The Concept of Shifting Baseline Syndrome

I have a very specific memory from the beginning of this year which keeps cropping up in my head.  It's the memory of the strong feeling I had when I had finished working in a beautiful Caledonian pinewood and started work in an area of land that is managed for grouse shooting.  The conspicuous contrast in the amount of life you could see and hear in these two habitats was very evident  and made me think about the other moorlands I drive and walk through a lot in Scotland.  Knowing as I do that Caledonian pinewoods used to cover large areas of Scotland before cutting, burning, and grazing depleted them to just 1% of their original extent, it's made me realise just how 'unnatural' a lot of the Scottish landscape actually is.

And yet many people don't see it as unnatural at all.  They see it as rugged and wild, untamed and one of the last natural places in Britain, completely unaware of just how managed it is.  I know this as I used to be one of these people and it made me wonder about how it is that we can be seeing a landscape so falsely?  How are we not seeing nature as damaged as it actually is?  So I did what I always do when I have questions and started researching, and during my research I came across the concept of Shifting Baseline Syndrome.

The idea of Shifting Baseline first appeared in a landscape architect's, Ian McHarg, publication 'Design with Nature' in 1969 when he was comparing modern landscapes with that in which ancient people used to live.  Shifting Baseline Syndrome was then coined by a marine biologist called Daniel Pauly in 1995 when writing about the fact that fisheries management scientist tended to use the population size of fish populations at the beginning of their careers as the baseline for stock management rather than at its untouched state as the baseline for stock management.  This meant that inaccurate advice was then being provided as the baseline was much lower then it should actually be.  

However, this is not just confined to fisheries management but is actually a common problem when it comes to how people view the natural world around them.  As we believe that what we remember from our childhood is when nature was at its normal, most natural state, we pay little attention to what we perceive as a slight loss unaware that it was already depleted in the first place.  This new level of depleted wildness then becomes the new baseline for the next generation.  A good example of this is the lost of a rare species.  When they go extinct it is taken as a sad but unsurprising loss, the population size was after all already small.  However, they are forgetting that the population size of many of these species actually used to be quite large, but declining with each generation.  This decline was so gradual that we basically sleepwalked into the situation.

This concept is now being increasingly recognised as one of the fundamental obstacles faced by conservation organisations when trying to address the wide range of global environmental issues we face today.  Trying to get individuals to care about an issue when they only see a relatively minor change is difficult and education is greatly needed to help people see just how far the baseline has shifted, even within a few generations.  Then we can have a more realistic eye opening conversation about the problems we're facing and the actions we need to take to solve them.

Don't get me wrong, I still find the stark Scottish scenery beautiful, but this beauty is tempered by the fact that I know I should also being seeing large woodlands in that scenery.  And I have to admit, in my eyes at least, it would be all the more beautiful for it.

Being more like the Kingdom of Bhutan

I like to look at how other countries and how they have taken on the challenge of looking after their environment.  It seems all the more important now that Britain has voted to 'stand alone' in the EU Referendum and we may have to determine our own environmental policies to protect our natural world and fight climate change as a whole. 

One of the countries I have been most interested in has been the Kingdom of Bhutan. Bhutan is a relatively small country nestled in between India and China, with a population of only around 750,000, a GDP of just 1.78 billion USD, and is still classified as a 'least developed country'. You would expect then they would be racing to catch up with the Western world (the apparent benchmark everyone aspires to), destroying all their natural resources and greatly increasing their carbon footprint in the process. But they haven't. Instead they have taken a very different route.


Firstly, one of the most obvious things is that they have chosen to rule their progress not by the western GDP (Gross Domestic Produce) but by GNH (Gross National Happiness), apparently based on the Buddhist spiritual values.  First coined in 1972, this may appear to have nothing to do with being environmentally friendly, the four pillars of GNH are:

• Sustainable development
• Preservation and promotion of cultural values
• Conservation of the natural environment
• Establishment of good governance

This not only puts sustainability and conservation at the heart of anything they do, but also removes money as the only goal to aim for.

Since then Bhutan has signed the Rio Convention on Biological Diversity in 1992 and produced a National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan which has lead to them being viewed as a model for proactive conservation initiatives.  In this strategy they have promised to maintain at least 60% of their land under forest cover, designate more than 40% territory as national parks, reserves, and other protected areas, and, most recently, identify a further 9% of land as biodiversity corridors linking these protected areas allowing migration throughout the country.  They have also implemented an insurance scheme and set up solar powered alarm fences, watchtowers and search lights to protect crops and livestock, as well as providing food and salt licks outside of human settlements to reduce conflict between humans and protected wildlife.  The Bhutan Government has made it clear that, while their natural heritage is largely intact, it cannot be taken for granted and conserving it must be one of the challenges to be addressed in years to come.

This protection of their wildlife has meant that the Kingdom of Bhutan currently has the net greenhouse gas emission of zero, with the small amount of pollution they produce being absorbed by the forests covering Bhutan.  On top of this, they have also implemented a number of (to us) progressive environmental policies, such as promoting the purchase of electric cars and ensuring that most of their energy is obtained from hydroelectric, which will ensure that their carbon footprint will always remain relatively low.

Perhaps the most striking difference between the Bhutan government's attitude to environmental conservation against the UK's is that it has not been treated as a separate sector, that is usually ignored, but has been placed at the core of the nation's development strategy and can be found as a running theme throughout all the sections of Government.

Now I'm not saying the Kingdom of Bhutan is perfect (there was the forced expulsion of the ethnic minority group of Hindu Lhotshampa), but their treatment and attitude towards the natural world is definitely something we can learn from.

Incidentally, I thought I would add another video here that will show you how measuring GDP alone will not necessarily help a nation develop into a happy, healthy, and sustainable nation.