SEA Working Paper 2000/04
Ethics in Dryland Salinity Management and Policy
David J. Pannell
Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of Western Australia, Nedlands WA 6907
Introduction
The forecast impacts of dryland salinity in Australia over the next 100 years are very severe (e.g. Anonymous, 1996; Ferdowsian et al., 1996; Anonymous 1999). There will be increasing impacts not only on agricultural production but also on man-made physical infrastructre (roads, bridges, building, gardens), on natural resources (rivers, biodiversity, natural habitat) and on the frequency and severity of flooding.
In the discussion of farming practices and government policies, ethical considerations are sometimes put forward as being important determinants of what should happen. Most commonly, it is asserted that ethical considerations imply that farmers should be willing to implement salinity prevention treatments, because their failure to do so will result in substantial adverse impacts on each other, on the non-agricultural community and on future generations. (I will refer to this as the "common" or "traditional" view of salinity and ethics. I don’t know how common it actually is, but it has been put to me independently by a number of people, so I suspect that it is common.)
The ethics of salinity are, in reality, more complex than this. In this article I will show that the traditional ethical position is at least partly misconceived. Then I will outline two additional ethical arguments that have very different implications. One of the additional arguments tends to offset the traditional view on salinity and ethics, while the other, in my view, over-rides it.
Before proceeding it is necessary to provide further backgound on the Australian response to salinity so far, and on current scientific knowledge.
Background
The main policy responses to dryland salinity in Australia have been the National Landcare Program (NLP) and initiatives intended to promote "Integrated Catchment Management" (ICM). (The National Heritage Trust is partly relevant to salinity, but because of the way it is constrained, much more relevant to biodiversity and habitat preservation or repair.) NLP and ICM have the objective of achieving radical changes in the way farms are managed in Australia. With respect to dryland salinity, the changes sought include widespread replacement of annual crops and pastures with perennial plants (trees, shrubs and pasture plants) and carefully selected engineering works.
The methods used to attempt to achieve these changes rely on social processes (mutual support among farmers, peer pressure, persuasion) and provision of information. I will refer to these approaches collectively as "communication" strategies. While good has come from these programs, it is clear that they have not achieved changes on the scale required to make a substantial difference to the salinity threat. Futhermore, they will continue to fail in this respect if relied on as almost the sole instrument of change. Pannell (1999) explains in detail why this is so. The real problem is not lack of awareness or information, but lack of sufficiently profitable treatment options. Despite this, policy continues down the politically acceptable but wasteful and ineffective path of relying on communication.
One of the rationales for the NLP and ICM approaches has been that farmers need to cooperate and coordinate their actions in order to be successful in managing salinity. However, Pannell et al. (1999) presented six reasons why this thinking is flawed in many situations. Among the reasons are the fact that off-site benefits from on-farm implementation of salinity treatments now appear to be extremely small (e.g. George et al., 1999) or achieved, if at all, only after extremely long lags, probably of centuries (Hatton and Salama, 1999). Hydrologists now believed that the most important and urgent treatments for non-agricultural assets threatened by salinity are engineering treatments located in or adjacent to the threatened assets. Benefits of on-farm treatments alone would, in most cases, be too little, too late.
Misconceptions in the Common View of Salinity Ethics
The proposition that farmers should behave ethically by implementing salinity prevention measures is predicated on an assumption that effective preventative measures are available. As discussed in the previous section, with respect to off-site impacts, it is, in many situations, not physically possible for farmers to implement any treatments that would prevent the impacts. In many cases, treatments protect little more than the land on which they are implemented. In these cases, the relevance of the ethical argument is narrowed to protection of the interests of future generations who would use that very land, presumably for agricultural production. Even here, it does not follow that preservation at any cost will be in the interests of those future generations. In a similar way as future benefits have relevance in the present, current costs have relevance in the future. For example, expenditure to prevent salinity may be diverted from investment in durable assets and infrastructure of enduring value.
An Alternative Perspective on Salinity Ethics and Farmers
An ethical principle we might espouse is avoidance of harm to others. Presumably this lies behind the common view on salinity ethics. However, this is a principle that can cut both ways. It might equally well be argued that the community should not impose costs on farmers for the benefit of a much larger group of non-farmers. Such an argument might be complicated by considerations of differences in wealth and income between the two groups, the rights of the two groups, and the relative sizes of on-farm and off-farm benefits from on-farm treatments. Nevertheless it remains a subjective issue about which different individuals disagree. I am not arguing that this perspective on the ethics of salinity should take precedence over the common view. I am merely pointing out that this alternative perspective exists, that it is not objectively "wrong", and that it may cause us to temper out application of the common view.
I also strongly suspect that if proponents of the common view were fully informed about the resulting degree of harm to individual farmers in some regions, they would reconsider. The degree of welfare loss and social dislocation from forcing farmers to plant sufficient perennials to make a substantial difference to salinity would be so large as to be socially and politically unacceptable.
The Community’s Ethical Imperative for Salinity
The common view on the ethics of salinity relates to actions that farmers should take for ethical reasons. The implication is that farmers should recognise and accept this ethical position, and act voluntarily in a spirit of self sacrifice. In the previous section I outlined a likely flaw in an approach based on voluntary farmer action – farmers’ views on the ethics of the matter will probably be different. A second, related, criticism of the common view is that it seeks to impose (or perhaps it expects) a strong ethical response by others, while freeing the proponent of the arguments (or society as a whole) from the need for any similar sacrifice.
In my view, a more defensible and desirable ethical position for the community as a whole to take is that the community should develop policies that address salinity in balanced way and are as effective as possible per dollar spent in pursuit of salinity reductions. In other words, the responsibility for managing dryland salinity at the broad scale rests with governments (on behalf of the whole community and of future generations) rather than with farmers. It is up to governments to design and implement policies that are effective against salinity. If ethics do enter into the salinity domain, they surely put the onus on governments to act in a balanced manner, implementing only those policies that will be effective, both technically and economically. A policy that relies on farmers to comply voluntarily with ethical principles that they may or may not agree with would not be effective. If one accepts that ethics provide a criterion for judging government policy, a policy based on the traditional view of ethics would not be ethical.
The current approach to salinity policy also fails this ethical criterion. By continuing to rely on communication-based strategies as almost the sole methods for averting agricultural salinity, we guarantee an ongoing ethical failure.
The salinity problem is complex and multifaceted. In previous issues of SEA News we have presented articles related to
In combination, the evidence we have collected, analysed and interpreted leads to a powerful conclusion about salinity policy. To quote Pannell (1999):
It is clear that by far the most important need from salinity policy is to alter the financial incentives for adoption of perennial production systems. Persuasion, education and extension will remain inadequate while the available options are so financially unattractive. A small proportion of public resources devoted to the salinity problem is now allocated to development of new, profitable perennial enterprises. The necessary work includes screening perennial species for productivity, processing ability and salable products; research on markets and required marketing infrastructure; and establishment of systems to finance the establishment of new industries. Given the critical importance of these activities, they have been, and continue to be, grossly under-funded. Such biological and industrial development work is not certain to succeed, but without it we seem certain to fail in our battle against salinity.
I believe that this conclusion is compelling and absolutely inescapable. Policy approaches that do not recognise this point are certain to fail any realistic ethical criterion for judging dryland salinity policy. In particular, approaches based on voluntary farmer adoption of current unprofitable perennials will only succeed on a scale that is much smaller than required. Similarly, approaches based on developing new institutional arrangements (e.g. new policy instruments) will also fail unless accompanied by a range of more profitable perennial plant options suitable for the full range of agricultural environments.
In attempting to achieve the community’s goals for dryland salinity, policy makers must be more realistic and honest than they have been. The spirit of forced optimism that still pervades most policy documents on salinity is understandable as an attempt to avoid despair and excessive pessimism amongst the farmers who are relied upon to implement the changes. However it is highly counterproductive in policy realms if it results in a failure to confront the situation realistically and honestly. It is true that the Western Australian government’s Salinity Strategy released in April 2000 is more realistic than the 1996 Salinity Action Plan, but it presents targets for itself that will be absolutely unachievable using the tools, mechanisms and investment strategies that it contains.
Only when policies become less based on the political need to do something quickly and more based on the ethical need to do something effective will we have any chance of substantially reducing the final area of saline land. The longer we take to reach this point, the less effective our eventual response will be. If we are concerned about the ethics of salinity, there is only one realistic course ahead.
References
Anonymous (1999) Dryland Salinity and its Impact on Rural Industries and the Landscape, Prime Minister’s Science, Engineering and Innovation Council, Occasional Paper Number 1, Department of Industry, Science and Resources, Canberra.
Anonymous. (1996) Salinity: A Situation Statement for Western Australia, Government of Western Australia, Perth.
Bathgate, A. and Pannell, D.J. (2000). Economics of deep-rooted perennials in southern Australia, SEA Working Paper 2000/05, Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of Western Australia. http://www.general.uwa.edu.au/u/dpannell/dpap0005.htm
Ferdowsian, R., George, R., Lewis, F., McFarlane, D., Short, R. and Speed, R. (1996). The extent of dryland salinity in Western Australia. Conference Proceedings, 4th National Conference and Workshop on the Productive Use and Rehabilitation of Saline Lands, Albany, Western Australia, 25-30 March 1996, Promaco Conventions: Perth, Western Australia, pp. 89-97.
George, R.J., Nulsen, R.A., Ferdowsian, R. and Raper, G.P. (1999) Interactions between trees and groundwaters in recharge and discharge areas – A survey of Western Australian sites Agricultural Water Management 39, 91-113.
Hatton, T. and Salama, R. (1999). Is it feasible to restore the salinity affected rivers of the Western Australian wheatbelt? In: I. Rutherford and R. Bartley (eds.) Proceedings of the 2nd Australian Stream Management Conference, Adelaide, 8-11 February 1999, pp. 313-318.
Kington E. and
Pannell, D.J. (1999) Dryland salinity in the upper Kent River
catchment of Western Australia: Farmer perceptions and practices.
Sustainability and Economics in Agriculture Working Paper 99/09,
Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of Western
Australia, http://www.general.uwa.edu.au/u/dpannell/dpap9909.htm
Later published as
Kington, E.A. and Pannell,
D.J. (2003). Dryland salinity in the upper Kent River catchment of Western
Australia: Farmer perceptions and practices, Australian Journal of
Experimental Agriculture 43(1): 19-28.
Final journal version (134K pdf file)
Marsh, S.P., Burton, M.P. and Pannell, D.J. (1999). Understanding monitoring of "sustainability indicators" by farmers: A case study of groundwater monitoring under threat of dryland salinity, Presented at COMLAND, University of Western Australia, Nedlands, 21-25 September 1999, http://www.general.uwa.edu.au/u/dpannell/dpap9907.htm
Pannell, D.J. (1999). Explaining non-adoption of practices to prevent dryland salinity in Western Australia: implications for policy. Paper presented at COMLAND Conference, University of Western Australia, Nedlands, 21-25 September 1999, http://www.general.uwa.edu.au/u/dpannell/dpap9908.htm
Pannell, D.J., McFarlane, D.J. and Ferdowsian, R. (1999) Rethinking the externality issue for dryland salinity in Western Australia, Sustainability and Economics in Agriculture Working Paper 99/11, Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of Western Australia, http://www.general.uwa.edu.au/u/dpannell/dpap9911.htm
Citation: Pannell, D.J. (2000). Ethics in dryland salinity management and policy, SEA Working Paper 2000/04, Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of Western Australia. http://www.general.uwa.edu.au/u/dpannell/dpap0004.htm.
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