Destructive Environmental Practices

[Pasty Luckenbaugh]

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Human-caused, or anthropogenic activities, are major threats to coral reefs. Pollution, overfishing, destructive fishing practices using dynamite or cyanide, collecting live corals for the aquarium market, mining coral for building materials, and a warming climate are some of the many ways that people damage reefs all around the world every day.

One of the most significant threats to reefs is pollution. Land-based runoff and pollutant discharges can result from dredging, coastal development, agricultural and deforestation activities, and sewage treatment plant operations. This runoff may contain sediments, nutrients, chemicals, insecticides, oil, and debris.

Coral reefs also are affected by leaking fuels, anti-fouling paints and coatings, and other chemicals that enter the water. Petroleum spills do not always appear to affect corals directly because the oil usually stays near the surface of the water, and much of it evaporates into the atmosphere within days. However, if an oil spill occurs while corals are spawning, the eggs and sperm can be damaged as they float near the surface before they fertilize and settle. So, in addition to compromising water quality, oil pollution can disrupt the reproductive success of corals, making them vulnerable to other types of disturbances.

In many areas, coral reefs are destroyed when coral heads and brightly-colored reef fishes are collected for the aquarium and jewelry trade. Careless or untrained divers can trample fragile corals, and many fishing techniques can be destructive. In blast fishing, dynamite or other heavy explosives are detonated to startle fish out of hiding places. This practice indiscriminately kills other species and can crack and stress corals so much that they expel their zooxanthellae. As a result, large sections of reefs can be destroyed. Cyanide fishing, which involves spraying or dumping cyanide onto reefs to stun and capture live fish, also kills coral polyps and degrades the reef habitat. More than 40 countries are affected by blast fishing, and more than 15 countries have reported cyanide fishing activities.

Other damaging fishing techniques include deep water trawling, which involves dragging a fishing net along the sea bottom, and muro-ami netting, in which reefs are pounded with weighted bags to startle fish out of crevices. Often, fishing nets left as debris can be problematic in areas of wave disturbance. In shallow water, live corals become entangled in these nets and are torn away from their bases. In addition anchors dropped from fishing vessels onto reefs can break and destroy coral colonies.

Increased greenhouse gases from activities like deforestation, and the burning of fossil fuels for heat and energy, cause ocean temperatures to rise, change storm patterns, and contribute to sea level rise. These changes lead to more coral bleaching events, increased storm destruction, and more.

Certain types of fishing can severely damage reefs. Trawlers catch fish by dragging nets along the ocean bottom. Reefs in the net's path get mowed down. Long wide patches of rubble and sand are all that is left in their wake.

Academia has experienced acceleration and expansion in parallel with the Great Acceleration, which has shaped the Anthropocene. Among other pressures, the expectation to be internationally mobile conflicts with many values held by sustainability scholars and results in disillusionment. The changes in the academic system can be seen through the framework of the adaptive cycle, which can help us understand historical parallels and shape the system to better align with sustainability values in future. We hope this piece can contribute to the discussion of the next steps forward to reimagine academia.

We propose that the current trends in academia can be seen as phases of the adaptive cycle (Fig. 1) and that it is currently perched on the cusp between the conservation and the release phase, with some institutions and scholars already in the release or even reorganization phase. As of now, the academic system is increasingly entrenched in several unsustainable patterns. Routine travel has become the implicit and explicit norm, where attendance at conferences worldwide, overseas fieldwork, and the need for international mobility to secure academic positions are seen as given, especially as an early-career academic (Bilecen and Van Mol 2017; Khler et al. 2022). A recent study in France found that a higher rate of air travel is associated with a higher publication rate and h-index, albeit using pre-pandemic data (Bern et al. 2022). There is also a reinforcement of the norm of the overachiever academic who is required to do it all; write multiple high-impact papers with many international collaborators, communicate them to the public in an impactful manner, and make them policy-relevant while being a liaison with stakeholders. This status quo is both unsustainable for the planet in a time when we need rapid phasing out of carbon-intensive activities, and unsustainable for people where the multiple demands are leaving academics overstretched (Paasche and sterblom 2019). The status quo has grown rigid, but only to a decreasing range of disturbances (Walker and Salt 2006). The system is currently shaken by the disruptions of the pandemic and the climate change crisis, and we should take these disruptions as a time of creative destruction. The release phase is marked by uncertainty as the old system has collapsed, but no new one has been rebuilt yet. Renewal and reorganization are thus possible, and the time for reimagining academia to align it with sustainability values is now.

Academics are becoming increasingly disillusioned with the current academic status quo. Perhaps this is felt more acutely by young sustainability researchers (such as ourselves) with the tensions we perceive between sustainability values and current expectations for success in academia: avoiding burnout while securing a position; building networks while avoiding air travel; and expanding concepts of knowledge yet developing expertise and credibility in your field.

These mismatches and disillusionment are paving the way for a release phase (Fig. 1) where academia can be radically reimagined to better align practices with values. We found several precedents for this type of renewal and radical overhaul of academia going back to the dawn of universities. Two Western Anthropocene examples: the industrial revolution initiated a period of reorganization in the late 1800s which saw the rise of the specialized, disciplinary professor; the rise of the research university; and the first acceptance of women into higher education (Forest and Altbach 2007). Second, the academic reorganization post-WWII, where higher education went from elite to mass education and the number of universities rose by 75% (Forest and Altbach 2007). We note these examples are approximately 70 years apart, and perhaps it is thus not surprising that this new status quo is feeling rigid and needs renewal after another 70 years.

We need to start by having uncomfortable discussions around international mobility. The romanticism around fieldwork and conferences in far-away places, funded by grant money is, of course, dream-like for many individuals. But it is a privilege that both rubs against ethics and equity and is unsustainable in light of climate change: we need to fairly distribute the limited global carbon budget and consider partnerships that broaden our ways of knowing in favor of parachuting in as foreign experts. The idea that it is better for academics, primarily from the Global North, to repeatedly travel, and in some cases build their entire career, on research topics and contexts that are geographically (and often culturally) far removed from their university home conflicts with notions of anti-colonialism and who is best suited for knowledge creation. We see this tension in our author group, where some of us undertake long-distance travel for fieldwork, some have already changed our topics and field of research in light of this, and others are trying to adapt our projects due to competing tensions and feelings of hypocrisy.

We also need to heed the increasing calls to rethink what knowledge is, how it is created and assessed, and its wider implications for academia (Lazurko et al. 2020). While knowledge co-production is increasingly present in many areas of sustainability science (Caniglia et al. 2021; Norstrm et al. 2020; Chambers et al. 2021), the current status quo in Western science at large is often that knowledge arises from the researchers; that it takes the form of theories, models, and methods; and can be adequately assessed through citation and publication metrics. This needs to be reimagined. We need to broaden the notion of who creates knowledge to include transdisciplinary formats and appreciate that knowledge co-creation is needed to take complex dynamics and translate them into effective communication or policy action. With an expansion of what knowledge is, we need tools and metrics to assess this broader notion of knowledge to make sure that regardless of the type of knowledge creation, future career prospects for researchers are not diminished.

Lastly, we need to be kind to ourselves as individuals during this turbulent process of change. Our discussions for this perspective piece started due to the discomfort and oftentimes guilt we feel by trying to live in line with our values, informed by the knowledge we have through our research in sustainability science, in a world built on a model where unsustainable practices are rewarded. It is incredibly difficult and often impossible to reduce your socio-environmental footprint, especially when we broaden the notion beyond emissions to include ecosystem degradation, pollution, social conditions, and equity. This struggle is, of course, bigger than academia, and is a result of the wider status quo of the societies we have built. So, while we do what we can to the best of our abilities within what the system allows at the moment, we will also push for change in academia and the wider world.

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