia Tech and earned an undergraduate degree in chemistry from Saint Vincent College. He also lectures in the History and Sociology of Science Department at the University of Pennsylvania and in the Science, Technology and Society Program at Drexel University. Chelsea Schelly received her PhD from the Department of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and is an Assistant Professor of Sociology in the Department of Social Sciences and the Environmental and Energy Policy graduate program at Michigan Technological University. Her work explores how residential technological systems shape the organization of social life and conceptions of human–nature relationships. Her research examines the historical normalization of residential technological systems in America, how technological systems interact with social structures to shape human–nature relationships and human action, and how alternative technological systems challenge the political, economic, and environmental consequences of the currently dominant technological systems. Her research, previously funded by an NSF-IGERT Fellowship and an EPA-STAR Fellowship, looks at alternative technology adoption in a diverse array of forms, from solar electric technology use to living off-grid to intentional communities. Her research and teaching interests include environmental sociology, science and technology studies, comparative-historical sociology, and social theory. Daniel Simberloff is the Nancy Gore Hunger Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Tennessee. His writings center on ecology, biogeography, evolution, and conservation biology; much of his research focuses on causes and consequences of biological invasions. His research projects are on insects, plants, fungi, birds, and mammals. At the University of Tennessee, he directs the Institute for Biological Invasions. Dr.  Simberloff is editor-in-chief of Biological Invasions, senior editor of the Encyclopedia of Biological Invasions, and author of What Everyone Needs to Know About Biological Invasions, published by Oxford University Press in 2013. He served on the U.S. National Science Board from 2000 to 2006 and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. His website is eeb.bio.utk.edu/Simberloff.asp. Banu Subramaniam is an associate professor of women, gender, and sexuality studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is author of Ghost Stories for Darwin: The Science of Variation and the Politics of Diversity (University of Illinois Press 2014), and coeditor of Feminist Science

Contributors  [ 275 ]

Studies: A New Generation (Routledge, 2001) and Making Threats: Biofears and Environmental Anxieties (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005). Trained as a plant evolutionary biologist, she seeks to engage the social and cultural studies of science and practice of science. Spanning the humanities, social sciences, and biological sciences, her research is located at the intersections of biology, women’s studies, ethnic studies, and postcolonial studies. Her current work focuses on the genealogies of variation in evolutionary biology, the xenophobia and nativism that accompany frameworks on invasive plant species, and the relationship of science and religious nationalism in India. Sainath Suryanarayanan is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Community and Environmental Sociology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Initially trained as a social insect biologist, for the past few years Sai has been publishing historically grounded scholarship on the environmental problem associated with accelerated die-offs of honey bees and other insect pollinators. Sai’s recent work, in collaboration with Daniel Lee Kleinman and supported by the National Science Foundation, has appeared in a variety of journals, including Social Studies of Science, Science, Technology & Human Values, Issues in Science & Technology, Insects, and The Guardian (UK). Joel A. Tickner is associate professor in the Department of Community Health and Sustainability at the University of Massachusetts Lowell where he also directs the Chemicals Policy and Science Initiative at the Lowell Center for Sustainable Production. He is a leading expert on chemicals regulation, regulatory science, and application of the alternatives assessment in science and policy. He has served as an advisor and researcher for several government agencies, international agencies, nonprofit environmental groups, companies, and trade unions, both in the United States and abroad, during the past few years. He served on the Environmental Protection Agency’s National Pollution Prevention and Toxics Advisory Committee as well as the National Academy of Sciences Panel on the Future of Science at the Environmental Protection Agency. He also directs the undergraduate Environmental Health B.S. program at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. He holds a master’s of science degree in environmental studies from the University of Montana and a doctor of science degree from the Department of Work Environment at University of Massachusetts Lowell and for three years was an Environmental Protection Agency STAR Fellow. Sarah A. Vogel is the director of the health program at the Environmental Defense Fund that focuses on protecting health by

[ 276 ] Contributors

reducing exposures to pollution and toxic chemicals. She recently authored the book Is It Safe? Bisphenol A and the Struggle to Define the Safety of Chemicals (University of California Press, 2013), which details political and scientific debates about the health risks of chemicals in the United States over the past sixty years. Sarah received a PhD from Columbia University at the Center for the History and Ethics of Public Health and Medicine and holds graduate degrees in public health and environmental management from Yale University and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia. Megan K. Warnement is a doctoral candidate in public administration at North Carolina State University. Her primary area of research is the public policy process, specifically disaster policy and the role of focusing events in relation to policy change and policy learning. She also conducts research in the areas of disaster management and critical infrastructure, organizational learning from events, film and politics, and government public relations. Judith S. Weis is a professor of biological sciences at Rutgers University, Newark. She received her bachelor’s degree from Cornell University and her master’s of science and PhD from New York University. Her research focuses mostly on estuarine ecology and ecotoxicology. She has published over 200 refereed scientific papers, as well as a book on salt marshes (Salt Marshes: A Natural and Unnatural History) in 2009, a book on fish (Do Fish Sleep?) in 2011, and a book on crabs (Walking Sideways:  The Remarkable World of Crabs) in 2012. She is interested in stresses in estuaries (including pollution, invasive species, and parasites) and their effects on organisms, populations, and communities. Much of her research has been focused on estuaries in the New  York/New Jersey harbor area, but she has also done research in Indonesia and Madagascar. She serves on the editorial board for BioScience and is one of the editors of the online Encyclopedia of Earth. She is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), was a Congressional Science Fellow with the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, and was a Fulbright Senior Specialist in Indonesia in 2006. She has been on numerous advisory committees for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the National Research Council and is currently chair of the Science Advisory Board of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. She was the chair of the Biology Section of the AAAS and served on the boards of the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, the Association for Women in Science, and the American Institute of Biological Sciences, of which she was the president in 2001.

Contributors  [ 277 ]

Judith Wittner is a professor of sociology at Loyola University in Chicago. She teaches courses in and writes about families, gender, and ethnographic field methods. In the past several years she has been teaching graduate and undergraduate courses in the culture and politics of food.

[ 278 ] Contributors

INDEX

aesthetics, 4 Agent Orange. See 2,4-D agrarian. See peasantry agribusiness, 6, 130, 263–266 agricultural technology, 7, 90, 92, 112, 142, 263, 265 government oversight of, 94 women's access to, 142 See also chemical industry, food security, food sovereignty, food system, genetically modified organisms agroecology, 7, 93, 95–96, 97, 101–102, 104, 129, 262 agroforestry, 102 definition of, 95 green manures, 97, 106 knowledge-intensive practices, 102 almonds, 263, 265 amphibians, 12, 161, 245–247 anemia, 98 animal rights, 223 aquatic life, 10, 77. See also fish and fisheries aquatic sciences, 12, 241 arsenic, 190 atrazine, 12, 161, 245–247, 255 beekeeping, 13, 260–261, 265 biodiversity, 101, 220, 222, 229, 235, 254, 259 biofuel, 140 biological invasion definition of, 211 Birkland, Thomas A., 4, 33 birth defects, 160, 200

body mass index (BMI), 113, 123 BPA assumption of safety, 205 baby bottles, 183, 199, 202–203 burden of proof, 205 chromosomal changes in animals, 160 chronic exposure, 161 consumer and marketplace pressure, 173, 177, 203 economic success and utility, 199 environmental estrogenic compounds, awareness of, 200 impact on successive generations, 160 lack of consensus, 202, 204–206 lack of research on alternatives, 174 legal uprising, beginnings of, 183 multicausal chronic diseases, 205 obesity, 119 oral exposure, 204 origins of, 159, 201 regulation of, 172–174, 184, 190, 192, 197, 199–200 regulation in Europe and at the state level, 203 research on alternatives, 172 restrictions in Europe and at the state level, 177 sales revenues, 159 the simplistic narrative, 197 wide range of uses, 174 workplace exposure, 172 See also chemical industry built environments, 3, 76 capital (economic), 8, 31, 43, 127–129, 142, 264–265

capitalism, 8, 128–129, 132, 272 origins of, 126 Carson, Rachel, 217 Centers for Disease Control (CDC), 153, 161, 175, 190 chemical industry alternatives assessment, definition of, 176 American Chemistry Council, 184 animal testing and exposure, 25, 154, 156–157, 159–160, 172, 188, 196–198, 204, 206, 245 asbestos, 184–185, 192 chemical-by-chemical risk assessment, 178 chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), 170 comprehensive chemicals policy, features of, 179 consumer and marketplace pressures, 177, 191, 203 “control or phase-out” approach, 178 economic impact, 153 gaps in knowledge and transparency, 169 green chemistry, 170, 176, 191 historical lessons, 192 new policies in Europe and at the state level, 176 nongovernmental organizations, influence of, 190 polymerization, 159 polymers, history of, 191 “regrettable substitution”, 205 regulatory agencies and processes, by chemical, 168 regulatory debate, 198 regulatory gaps and limitations, 168 research on alternatives, 191 “the jurisdiction gap”, 171 “the safety gap”, 169 “the science gap”, 170 “the technology gap”, 170 toxic Substances Control Act, 176, 184, 206 traditional risk assessment, 176 workplace and environmental exposures, 170, 188 See also agricultural technology, BPA, herbicide, pesticides children

[ 280 ] Index

chemical exposure, 54, 97, 119, 153, 167, 172, 177, 183–184, 188, 190– 191, 201, 203 food insecurity, 142–144 noise pollution, 75 nutrition, 115 obesity, 112, 119 pesticide exposure, 167 Chiles, Robert M., 1 civil liberties, 5, 48–49, 54, 56 climate change climate justice, 8 consequences of, 4, 17–18, 21, 26–27, 30, 62, 81, 89, 237, 255 denial of, 67 food and agriculture, 90, 92, 99–101, 103–104, 124, 131, 137 forests, 93, 99 impact on fisheries, 252 impact on wildlife populations, 162 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 18, 100, 108 origins of, 18 xenophobia, 233 See also infrastructure Clinton, President Bill, 211, 216 coal, 17, 26, 62, 69–70, 76 colonization, 11 Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), 13, 259–260, 262, 265, 272 “chemical treadmill”, 265 modernization of agriculture, 261 multiple causes, 261 responses to, 262 restorative efforts, 13, 260, 262–263, 266 substitutive efforts, 13, 63, 260, 265–266 commodity crops, 7, 12, 114, 116, 120, 125 chains, 118, 137, 265 speculation, 118, 132 communities access to food, 6 access to resources, 62, 82–84, 265 empowerment, 6–7, 65–66, 79, 96, 125, 138, 145, 237 health, 66, 79, 177, 266 resilience and vulnerability, 17, 33, 37–43, 73, 77–79, 242

Congress, 4, 59, 185, 189, 216 consensus, 12, 186, 202, 205, 260–261 consumption alternative networks of, 104, 132, 137 caloric intake, 111 energy, 63, 65, 153 globalization, 232 household, 8, 139, 142, 144–145 livestock products, 90 overconsumption, 6, 81, 90, 112, 116, 119, 237 (see also meat-rich diets, obesity) safety (see BPA, chemical industry) cost-benefit, 9, 184 court decisions, 10, 56, 59, 173, 184–186 cultural studies of science, 228 Darwin, Charles, 222 data collection, ubiquitous, 5, 48–49, 51–52, 55 government data collection and storage, 55 marketing purposes of, 5, 48, 50, 52–53 monitoring users, 51 data storage, 5, 50, 58 cloud computing, 58 dangers of, 50 hacking, danger of, 54, 59 DDT, 158 Deepwater Horizon, 11, 244 democratization, 7 Desmarais, Annette Aurélie, 7–8, 124 developing countries. See Global South diethylstilbestrol (DES), 154, 156–157, 159–160, 162, 201–202, 273 disability, 6, 82–83 disaster response, 41 discourse, 6–8, 54, 59, 115, 127–129, 137, 139, 232 discrimination, 8 disease bladder, 82 cancer, 9, 98, 111, 114, 155, 157, 161, 171, 173, 175, 177, 189, 201, 204, 222 cardiovascular disease, 75, 114, 161, 188, 197, 201, 206 diabetes, 9, 98, 111, 114, 160–161, 172, 197, 201, 206

diarrheal, 80 epidemic, 7 fetal death, 160 flu, 111 high blood pressure, 111 limb deformities, 9, 161 osteoarthritis, 114 Parkinson's, 98 plague, 30 reproductive disorders, 160, 188 severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), 77, 111 stroke, 114 tumors, 156–157 West Nile virus, 214 See also chemical industry, endocrine disruption, hunger, infrastructure, malnutrition, obesity DNA, 156–157, 161 Dodson, Belinda, 8, 137 dosage, 9, 155, 160–162, 172, 187–188, 197–198, 202, 204–207, 244–246, 255 high-level exposure, 204 low-dose research, critiques of, 206 low-level exposure, 9, 174, 197–198, 201, 204 low-level exposure, impact of, 170, 172 See also BPA, endocrine disruption drought, 4, 7, 18, 22, 27–28, 92, 94, 112, 115–116 economic growth, 128, 139 economic treadmill, 264 economists, 3, 131, 252 ecosystems chemical pollutants, 168 human body, 161 human role, 237 impact of industrial chemicals, 153– 154, 162, 168, 179 impact of invasive species, 212–213, 216, 228, 230, 232 impact of overdevelopment, 234 management, 3, 219, 223, 235 pathogens, 77 pragmatic approach, 236 regenerative capacity, 90 ecotourism, 140

Index  [ 281 ]

education, 4, 6, 83, 139, 144, 262, 266, 271–272 maternal, 144 efficiency, 4, 8, 37–38, 40, 43–44, 55–56, 58, 70, 79, 103, 129, 138–139, 251 e-government, 48–49, 55, 57 elderly, 6, 83, 113, 143 Elton, Charles, 211, 230 e-mail, 4, 5, 47, 51, 53 employment, 3, 8, 83, 139, 140, 143–144, 232 endocrine disruption, 6, 9, 153, 155, 158, 174, 189, 192, 200, 202, 245 at-risk populations, human, 188 defining risk, 202 environmental endocrine disruption hypothesis, origins of, 186 exposure to multiple chemicals, 161 fetal development, impact on, 156 impact on animal reproductive systems, 158 impact on successive generations, 188 impact on wildlife, 245 industry funded science, 246 industry-funded science, 245 lack of consensus, 202 life history research, 162 measurement, difficulties of, 161 population research, 162 timing, 187, 202 endocrine system definition of, 153 engineers, 3, 4, 6, 40, 42–43, 77 collaborations with social scientists, 79 environmental health, 3, 7, 9, 10, 81, 160, 169 (see also endocrine disruption) Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 10, 12, 167, 169–170, 172–174, 184–186, 189–190, 192, 245–247, 275 green chemistry program, 186 Office of Toxic Substances, 184–185 environmentalists, 5, 216, 229, 241 epidemiology, 160–161, 197 epigenetics, 156 ethnocentrism, 11 eutrophication, 252

[ 282 ] Index

expertise, 2–3, 24, 89, 104, 114, 118, 130, 174, 189 agricultural policy, 130 “knowledge-first” approach, 173 local knowledge, 118 “solutions-oriented approach”, 173 export, 7–8, 116, 118, 127–128, 131 extreme event, 34, 38–39 Exxon Valdez, 12, 242–243, 255 Facebook, 47–53, 59–60 farmers. See food security, food sovereignty, food system, and peasantry fat, 111–114, 118–119, 190, 198, 201 feminism, 11, 228. See also gender fertilizer, 6, 29, 79, 90–93, 97, 100, 102, 117, 127, 131, 264 fetus, 154, 156, 160, 187 fish chemical exposure, 154, 158–159, 162, 246–247 impact of pollution, 77, 243–244 See also coastlines, invasive species, oil spills fisheries, 12, 213, 251–255 access, 126 cod, 252 flawed data, 253 industry vs conservation debate, 252 integrating findings, 254–255 over-fishing, 251 population collapses, 28, 252–253 stock assessments, 251, 252, 254 flooding, 4, 17, 21–25, 27–28, 36, 38, 76, 115, 127 Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), 90, 93, 95, 97, 100–102, 111–112, 115–116, 118, 125, 137, 139 Food and Drug Administration (FDA), 100, 168, 183, 197 the “safety standard”, 174 food aid, 7, 115–116, 120 food crisis, 117, 125, 132, 142 food demand, 138, 139 food distribution, 115 food prices, 6, 104, 115–116, 137, 142, 144 Food Quality Protection Act, 167, 188

food security, 7–8, 99, 114–117, 124– 125, 128–132, 137–139, 142–146 access, 114, 138 definition of, 124 food as a human right, 120, 124, 138 food insecurity, 111, 113, 115–118, 126, 142, 144–146 in the United States, 115 inattention to urban areas, 142, 143 international political security, 137 nutritious food, definition of, 114 role of women, 139, 144 scarcity, 90, 95 “sufficient food,” definition of, 114 “The scarcity scare”, 115, 138 food sovereignty, 7–8, 104, 124–125, 130–133, 137–138, 142, 145 definition of, 125 democratization, 133 emphasis on production, 140 inattention to urban areas, 142 La Via Campesina, 125, 132–136, 270 food system, 3, 7, 90–91, 95, 100–101, 112, 116–120, 124–125, 132, 138, 142, 145 corporate ownership, 117 democratization, 95, 120 “frame of orientation”, 89 governance, 103 Green Revolution, 91–92, 125, 129 processed foods, 119 productivist frame, 6, 90 productivity, 93, 104, 117, 125, 129, 130, 139, 140–142, 145, 215 relational frame, 6, 91 unequal access to resources, 131 waste, 97 forests, 93, 213 fossil fuels, 2, 17, 26, 62–63, 66, 70. See also climate change, infrastructure, oil gender access to food, 138 access to resources, 82, 139, 140 agriculture, 8, 101, 133, 138–146 education, 82, 142, 144 empowerment strategies, 138, 142, 144–147 exclusion from formal labor, 143

family planning, 97 health, 6, 82, 160, 188, 197, 201 household labor, 8, 143 structural barriers to equality, 141 toxics activism, 191 traditional roles, 143, 232 unequal access to resources, 82 genetically modified organisms (GMOs), 6, 93, 98, 101–102, 120, 125 arguments in favor of, 92–93 impacts on the Global South, 96 “substantial equivalence”, 100 “super-weeds”, 100 health risks, 98 labeling law, 117 Monsanto, 94, 96, 101, 117–118, 137 profit vs need, 118 seed overuse, 100 self-pollinating trees, 13, 263 unintended effects, 98 Global North, 6, 90–91, 111 Global South, 7, 91–92, 96–98, 111, 140, 145 global warming. See climate change globalization, 12, 139, 140, 142, 145, 232, 234, 237 Goebel, Allison, 8, 137 Goodman, Seymour, 5, 47 Google, 48–49, 51–53, 59, 69 governance, 3, 10, 12, 79, 82, 192 habitat, 12, 162, 213, 220, 229, 248–250, 252, 261 Haiti earthquake, 77, 85 Handy, Jim, 7–8, 124 Haraway, Donna, 11, 228 hard structures, 12, 249, 255 hazard assessment, 9 health care, 6, 75, 81 health standards, 3 heat damage, 4, 21 herbicide, 12, 98, 100, 161, 218, 235, 245, 247 human exposure, 98 hormones, 9, 153–154, 156 definition of, 153–154 estrogen, 154, 156–158, 159, 174, 197, 199–201 See also diethylstilbestrol (DES) and endocrine disruption

Index  [ 283 ]

human rights, 120, 124, 131–132, 138 hunger, 7–8, 89–90, 95, 98, 101–102, 108–109, 111–112, 115, 119–120, 123–128, 131, 133, 139, 142–143 connection to obesity, 7, 112, 116 gender inequality, 139 global phenomenon, 111 historical context, 127–128 impact of agricultural modernization, 8 persistence of, 90 rhetorical arguments, 89, 125 structural factors, 7, 95, 100, 105, 112, 115, 119–120, 126, 131, 146 See also food security, food sovereignty, food system, and malnutrition Hurricane Katrina, 4, 11, 25, 29, 37–40, 44, 46 Hurricane Sandy, 11, 250 import, 116, 127 industry-funded science, 255 inequality, 7, 82–83, 117, 127, 141, 144 income, 74 redistribution of wealth and resources, 120 socioeconomic status and health, 81 urban vs rural, 144 See also Global North, Global South, and poverty information security, 5, 47, 49, 54, 59, 274 information technology, 4–5, 35, 47 infrastructure aging, 74, 77 airports, 25 communications, 30 (see also data gathering, data storage, and Internet) “critical” infrastructure, definition of, 34 definition of, 17, 34–35 disability, 82 electric utilities industry, 63, 68–69, 71 electricity grid, 62 energy infrastructure, 27 “failing gracefully”, 42–44 impact on inequality, 74, 81 (see also inequality)

[ 284 ] Index

interdependence, 37 pathogens, 77 ports, 25 race and ethnicity, 83 rafting, 37–38, 44 railways, 24 roads and bridges, 20, 22 secondary shocks, 77 shoreline, 247 solid waste management, 4, 17, 30– 31, 77–78, 82 transportation, 20, 25, 75 water waste management, 29, 78–79, 82 young and elderly populations, 83 insecticides, 118, 217–218 Internet, 3, 5, 29–30, 47–48, 51–53, 56 social media, 47 invasion biology, 212, 228, 230 criticism of, 220 military metaphors, 222, 229 nostalgia, 235, 237 origins of, 211 parallels with eugenics, 232–233 xenophobia critique, 221, 231, 233, 236 invasive species activation of innocuous genotypes, 214 agricultural benefits, 215, 235 as a scapegoat for overdevelopment, 234 Asian carp, 11 biological controls, 218 “black list”, 216 chemical controls, 218 Columbian Exchange, 211 costs and benefits, 235 debate over costs and benefits, 215 ecological benefits of, 215 ecological imperialism, 230 economic costs, 215 ecosystem management, 219 eradication of, 217 fighting a losing battle, 222 “game-changing” invasions, 212 hybridization with native species, 214 hyperbole, historical context of, 232 introduced pathogens, 213 “invited invasions”, 235

kokanee salmon, 212 management of, 215 mechanical management, 218 “native” and “exotic,” definitions of, 233 no “silver bullet” solution, 223 public attention, 229 Irish potato famine, 8, 11, 127–128, 131. See also food security, food sovereignty, and hunger jobs, 11, 81, 94, 103, 153. See also employment and labor knowledge-intensive farming. See agroecology labor, 8, 93, 96, 103, 117, 129, 139, 140–143, 188, 218 Lai, Ka man, 5–6, 73 land dispossesion, 126, 143 enclosure of the commons, 127 impact on women, 140–141 land grabs, 8, 118, 131, 140 land tenure, 140 land use, 12, 39 Langston, Nancy, 9, 153 Lappé, Frances Moore, 6–7, 89, 115 legislation, 9–10, 48, 53–54, 56, 171, 176, 183–184, 189 online privacy, 53 privacy, 59 Levy, Matthys, 4, 17 lifestyle, 5, 76 Limits To Growth, 137 livestock, 90, 95, 100, 139, 142 local food, 6, 8, 79 malnutrition, 8, 95, 113, 127 Childhood mortality, 113 mammals, 200, 218, 246, 275 meat-rich diets, 6, 92, 112, 117 modernization, 8, 125, 128 monoculture, 12, 118, 131, 261, 264–265 monopoly, 5, 69–70, 103, 117 Moore, Kelly, 7, 111 mortality, 127 National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), 252, 254

National Science Foundation (NSF), 59, 170, 229, 271, 274, 276 national security, 5, 48, 54, 56, 79 National Security Agency (NSA), 3 National Wildlife Foundation, 229 Native Americans, 234 natural disasters, 5–6, 26–27, 33, 37, 39–44, 75–77, 184, 269, 277. See also climate change, Haiti earthquake, Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Sandy, and infrastructure natural enemies, 11, 219, 233 Nature Conservancy, 229 Natureculture, 228, 230, 236, 237 neoliberalism, 125, 128, 132, 141 news media, 111, 184, 221, 229 nitrogen-fixing plants, 213 nonprofit, 10, 41, 262, 270, 276–277 “normal accidents”, 38, 40 nuclear power, 6, 26–27, 31, 35, 62, 75–76 Chernobyl, 75–76 Fukushima, 26, 75–76 See also infrastructure nutrition, 6, 94–95, 101, 119, 139, 143–145, 261 childhood, 144 obesity, 6–7, 75, 95, 111–114, 116, 119– 120, 160, 172, 188, 201, 206 biomedical or moral problem, 112 costs of, 114 mortality risk, 114 relationship to endocrine disruption, 119 ocean, 18, 26, 29, 247, 249–250, 254 oil, 11–12, 17, 26, 35, 241–245, 255, 263 Definition of, 242 oil spills, 241 impact on wildlife, 242–243 industry-funded science, 244 weathering, 242, 243 organic, 7, 75, 92, 93, 95–97, 106–110, 120, 191, 196 overdevelopment, 12, 234 peak energy, 62 peasantry, 6–8, 104, 125–134, 138 “de-peasantization”, 118 intrahousehold conflict, 142

Index  [ 285 ]

peasantry (Cont.) male control of women’s labor, 141 overvalorization of, 138 patriarchal family systems, 139 pesticides, 6, 12, 90, 92, 98, 100–102, 117, 119, 161, 167–168, 171, 186, 188–189, 217–218, 261–265 2,4-D, 218 alternatives, 101 arguments in favor of, 6, 90, 92, 99, 218 corporate power, 100, 117, 255 environmental consequences, 99, 217, 218, 261–262, 265–266 health consequences, 98, 119, 153, 161, 171 regulation, 167–168, 171, 186, 188– 189, 264 Pollan, Michael, 6 pollination, 11–13, 259, 260–266 pollinators beekeepers, 259–261, 263, 265 economic value, 259 pollution, 6, 12, 75, 77–78, 100, 102, 157–158, 170, 172, 178, 193, 228, 241, 252, 254–255, 276–277 air pollution, 75 contamination, 158, 200, 244, 246 noise pollution, 75 population biology, 211 population, human, 31, 73, 89, 90, 92, 97, 138, 233 slums and informal settlements, 75 urban, 143 poverty, 6–7, 71, 74, 81–82, 96–97, 115–120, 124–128, 131–134, 140, 144–145, 255. See also food security, food sovereignty, hunger, inequality, Global North, Global South power plants, 3, 17, 69, 82 precautionary measures, 9, 12, 166, 175, 178, 202, 205, 245 precautionary principle, 9, 175, 202 pregnancy, 158, 160, 197, 201 premature death, 111 privacy, 3–5, 47–59, 80, 94, 104, 130, 145, 176, 274 definition of, 48 fourth amendment rights, 60

[ 286 ] Index

personal data, 5, 48–49, 51, 53, 57 privatization, 7 proof of harm, 9 public health, 3, 9, 34, 73–75, 79, 154, 184, 205–206, 214, 222, 269, 272, 277 definition of, 73 exercise, 111 sexual problems, 156 stress tolerance, 161 urban health, 73–74 public–private partnerships, 41, 48 racial and ethnic minorities, 6, 83, 221, 231–233, 236 renewable energy, 63–64, 170 feed-in tariff, 67 site of use, 69 tax credit, 64 tax credits, 67 tax incentives, 63 “the head, the heart, and the wallet”, 65 See also infrastructure and solar power reproductive system, 9, 98, 143, 154– 158, 162, 174, 186–188, 197–198, 200–201, 204, 217, 231, 233, 247 reptiles, 246 resiliency, 4–5, 10, 39–41, 43, 76–77, 79 resilience delta, 41–42 restoration ecology, 235 restorative efforts, 266 Rifkind, Jarrod, 5, 47 rinder-pest, 217 Roberts, Jody A., 10, 183 sanitation, 5, 28, 37, 74, 78, 80. See also infrastructure Schelly, Chelsea, 5, 62 Schlosser, Eric, 6 science and math education, 2 scientific knowledge, 1, 3, 173, 205. See also expertise sea-level rise, 4, 25, 247, 250. See also climate change shoreline erosion hardening, 247–248 living shorelines, 12, 248–249, 251 managed retreat, 250 shorelines, 11, 12, 241, 247–250

Sierra Club, 229 Silent Spring. See Rachel Carson Simberloff, Daniel, 11, 211 smartphones, 51 Snowden, Edward, 4, 5 soil, 93, 95, 97–98, 100, 102, 126, 214, 235, 237, 248, 271 solar power, 3, 5, 26, 63–71, 275 stakeholders, 10, 23, 124, 216, 262–263, 265–266 stunting, 119 Subramaniam, Banu, 11, 228 subsidies, 5, 13, 63, 104, 117, 262–264, 266 subsistence, 7, 140, 141 sugar, 119, 213 Superstorm Sandy. See Hurricane Sandy Surfrider Foundation, 250 Suryanarayanan, Sainath, 12–13, 259 sustainable agriculture, 6 Syngenta, 12, 129, 133, 137, 245–246 techie/fuzzy, 1 technical fixes, 2 technological controversies, 1–2 terrorism, 11, 33, 37, 232, 236 September 11th, 3, 33–34, 48, 56, 232 Tickner, Joel A.., 9–10, 166 Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), 184–186, 188–193 toxicity, 9–10, 98, 155, 168–169, 174–176, 179, 189, 193, 197–200, 203–204, 206, 242–243, 255 advancing new measurement tools, 175 age of the exposed individual, 155 burden of proof, 203 oil, 242–243 regulation, 166 testing, “bottom-up” approach, 199, 204, 206 threshold, 155 timing, 155 toxicology, 9, 175, 187, 198, 200, 202 alternative/multidisciplinary perspective, 187 core suppositions, 187 regulatory history, 187 reliability and standardization, 190 testing, “bottom-up” approach, 202

trade, 12, 49, 96, 116, 125, 130, 132, 145, 196, 203, 206, 222, 276 international agreements, 132 protectionism, 131 transportation, 4–5, 17–19, 22–23, 35, 75. See also infrastructure trichloroethylene (TCE), 173 Twitter, 47 uncertainty, 1, 169, 172–173, 199, 205– 206, 241, 251, 261 assessment of chemical risks, 173 BPA, effects of, 172 burden of proof, 9, 173 industry safety studies, 204 legitimate criticism versus nitpicking, 205 navigating complex risks, 205 sampling, extrapolation, and modeling, 251 stalling regulatory action, 169 See also precautionary principle urban development, 80 urbanization, 73, 81, 138 U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), 167, 169, 172 U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), 215, 229, 233, 261–264 U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), 167, 172, 174, 183–185, 197, 200, 203, 206 U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), 243, 248, 255 USA PATRIOT Act, 35–36, 56 values, 2, 5, 10–12, 40, 44, 65–66, 68, 102, 237 agricultural, 102 engineering, 40 environmental, 68, 237 Vogel, Sarah A., 10, 184, 196 vulnerability, 4, 26–27, 29, 39–40, 44, 76, 117, 170. See also resiliency wages, 3, 8, 128, 143 Walmart, 178, 191, 203 Warnement, Megan K., 4, 33 water access, 81–82, 114, 117–118, 145

Index  [ 287 ]

water (Cont.) agriculture, 95, 97, 104, 119, 129, 138, 214 global competition for, 116 infrastructure, 4–5, 18–19, 27–29, 36–37, 44, 73, 78–80, 82 pollution, 99, 167, 193, 235, 242, 245 scarcity, 79, 81, 90 See also aquatic life, fish, fisheries, flooding, infrastructure, shorelines, shoreline erosion wealth, 8, 43, 69, 112, 132

[ 288 ] Index

Weis, Judith S., 12, 241 wildlife, 12, 98, 140, 157–158, 218 chemical exposure, 157 masculinization, 158 windstorm, 27 Wittner, Judith, 7, 111 World Bank, 31, 47, 77, 96, 129, 141 World Food Programme (WFP), 114– 115, 142 World Health Organization (WHO), 73–75, 77, 81, 83, 111, 113–115, 138, 200–201 World Wide Web, 5, 30