The first version of this book arose from an academic requirement of the international course on Political and socio-environmental management of natural resources. This course was sponsored by NUFFIC, a Dutch institution that promotes a system of scholarships for the training of technicians in different parts of the world.
It was executed in Ecuador in an alliance between the CAMAREN Consortium and the Institute of Ecuadorian Studies (IEE), together with the University of Tilburg in the Netherlands and the University of Campinas in the State of Sao Paulo in Brazil. The title, Environmental Decisions and Liberalism, focuses on the three main elements subject to analysis: the decisions of individuals, the environmental problems derived from these decisions and the type of determinations that arise from the liberal context. The theoretical approach to the subject is made from political philosophy and ethics, with a qualitative and speculative perspective supported by mathematics.
The publication is aimed primarily at academics interested in environmental ethics.
However, your audience can be broader and include people engaged in philosophical, political ecology, and economic ecology issues.
The content is organized in four parts. In the first, the introduction, the field layout of the philosophical investigation is established, the main hypothesis, as well as the scope and limits of the study based on the bibliographic sources used by the author. The second part presents the main concept of the book, that is, the environmental decision fields. It is argued about its meaning and heuristic capacity and the fields are characterized qualitatively with the help of mathematical language.
In the third part, the implications of the environmental decision fields and their relationship with the theories of rational choice and with utilitarian ethics are analyzed. Finally, in the fourth part, the issue of consumption and production decisions is addressed.
The aspiration is ambitious and modest. Ambitious because it aims to provide an original interpretive framework. Modest, because this interpretive framework is proposed as a hypothesis that requires validation.
The book that the reader is holding in his hands postulates that individual decisions that affect the environment must be incorporated into the contract, as a way to reconcile rationality with morality. For this, the concept of "environmental decision fields" is presented.
Thanks to this concept it is sought to make transparent the relationship of environmental responsibility of the individual, in the occurrence of environmental problems.
1. Introduction
Meaning and trajectory
This philosophical research evolved from the study of ethical thresholds in environmental public policies, towards a more limited analysis of individual decisions that affect the environment, also a subject of practical reason or ethics.
It evolved in this way due to the contributions of the readings of John Rawls and David Gauthier. Indeed, to consider in any depth the issue of environmental public policies, it was first necessary to work on the concept of environmental decisions. How do environmental decisions work, how do they interact, from where is ethical responsibility built on an environmental decision? If the landscape about decisions is clarified, then a major leap can be made in the discussion of public policies and their ethical thresholds, but this is part of a program that the book does not claim to cover.
And if we agree on a nomenclature or a code for an environmental ethic, how can that ethic be exercised in determining ethical environmental decisions? How to do it in the context of modern society?
Thus, the ethical situation of individual environmental decisions is analyzed. And the problem addressed is synthesized in the following guiding question of the work: What type of significant relationship can be established between rational and autonomous environmental decisions of individuals and the occurrence or non-occurrence of environmental problems? The conceptual foundation is based on the following authors and a few texts: David Gauthier, Alipio Sánchez, John Rawls, Laura Rival, Bruno Latour, Bourdieu, Michel Serres, Paulette Dieterlen, Rom Harré, Abitbol y Botero, Patricia Gualdoni and Elizabeth Errazti. However, the topics are entered with great freedom by the author.
The question in turn alludes to topics related to the theories of rational choice and the so-called methodological individualism. A section deals with these very complex relationships that are the subject of arduous study in the current social sciences.
The underlying conceptual hypothesis
“There are those who argue that, just as the reasoning about what to think or believe must respond to an objective criterion of truth, the reasoning about what to do must respond to an objective criterion of goodness (…) The main problem of modern ethics is reconciliation of morality with rationality ”1.
As will be seen throughout the text, there is a negative hypothesis that supports the analysis:
Individual environmental decisions, especially those of consumption, are not connected, from the point of view of ethical responsibility, in a transparent way with the occurrence of environmental problems, and this means that these decisions are mostly not part of the social contract liberal.
It could be said, with good reason, that we all know that the individual decision, for example, to consume shark fin soup has a serious impact on the ichthyological balance, but the problem is focused on the fact that these decisions have not been properly analyzed. sufficient neither by economic theory, nor by political ecology, nor by ethics, but only partially.
To deepen the analysis on individual environmental decisions and their implications, the work postulates the concept of "environmental decision fields". This concept is considered an original contribution of the text.
The analysis framework
The proposed problem concerns political philosophy and philosophical ethics. Well, it tries to inquire about the relationships between environmental decisions and ethics.
How can an environmental decision be ethically qualifiable as such? But to answer this question, it is convenient to establish certain notions as a frame of reference: from where is this question posed? From what frame of political and social organization?
The text is located within the limits of a liberal democratic society, that is, one that is the product of a contractual process, which starts from the notion of rational and autonomous individuals, who make decisions within a framework of basic freedoms. It is then a matter of looking at environmental decisions as a particular case of decisions in which liberal democratic society makes. In a sense it falls within the theories of rational choice. Therefore, the notion of the market and the free interaction of individuals in the market, constitutes the cornerstone of this reflection, regarding the possibilities of societies to generate ethically fair environmental decisions, or, if you want, it is about investigating the possibilities of good environmental decisions, being understood as good,those that protect environmental sustainability and that avoid or mitigate the degradation of nature.
The question seeks to investigate the possibility of individual ethical decisions in the framework of market societies, beyond the arrangements that can be achieved from price systems.
All this means that the text does not deepen the analysis on environmental decision options under a different social organization.
For example, a society with a collectivist or communitarian or theocratic organization, which could organize decisions on environmental policy in a way other than the social contract between free, autonomous and rational individuals.
It is assumed that the individuals in the contract make "rational" decisions, that is, that their decisions obey certain logics admissible by a large majority, such as plausible decisions in a certain framework. In other words, the typical rationality of a consumer is expected.
Thus, for example, it would not be a rational decision for all individuals in a liberal democratic society to decide to stop investing their savings in private goods on planet Earth and, rather, to make the decision to allocate all the money to purchase land in Mars. Or that an economic decision-maker2 opts for a more expensive product, when he can get exactly the same product on the market at a lower price.
It is also based on decisions of informed individuals, or who have access to truthful information about the environmental problem in question. In other words, they make rational, autonomous decisions based on reliable information.
All of this can help to build strategies to avoid environmental catastrophes. After all, these same market societies are the generators of the greatest environmental problems.
Whether liberal democratic societies are good or bad is an issue that is not discussed. The text starts from the confirmation that this is the dominant form of social organization and that it is worth analyzing the possibilities offered by this form of organization to, by adjusting the contract, preserve the natural environment.
As in Rawls's attempt to tie the principles of justice with freedom, here the option is faced to condition a natural contract3, so that the world, according to Serres, this global partner, is a fundamental part of the contract.
Rawls, from a hypothetical original situation, imagines human beings sheltered under a veil of ignorance. From this situation, individuals adopt rational norms of justice under the understanding that they do not know about their own individual life circumstances. They don't know if they have special attributes from birth, they don't know about their beliefs, they don't know if they are rich or poor, etc. In such circumstances and erected as potential legislating subjects, they start in the original situation from a position of impartiality to issue the basic norms of justice.
In some way, the possibility of a framework of sustained environmental decisions is postulated both from a hypothetical original situation, and from the free and rational decisions of individuals, so that these do not harm the environment. Is this possible?
Rationality and morality
"The problem of the social order and the principles that should regulate political life is subsumed within the requirements of modern rational legitimacy: only those principles that can be rationally accepted by all citizens to whom they are bound are legitimate" 4.
Free and rational acceptance is at the base of the principles. Then, ethical codes also depend on a contractual rationality.
Moral relativism, extreme for many, comes from modernity. If the philosophical ethics of medieval times is analyzed, the rational foundation could be found in natural law, in eternal law or in divine law. An ethical norm is valid if its rational foundation is determined by divine precepts. A dogmatic code, founded on faith, leaves no room for relativism. And neither can its construction be understood as a democratic agreement.
Modernity, by presenting itself as a disenchantment with the religious foundation, makes the human being the "measure of all things." And this Copernican turn introduces doubt and uncertainty into ethics. Kant's search for a universal categorical imperative that provides an a priori foundation for practical reason is an attempt to replace the theological basis of the old ethics.
They made colossal intellectual efforts to harmonize reason with faith and philosophy with theology, while modernity will emerge precisely from their differentiation. And it is fascinating to observe that in this differentiation, human reason not only loses its recognition in God, but also the link with the natural world is broken. Freedom rules over reason and reason over freedom, and among the signatories of the contract neither God nor nature sign it: creation loses its divine status and its legislative capacity, and the creature stands as the judge of everything civil or mundane.
For Saint Thomas Aquinas, the content of natural law is based on three principles: “do good and avoid evil; preserve life and avoid anything that threatens it; seek the truth and flee from ignorance ”5.
“The law is nothing more than an opinion of the practical reason existing in the prince who governs a perfect community. But, since the world is governed by divine providence (…), it is manifest that the entire community of the universe is governed by divine reason. Therefore, the very design of the government of things that exists in God as monarch of the universe has the nature of law. And since divine intelligence does not conceive anything in time, but its concept is eternal (…), it follows that the law in question must be called eternal. (…) On the other hand, as good has a reason for the end, and evil, otherwise, it follows that everything to which man feels naturally inclined is apprehended by reason as good and, therefore, as something that it must be sought ”6.
The rational foundation of the natural law Santo Tomás builds it from a Christian and religious reading of metaphysics and Aristotelian logic. Searching for this rational foundation is relevant because one of the controversial issues is that of free action. If there is no freedom, then there is no responsibility and if the individual is not responsible, the whole issue of salvation loses its sustenance.
St. Thomas and many other scholastics will find the following argument: free action exists and is rational self-determination. Reason tells me what is good to do, but only the gift of grace gives me the strength to make the best choice. In other words, in every ethical dilemma, God with his infinite wisdom knows well that there is only one option.
If the person is in a state of grace with God, then he will have the will to choose the default option. On the other hand, in modernity with all its enormous potential and in this magnificent liberation of the spirit, a discomfort hides that can be synthesized in the phrase: "if God is dead, then everything is allowed to me" 7. And if everything is allowed, so are evil, death and ignorance.
Is it to be understood that the banishment of God is at the same time the concealment of the world? It should not be this way and the challenge of a humanistic ethic is to reconcile the human being with the world. The possibility of an encounter between reason and ethics so that there are no doubts about the intrinsic value of nature. But in our intellectual instruments we cannot count on God for this construction, we have to build this ethic from modern reason. In demarcating theology from philosophy, the question, "Could he have acted otherwise?" Is suspended in the human will. Responsibility increases, but at the same time rational self-determination by not depending on a divine code, is freed (and released) to the exclusive designs of reason.And it is the reason for the individuals who sign a contract and adopt it as law, worldly law, which can be changed if the people so decide. The current expansion of the subjective rights of individuals and the expansion of second and third generation rights are ultimately a product of that modern revolution.
The contract and the financial arrangements
“In the vicinity of Goteborg, Sweden, a car plant was built near an oil refinery. The automaker found that when inferior oil was refined and the wind blew in the direction of the car plant, there was a significant increase in corrosion on its metal stock and paint on recently completed vehicles.. The negotiation between these two parties occurred.
An agreement was reached to carry out corrosive activities only when the wind blew in the opposite direction, towards the large number of inhabitants in the vicinity who, naturally, did not take part in the negotiations ”8.
In modern society we are tempted to interpret phenomena from an economic perspective. The very concept of contract would seem to indicate that agreements between people are established as a rational market measure.
Certainly, a contract fixes how much each party places and if the negotiation is convenient for those involved, then the contract is signed, the same one that binds the parties. It operates an instrumental economic rationality driven by the interest of those who are part of the agreement. Every transaction in the market is the product of contracts. But this liberal democratic model is not limited to mere economic transactions. We all know that social organization is much more complex and that countless factors are involved. Otherwise, it would only take economists and calculators to settle the differences, but precisely those who help in this work are not economists, but lawyers. This is because the social organization is not exhausted in trantomobile, sacred, economic measures.not even in contemporary liberal society.
This work shows that the relationship of individual decisions with environmental problems cannot always be interpreted from the economy and that rather an ethical interpretation is required. For this analysis, it is essential to address, albeit briefly, the scope of the economic approach in dealing with the environmental issue. Thus, Luis Corral, in a tight synthesis of other authors and from neoclassical economics, shows that the functions of nature become tradable goods and services, through the creation of property rights over these functions. And this is presented as a response to the overuse of this type of property: "the need to give a private property title to said property is suggested so that there is direct responsibility for its care."
Environmentalists consider that this way of interpreting environmental problems derived from liberal economic activity, by placing value and property rights on externalities, does nothing but produce greater environmental deterioration in the long run, since economic agents are not abstract and among themselves there is great asymmetry.
Ecological economics is critical to the vision of neoclassical economics, since it postulates that property rights over these goods lead to the concentration of wealth and that political decisions are required to intervene in the market10. Another option, close to ecological economics, according to Corral, is institutional economics, which postulates the emergence of instances of society that carry out counterweights and controls. For example, with Shared Resource User Organizations.
In the text "Environmental impacts and environmental policy instruments" to make a critical entry into the subject, the classic notion is based on: "Adam Smith referred to market forces as an invisible hand that regulated economic activities, so that the search for self-interest on the part of employers, workers, consumers, would lead to a desirable social result ”. This leads to one of the basic assumptions of classical economics:
“The decisions of individual agents only affect themselves. In other words, private costs and benefits coincide with social costs and benefits ”. But it has been shown that private costs and social costs do not always coincide14. "Jacobs already stated in 1991 in" The Green Economy "that when one moves to seek their interests, they consciously hit others, but on other occasions this affectation may be unconscious, such as when an individual's decision minimally affects a global ecological problem ”. Or, as Joan Martínez Alier has indicated, externalities are not market failures but rather great competitive successes as costs are transferred to others16.
Coase provides a part of the economic rationale for creating markets for environmental goods.
According to this author, when there are conflicts of interest between two economic agents, there is a reciprocal relationship of economic values: for example, relating the value that is lost when stopping using a technology, with respect to the value that corresponds to the discomfort that the use of that technology technology produces.
"All this leads to measuring the monetary value of an externality by the cost of restoration or purification or decontamination" 18. Coase provides the concept that negotiation between economic agents is based on an economic rationale that expresses transaction costs or social costs, and that this is carried out independently of the opinions of judges or intervention by the authority. Coase also contributes to the analysis according to which firms or companies constitute islands of planning that allow a reduction in transaction costs, including in transaction costs those of negotiating, drafting a contract, ensuring its compliance, etc.19.
But, "the monetary valuation of externalities according to the cost of restoration is applicable only in the case of reversible externalities." On the other hand, "only solvent demands count in the market" 21. “If a person (with limited resources) is asked how much money they would pay to prevent the construction of a hydroelectric dam that will flood their house, or is asked instead how much they would accept to approve the project, it is possible that the person does not accept the first question and answers that he has a right for which he does not have to pay ”. In all this, according to the author, the usual assumption of rationality of economic agents fails.
But, in addition, when we introduce measures of loss of well-being, the complexities increase, because every monetary measure of consumer surplus is mediated by the distribution of income, so that the only thing that counts are solvent demands. On the other hand, if we consider preferences as something dynamic, the questions increase: if to reduce a certain impact, for example, it is necessary to change the majority habit of traveling from home to work by promoting public transport to the detriment of private transport,Can we measure in money the supposed sacrifice that this will ultimately entail for citizens? Is it not possible that welfare ends up increasing and that what was perceived (perhaps helped by the campaign of economic interests harmed by the change) as a sacrifice ends up being experienced as a benefit?
In the analysis of these texts, some criticisms can be observed of the method of assigning property rights to deal with environmental externalities. Since Ronald Coase makes a substantial contribution on this subject, it is convenient to refer additionally to some aspects of his theory.
In the introductory paragraph to “The problem of social cost”, the editor presents a synthesis of the academic's thesis: “Coase argues that, to the extent that transaction costs are low or non-existent and that the property rights established in the judicial rulings do not allow an efficient economic solution, there will be a reallocation of these rights to those who value them most, even if the courts rule against them ”25. As Coase advertises his work refers to the activities of one company that has detrimental effects on others. And he argues that the usual way of dealing with this problem is to hold the owner of the factory or the company itself responsible, generating for example a variable tax.
Coase argues that this path is inappropriate. The first thing he argues is that the economic relationship between the affected person and the affected person is reciprocal. "Preventing damage to B would inflict damage to A." According to Coase, the question is to avoid further damage. He gives the now famous example of the baker and the doctor. The baker's machinery disturbed the doctor's work: but avoiding harm to the doctor would cause harm to the baker.
The best proof of the need for an ethical argument for environmental decisions is the Coase presentation itself: economic logic neutralizes blame, or it is reduced to its mathematical expression in economic transactions. If the economic relationship between the affected person and the affected person is reciprocal, then guilt is eliminated in social relations, and the problem can be resolved with a balance in the transaction or in the negotiation.
As Habermas argues, in negotiation the agents are instrumentalized and a superior or universalizable objective is not sought, but rather the interest of one or the other of the parties prevails. If we apply Kantian ethics, there may well be environmental ethical imperatives that require not so much a crematistic contract for their construction, but rather an agreement on a universal objective or on a higher good. The paragraph that opens this chapter is a good example of the limits of negotiations based on mere economic transactions. Indeed, the solution adopted between the parties was the most pernicious for the people, in this sense, it was the least ethical. Don't we see that economically efficient individual decisions are made every day,but ethically reprehensible environmentally? If we consider that the market society has an intrinsic fatalism of an environmental unethical, then it is probable that we will not find a global solution. However, it is worth analyzing that liberal contractualism is not limited to transaction calculations, but may well incorporate the ethical dimension, in fact it does so in many areas.
Even from a chrematistic point of view, ecological taxes sometimes go beyond the merely transactional analysis and address the environmental problem from a sociological complexity in which ethical dimensions undoubtedly enter: “in the metropolitan area of Barcelona there is a metropolitan environmental tax for municipal waste management that it is charged for the peculiar system of setting an amount per cubic meter of water consumed; the reason that is alleged is that there is a statistically proven relationship between water consumption and the amount of waste generated ”26. But this is rather a good example of an “ethical” tax, since the rationality of the tax has not been calculated by a transaction relationship, so what does water really have to do with solid waste? Rather, the measure, thanks to its indirect effect27,encourages the reduction of water consumption. For all that has been indicated, the need for a strategic ethical rationality to address the issue of decisions seems clear, as opposed to an approach limited to an instrumental economic rationality.
2. The fields of environmental decision. Characterization of the environmental decision field
A concept that is intended to be a contribution is that of "field of environmental decision". The idea is as follows: investigate the differences between different “environmental decision fields”, understanding by fields the decision areas that cover a certain environmental problem.
For example, if the environmental problem is the "contamination of the Cutuchi River on its way through the city of Latacunga produced by tanneries", then the field of environmental decision combats, from the point of view of the subjects, the various social agents that work in leather and that deposit the effluents without any treatment in the course of the river.
The field of environmental decision covers a more or less determined and direct geographical or territorial scope. In this case, it could be considered the middle river basin in which a certain area of influence of the environmental problem is contemplated, which can even be calculated in terms of surface area. But the field of environmental decision is also determined by relationships of a supra-territorial nature that depend on broader political, social, economic and commercial dynamics.
For example, if the cause of river pollution is the tanneries, and the main leather market is in the city of Quito, then there is an indirect relationship with environmental decisions caused in a rational, but distant way, by a number more wide of people.
Thus, an environmental decision field would have multiple territorial circles and decision-making agents that do not necessarily constitute a geographical or social continuum. The idea is to study the overlaps between environmental decisions in relation to decision fields that are located on different scales.
What possibilities do environmental decision-makers have to change the course of pollution or environmental degradation when the decision field is micro, or when the decision field is macro? What logics operate when the decision field, although macro, depends on micro decisions for its resolution?
Let us assume the following environmental decision field: "The widening of the hole in the ozone layer due to the widespread use of de-terminated aerosol dorants." In this field of environmental decision it is assumed (false assumption) that the only cause of contamination is aerosols from deodorants for widespread personal use.
In this field, the problem is global and macro, the consequences of the problem are also global, however the field of decision is quite limited to the decision of an individual: to use or stop using aerosol deodorants.
If a single individual makes this decision, the solution of the global problem is affected only in infinitesimal terms. But if hundreds of millions of individuals change their consumption pattern and make the decision to avoid aerosol deodorants, then the problem is solved.
In this case, we have a possibility to change a global and critical situation, from the autonomous, rational and informed decision of individuals taken in isolation or atomic. It could even be the case of not requiring corporate decisions (companies) or coercion of any authority to eliminate the production of aerosols. The rational decision of informed individuals would suffice. It would be like a paradigmatic case of the possibilities offered by the liberal democratic organization, for the decision making of rational and autonomous individuals.
But what about other cases. Can a typology of environmental decision fields be postulated that may be useful to design environmental remediation strategies? Between the field of decision involved in the environmental problem "pollution of the Cutuchi river" and the field that has to do with the mega problem of climate change, what kind of relationship is established in terms of people's decisions.
Are the former commensurable and the latter immeasurable? If they are immeasurable, could we reach the extreme and the paradox that human beings can destroy the planet without feeling any individual responsibility?
Main elements of the environmental decision fields
The concept of field of environmental decision establishes a correlation between a given environmental problem and the scope of individual decisions that the subjects are able to make about this problem, both to generate it, to mitigate or solve it. And what most characterizes the field of environmental decision is the distance between human action and its effect on the environment. Effect distance between the generation, mitigation and solution of the environmental problem, with the capacity of the individual so that her decision can affect the environmental problem considered in one way or another.
Thus, for example, a field could also be the following: “air pollution inside the house X caused by the use of traditional wood stoves (assuming that the conversion to a gas stove does not constitute an economic problem and that the family will not miss the heat generated by the wood stove either) ”. In this field of decision, the distance is minimal: it is the decision of a family, the family of dwelling X, which to solve the problem can make the decision (we assume that it is financially able to do so) to switch to a kitchen to gas. To make this decision it does not depend on other individuals, groups or corporations. It is a one-way and immediate decision, between a minimum set of individuals (the family) and the problem.But the environmental decision field establishes a numerical relationship in which the unit considered is the decision of an individual about a certain action described in the field. Thus, for example, if the family considered has 7 members (it is assumed that all members have decision-making capacity on the issue in question) then the total number of individuals involved in the decision would be: It could be considered a field of lesser distance: air pollution in room X from individual Y's cigarette smoking. Here the correlation is not even between a family's decisions and the problem. Rather, everything depends on the autonomous, rational, informed and free decision of a single individual.
But, on the other hand, an effect distance field can be considered that could be called intermediate: air pollution in city X due to gases from the use of combustion vehicles that circulate in said city. In this problem the distance increases and thousands of decisions of individuals and groups and even corporations intervene.
But, in what sense does the effect distance increase? It could be said that the effect distance is also small: the relationship between a driver X and the emission of gases from his car Y. But it turns out that this is not the field: the field is the air pollution in the city, so that the scope of effect or impact of an individual's decision is very distant depending on the capacity that this individual alone would have to generate, mitigate or solve the problem.
If the exposed examples are analyzed, it can be determined that in addition to the effect distance factor3, the other factor that characterizes the field of environmental decision is the number of decision-makers involved in the occurrence of the problem.
Thus, the greater the capacity of a single individual to produce, mitigate or solve a given environmental problem, the shorter the distance from the effect. Or also, if the sum of the decision makers involved takes the option to act, then the distance from the effect decreases. But if in a high number of decision makers involved in the problem, only one acts, then the distance of effect is very great.
Now, if the size of the area to which the problem concerns is considered, then the notion of gravity or more precisely the physical amplitude of the field is chosen, because it could happen that the effect distance between the problem and the capacity of the individual to produce it is minimal, but it turns out that the physical amplitude of the field is enormous, and therefore the seriousness of the problem. For example, the operator of a nuclear plant who is in charge of a critical element about safety.
With these two factors, the gravity or physical amplitude (the surface or the area that the environmental problem considered in the field, combs or sweeps) and the number of decision-makers, there are two magnitudes that could help to characterize the environmental decision fields already identify interactions 4. The physical amplitude of the field is placed on the ordinate axis and the number of decitors on the abscissa axis:
Thus, a correlation is established between the ecological footprint and the decisions of individuals. With the coordinate axes, the environmental decision fields can be grouped into 4 categories or zones:
- Zone 1: Low-amplitude fields and low number of decitors Zone 2: High-amplitude fields and low number of decitors Zone 3: High-amplitude fields and high number of decitors Zone 4: Low-amplitude fields and high number of decitors Zone 1 field example: “Contamination of the home due to domestic and family use of firewood for the kitchen”. Example of a field in zone 2: “radioactive contamination due to the use of atomic bombs by the government of country X”. Example of a field in zone 3: “Depletion of the ozone hole layer due to the use of aerosols”. Field example of zone 4: “air pollution in cities due to the use of private vehicles”.
The effect distance function
Until now, the concept of the decision field has been analyzed by identifying three elements: the distance of effect, the physical amplitude and the number of decision makers. On the one hand, the physical amplitude and the number of decision-makers constitute quite clear mathematical quantities, although the physical amplitude includes the consideration of the seriousness of the environmental problem, which poses a quantification problem.
On the other hand, the distance of effect that establishes the relationship with the capacity of individual decisions requires greater precision.
For this, it is proposed to associate a field with an effect distance function.
This effect distance function would have two relatively fixed parameters that essentially depend on the field considered:
The size of the area to which the problem concerns, or the physical area that the environmental problem “combs”, which will be called amplitude. And, the total number of decision-makers involved in the occurrence of the problem, therefore, with the capacity to mitigate or solve the problem. The input of the effect distance function is the number of decision makers who make a given environmental decision, and the output of the function would be the effect distance perceived by a decision maker when n of them act.
The symbols for the parameters, variables and the function would be the following:
- The function of distance of effect as d. The parameter of gravity and physical amplitude of the problem would be A. The parameter of the total number of decision makers would be N. The variable, the effective capacity of the decision makers considered to individually or collectively solve the problem. The environmental problem considered would be n, that is, the number of decision-makers who make the decision to act.
Then relating the terms, it will be said that: given an environmental decision field, let's say field C, it will be of interest to study the distance of effect between the generation, mitigation and solution of the environmental problem, with the capacity of the individual or of a group of individuals, so that their decision or decisions may affect the environmental problem considered in one way or another. This distance has as a variable the number of individuals who decide to act, but also of parameters specific to the field: the total number of decision makers concerned, say N, and a measure of the severity and extent of the environmental problem, A. Thus, we have a distance function, which we will denote by d. The argument of this function is the number of decision makers who make the decision to act, say n, and the function would be given by: d = d (n, N, A)
Some inferences can be made from the effect distance function of an environmental decision field:
- The distance of effect, in most cases, that a single individual perceives is very large, the greater the greater the total number of decision-makers. However, when evaluating the distance in the entire population, an approximation of 0 must be obtained.: Indeed, if everyone takes action, the distance to mitigate the problem is small. The previous points would be summarized by saying that the function is decreasing as a function of N. The field effect distance function is likely to show a slightly decreasing curve when start (for small values of n), and then a larger rate of change is expected. Symmetrically, "at the end", that is, for values of n close to N, the curve should again be slightly decreasing. The interpretation of this is that it would give almost the same if 90% or 95% of the population considered decides to act.A curve that does this is what is called a sigmoid.
Associated with the logistic model of population growth, for example. The sigmoid or logistic curve, product of the effect distance function of the decision fields, would be the following:
Around the logistics model
A qualitative justification for using the logistic curve (the sigmoid curve) comes from the population models, which leads to a bias towards exponential models. These work relatively well in contexts in which the studied population has extremely favorable conditions to grow (unlimited resources). Since this is not very realistic, the model is refined by introducing a new term. This gives rise to the logistic curve. Thus, it is a question of studying the evolution of a population p in terms of time t. Let's now think that it is a population of bacteria, which has stable conditions: unlimited food, oxygen, and space resources.
Under these conditions, a bacterium simply doubles in a given time (this period will depend on the species, and on other parameters, such as the mortality rate, but these parameters, it is assumed, are fixed). So, and this is the essential thing: the larger the population, the faster it grows. Individual and massive environmental decisions, for example consumption, can they grow exponentially? Starting from the sigmoid, this curve rather corrects the unrealistic asymptonic tendencies of the exponential models. Indeed, there are ample reasons to consider that consumption, in terms, for example, of net biomass consumed, cannot grow to infinity.
If physical consumption cannot grow exponentially, should consumption decisions be self-limiting?
If the population doubles every hour and the process starts with a bacterium, at hour 3, there will be 4 bacteria, but after passing from hour 10 to hour 11 1,024 bacteria will be created (= 210). This leads to what is called a differential equation: it is a relationship between the rate of change of p (t). That is, the derivative p '(t), and the function p (t). The differential equation obtained here has the following form: p '(t) = ap (t) where a is a strictly positive constant that depends on the parameters mentioned above.
The solution of this equation is of the form: p (t) = K • exp (at) The constant K depends basically on the initial Population, and on the other parameters. The first observation is that the limit of such a population is infinity: this is consistent with the assumption that resources are unlimited.
But what if the food runs out?
As we can see, this model is not very realistic, especially not in the long term. There actually comes a time when the food supply begins to be insufficient to maintain this rate of growth. There may also be other types of restrictions: space, for example. Thus, the rate of population growth cannot be greater and greater. We must then introduce a new term in the original differential equation. This should mean that if p (t) is very large, the growth rate, that is, the rate of change, that is, p '(t), decrease. Interpretation: the more bacteria there are, the more bacteria there are to reproduce, but in addition, there is proportionally less food, which means that not all can reproduce.
The equation that is reached is the differential equation of the logistic model, which by the way is used in many areas, for example in spreading a rumor or in the expansion of technological innovations.
If the logistic model is related to the fields of environmental decision, it can be said that when there are few people who make a behavioral decision regarding a problem, the effect that this produces is rather small, almost zero. The effect grows as people act more and more massively.
But there is a limit to this: whether there are a few polluting cars left or none left is more or less the same. The curve models this. But between the population growth of a bacterium and the probable tendency of a massive change of individual decisions, for example, of consumption, there exists in addition to the problems of space and stock, a problem of freedom of choice. Of course, it can be postulated that when the situation is dramatically untenable, people will be forced en masse to change their behavior pattern, at the risk of perishing. But, this does not happen with pests. Pests die in droves. Should it be assumed that the human being will suffer a similar fate and that she will not even have time to exercise her freedom and change her decision?
