My professional experience of environmental work is that true positive environmental impact is very difficult. In complex systems, unintended consequences are likely. Environmental problems often arise at the interface between multiple complex systems, further increasing complexity. For example, in a project I worked on, we organized for farmers to receive payments to build soil conservation measures. With the money they were paid, we believe it was mostly used for fuel, pesticides and fertilizer, all which carry their own environmental cost. So we’d solved one environmental problem, but inadvertently created another.

In another project I heard about, fishing communities were provided with better access to contraception on the hope that smaller families would reduce consumption pressure. A PhD researcher uncovered that actually smaller families increased their fishing activity as they wanted to boost the life chances of their fewer offspring. (Those results were swept under a carpet apparently).

I’m happy about this law reported on here as it will force some honesty about environmental trade-offs, and also hopefully apply to environmental organisations which have in the past been misleading in their claims about environmental benefits of their work.