Reading Materials: 

Text 1: Sustainability and sustainable development

As noted in Chapter 1, Blake Ratner has suggested that the most appropriate way to understand the concepts of sustainability and sustainable development is as a  ‘dialogue of values’.Different individuals, communities, pressure groups, institutions and governments are likely to view sustainability and sustainable development from different perspectives.

For some people, sustainability will be seen as a goal and sustainable development as a process, with an underlying assumption that any equilibrium will always be dynamic and changeable rather than static and secure.For Ratner, when advocates use the term sustainable development to mean ‘sustained growth’, ‘sustained change’ or simply ‘successful’ development, then it has little meaning, especially when development is considered as growth in material consumption.

More meaningful interpretations are multidimensional, often distinguishing among social goals (including justice, participation, equality, empowerment, institutional sustainability and cultural integrity), ecological goals (including biodiversity preservation, ecosystem resilience and resource conservation) and economic goals (including growth, efficiency and material welfare).Such a multidimensional notion represents the mainstream in analysis and advocacy of sustainable development.

It recognizes ecosystem integrity as fundamental to the productive activities on which human society and economy depend, acknowledges ecological limits to growth in the consumption of resources, and assumes that the distinct goals of sustainability sometimes converge in practice and other times require difficult tradeoffs.Ratner is not the only one seeking clarity and a way forward.

Ben-Eli (2007) writes that if we are serious about fashioning a sustainable future, we need rigorous concepts and key principles focusing on self-restraint, balance and a spiritual dimension that honors the Earth and fosters compassion for non-human others by reintroducing a sense of sacredness and reverence for all interactions making up the planet’s intricate ecology.

For Pezzoli, it is the concept of political ecology that best links ecological themes with social struggles and will help to build a radically different and better world From the perspective of political ecology, each sphere gives rise to a set of challenges. These include the challenge to engender:(1) holism (an integrated,coevolutionary understanding of social, economic and ecological interlinkages); (2) empowerment and community building; (3) social justice and equity; and (4) sustainable production and reproduction.

Glenn and Gordon（2007）explicitly statedthe necessity of cultural change.Although many people criticize globalization’s potential cultural impacts, it is increasingly clear that cultural change is necessary to address global challenges. The development of genuine democracy requires cultural change, preventing AIDS requires cultural change, sustainable development requires cultural change, ending violence against women requires cultural change and ending ethnic violence requires cultural change.

The tools of globalization, such as the internet, global trade, international trade treaties and international outsourcing, should be used to help cultures adapt in a way that preserves their unique contributions to humanity while improving the human condition.Without cultural change, without dialogue on sustainability and sustainable development, values and policies, political decision making is liable to remain  blinkered and uninformed.

As Robinsonnotes, sustainability is a political act, but what informs that act?The rest of this chapter explores various perspectives informing this dialogue, but it should be remembered that only human action that is at once political and ethical will ultimately fashion a more sustainable world.

     Text 2: Paths, perspectives and worldviews

Public debates, discussions and discourses on globalization, anti-globalization, sustainability and the environment reveal a wide range of perspectives and worldviews. 

Clapp and Dauvergne(2011) offer a fourfold categorization albeit recognizing that their categories are ideal types and that many organizations, groups and individuals share elements drawn from two or more.

Each view has its own logic and is based on its own assumptions, meaning that different interpretations of our global environment may shape which information a policy analyst or indeed academic may choose to emphasize.

Given this, it should be noted that complexity and interconnectedness frequently characterize both our world and our attempts to make sense of it.

The four categories and associated beliefs include the following:

Market liberals

(1) The main causes of global environmental problems are poverty and poor economicgrowth brought on by market failures and bad government policies that lead to market distortions – e.g. subsidies, unclear property rights.

(2) Globalization is largely positive because it fosters economic growth and, combined with the application of modern science and technology and human ingenuity, will in the long run improve the environment and people’s material well-being.

Institutionalists

(1) The primary cause of global environmental problems is weak institutions and inadequate global cooperation, which has failed to correct environmental failures, promote development or counteract the self-interested nature of some states’actions.

(2) The main opportunity of globalization is to enhance opportunities for cooperation, capacity building and innovative eco-efficient technologies, which will generally enhance human well-being.

(3)  The precautionary principle should inform the evaluation of new developments.

Bio-environmentalists

(1) The main causes of the environmental crisis are excessive economic growth, overpopulation, over-consumption and rampant materialism.

(2) Globalization is driving unsustainable growth, trade, investment and debt while accelerating the depletion of natural resources and filling waste sinks. The way forward is to create a new global economy operating within the Earth’s ecological limits.

Social greens

(1) The main causes of the global environmental crisis are large-scale industrialization and economic growth.

(2) The main impact of globalization has resulted in the acceleration of exploitation, inequality and ecological injustice, leading to the erosion of local-community autonomy and the increase of drug-related global crime, human trafficking and the re-emergence of slavery.

(3) The way forward is to reject industrialism (or capitalism) and reverse or at least take democratic control of economic globalization, restore local community autonomy, empower those whose voices have been marginalized, and promote ecological justice and local indigenous knowledge systems.

Text 3: Deep and shallow ecology

   “Deep ecologists”have the principles of ecological limits and the need for humanlife to harmonize with nature as their central tenet.In 1973, the Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess published in Inquiry a short articletitled “The shallow and the deep”, which outlined the foundation of “deep ecology”,essentially an ecocentric value position.He later elaborated these views in a number of papers, speeches and books, and the ideas soon took root among radical activists throughout the world.

In many ways, largely because of its strong moral compass, deep ecology is the touchstone of the environmental movement and the conscience of sustainable development practitioners. Importantly, Naess made the distinction between shallow and deep ecology, clearly articulating the centrality of system interactions and complexity to this worldview. He writes that the differences between them can be seen by contrasting their approaches.

Pollution

(1) Shallow approach: Technology seeks to purify the air and water and to spread pollution more evenly. Laws limit permissible pollution.Polluting industries are preferably exported to developing countries.(2) Deep approach: Pollution is evaluated from a biospheric perspective, not exclusively focusing on the effects on human health, but rather on life as a whole, including the life conditions of every species and system.

Resources

(1) Shallow approach: Emphasis is on resources for humans and particularly those living in affluent countries. The Earth’s resources belong to those with the technology to exploit them.(2) Deep approach: Emphasis is on resources and habitats for all life-forms for their own sake. No natural object is conceived purely as a resource.

Population

(1) Shallow approach: Human “over-population”is mainly a problem for developing countries. The issue of an “optimum”population for humans is discussed without reference to the question of an ‘optimum’ population for other life-forms.(2) Deep approach: Excessive pressures on planetary life stem from the human population explosion. Pressures stemming from industrial societies are a major factor and population reduction must have high priority in these areas.

Cultural diversity and appropriate technology

(1) Shallow approach: Industrialization on the Western model is held to be the goal for developing countries.(2) Deep approach: Industrialization and modern technologies should not be allowed to destroy the cultural identity, diversity and values of non-industrial  societies. Cultural diversity is the human analogue of biodiversity.

Land and sea ethics

(1) Shallow approach: Landscapes, ecosystems, rivers and so forth are conceptually fragmented and regarded as the properties and resources of individuals, organizations and states.Conservation is argued in terms of ‘costs’ and ‘benefits’.(2) Deep approach: The Earth does not belong to humans; we only inhabit the lands and must only use resources to satisfy vital needs.If the non-vital needs of humans conflict with the vital needs of non-humans, then humans should defer to the latter.

Education and scientific enterprise

(1) Shallow approach: The degradation of the environment and resource depletion require the training of more experts who can advise on technologies and policies designed to maintain economic growth while maintaining a healthy environment.(2) Deep approach: If sane ecological policies are adopted, education should concentrate on increasing human awareness and sensitivity to the natural world and combating the growth of consumer materialism.

The basic principles of deep ecology include:The well-being and flourishing of human and non-human life on Earth have value in themselves (‘inherent value’).These values are independent of the usefulness of the non-human world for human purposes.Richness and diversity of life-forms contribute to the realizations of these values and are also values in themselves.Humans have no right to reduce this richness and diversity except to satisfy vital human needs.The flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a substantial decrease of human population.The flourishing of non-human life requires such a decrease.

Present human interference with the non-human world is excessive, and the situation is rapidly worsening.Policies must therefore be changed. These policies affect basic economic, technological and ideological structures. The resulting state of affairs will be deeply different from the present.The ideological change is mainly that of appreciating life quality (dwelling in situations of inherent value), rather than adhering to an increasingly high standard of living. There will be a profound awareness of the difference between big and great.Those who subscribe to the foregoing points have an obligation to directly or indirectly try to implement the necessary changes. 

More recently, a sustainable tourism has emerged as a significant economic opportunity for many developing nations, but Guha’s fundamental point about ecological concerns needing a fuller integration with people’s livelihoods and work throughout the world remains pertinent.Deep ecology must not become yet another veiled form of cultural and economic imperialism.

Text 4: Social ecology

Deep ecology has also been criticized by social ecologists, most notably by the anarchist writer and activist Murray Bookchin, who sees deep ecology as “vague, formless, often self-contradictory and predominantly missing the point”.

In What is Social Ecology?Bookchin (1993) states firmly: Indeed, to separate ecological problems from social problems—or even to play down or give token recognition to this crucial relationship—would be to grossly misconstrue the sources of the growing environmental crisis.

The way human beings deal with each other as social beings is crucial to addressing the ecological crisis. Unless we clearly recognize this, we will surely fail to see that the hierarchical  mentality and class relationships that so thoroughly permeate society give rise to the very idea of dominating the natural world. Unless we realize that the present market society, structured around the brutally competitive imperative of “grow or die”, is a thoroughly impersonal, self-operating mechanism, we will falsely tend to blame technology as such or population growth as such for environmental problems. We will ignore their root causes, such as trade for profit, industrial expansion and the identification of “progress”with corporate self-interest.

In short, we will tend to focus on the symptoms of a grim social pathology rather than on the pathology itself, and our efforts will be directed towards limited goals, whose attainment is more cosmetic than curative.

Bookchin develops his eco-anarchist ideas, arguing that the future is dependent on how humankind steers its relationship with the natural world. He looks in part to the experience of indigenous peoples, as well as to classic anarchist writers, for guidance as to how we should ‘live with’ nature rather than dominate or exploit it. For Bookchin, the underlying human problem is hierarchy and inequality.

So long as human beings exploit each other in terms of class, race or gender, humanity will exploit and degrade the natural world. Ecological harmony is dependent on social harmony, and the practical prescription for this entails a reversal and transcendence of contemporary capitalist arrangements—the ending of the detailed division of labour, the concentration of people and resources in massive corporations and urban developments, bureaucracy, class hierarchy, the separation of town and country, and the objectification, alienation and commoditization of nature and humankind.

Cities must be decentralized in accordance with the ecosystems in which they are located in order to establish a human-scale direct and participatory civic democracy. New kinds of flexible, versatile and productive eco-technologies must be applied to ensure that waste is recycled, reused and reduced. The leading industrialized nations must create an alternative path of development which will both address global environmental problems and eradicate the poverty blighting the developing countries.

However, Best (1998) notes that it is sometimes difficult to comprehend the practical viability of Bookchin’s anarchist politics in advanced technological societies, since he fails to address the significant role that the media and education play in socializing and acculturating people to the practices of unsustainable development.

Text 5: Bioregionalism

Lewis Mumford clearly articulates the intricate and inextricable relationship between human social organization, economic production and ecology, stating that through sensitive regional planning an appropriate balance could be achieved between human institutions and natural, regional, resources.

He saw the modern age as offering great hope in that new environmentally benign   technologies could emerge to rectify the destruction wrought on the Earth through the desire to increasingly accumulate material wealth and financial profit. For this change to happen, though, a fundamental shift in human values and the human personality was needed.

There could be no ecological balance without human balance, no indefinite progress. What should emerge is a “dynamic equilibrium”, with a conservation ethic replacing the all-too-apparent “reckless pillage”For Mumford, this dynamic equilibrium would entail the building of eutopias (good places).

This would encompass:

Equilibrium in the environment: Conservation and restoration of soils; reliance on kinetic energy (sun, falling water, wind); the larger use of scrap metals; and the conservation of the environment itself as a resource, the fitting of human needs into the pattern formed by the region as a whole.

Equilibrium in industry and agriculture: A balanced industrial life in every region of the Earth; the decentralization of population into new centres; the widening of market gardening and mixed farming, with specialized farming intended for world export reduced to the essential. Capitalism will diminish as human and environmental exploitation is replaced by alternative modes of living and working.

Equilibrium in population: The balancing of the birth rate and death rate, and of rural and urban environments and the wiping out of “blighted industrial areas”in favour of “a rational resettlement of the entire planet into the regions more favourable to human habitation”. 

Text 6: Systems thinking and complexity

Many phenomena do not easily lend themselves to a linear, reductionist or classically scientific method of analysis and explanation. Climate change, population, global ecology, the economy and organizational management offer so many variables, uncertainties and possibilities that confident predictions of future trends are not always easy, or even possible, to make.

Many promoters of sustainable development have been influenced by the study of ecology, recognizing systems thinking as being particularly relevant to their ongoing work. Indeed, systems thinking is not confined to the work of ecologists, as its influence is felt throughout the social, human and natural sciences.

Sterling (2004) applies systems thinking to his work on sustainable education and Capra (1996, 2002) has carefully rearticulated systems thinking and complexity theory to produce a ‘new scientific understanding of living systems’ and a new‘science for sustainable living’.

Complex adaptive systems identify problems and possibilities that are simultaneously multidimensional, dynamic and evolving.A systems approach involves examining the connections and relationships between objects and events as much as the objects and events themselves. Changes in one component of the system will lead to changes in another, which in turn may lead to changes elsewhere.

Interactions occur between system components that may cause both themselves and the system itself to change.

In general, the more complex a system and the more interlocking its feedback loops, the more robust and better able it is to resist change. Emergence is a key concept in systems thinking equally applicable to the natural and social sciences.

The planet’s ecology is very complex and will accommodate a significant amount of stress, but there are limits and thresholds. The very complexity of the global ecology often makes human knowledge and understanding of it partial and scientific certainty improbable.

Disputes over scientific findings frequently arise, and consensus occurs only after protracted debate and discussion, as the climate change issue bears witness. Analysts frequently talk in terms of probabilities rather than certainties.With every predicted outcome there will be a margin of error that makes the calculation of risk both exceptionally important and quite difficult.

This raises many challenges for policy-makers, scientists, businesses, communities, peoples and nations.

What are the risks associated with global warming?

What are the costs and benefits?

What policy options are available?

Is it possible, indeed ethical, to place monetary value on such risks, particularly when lives and livelihoods are at stake?

What will be the consequences and the risks involved in continuing a given pattern of behaviour for example, the burning of fossil fuels?

Ordinary people’s perceptions of risk may be at variance with the technical assessments of experts, and indeed may be disproportionate. When children are exposed to risk, adults feel particularly anxious, so citizens and politicians demand clear and direct answers, actions and solutions.

However, philosophers frequently noted that uncertainty seems to be the rule. Thus, in the project to fashion a sustainable planet, uncertainty will inevitably figure greatly as experimentation is difficult when there is only one planet.

Cairns (2003) writes that,because of continuing uncertainty, ethics and social learning will be necessarily an important part of any decision-making process. He continues that humankind is now moving from the age of reductionist science to an age of synthesis or integrative science.Both systems and systems-thinking continually evolve. For instance, from recent studies of natural hazards, systems thinkers write of the relationship between uncertainty, vulnerability and resilience.

An ecological, social or economic system may experience some disturbance, such as an oil spill, crime rise or bank failure, but it is the resilience or capacity of the system to absorb this disturbance and reorganize itself, while experiencing change and still maintaining essentially the same function, structure, identity and feedbacks.

Some disturbances, like climate change, will affect everything, and complexity theory and resilience thinking enable us to recognize that disturbances will have broad-based, non-linear consequences.In social-ecological systems, adaptability and resilience will inevitably be the capacity to learn from previous experience and remember past mistakes and not repeat them. For Walker and Salt (2006), resilience thinking offers important opportunities for fashioning new ways of coping with future surprises and unknowable risks through intentionally building up resilience in social–ecological systems.

This can be achieved by: (1) learning to live with change and uncertainty;(2) nurturing ecological, social, economic and cultural diversity;(3) combining different types of knowledge (indigenous and scientific) for learning;

And creating opportunity for self-organization through:(1) strengthening community-based management;(2) building cross-scale management capabilities;(3) strengthening institutional memory;(4) nurturing learning organizations and adaptive co-management.

The logic of a systems analysis is that economic activity, environmental impact, social experience, political action and cultural attitudes are not discrete. Another possible implication of this approach is a policy of precaution and prudence; with knowledge being limited, decision making on sustainability issues becomes clearly both political and ethical.

Text 7:The promise of new technology

Industrial ecologists often analyse flows of material and energy that connect business enterprise with the natural world in a continuous feedback loop operating in roughly three stages: (1) Natural materials are extracted from the Earth and converted into raw materials and energy.(2) These raw materials and energy flows are then worked up into usable and saleable products.(3) The resulting products are distributed, consumed or used, and disposed of by consumers.

All these stages produce waste, which becomes pollution unless it is recycled or reused. The problem with much industrial ecology, as Hoffman (2003) notes, is that it takes an overly technical-engineering perspective that fails to accommodate the impact of individual cognition, organizational culture or social institutions on the direction of these material and energy flows.Hoffman writes of the value of analyzing environmental issues from an ‘open systems’ perspective, recognizing that no organization operates in complete isolation, protected from external interaction and control.

The application of methodological approaches from other disciplines for example, economics, sociology, law, ethics or systems dynamics – enables industrial ecologists to make links and ask questions they would not otherwise have done.

There is a need to find ways of ensuring that ‘organizations think and act systematically within their social ecologies’, displacing the well-established assumption that environmental protection inevitably means a loss of economic competitiveness.

Philosophers see technological development as a complex social, cultural and political phenomenon. Technical innovations such as the car, cell phone or solar panel inevitably involve a reshaping of society. Change is multifaceted, so technology should not be seen as its only cause. Nonetheless, it would be unwise to suggest that new technical devices such as the car or mobile phone do not change social practices, patterns of behaviour, individual and cultural identities.

We do not always perceive the influence of technology, because devices quickly become embedded into the fabric of our lives. We soon see these devices as desirable or meaningful ends in themselves, rather than as a means to live lives in different or better ways.

We may see technology as the means to combat pollution, climate change, global poverty, violence, hunger and disease without recognizing that the problems are not amenable to a simple technological fix and may, in fact, have been caused by technological innovation in the first place.

Davison argued that our increasingly technological society has become integral to the way we understand and interpret the world, our predispositions, and the structures of our thought and action, at times even shaping our sensory and aesthetic experiences of the world.

Technology is not a neutral vehicle of human agency, but rather its essence. Like sustainable development, technology is a political act. Biotechnology, genetic engineering, geoengineering, digitization, nuclear power, hybrid cars and wind turbines are all themselves expressions of human practical reason, moral choices and indeed a cultural value system.

There may be no easy or readily apparent answers, but we do need to see technology and science as being constitutive of the ends we wish to fashion, rather than as ends in themselves.