Dissecting higher order effects from industrial technologies
Delayed, cumulative, systemic effects from industrial technologies.
There are known knowns, and there are known unknowns. But there are also unknown unknowns- Donald Rumsfeld.
We are all aware of the direct negative effects (first order effects) of most socio-environmental issues (air pollution, overpopulation etc) but we don't pay enough attention or no attention at all to the higher order effects (second, third...) which becomes unmanageable or irreversible in the long run. In simpler words, higher order effects are unintended consequences. Higher order effects can be beneficial too in some cases, but in this article, we will explore the type, nature and the causes of higher order negative effects from pressing global environmental issues and the importance of addressing them.
Most of our socio-environmental issues arise from introduction of a technology into the marketplace and the creators and promoters of that technology focusing on the market opportunities and overlooking the risks. Initially society sees the upside and adopts the technology to experience all the benefits but after due course we get to experience the negative effects from the adoption. The negative effects which are seen immediately can be termed as first order effects while the ones which are delayed, cumulative, systemic can be seen as higher order effects.
If one asks, why are we not looking equally at both risks and opportunities of any new technology in the early stages, the answer lies in the incentive for the technology promoters (corporates) in our current capitalistic system to leverage the opportunity and gain first mover advantage towards market monopolization. Secondly, it is also less mentally intensive to make plans to maximize opportunity than to minimize risk for the corporates. This line of reasoning applies at an individual level as well.
Let's first identify the higher order effects from our current socio-environmental issues and then understand the characteristics of these effects and what can be done to mitigate them. We will use a simple template of technology-opportunity-overlooked risks-unintended effects like the one illustrated below to identify the higher order effects.
In the illustrative case of social media platforms, the promoters of the technology focused on getting as many users as possible and took advantage of the network effects and built ad revenue models on it. Their algorithms and the user interface ensured we are glued to the screens. We got benefits from the social media adoption, but soon we started seeing spread of misinformation and echo chambers being created from the algorithms (first order effects). As time passed, we began to see higher order effects- reduction in attention spans and drop in real life social interactions. Now we have reached a point where it is debatable whether pros outweigh the cons for social media.
We have the benefit of hindsight in analyzing the higher order effects from social media but for many environmental issues, some of the negative effects have not yet emerged or are just emerging, which makes it important to anticipate, assess and hopefully mitigate them. In the following sections, we will analyze the effects from the adoption of private vehicles and plastics in our lives.
Private vehicles
With the invention of internal combustion engines in vehicles (technology), we got the benefits of faster and longer duration travel from high power density of fossil fuels. However, we overlooked the risks from poor emission standards and controls in certain developing countries and the dependence on rubber tyres. The former risk translated into PM2.5 particulate matter exceeding safety limits in those countries causing eyes, nose and throat irritations (first order) while sustained exposure to the same particulate matter resulting in long term health problems like lung cancer, stroke etc (higher order). From the dependence on rubber tyres, we had monoculture cultivation of rubber causing loss in biodiversity and tyre wear matter running into water bodies (higher order).
In countries like India, stricter enforcement of PM2.5 particulate control is needed, instead we are running into problem of PM10 being wrongfully prioritized and deceptively showing air pollution is under control.
A classic case of a combined effects from the adoption of cars and unplanned rapid urban growth in the city of Bengaluru, India has resulted in marginalization of green spaces and road spaces for pedestrian/cyclists. Despite the economic boom from being the 'Silicon Valley of India', the residents of the city suffer a poor quality of urban life from this combined effect. The car congestion in the city has made the Bengaluru traffic more notorious, with local authorities under pressure to ramp up the public transport (mostly metro). It is interesting to note that expanding the metro line coverage will make Bangalore more attractive for people from other states to come, further raising the probability of additional car congestion! It is better to focus on development in other tier B cities in Karnataka and make them attractive for people to come in to ease the influx to Bangalore.
The monocultural rubber cultivation has caused conversion of primary forests to rubber plantations and associated biodiversity loss. Dependence on rubber tyres could be reduced with adoption of tyres made from special shape memory alloy called Nitinol. This innovative tyre offers a significant value proposition as it requires minimum maintenance and reduces rubber usage by more than half as compared to conventional tyres. However, these tyres are not commercially ready yet.
Tyre wear is still not recognized as a problem globally, except for EU which has started including tyre wear limits on their vehicle standards. A British company called The Tyre collective is leading the efforts to minimize tyre wear through their electrostatic collector that attaches to the rear mud flap of vehicles. As the vehicle moves, the collector captures the tiny rubber particles emitted from the tyres. The collected tyre wear is then recycled to create retreads for truck tyres or upcycled into shoe soles.
Plastics
In the last two decades, plastics have been very convenient and versatile for shopping bags and packaging materials but at the expense of microplastic creation from its disposal. These microplastics have ended up everywhere with far reaching effects on humans and marine organisms. They are interfering with ocean's ability to sequester carbon. Even worse, they are breaking down further into nanoplastics whose effects will only be known in few more decades. Microplastics have also started to hinder photosynthesis of staple crops through multiple ways- damaging the soils, blocking water and nutrient channels and by releasing toxic chemicals. This would eventually translate to food insecurity for the masses.
Higher order effects from plastics makes a strong case of precautionary principle to be applied for all industrial technologies, especially for industrial chemicals.
Precautionary principle states that under uncertainty, and when there is a risk of significant or irreversible harm, it is advisable to take precautions in advance of any deployment.
The regulators need to enforce this principle on the technology creators and promoters in the initial stages of the technology, so that they can forestall the adverse outcomes as much as possible. Further, they need to investigate the combined effects in how the technology interacts with other technology types or existing urban infrastructure in the ecosystem and if that exacerbates or creates new risks. On this note, it is worth mentioning that we are amid Artificial intelligence (AI) proliferation and its environmental impacts needs to be critically analyzed through the precautionary principle to forestall its higher order effects (forthcoming article on this).
Fooled by Incidence rates
An incidence rate measures the frequency of new cases of a disease or event within a population over a specific time. However, this metric desensitizes us to the emerging risk in that category. Rather rate of increase or transmission rate metric needs to be scrutinized as well.
To understand the difference in implications from these two metrics, let's take cancer cases in India as an example. India is seeing at least 1.4 million new cases of cancer annually, according to data from the Indian Council of Medical Research’s (ICMR) National Cancer Registry Programme. However, between 2012 and 2022, cancer incidence in the country increased by nearly 36%, touching 1.36 million cases in 2022. As we can see, the total number of cases per year (incidence rate) is still a very low number as compared to total population of India (1460 million) but the rate of increase in cancer cases from 2012-2022 is quite significant and alarming. This happened with Covid-19 as well where severity of the transmission rate was overlooked in favour of number of infected people in many places and subsequently public health infrastructure in those places got overwhelmed in addressing the pandemic.
Incidence rate is a first order metric while rate of increase or transmission rate can be seen as second order metric. What do third order metrics look like? That requires a deeper systemic understanding of the issue in hand. It is important to acquire that level of understanding as third and fourth order metrics are acutely predictive of the dangers of the incipient higher order negative effects. Hence, investigating higher order metrics to address higher order effects from microplastics, PM2.5 particulate pollution, tyre wear, pesticide content in foods etc becomes urgent. Further, both higher order metrics and effects show non-linearity in their trends, giving us a false sense of security in phases when the risks are bubbling up to dangerous levels. Ultimately, the challenge is whether we have enough time and are we prioritizing the investigation of the higher order effects from our industrial technologies before we see a cascading impact on our lives.
Conclusion
The template we used to analyze the effects of the industrial technologies in the above 3 examples seems like a linear process. But we are in a spiral loop, where in to address higher order effects we are introducing new technologies to fix the damage done by previous technologies.
This is a spiral loop of keeping faith in technology to solve our problems. If the faith is not questioned, it seems we are making progress but if it is questioned it opens the possibility of humans spiraling down from our desire to dominate nature, reshaping it to our will and possibly buckling under the weight of our own creations.
PS: I would like to thank Ronojoy for proofreading the article.
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