While mowing patches of thistle in our CRP acres Friday, I glimpsed a fawn before it darted to safety. I also saw jackrabbits, long almost extinct in our area, pheasants and a new beaver dam.
It’s satisfying to me to see abundant wildlife on the farm. But do these animals benefit society as a whole? If so, should society pay for preserving their habitat? Or should government require landowners to minimize harm to natural ecosystems?
In Minnesota and the rest of the United States, we decided 20 years ago that supporting land conservation with tax money is a good idea. The federal Conservation Reserve Program, which began with the 1985 Farm Bill, pays farmers near the market rental rate to conserve land for 10 to 15 years. The Reinvest in Minnesota program, which began in 1986, buys conservation easements for longer periods. The CRP now covers nearly 40 million acres nationally, more than 1.5 million of those in Minnesota. RIM adds another 90,000 acres or so.
Of course, these programs do more than provide habitat for fawns and pheasants. Their primary purpose is protecting soil and water. Benefits to wildlife are secondary but make the programs popular with both birders and hunters.
Should we fund such programs, however, when we are cutting back on MinnesotaCare or similar federal programs that benefit low-income people? Economists cannot give a good answer.
One can estimate the benefits of reducing water pollution. One cannot easily put a dollar value on an additional deer or muskrat.
History shows, however, that landowners will not conserve soil and water or preserve habitat to the degree many want without government subsidies or coercive regulation.
The issue is not limited to Minnesota or the United States. The tropical forests of Brazil and Southeast Asia are clearly important to global ecosystems for their effects on the atmosphere and weather. Governments of wealthy nations piously urge Brazil and Indonesia to maintain their forests for the global common good but have not been willing to pony up much money for them. Like Minnesota farmers who have to make a mortgage payment, poor tropical nations are not likely to give up short-term income for the broader benefit of others.
This is a case where institutions are inadequate to address the problem. Minnesotans have some economic interest in conservation and wildlife in rural Minnesota. Billions of people have an interest in the global environment.
We have some means of translating Minnesotans’ public interest into concrete incentives for landowners. We don’t have very good ways of translating global public interest into incentives for any nation or individual. Coercion across national borders — particularly if rich nations coerced poorer ones — would be unjust and counterproductive. Transnational subsidies for ecosystem conservation are not yet a priority in any nation. Our children are the ones who will experience the results of this institutional failure.
© 2005 Edward Lotterman
Chanarambie Consulting, Inc.