Showing posts with label policy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label policy. Show all posts

Monday, March 1, 2021

The fork in the road: science versus denialism and conspiracy theories

The world is awash in information. Never before have people had as much access to humanity’s collective knowledge as we do today. You want to know when the Normans conquered England? How many people use Weibo? Or what Machu Picchu would have looked like in its glory days? Simply pull out your phone and ask Siri. 

 

This cornucopia of knowledge should mean that people are in the position to make the best decisions possible. From the insurance plans that best fit their needs to voting for candidates or political parties that support policies that return optimal outcomes for individuals and society as a whole. Beyond individuals, this wealth of information should mean that evidence-based policy would be easy to pursue and outcomes for nations continually improving.

 

However, this is clearly not the case. The availability of knowledge doesn’t mean that evidence, fact and truth are utilized. Preconceived belief and ideology are important filters through which evidence is evaluated. Yet, what is really disheartening about the use of knowledge and evidence is how others (individuals and organizations) with political and economic agendas filter and manipulate what is channelled to various audiences.

 

While we might naively refer to the modern era as one based on information and the democratization of evidence and knowledge, the reality is that we live in the era of disinformation. Disinformation is the active and knowing creation and spread of false information, like politicians saying a fair election was stolen. Misinformation is the cancerous offspring of disinformation, where this false information is shared by those unaware of its nefarious origins. Disinformation and misinformation have the power to derail robust democracies and motivate atrocities.

 

The study of the origins and valuation of knowledge is a complex, convoluted and challenging area to say the least. But it is not esoteric nor just academic. Knowledge and understanding are the cornerstone of societal well-being, technological development and ultimately underpin democracy. Public policy driven by misinformation and dismissal of basic facts is simply ill-equipped to deal with many of the problems we face. This is easily showcased by the dismal, and frankly embarrassing, chaotic COVID-19 response in the United States -a clear failure for proponents of evidence-based policy.

 

Knowledge and belief arise through a number of different endeavours that span social influences, logic and reasoning, and, importantly, the empirical claims of science. Science is the process by which we assess testable claims about the world. Scientists use accumulated knowledge and evidence to formulate questions or predictions and then ultimately assess these against experiments and observation. We commonly ascribe science to the scientific method, but what scientists actually do and how they go about developing explanations and testing them is actually quite a bit more complicated. Philosophers of science, from Popper to Kuhn to Lakatos and on to Lauden have argued about what demarcates science from other knowledge-gaining exercises and these debates have, in some ways, been mired by the reliance on a scientific method that may or may not exist (see Lee McIntyre’s The Scientific Attitude for a wonderful overview).

 

The best way to think about science is to use McIntyre’s lead, where science is both a process and worldview. It is a process because it has rules in place to guide how we assess claims about the world. Perhaps more importantly, as a worldview that scientists subscribe to, we are willing to test our explanations against fair and unbiased evidence and are willing to alter our belief in light of countervailing evidence. Explanation and belief are constantly assessed and refined, or in some cases completely dropped, because we allow the real world to correct us. I’ve certainly gone through this process and have changed my thinking about the theories that I work on. More than once.

 

 

As the figure above indicates, there are multiple avenues to gain knowledge and empirical science is one of them. I take a broad view of science, so that it would include a lot of what is done in social sciences. Economics, for example, can certainly answer the question, based on more than 80 years of empirical evidence from neoliberal policies, of whether tax cuts or infrastructure investment result in greater economic growth (it’s the latter).

 

Science is one route to knowledge, insight and introspection about ourselves and our place in the universe. However, on matters of the observable world, it is the most important. Science starts with testable questions which necessitate the collection and assessment of evidence (‘facts’), but something can go wrong here. People who don’t follow the rules of science (like objectivity, honesty and transparency) and have a pre-ordained conclusion can simply use only evidence that confirms their belief (confirmation bias) while downplaying damning evidence that shoots their theory full of holes (refutation bias). Once we hit this fork, we go down the path to denialism, pseudoscience and conspiracy theory.

 

We throw around these last three terms a lot when talking about anti-science and anti-fact movements like QAnon, anti-vaccine movements and flat-Earth proponents, but they are not actually synonyms. Though these three terms are clearly interrelated, and many irrational movements invoke all three.

 

Denialism refers to the refusal to believe empirical evidence that casts doubt on one’s belief or ideology. No amount of negative evidence can change the mind of an adherent. Positive evidence is given extremely high weight, often without critically examining the origins of evidence.  But evidence is often not an important ingredient, it is just convenient when it reinforces belief. 

 

Pseudoscience uses the language of science and even purports to uses empirical evidence and experimentation. However, the preferred explanation is assumed to be true, and all that is required is the evidence support it. Opposing explanations are assumed to be wrong, regardless of empirical support. A classic example was the shift from young-Earth creationism (which usually fell firmly in the Denialism camp) to intelligent design (ID). ID attempted to avoid the language of creationism and instead used technical-sounding concepts like ‘irreducible complexity’ to conclude that a creator was a necessary ingredient to explain life. Unfortunately, for ID, proponents’ claims have not been able to withstand rigorous testing, but proponents will still cling to fragile evidence to support their beliefs. 

 

Finally, conspiracy theory has much in common with denialism, and it can be argued that you need to be a denialist in order to truly be a conspiracy theorist. However, in order to support their claims, they go a step further and see a vast collusion of nefarious actors whose primary agenda is to undermine the ‘truth’. Take for example the recent claims of election fraud in the USA. Adherents to this conspiracy theory are willing to believe that dead dictators, Democrat leaders and a vast network of thousands of election volunteers are all part of an organized attempt to change the outcome of an election. Without e-mails. Or social media posts. Or any other evidence. Compare this to the fact that average people could easily figure out the identities of members of the mob that stormed Congress because of extensive social media threads and verbal communication with friends and neighbours. This strange juxtaposition can only lead us to one of two conclusions. Either there was no election rigging conspiracy, or those who stormed the Capital are idiots and the thousands of election stealers are just so much smarter.

 

In all three of these cases, some form of authority or ideology is given more weight than reality. I have a couple of hypotheses why this happens, and especially in the USA, where the nationalistic hubris creates a large gap between the belief about how great one is compared to their reality, and so instead of accepting reality, feelings and scapegoats trump fact.

 

The dismissal of evidence has become commonplace in political life. No one said it better than Newt Gringerich. He basically says that conservative voters believe America is more dangerous today than in the past, and when the newsperson confronts him with the fact that crime has been on a downward trajectory for a long time and that we are statistically safer today than a couple of decades ago, he responds that ‘Liberals’ might have facts that are theoretically true, but his facts are true too. Remember Sean Spicer’s ‘alternative facts’, and this thinking has been around for a while. Have conclusion, need fact.

 

Christmas day 2020, Wisconsin pharmacist Steven Brandenburg purposely destroyed hundreds of dosesof the Moderna COVID19 vaccine. Turns out that Mr. Brandenburg believes that the world is flat and that the Moderna vaccine was designed to harm people and also includes microchips for tracking. While we might chuckle at the absurdity of these believes, there is a deeper, more troubling issue at play. Mr. Brandenburg is a pharmacist. Meaning that he not only has scientific training, but also needs to make evidence-based decisions to help patients. As a supposedly scientifically literate person, he could have easily devised ways of testing his claims. For example, take a plane to Asia, then another to Europe, and then back to the USA. There, the world is not flat. As for microchips in vaccines, a simple compound microscope ought to be enough to observe these.

 

So, if a pharmacist is not willing to put the effort into testing easily refutable claims, why would we expect our bank teller, auto mechanic or Ted Cruz? This goes to the core of the problem. Given the politics of Truth and fact, science and scientists no longer have any authority for many people. In fact, just being a scientist might be enough to get you dismissed as an agenda peddler or a member of some number of absurd conspiracy theories.

 

There is no doubt that vaccines have saved more lives than almost any other medical technology. Yet no other medical treatment or intervention has elicited more skepticism and outright rage than vaccines. And yet there is no rational reason for this, the evidence is very clear. But, there is a denialist and alarmist reason that plays on parents’ anxiety about the health of their children and mistrust of science. 

 

In 1998, Andrew Wakefield published a paper in the prestigious journal, Lancet, in which he reported a link between MMR vaccines and autism. This paper should have never been published. It was based on a sample size of 12 children, and from which there was evidence that Wakefield altered data and records. This paper was retracted by the journal, which is pretty much the worst public humiliation a scientist can experience. It is a recognition that you broke the sacred rules of science and it is a shame you wear for the rest of your career. Despite this public shaming, non-scientific audiences gravitated to his messaging in books and paid lectures.

 

Today, many thousands of people believe that vaccines are bad for children and might cause autism. Of course, these same people would probably have no problem taking antibiotics for an infection, receiving chemotherapy for cancer or eating a hotdog when hungry, despite the fact they probably can’t tell you what exactly is in these. Why vaccines? That is an interesting question. Maybe it’s just serendipity that this was the fraud target of Wakefield, or maybe it’s because of the violation of having a needle pierce your skin, or maybe it is because of the undeniable success of vaccines.

 

This vaccine denialism not only resulted in the re-emergence of nearly eradicated childhood diseases in places like Paris and Los Angeles, but it wasted money and time that could have been put to better use research new therapies. The response required ever increasing numbers of studies to show that there were no links between vaccines and autism. In one of the largest assessments, Anders Hviid and colleagues examined and analyzed the health records of more than 650,000 Danish children for more than 10 years and they simply didnot find any links between MMR vaccines and autism.

 

If you happen to be one that doubts the safety and efficacy of vaccines, ask yourself why, and where you are getting your information from. Then ask yourself if you were, unfortunately, diagnosed with cancer, would you trust your doctor’s request that you start radiation or chemotherapy? If so, despite not really understanding what constitutes ‘chemotherapy’, you’d trust your doctor's knowledge and expertise. Why would you dismiss this same doctor when it came to vaccine advice? You can’t have it both ways, that is irrational.

 

So, where does this leave us? In a quagmire for sure. But it also means that those of us who practice, use or teach empirical science have the knowledge and scientific understanding to engage in dialogues about important issues, whether that is about climate change or vaccines. It doesn’t mean we need to be political (but we should engage with political structures), and we don’t need to be dismissive. We can ask questions to understand peoples’ mistrust or where they are getting their information from. I find that the best way to engage is to be affirmational and dispassionate (which can be hard for me). I recently engaged in a conversation with someone who wasn’t going to get a COVID vaccine and asked a bunch of ‘why’ questions and then started my statements with phrases like “I can understand why you’d be unsure…” and I laid out the medical and public health facts about vaccines.

 

The only way to counter disinformation is with the light of evidence. Not everyone will abandon their conspiracy theories, but many have been fed misinformation, and scientific understanding and fact can really help people make better decisions for themselves.

Wednesday, December 9, 2020

Targeting Biodiversity Conservation: A Post-2020 World

Guest post by Connor Kendall, recent MEnvSc graduate from the University of Toronto-Scarborough


The world is currently in the midst of the sixth mass extinction where global vertebrate populations have declined by 60% over the past 40 years and human pressures are impacting a vast 75% of the Earth’s surface1. If we continue along the path of business-as-usual, we will have a lot more to be concerned about than just living underwater in the next 30 years. If we lose most of the world’s pollinators, 40% of which are facing extinction1, you can say goodbye to your avocado toast and pumpkin spice lattes. If bats continue along their current trajectory and become extinct, you can say hello to endless summer nights with countless mosquito bites. This is why we need global action towards conserving, restoring and sustaining biodiversity, which is exactly what the Aichi Biodiversity Targets hoped to accomplish back in 2010.

Source: UNDP (2013). Charting pathways for biodiversity and sustainable development (retrieved from: https://www.slideshare.net/equatorinitiative/charting-pathways-for-biodiversity-and-sustainable-development)

At the 10th meeting of the Conference of the Parties in 2010, the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020 was implemented and the 20 internationally agreed upon Aichi Biodiversity Targets were formulated. The goal of this plan was to “take effective and urgent action to halt the loss of biodiversity” by 2020. The years have since gone by and it is now 2020, so what does that mean for the targets and biodiversity conservation? We are still experiencing unprecedented species declines – and despite global commitments towards achieving these targets, as a whole – we fell short and a lot still remains to be done. There is no point dwelling on the past but rather, it is important to learn from our failures and look to the future in order to adapt and create revised targets. We need to refocus our efforts, now more than ever, so that we can transform our relationship with nature and save the things we hold dear (even if that is just avocado toast).

Before we can look to the future, we must first look to the past. Where did we fall short? What can we learn from our failures? Did we miss something? These are the questions that need to be answered if we want to succeed in the future. In writing this blog about the past and future of International Biodiversity Targets, I hope to draw attention to the issue of biodiversity loss and highlight the importance of not only creating these targets but also achieving them, in the years to come.

Where did we go wrong?

It’s been 10 years since the 20 Aichi Biodiversity Targets were agreed upon and we have fallen short of almost all of them. The targets have been criticized for being too ambiguous leaving room for interpretation, not being quantifiable enough making it difficult to track progress, and not being binding which allowed countries to create individualized targets that don’t meet the global targets. Together, these may be a couple of the reasons why we have failed to meet the majority of the goals globally.

Let’s take a look at Aichi Target 11 which is one of, if not the most, talked about target. Target 11 falls under the Strategic Goal C and states:

 

“By 2020, at least 17 per cent of terrestrial and inland water, and 10 per cent of coastal and marine areas, especially areas of particular importance for biodiversity and ecosystems services are conserved through effectively and equitably managed, ecological representative and well-connected systems of protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures, and integrated into the wide landscapes and seascapes.”

 

As far as the target itself goes, it is one of the most quantifiable and easily tracked targets, providing exact percentages of area that must be conserved. It is specific and uses unambiguous language, providing clear guidance on how to achieve the target. Areas must be ecologically “representative”, “well-connected” and “effectively and equitably managed”. Seems fairly straight-forward, right? Wrong. Because the Aichi Biodiversity Targets are not binding and act more as a guide than a hard-and-fast rule, different government agencies can take these “guidelines” and adjust them into what works for them. For example, in 2015 (five years after the original targets were imposed) Canada came up with their own 2020 Biodiversity Goals and Targets, giving them just a couple of years to make any real progress. The issue with these targets is that they removed a lot of the meat from the Aichi Targets, solidifying the dreary fate of biodiversity. For comparisons sake, let’s take a look at Canada’s Target 1, to see just how Aichi Target 11 was altered:

 

“By 2020, at least 17 percent of terrestrial areas and inland water, and 10 percent of coastal and marine areas, are conserved through networks of protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures.”

 

What was once 62 words has been condensed down to 32. The main idea of the target and the percentages are still there however, it leaves out the idea of conserving ecologically representative areas that are effectively and equitably managed. By removing these ideas, Canada made a more ambiguous target and set themselves up to achieve the target in all the wrong ways. And Canada is not alone.

The Protected Planet issued a report in 2018 and have since updated it with information from February 2020. According to this report, 15.1% of the global terrestrial area and 7.9% of the global marine area have been conserved. 

Source: UNEP-WCMC and IUCN (2020). Protected Planet: The World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA), February 2020 version (retrieved from: https://livereport.protectedplanet.net)

Looking at these numbers, it seems like we are heading in the right direction but, when you dive further you notice that is not the whole picture. Remember in the Aichi Target 11 when it specified the areas needed to be “representative”, “well-connected” and “effectively managed”? The Protected Planet Digital Report looked at the percentage of areas that are conserved that meet each of these criteria and this is what it found: 5% of terrestrial areas and 1% of marine areas are effectively managed, 9% of terrestrial areas are ecologically representative, and 7% of terrestrial areas are well-connected.

Source: UNEP-WCMC and IUCN (2020). Protected Planet: Aichi Target 11 Dashboard (retrieved from: https://www.protectedplanet.net/target-11-dashboard)

Because the countries had the ability to adapt the Aichi Targets to suit their needs, it left too much room for ambiguity and inadequacy, ensuring that by 2020, there was nothing the world could do but fall short. It is important when we look to the future of biodiversity conservation that we consider the mistakes from the last 10 years and learn from them to ensure biodiversity is around for the generations to come.

What does the future look like?

The future remains uncertain but what is certain, is the need to act now. Many believe that new targets must be SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time-based), should integrate scientific research where applicable, and involve progressive steps and actions similar to a roadmap for achieving the targets.

Negotiations have already been underway and governments have given themselves two years to develop a post-2020 framework that is to be presented at the 15th Conference of the Parties, at the UN Biodiversity Conference in 2020 in Kunming, China. An open-ended intersessional working group, under the leadership of Mr. Francis Ogwal of Uganda and Mr. Basile van Havre of Canada, has already published the Zero Draft of the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework as of January 13th, 2020. The framework hopes to provide both the context and structure required to allow diverse stakeholders to communicate and work together towards the common goals.

The zero draft looks to the next decade and identifies a 2030 Mission:

 

“To take urgent action across society to put biodiversity on a path to recovery for the benefit of planet and people.”

 

The post-2020 framework also proposes 20 new biodiversity conservation targets. What is interesting about the proposed targets is that there are similarities to the original Aichi Targets and it is evident that the working group considered the mistakes that were made and learned from them when drafting the new ones. For example, the second proposed target mirrors Aichi Target 11 and ups it by creating the more ambitious proposed Target 2:

 

“Protect sites of particular importance for biodiversity through protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures, by 2030 covering at least [60%] of such sites and at least [30%] of land and sea areas with at least [10%] under strict protection.”

 

The target not only identifies higher percentages of area protected, but also offers up the condition of “strict protection” which was not included in the original Aichi Target 11.

It is also evident in the new proposed targets that the working group listened to the public over the past decade and tried to incorporate issues that people care about like plastic waste in proposed Target 4, climate change mitigation and adaptation in proposed Target 6, and the sustainable use of wild species in proposed Target 7. In order to stand a chance of reaching the goals by 2030, it is clear that the public needs to be engaged with these targets, and what better way to do it than include things that people are already passionate about.

The Zero Draft of the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework is promising and it has huge potential to have a ripple effect in many countries, but there are some things that need to be reviewed and reconsidered before that can happen. Some of the targets remain to be unquantifiable, such as the proposed Targets 16 and 17. At the very least, the working group should consider including some guidelines as to how to achieve and track these targets, to ensure they do not get lost and forgotten alongside some of the “bigger ticket” targets.

Any new framework that is implemented will have its highs and lows, but to ensure the 2030 Mission and Targets are achieved in the best way possible, it is important that the new framework works on strengthening the existing Aichi Targets, progress and initiatives that are underway and learn from them, as well as have stricter guidelines in place to avoid the ambiguity and inadequacy that came about from the Aichi Targets.  

All hope is not lost, but much still remains to be done. Now, more than ever, we need a drastic shift in the way biodiversity is viewed and valued in order to stand a chance of putting an end to the sixth mass extinction and the post-2020 framework is a step in the right direction.

 

1.     WWF (2018). Living Planet Index. Retrieved from: https://www.worldwildlife.org/pages/living-planet-report-2018 



Thursday, December 3, 2020

Politics and the biodiversity crisis: a call for scientists to be politically engaged

I am a politics junkie. I am genuinely fascinated by politics and political systems, despite their irrational and often ineffective nature. Yet the world is awash with existential crises and solving them (or at least reducing the worst of their impacts) must come from the political systems that exist. So the question for biodiversity scientists is, how politically engaged do we need to be and how do we affect policy change regardless of the political party in power.There’s no doubt that science is more politicized, and polarizing, than ever, with general distrust in science and scientists increasing around the world (1). This declining trust comes from a combination of a lack of understanding of what science really is and the elevation and reinforcing of personal opinion from social media echo chambers, as evidenced by the rise of evidence-free conspiracy theories.

 

Past calls for scientists to become better communicators (2) has helped drive some scientists out of the ivory tower, but this increased visibility has minimally influenced public understanding, policy and discourse. Though there is an argument to be made that evidence-based policy and management in some sectors, like public health and ecosystem management, is undoubtedly better today than ten years ago. This lack of broad impact of scientists’ communicating is where we are at despite the many science communication courses now offered (3) and clearly better publicly engaged and more diverse scientists.

 

The core problem was never one of communication skills alone, rather, there has always been a political component that scientists need to engage with. We need to look no further than the disastrous COVID-19 response in countries like the United States or Brazil where highly respected infectious disease experts are thrown under the bus as soon as their advice deviates from political messaging. For example, a significant minority of Americans believes that Donald Trump knows more about viruses than Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has studied infectious diseases for decades with hundreds of papers published and which have been cited more than 200,000 times!


So, what should scientists do? Simply, they should be more politically engaged. Which sounds antithetical to our notions of objectivity and dispassionate advocacy. But I believe we can be politically engaged and retain this dispassionate objectivity.

 

But let me be clear, being politically engaged does not mean being political or a partisan. In fact, I champion being politically engaged while eschewing partisan politics -see my belief disclaimer[i]  and experience biases disclaimer[ii] at the end of this post.

 

Biodiversity scientists, who care about evidence-based public policy need to find ways to inform and influence political systems so that species extinctions and biodiversity loss are prevented, and ecosystem health improved. During my time as a professor, I’ve engaged with politicians and politics at all levels. It’s been rewarding, interesting and eye-opening, though debatably effective. From this experience, here are some suggestions about how to engage in political systems. 

1-Talk to politicians! You are an expert, and you were likely educated, employed and financed by public funds at some point in your career. You owe it to society and government to feedback into the system. I have met with politicians at all levels (municipal, provincial and federal) and from all the major parties that operate in Ontario, Canada. I have had some amazing experiences talking to interested and earnest politicians (I have had positive and unforgettable interactions with Kathleen Wynn [former Premier of Ontario] and Kirsty Duncan [former federal minister of science, and coincidentally a professor who taught me at the University of Windsor when I was an undergraduate]). I have also had some odd and frustrating conversations with other politicians. While I do talk all parties, I have found that representatives from the Conservative party here in Canada tend to have the strongest preconceived convictions without a firm understanding of science and fact, and they tend to be the most political; meaning that they are more likely to put their party or ideology over other concerns. Regardless of the specifics of any interaction, I believe that some of these conversations do have impact and at a minimum opens doors to more engagement.

 

2-Stay informed and share your thoughts. Being informed and knowledgeable allows you to speak to recent developments and make arguments germane in the current political landscape. This means being aware of legislative priorities and initiatives. Be aware of bills that are being proposed so you have time to talk to politicians and journalists. You should use different vehicles to discuss issues, whether that is with interviews or on social media. I have sat through legislative sessions in our provincial parliament in 2018, and the experience was mixed. On the one hand, I learned quite a bit about legislative processes and the priorities of the ruling party. On the other hand, I was very disappointed at the lack of serious thought and contemplation by members of the ruling party. It was all false praises of the Premier (I assume because their upward mobility depended on it) and a fundamental inability to provide meaningful answers or insights into decision-making. It reminded me of a bad movie about high school politics.

 

3-Don’t be partisan[iii]. Conveying science isn’t a partisan activity (even if some politicians attempt to make it so). Don’t use facts as a partisan attack, but do use facts to correct uniformed politicians or to criticize problematic legislation. For example, if a certain political party contains a substantial number of climate deniers or anti-vaxxers, don’t start your arguments by blasting their party. Rather, talk about the facts, and perhaps assume that there are other party members who are more open to facts and science and have good intentions. I realize that being non-partisan is more difficult in the United States where there are just two parties, but perhaps you should consider not registering yourself as a member of either party. Consider the fact that in the US, both parties have supported policies that favour economic growth over the environment and you should feel that either party has room to learn and grow. In Canada, avoiding party membership is much easier. I believe that a substantial proportion of Canadians will vote for different political parties in different elections (I have voted for three of our five main parties, plus small parties a couple of times). Under a million Canadians (out of 36 million) hold membership in a political party, so we are not an overly partisan country (and I hope it can stay that way, but the threat of right-wing populism is infecting our politics as it is elsewhere).

 

4-Run for office or support candidates. Ok, this one seemingly conflicts with #3, so we need to be careful here. There is something to be said for creating change from the inside. If you have the desire for public office, and being charismatic certainly helps, then pragmatism dictates you would need to run for a party. You shouldn’t say things you don’t believe, and you should be clear that you will prioritize science and evidence over party. And believe it or not, some parties would value this. Here in Toronto, since political parties are not permitted in our municipal elections, you can run or support candidates without any need to be a partisan. I canvassed for, and openly supported a friend who was elected as counsellor, Jennifer McKelvie. She holds a PhD in geochemistry and so brings not only a strong openness to science-informed policy, but has the credibility to lead on this front.

 

As I write this, the USA has a new President-elect who ostensibly supports science and evidence-based policies. Despite this, I argue that scientists should not rest on their laurels, but rather should engage with government. There are many many policy makers from your local ward all the way up to national levels and these people have a great diversity of viewpoints and understanding of science. Moreover, a more sympathetic administration does make it easier to engage and feel like your actions are having impact.

 

The final piece of advice is, and this is a very tough one for me personally, don’t get baited by the partisan trolls and nay-sayers. Some partisans don’t actually care about the truth or right and wrong, but rather view politics and policy making as a team sport, and any point they score is worth it. Rise above, state facts, point them to where they can learn more and offer advice on policy that makes sense.

 

 References

1.         L. McIntyre, The Scientific Attitude: Defending Science from Denial, Fraud, and Pseudoscience.  (The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2019).

2.         S. J. Hassol, Improving how scientists communicate about climate change. Eos 89, 106-107 (2008).

3.         L. M. Kuehne et al., Practical Science Communication Strategies for Graduate Students. Conservation Biology 28, 1225-1235 (2014).

 



[i] A disclaimer. My political beliefs undoubtedly colour my perspective. I fully acknowledge that I am a militant non-partisan! I believe that political parties, by both their objectives and methods, are inherently anti-democratic. The main goal for any political party is the permanent consolidation of power; and the more power they have the more they use the tools and instruments of government to ensure they retain power. The voting public doesn’t seem to be overly concerned when the political party in power changes voting processes or electoral precinct boundaries to bias voting outcomes, especially when its ‘their team’. If we asked what made logical sense for a democracy, then there would be easy pathways to increase the number of parties (not clog those pathways), all votes would be of equal weight (why the heck is there still an electoral college in the USA?), governing bodies would be truly representative (i.e., proportional representation -we get majority government in Canada when one part gets 33% of the popular vote because of our riding system) and voters shouldn’t be restricted to selecting a single option (ranked voting works, at least when you have more than two real options). In reality, political parties might have outlived their usefulness. In Toronto, where I live, municipal elections do not permit official political party involvement, so we often have a dozen people running for counsellor in each ward and for mayor. This is the closest to true democracy as I’ve experienced.

 

[ii] Also, a second disclaimer. My understanding and views about politics are greatly shaped by political systems and governance in North America.

 

[iii] There is an important caveat here. For scientists in some countries, like for example in China, being a member of a political party is necessary in order to hold certain positions in academic institutions or government agencies.  


Monday, March 30, 2020

Early evidence that governmental responses to COVID-19 reduce urban air pollution

There is no doubt that the global spread of COVID-19 represents the defining crisis of the last decade. Governments around the world have scrambled to try to reduce person-to-person spread and deal with pressures on public health infrastructure. Regions with community spread have almost universally faced restrictions on travel, business and social activities. These restrictions are designed to reduce the exponential spread of COVID-19 (that is, to flatten the curve), these restrictions will also have a large number of other economic, social and environmental repercussions. Here, I ask a simple question: Has reductions in economic activity and movement caused by governmental responses to COVID-19 improved air quality in cities? I compare February 2019 and 2020 air quality measures and show that six cities that were impacted early by government restrictions in response to COVID-19 show consistent declines in five of six major air pollutants compared to cities that were impacted later (the text in this post has been modified from Cadotte 2020).


One of the most pernicious and inevitable consequences of urbanization and industrialization is the release of air pollutants. The WorldHealth Organization (WHO) estimates that about 90% of urban residents experience air pollution that exceeds WHO guidelines and that air pollution is responsible for more than four million premature deaths annually (World Health Organization 2018). Air quality is adversely affected by the aerosol release of a number of chemical compounds from agriculture, manufacturing, combustion engines and garbage incineration, and is usually assessed by measuring the atmospheric concentrations of six key pollutants: fine particulate matter (PM2.5), course particulate matter (PM10), ground-level ozone (O3), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), sulfur dioxide (SO2), and carbon monoxide (CO). These pollutants have a number of serious human health impacts (Table 1). Reducing inputs of these pollutants into urban areas requires a combination of technological advancement and behaviour change that can be stimulated by governmental regulations and incentives.


Table 1: The six commonly measured air pollutants in cities and their human health impacts.

Alterations of human, transport and industrial activity are usually the result of long-term economic and behavioural change and difficult to legislate under normal situations. However, the recent emergence of the global COVID-19 pandemic has had clear epidemiological impacts with, as of March 25, 2020, almost half a million confirmed infections and close to 20,000 deaths (World Health Organization 2020). This pandemic has resulted in emergency measures attempting to reduce transmission rates that limit activity, movement and commerce in jurisdictions around the world. While these emergency measures are critically important to limit the spread and impact of the coronavirus, they also provide a glimpse into how governmental calls for behavioural change can alter air pollution levels in cities.

Early evidence reveals that pollution levels have dropped in places that have undergone COVID-19 shutdowns. As Marshall Burke showed in a blog post,  PM2.5 and PM10, levels are lower than expected in parts of China. Here I examine January and February 2020 AQI levels for the six pollutants in Wuhan to what would be expected under normal circumstances. I further compare the change in February air pollution levels over the past two years in six cities that instituted emergency measures by the end of February (early impacted cities) to 11 cities that did not declare states of emergency until March (later impacted cities) using freely available air monitoring data (World Air Quality Index Project 2020) -see Table 2 for a list of cities.

Table 2: The eleven cities used in this analysis, the month that emergency measures were enacted and two- to six-year AQI averages of the pollutants
City-data come from monitoring agencies listed at the end of this post

Wuhan, China was the epicenter for the December 2019 emergence and the first person-to-person spread of the novel coronavirus.  In response, authorities initiated a series drastic measures limiting human movement and activity in Wuhan and large parts of Hubei province by the end of January. Three air pollutants: PM2.5, PM10 and NO2 all showed substantial January and February declines in Air Quality Index (AQI) (U.S.Environmental Protection Agency 2014) values over 2019 levels for those months and what would be expected from long-term trends (Fig. 1). These long-term declining air pollution trends do reveal that China’s recentpollution reduction and mitigation efforts are steadily paying off, but the government-enforced restrictions further reduced pollution levels. The expected air pollution values predicted by temporal trends (red dashed lines in Fig. 1) are all substantially higher than the observed levels, with observed values being between 13.85% lower than expected for January PM2.5 and 33.93% lower for January NO2. Further, the reductions in the pollutants shown in Fig. 1 increased the number of days where pollutant concentrations were categorized as ‘good’ (0 < AQI < 50) or ‘moderate’ (51 < AQI < 100) according to the AQI. The three other pollutants: SO2, O3 and CO, all showed idiosyncratic or non-significant changes, mostly because their levels have already reduced significantly over time or appear quite variable (Fig. 2). 

Fig. 1. Temporal patterns of Air Quality Index (AQI) PM2.5, PM10 and NO2 values in Wuhan, China. Both January and February, 2020 values show significant declines compared to 2019 levels and to that predicted from long-term trends (red dashed line).

Fig. 2. Temporal patterns of Air Quality Index (AQI) SO2, O3 and CO values in Wuhan, China.

Once COVID-19 moved to other jurisdictions, and confirmations of community spread emerged in February 2020, emergency measures, like those in Hubei province, were instituted to limit human movement and interaction. The cities subjected to February restrictions include, in addition to Wuhan, Hong Kong, Kyoto, Milan, Seoul and Shanghai, and the AQI values from these cities were compared to other cities that did not see the impacts of the novel coronavirus or have emergency restrictions in place until well into March. Log-response ratios between the air concentrations of pollutants observed in February 2020 to those from February 2019 reveal that all air pollutants except O3 show a decline in the 2020 values for the early impacted cities (Fig. 3). For later impacted cities, there is no overall trend in changes in the concentrations of pollutants between 2020 and 2019 and the individual cities in this group showed less consistency in the differences between years (Fig. 3). 

Fig. 3. Log response ratios for Air Quality Index (AQI) PM2.5, PM10, NO2, O3, SO2 and CO values between February 2019 and February 2020 values. Negative values indicate a decline in 2020. The green symbols indicate values from an assortment of cities that did not have emergency measures in place until March, 2020 (later impacted cities) and orange symbols are for cities that were impacted by the end of February.
These results indicate consistent air pollution reduction in cities impacted early by the spread of the novel coronavirus. However, the analyses presented here require further investigation as governments increasingly restrict activity world-wide, and some are discussing the possibility of prematurely lifting restrictions in order to spur economic growth. Further, the data analyzed here present point estimates of air quality but air pollution impacts are not homogeneous through urban landscapes and is influenced by spatial variation in industrial activities and transportation (Adams & Kanaroglou 2016). Thus, as higher resolution spatial air pollution data become available, it would be valuable to see how reduced activity affects air quality in different parts of cities.

This analysis of early data indicates that governmental policies that directly reduce human activity, commercial demand and transportation can effectively and quickly reduce urban air pollution. While the COVID-19 pandemic represents a serious risk for health and wellbeing of populations globally, especially those living in high density urban areas, the impacts of air pollution are equally consequential. If governments are willing to expend trillions of dollars in direct funding and indirect economic costs to combat this disease, then why do these same governments permit or even subsidize activities that emit air pollution? Maybe the lessons learned with COVID-19 can serve as the impetus for further action. Perhaps mandating changes to economic or transportation activity or investing in clean technology would better protect human health from the effects of air pollution.

Cited sources
Adams, M.D. & Kanaroglou, P.S. (2016) Mapping real-time air pollution health risk for environmental management: Combining mobile and stationary air pollution monitoring with neural network models. Journal of environmental management, 168, 133-141.
Cadotte, M. W. (2020) Early evidence that COVID-19 government policies reduce urban air pollution. Retrieved from eartharxiv.org/nhgj3
Cesaroni, G., Forastiere, F., Stafoggia, M., Andersen, Z.J., Badaloni, C., Beelen, R., Caracciolo, B., de Faire, U., Erbel, R. & Eriksen, K.T. (2014) Long term exposure to ambient air pollution and incidence of acute coronary events: prospective cohort study and meta-analysis in 11 European cohorts from the ESCAPE Project. Bmj, 348, f7412.
Fann, N., Lamson, A.D., Anenberg, S.C., Wesson, K., Risley, D. &Hubbell, B.J. (2012) Estimating the National Public Health Burden Associated with Exposure to Ambient PM2.5 and Ozone. Risk Analysis, 32, 81-95.
Greenberg, N., Carel, R.S., Derazne, E., Bibi, H., Shpriz, M., Tzur, D. & Portnov, B.A. (2016) Different effects of long-term exposures to SO2 and NO2 air pollutants on asthma severity in young adults. Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health, Part A, 79, 342-351.
Kampa, M., & E. Castanas. (2008) Human health effects of air pollution. Environmental Pollution, 151, 362-367.
Khaniabadi, Y.O., Goudarzi, G., Daryanoosh, S.M., Borgini, A., Tittarelli, A. & De Marco, A. (2017) Exposure to PM 10, NO 2, and O 3 and impacts on human health. Environmental science and pollution research, 24, 2781-2789.
Raaschou-Nielsen, O., Andersen, Z.J., Beelen, R., Samoli, E., Stafoggia, M., Weinmayr, G., Hoffmann, B., Fischer, P., Nieuwenhuijsen, M.J. & Brunekreef, B. (2013) Air pollution and lung cancer incidence in 17 European cohorts: prospective analyses from the European Study of Cohorts for Air Pollution Effects (ESCAPE). The lancet oncology, 14, 813-822.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (2014) AQI: Air Quality Index. Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards, Research Triangle Park, NC.
World Air Quality Index Project (2020) https://waqi.info/.
World Health Organization (2018) Ambient (outdoor) air pollution: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/ambient-(outdoor)-air-quality-and-health.
World Health Organization (2020) Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), Situation Report –65.

City air quality monitoring agencies:
1 Division of Air Quality Data, Air Quality and Noise Management Bureau, Pollution Control Department, Thailand (http://aqmthai.com).
2 Delhi Pollution Control Committee (http://www.dpccairdata.com).
3 Hong Kong Environmental Protection Department (http://www.epd.gov.hk).
4BMKG | Badan Meteorologi, Klimatologi dan Geofisika (http://www.bmkg.go.id).
5South African Air Quality Information System - SAAQIS (http://saaqis.environment.gov.za).
6 Japan Atmospheric Environmental Regional Observation System (http://soramame.taiki.go.jp/).
7 UK-AIR, air quality information resource - Defra, UK (http://uk-air.defra.gov.uk).
8 South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD) (http://www.aqmd.gov/).
9 INECC - Instituto Nacional de Ecología y Cambio Climático (http://sinaica.inecc.gob.mx).
10 Agenzia Regionale per la Protezione dell'Ambiente della Lombardia (http://ita.arpalombardia.it).
11 CETESB - Companhia Ambiental do Estado de São Paulo (http://cetesb.sp.gov.br).
12 Department of Public Health of the Sarajevo Canton (http://mpz.ks.gov.ba/).
13 Air Korea Environment Corporation (http://www.airkorea.or.kr).
14 Shanghai Environment Monitoring Center (http://sthj.sh.gov.cn).
15 Israel Ministry of Environmental Protection (http://www.svivaaqm.net).
16 Air Quality Ontario - the Ontario Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change (http://www.airqualityontario.com/).
17 Wuhan Environmental Protection Bureau (http://www.whepb.gov.cn/).