shifting baseline syndrome

English

Etymology

Coined by scientist Daniel Pauly, in reference to generations of scientists treating the successively reduced fish populations of their own time, rather than the earliest recorded fish population levels, as the "baseline", so the "baseline" kept shifting.

Noun

shifting baseline syndrome (usually uncountable, plural shifting baseline syndromes)

1. The tendency of each generation to consider the state the environment (or by extension any other thing) was in when they grew up or first examined it to be its natural state (baseline), normalizing changes made by prior generations.
   • 2000 April 12, National Research Council, Commission on Geosciences, Environment, and Resources, Water Science and Technology Board, Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology, Committee to Evaluate Indicators for Monitoring Aquatic and Terrestrial Environments, Ecological Indicators for the Nation, National Academies Press, →ISBN, page 25:

     […] in what has been called the "shifting baseline syndrome" (Pauly 1995). For example, Trautman (1981) described Ohio in the late 18th century as characterized by a "profusion of 'durable springs and small brooks,' both flowing throughout the year, and the great amount of bog, prairie, and swamp and forest lands which were covered with water during all or much of the year." The change in the distribution, availability, and quality of water in Ohio - and many other places throughout the world - since 1800 is dramatic and is an example of the shifting baseline syndrome. If the change had occurred in the past 20 years, it would have caused widespread dismay and concern, but because the change took 200 years (or before current environmental awareness), the baseline for comparison has shifted and the change seems acceptable.

   • 2013 March 5, Ian D. Rotherham, Trees, Forested Landscapes and Grazing Animals: A European Perspective on Woodlands and Grazed Treescapes, Routledge, →ISBN, page 100:

     […] It is important to realise whether or not we suffer from shifting baseline syndrome, because if we make ecological models that relate to 'natural' conditions, they will have been programmed with erroneous starting points (Sheppard, 1995).

   • 2021 June 25, Richard Fisher, “Generational amnesia: The memory loss that harms the planet”, in BBC News:

     One day, the fisheries scientist Daniel Pauly looked around at his contemporaries, and noticed something curious. Despite an objectively recorded long-term decline in certain fish populations, each generation of scientists seemed to be accepting the lower abundance and diversity they studied as their "baseline". [...] What this blindspot meant, Pauly argued in a short-but-influential paper, was that the scientists were failing to account fully for the slow creep of disappearing species, and each generation accepted the depleted ocean biodiversity they inherited as normal. He dubbed the effect "shifting baseline syndrome".