The solution seems simple. Change the rules, so that all the costs and benefits society cares about are taken into account in the economic decision making. Charge for the destruction of biodiversity or the degradation of water quality. Reward good stewardship and contributions to local community. The exact solutions are local matters. They will be different for soybeans than for corn, and different for codfish than for tuna. The knowledge of people living and working in these systems will be central to the design of policies that allow these systems meet their environmental and social goals.
But, even before we come to implement specific policies, there are challenges to overcome. For those commodities sold into global markets it is not a simple matter to change the rules to take social and environmental goals into account. If a pollution tax raises the price of corn in the US, multinational grain buyers -- caught up in their own competitive dynamics -- will feel themselves forced to buy from other producers, in places that do not account for environmental degradation. As long as the buyers are intent on buying the cheapest commodity, growers in one region cannot afford to improve the rules of their systems unless growers in other regions take a similar step. This sets up the system for what some have called a "race to the bottom", with no one able to improve the system rules on their own and
The solution seems simple. Change the rules, so that all the costs and benefits society cares about are taken into account in the economic decision making. Charge for the destruction of biodiversity or the degradation of water quality. Reward good stewardship and contributions to local community. The exact solutions are local matters. They will be different for soybeans than for corn, and different for codfish than for tuna. The knowledge of people living and working in these systems will be central to the design of policies that allow these systems meet their environmental and social goals.
But, even before we come to implement specific policies, there are challenges to overcome. For those commodities sold into global markets it is not a simple matter to change the rules to take social and environmental goals into account. If a pollution tax raises the price of corn in the US, multinational grain buyers -- caught up in their own competitive dynamics -- will feel themselves forced to buy from other producers, in places that do not account for environmental degradation. As long as the buyers are intent on buying the cheapest commodity, growers in one region cannot afford to improve the rules of their systems unless growers in other regions take a similar step. This sets up the system for what some have called a "race to the bottom", with no one able to improve the system rules on their own and
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