Weird music, ditto beer

Call me a snob, but I've never cared much for the music you hear on everyday radio. I don't know what it is. I prefer the grinding doom of Ufomammut and the richness and purity of a skilled traditional fiddler to the polished one-size-fits-all music mostly served on prime time. So while around 80,000 pop music lovers were sweating away in a simmering Rock Werchter, I was one of the 5,000 folk music lovers enjoying the atmosphere, the music, and the local lambic beer at the Gooikoorts festival.

I discovered traditional music (like many of my generation) through The Pogues. While attending college I spent four months in Ireland, going after the local folk music with my guitar and buying a cheap and crappy mandolin. Years later the Saint Chartier festival was a revelation to me: all those musicians, all those dancers, all those instrument makers, in such a small village! As soon as I came home I hung the mandolin on a wall and bought a fiddle. The fiddle's been with me ever since. Slowly the Saint Chartier festival gave way to Gooikoorts, which feels like a much smaller and friendlier version of Saint Chartier with even a higher degree of joie de vivre. In Dutch I would call it "Burgundian", a term that refers to the days when present-day Belgium, Luxemburg, and The Netherlands were part of the Duchy of Burgundy, but also to the stereotype of a people that loves the good life.

Gooik is a small village (about 9,000 inhabitants) in the Pajottenland, southwest of Brussels. The region is famous for its mattetaarten (cakes made from cream and buttermilk), but even more famous are its unique beers. Unlike most beers, where carefully selected yeasts convert the sugars to alcohol, geuze and lambic get their fermentation bugs from the open sky. The beers are an acquired taste: deeply sour, and in the case of lambic not a single bubble of carbonate. But once you get used to the sourness you start appreciating the tones of apple and oak not found in any other beer. Many brewers from other regions, from West-Flanders to the United States of America, have tried to imitate the process by taking samples from the Pajottenland air, but so far they haven't been able to beat the real thing. You need the right mix of micro-organisms, especially Brettanomyces bruxellensis, which is a bacterium unique to the region. Real geuze and lambic can only be brewed in the Pajottenland, and nowhere else.

Since 1997 Gooik has its own geuzestekerij. "Steken" is a local term for blending, so a stekerij is a place where geuze is matured and blended, but not brewed - they get the wort from other breweries and mature and blend it in Gooik. I finally had the opportunity to visit the geuzestekerij and buy some bottles of the stuff. The place is crammed with 200-year old oak casks where the beer matures, soaking in the oak flavour as well as more germs. The beer matures for 3-6 years ("1 bottle = 3 years work", the label says) and is then blended to oude geuze or mixed with fruit. What struck me was the dedication to tradition of the people working in the stekerij, but also its international appeal. Just when I entered the building there was a delegation from Brazil tasting the local brew.

The local brew and the excellent food are just two of the many factors that add to Gooikoorts' Burgundian atmosphere. The bands play mainly traditional European folk, varying from strictly traditional Flemish folk songs, to jazzy interpretations of French dance music, to mixtures of Finnish polka and bluegrass. All generations are present: young parents with toddlers in their arms, teens with hormone-driven chutzpah, pensioners with an open mind. For me, the greatest enjoyment was to meet old friends, and to grab the fiddle and play. Ten years ago, at the first edition of the festival, we would play until the sun rose, sleep a few hours, and party on. Now most of us had kids, a demanding working life, or both, so we took it easy. And easy is how you take Gooikoorts.

Have a great summer.

Confusing Nemo (1): How much is too much?

The Black Fish, an environmental NGO, has made an animation movie on fisheries. Laudibly, the organisation provides the sources for its (albeit not all) claims. I agree with some statements they make, but not all. Let me go through some of them one by one in a series of posts. Number one:

"The global fishing fleet hauls in 80 million tonnes of sea food"

The latest FAO report on the State of the World's Fisheries and Aquaculture (SOFIA) on this states that the amount of fish captured in marine areas is indeed around 80 million tonnes each year. I suspect, however, that this only includes the recorded landings: figures on discards and illegal landings are probably too shaky to be included in these figures. So catches might actually be higher.

So the 80 million tonnes seems accurate, but is it much? For comparison: FAOSTAT states that the world produced almost 300 million tonnes of meat in 2011. But that says little about whether 80 million tonnes (or perhaps more, due to discards and illegal landings) is too much. The most widely used benchmark for this is maximum sustainable yield (MSY). The SOFIA does that, and concludes that around half of evaluated stocks is fully exploited (around MSY); overexploited stocks (stocks that, in the report's definition, "produce lower yields than their biological and ecological potential", due to low stock abundance) make up about 30% of the stocks evaluated. Of the remaining 20% harvests can be increased sustainably. What the report also says is that

The declining global catch over the last few years together with the increased percentage of overexploited fish stocks and the decreased proportion of non-fully exploited species around the world convey a strong message – the state of world marine fisheries is worsening and has had a negative impact on fishery production.

In other words, the fact that slowly the number of overexploited stocks is increasing while catches stabilize or decline should, according to the FAO, be taken as a bad sign.

If you want a second opinion, this article by Boris Worm and others should be a good place to start. The authors examined the exploitation rate and biomass of 166 stocks worldwide and found, among others, that

For about two-thirds of the examined stocks (63%), biomass (B) has dropped below the traditional single-species management target of MSY, that is, B < B_MSY. About half of those stocks (28% of total) have exploitation rates that would allow for rebuilding to B_MSY, that is, u < u_MSY, whereas overfishing continues in the remainder (u > u_MSY in 35% of all stocks).

That's the bad news. Interestingly, the article also states that

Since the 1990s, Iceland, Newfoundland-Labrador, the Northeast U.S. Shelf, the Southeast Australian Shelf, and California Current ecosystems have shown substantial declines in fishing pressure such that they are now at or below the modeled u_MMSY. However, only in the California Current and in New Zealand are current exploitation rates predicted to achieve a conservation target of less than 10% of stocks collapsed.

So is the 80 million cited in Losing Nemo accurate? It seems so. Is 80 million too much? For the short run it also seems so, but on the long term it is more difficult to say. As Worm et al. state, it is still possible to rebuild stocks, and we can only do so by catching less. So far I haven't found any figures on how productive world fisheries stocks could be if we managed them well: 70 million tons? 90 million tons? In any case, things are moving in the right direction as the exploitation rate is slowly declining in most, albeit not all fishing grounds.

Mapping marine economics (6): Putting it all together

I promised myself not to write this post. I'm sure not everybody will agree with how I redefine some of the terms commonly used in economics, or perhaps more broadly in philosophy of science. But doing so gives me a framework that I find quite helpful to map a disciplinary field.

So here goes.

In this post I argued that economists working on a particular policy issue (climate change, health, overfishing) do four types of research, similar to the four types of questions a doctor asks when treating a patient:

1. Assessment: how bad is the problem?
2. Diagnosis: what causes the problem?
3. Objective: what is the best possible improvement?
4. Prescription: how can we realize the objectives?

It is common among economists to distinguish positive economics (what is happening?), also called descriptive economics, from normative economics (what should be happening?), which is also called prescriptive economics. But for some issues it's not so clear-cut whether they are positive/descriptive or normative/prescriptive. For example, take monetary valuation of ecosystem services. On one hand you could argue that such valuation is positive/descriptive because it merely describes people's preferences with respect to ecosystem services: the recommendation comes later. On the other hand, by putting a price tag on nature you do make a normative statement: this is more important than that. So you might as well call a valuation study a normative/prescriptive exercise. I think analysis of policy instruments has the same problem. You could label such research positive/descriptive (e.g. "ITQs are more likely to lead to discarding than restrictions on fishing effort"), but also normative/prescriptive (e.g. "if you're worried about discards, don't introduce ITQs"). I think it would be easier if you slightly redefine the terms (and this is where the hatemail probably starts):

• Positive: analyzing without judging, e.g. "if you do x then y will happen"
• Normative: making a judgement, e.g. "x is better than y"
• Descriptive: considering the situation 'as is', e.g. "we have a problem"
• Prescriptive: making recommendations, e.g. "you can solve the problem with y"

The nice thing about these definitions is that you can make a quadrant that neatly describes the Assessment, Diagnosis, Objective, and Prescription:

	Normative	Positive
Descriptive	1. Assessment	2. Diagnosis
Prescriptive	3. Objective	4. Prescription

I know the boundaries between these four quadrants are not perfectly clear-cut either. If you do cost-benefit analysis you may need to do some non-market valuation (Quadrant 1), but you will make recommendations on which policy alternatives are more desirable (Quadrant 3 - or is it 4?). You can only set objectives (Quadrant 3) properly if you know how to achieve them (Quadrant 4). That's why I prefer to call it a map, rather than a classification. And as such I find it a helpful model to understand how different strands in the literature fit together.

So here it is, my map of the economics of coastal and marine ecosystems, formulated in research questions:

	Normative	Positive
Descriptive	What is the economic value of a coral reef? How much tourism value is being lost by jellyfish outbreaks? What are people willing to pay for whale conservation?	How do social norms evolve in common pool resource management? When will countries cooperate in international fisheries management? How do fishers decide how much and when to fish?
Prescriptive	What is the optimal harvest rate in an uncertain fishery? What is the optimal spatial allocation of shrimp farming and mangrove forest in a coastal zone? What is the optimal management strategy of an invasive species?	How do ITQs perform in a mixed fishery? How can we design effective PES schemes? How will a ban on discards affect a fishery?

Or in research methods:

	Normative	Positive
Descriptive	Contingent Valuation Travel Cost Method Choice Experiments	Game Theory Field experiments Evolutionary models
Prescriptive	Optimal Control Theory Numerical optimization models Cost-benefit analysis	Applied fisheries models Game Theory CGE models

Dear students, please question my authority

Some more thoughts on the Stapel saga.

In most fraud cases Diederik Stapel told his students that he would perform his experiments, collect the data, do the analysis, and give the students the results. Some students wanted to be at the experiments (a good suggestion, because you can learn a lot from it), but he wouldn't allow them. A few students wanted to see the raw data, but when they pressed him he expressed doubts whether they were good enough to be his PhD students. A filthy intimidation tactic if you ask me. But not only his students were duped: other academics, like the Dutch professor Roos Vonk, co-authored articles that turned out to be based on fake data. In the end the whole fraud came out because a few students finally had the courage to stand up to him (and, possibly, the university board where he had a lot of friends - luckily the board did the right thing and took their complaints seriously). Other students, who allowed themselves to be intimidated, now have flawed dissertations. A few of them have left science because of the affair.

Dear students, learn from this. I promise I won't cook the books, but don't take my word for it - don't take anyone's word for anything. Not just your thesis supervisor. After you graduate you will work with other people, like your boss or your co-authors. They can make mistakes. They can lie. When your name is on a proposal, a thesis, or an article, than you (and your co-authors) are responsible for its contents. Convince yourself that its contents is correct. Yes, I do the same with your contributions.

I know that in some cultures it is impolite to question the advice of your superiors, much like foot soldiers are supposed to follow their sergeant's orders. That may work in the army, but we're not in the army here. The one order I give you is not to take orders from me.

Great jelly report, shame about the mudslinging

Nando Boero, the man who named a jellyfish after Frank Zappa, has just written a new FAO report on the impact of jellyfish in the Mediterranean and Black seas. As far as I can judge it is a fairly comprehensive overview of these impacts, including some sensible recommendations, including

• Develop jellyfish products (if you can't beat them, eat them!)
• Use cutting nets to destroy jellyfish
• Destroy the polyps (this may actually be an argument against wind farms, whose concrete structures are excellent breeding grounds for jellyfish polyps)
• Prevent spread by shipping and so on

It's just a shame that the report concludes with some unnecessary mudslinging against my profession:

One of the paradigms of current economy is growth. Production, income, and consumption must grow, in order to have a healthy economy. The expectation, thus, is infinite growth.

I have never, ever met a serious economist (surely not an environmental economist) who says that production and consumption can or should grow indefinitely. We are all aware of the second law of thermodynamics, and we are all aware that the earth's resources are finite. Yes, I know The Economist newspaper recently argued that in order to alleviate poverty we need to increase economic output. But that is an issue of raising people's income above some absolute level: nobody says our income should rise forever. In any case, are we going to tell 1.1 bln people living on less than $1.25 a day that they should remain poor?

Obviously this is not possible, since our planet is finite, and the biomass ecosystems can produce is limited. The growth of human populations is exerting an unbearable pressure on natural systems that, obviously, are on the edge of collapse.

As I explain in this post, this would be true if economic growth is the same as producing ever more stuff, by putting in ever more other stuff. But it's not. A lot of economic growth comes from meeting needs (material and immaterial) ever more efficiently, which does not necessarily imply using and producing more material. Can we keep increasing that indefinitely? Personally I don't think so either. I'd bet our stock of ideas is likely to be as finite as our stock of fossil fuels, but that I'd also expect the bottom of that stock is still a long way off. Again, it is important to remember that not all economic growth is material growth. The economy also grows if we learn how to produce the same amounts with less inputs, for instance by being less wasteful. So for the foreseeable future I believe we can raise those 1.1 bln people above the poverty line while remaining within the boundaries of our planet.

The scientific community is warning about this problem since the times of Malthus and Darwin, but it is apparently unheard by decision-makers, economists having much greater influence than ecologists.

For the record: Malthus was an economist. And economists having influence on policy makers? If only. If this really were the case we would have an effective tax on carbon emissions, much less farm subsidies, and much healthier fish stocks.

Damn you, lack of global warming

The lack of Spring is taking its toll. We'll have to wait another two weeks for our fresh maatjes:

The first barrel of fresh herring will be auctioned two weeks later than usual. The reason is the bad weather. Plankton, which is the main food source of herring, has been growing very slowly due to the lack of sunlight. (Source: Trouw.nl)

Actually, it's not as dramatic as it sounds. "Fresh herring" is a bit of a oxymoron because all herring is frozen. If they weren't you'd have to worry about this uninvited guest. So go on and order some onions with it.

Who's the sucker here: Kiribati, Mauritania, or the EU?

In many developing countries with large fish stocks most of the fishing is done by fleets from rich countries such as Japan, Spain, or The Netherlands. The EU has made a few new deals recently and they make interesting case studies.

On the EU's latest deal with Kiribati (H/T Adam Baske):

Kiribati has secured a US$1.71 million deal for 15,000 tonnes of tuna per year with the European Union. Under the agreement, the EU is now able to deploy four purse seiner and six longline vessels in Kiribati’s waters.

There are many Pacific Island Nations making such deals. It's a classical Prisoner's Dilemma: if those countries stick together in the negotiations they could earn a lot more than if they go it alone. No wonder the Parties to the Nauru Agreement are not amused. Dr Transform Aqorau of the PNA comments:

“Kiribati could have generated an annual income of US$11.3 million from its agreement with the EU. But as I said, countries have their own reasons for doing what they do, but you have to wonder why in the face of great need by our people, we allow our natural resources to be sold short?”

On the other side of the globe Mauritania seems to have taken the other extreme. The Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant reports (25 May 2013) that ever since Mauritania's fishing deal with the European Union has come into force, hardly any European fishing vessel has entered Mauritanian waters. Fishing in Mauritania has become unprofitable for these vessels due to several restrictions, including the distance they are required to keep from the coast, the fee they are required to pay, and the number of Mauritanian workers they are required to hire.

European fishing in Mauritania's waters is often portrayed as a hostile takeover of a poor African country's resources by rich nations' fishers, so you may be tempted to cry victory over Western imperialism. But this is no victory for Mauritania (my translation from Dutch):

According to Jedna Deida, a Mauritanian fisheries consultant, four thousand people in the port city of Nouadhibou have lost their jobs because the foreign fishing fleets stay away. A few thousand earned a living as crew. Many others worked in processing factories. "It's a terrible situation, " Deida says. "People can't pay their children's schools. It's been like this for months."

Many coastal (can I call Kiribati coastal?) developing countries struggle with the same question: should we allow foreign fishers in our waters? Under what conditions? Shouldn't we develop our own fisheries? But what if we earn more from lucrative deals with big foreign vessels than from our own small-scale fleet?