Sustainability - time to move past waffle and denial?

Dr Haydn Washington Visiting Fellow, Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies, UNSW The Walter Westman Lecture on Science, Humanity and the Environment, International House, September 2016

2011 2013

2015 2016

So, sustaining what, who and for how long?

• We speak glibly of ‘sustainability’ but there are over 300 definitions

• The term has been buried under academic jargon and waffle

• Some claim accordingly that it has become meaningless

• Rather than jettison the term, it is time to demystify it, confront reality, and move to key solutions.

The old sustainability

• I argue that society’s interest in ‘sustainability’ doesn’t come from recent definitions or academic papers

• Rather, it comes from the ‘law’ and lore of traditional societies, and the sense of wonder at life that all children feel (which sometimes gets buried at puberty)

• This encapsulates words such as: caring, harmony, balance, custodianship, enchantment, respect, empathy, listening, wisdom, celebration of life … and even ‘love’.

Weak definition – problem or strength?

• ‘Our Common Future’ defined Sustainable Development’ as:

Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

• However, over 300 definitions of sustainability

• Some argue that its weak definition is a strength as it’s flexible and allows a variety of action

• Others point out that being poorly defined allows ‘sustainability’ to be co-opted or to become meaningless.

Jim MacNeill (2006) was a lead author of ‘Our Common Future’:

I also never thought that the concept of SD could and would be interpreted in so many different ways … many of them of course are totally self-serving. I no longer shock easily but to this day I remain stunned at what some governments in their legislation and some industries in their policies claim to be ‘sustainable development’. Only in a Humpty Dumpty world of Orwellian doublespeak could the concept be read in the way some suggest …

Let’s take a step back …

• What do we mean by ‘sustainability’?

• Let’s consider society’s predicament.

Finitude – just one planet, spaceship Earth

Can we grow physically forever?

The Limits to Growth (1972)

‘A person who knows that enough is enough will always have enough’ Lao Tzu

Reality or delusion?

• We face a critical issue here in terms of what we mean by sustainability.

• We cannot afford to dither on this point or descend into vague generalities (yet society has done this for 30 years).

• Otherwise sustainability is in danger of becoming an ‘empty shibboleth’ (Daly, 1991).

• Considering a sustainable future, do we believe that the human population can keep growing forever? Do we believe that our use of resources can keep growing forever? Do we believe that we can keep destroying ecosystems for human needs forever? If we don’t believe this, then can sustainability be equated with ‘development’ in the sense of growth in a physical sense? If we believe this, then are we living a delusion?

• Historically, society has in fact followed the path of denial and delusion.

Teleology – why are we doing what we do?

• Our problems are real – so why is society doing what it’s doing?

• Teleology, the ‘study of purpose’, one of the dominant concepts of an earlier

age, has apparently been

banished today (Daly, 1991)

• What drives our current

unsustainability?

A failure in environmental ethics

We can break the mountains apart; we can drain the rivers and flood the valleys. … We can pollute the air with acids, the rivers with sewage, the seas with oil - all this in a kind of intoxication with our power for devastation …. And why? To increase the volume and speed with which we move natural resources through the consumer economy to the junk pile or the waste heap. Our managerial skills are measured by our ability to accelerate this process. … If the environment is made inhospitable for a multitude of living species, then so be it. … But our supposed progress toward an ever-improving human situation is bringing us to a wasteworld instead of a wonderworld.

Thomas Berry (1988) ‘The Dream of the Earth’

We find it hard to suppress a cry of anguish, a scream of horror. We humans are being led to a dead end, we are living by an ideology of death and accordingly we are destroying our own humanity and killing the planet. … Before this generation is the way of life and the way of death.

Herman Daly and John Cobb (1994) ‘For the Common Good’

The science of crisis

During the 20th century (mostly Rees, 2008):

• Human population quadrupled to 6.4 billion.

• Industrial pollution went up 40-fold.

• Energy use increased 16-fold and CO2 emissions 17-fold.

• Fish catches expanded by factor of 35.

• Water use increased 9-fold.

• Mining of ores and minerals grew 27-fold (UNEP, 2011).

• One quarter of coral reefs are destroyed and another 20% degraded (MEA, 2005).

• 35% of mangroves were lost (in just two decades) (MEA 2005).

• At least half of all wetlands were lost (Meadows et al, 2004).

• Extinction is at least 1000-fold above the normal levels in the fossil record (MEA, 2005).

Transgressed 3 boundaries Chemical pollution not yet quantified

15

Rockstrom et al (2009) – Planetary boundaries

State of Play of Ecosystem Services

• Overall 60% of ecosystem services are being degraded or used unsustainably.

• Many being degraded primarily to increase food

• How many people know this?

• Society does not think about or adequately value

ecosystem services (Kumar, 2010).

• Society using Ecological Footprint of

1.6 planets and Living Planet Index

has dropped by 52% since 1970.

• Without change, by 2100, two thirds

of life (multi-cellular) will be extinct. (Raven et al, 2011)

Believing in 7 stupid things:

1) The world and the Universe are all

about us 2) Although we live on a finite planet, endless growth is possible (indeed apparently praiseworthy)

3) Population growth is not a problem (‘more is better’)

4) Endless growth in consumption and resource use is not a problem (‘resource limits are in our mind’ Simon, 1998)

5) The ‘invisible hand’ of the market is a God and must not be regulated

6) Technology can solve everything (techno-centrism)

7) Greed is good.

Washington (2015)

What causes us to be unsustainable?

• Society is beset by a number of ‘great taboos’, practices that have been shown to be unsustainable – but many of us just deny this

• Silence is the usual way we avoid such topics

• To have any chance of becoming sustainable, we can no longer avoid these issues.

Ignored or denied – ‘undiscussables’

‘The best way to disrupt moral behaviour’ notes political theorist C. Fred Alford ‘is not to discuss it and not to discuss not discussing it’. ‘Dont talk about ethical issues’ he facetiously proposes ‘and don’t talk about our not talking about ethical issues’. As moral beings we cannot keep non-discussing ‘undiscussables’. Breaking this insidious cycle of denial calls for an open discussion of the very phenomenon of undiscussability.

Zerubavel (2006)

Four elephants in the room

Population

Consumption The Growth economy

Climate Change

Which elephant is bigger?

Which is more dangerous?

Which is least discussed?

Taboo 1 - Ignored overpopulation

‘More is better’ – the mantra of the past

Population ecologist Meyerson (see Hartmann et al, 2008) notes:

Conservatives are often against sex education, contraception and abortion and they like growth – both in population and in the economy. Liberals usually support individual human rights above all else and fear the coercion label and therefore avoid discussion of population growth and stabilisation. The combination is a tragic stalemate that leads to more population growth.

• Impact = Population x Affluence x Technology

• Cannot ignore any of its 3 parts

• Think of impact as a rectangle with population on one side and consumption on the other

• We cannot afford to ignore either (but we do)

Population

con

sum

pti

on

IMPACT

Re population

Hulme (2009) notes that if there is a ‘safe’ level of greenhouse gases to avoid runaway climate change, then:

‘Is there not also a desirable world population?’.

Why? Because we are way beyond ecological limits.

Taboo 2 - Ignored over-consumption

• Challenging consumerism is seen as challenging the growth economy – a key myth or ‘given truth’ of modern society

• Consumption has become the meaning of life, the ‘chief sacred’, the ‘mystery before which one bows’ (Ellul, 1975).

• Tacey (2000) points out that consumers in Western society are spiritually empty, so shopping temporarily fills this void. Mass consumption requires consumer demand to remain insatiable (Westra, 2008). We can never have enough.

Taboo 3 - Growthmania Growth for growth’s sake is the ideology of

the cancer cell (Edward Abbey, 1977)

• World leaders seek economic growth above all else.

• Daly (1991) notes that the verb ‘to grow’ has become twisted. We have forgotten its original meaning: ‘to develop to maturity’.

• The original notion included maturity or sufficiency. Thus growth normally gives way to maturity, a steady state.

• Yet talking about the impossibility of the endless growth economy may be the biggest taboo of all!

The Magic Pudding

• Norman Lindsay published

‘The Magic Pudding’ in 1918,

about a pudding that could never

be consumed.

• A good children’s story but a terrible way to live sustainably on Earth!

Environmental crisis caused by

growth

Environmental damage as exceeded ecological limits

NC economists argue growth is cure

Greater environmental damage

NC economists argue growth is cure

NC economists argue growth is cure

Escalating environmental damage

Endless growth the cause of crisis

• The scientific data on the environmental crisis is clear, a testament that growth over the last century has not been ecologically sustainable (e.g. MEA, 2005).

• Further growth in numbers and resource use will only accelerate the crisis.

• Despite the hopes of the ‘World Conservation Strategy’ (WCS, 1980) and ‘Our Common Future’ (WCED,

1987), we cannot ‘grow’ our way out of this crisis.

• Growth is the cause, not the cure.

The evolution of humanity?

Homo sapiens?

Homo denialensis?

Australopithecus Homo habilis or

Denial is a key obstacle to solving the environmental crisis

The Elephant in the room! (in fact the room is full of elephants)

Taboo 4 – Denying reality

• Skepticism is not denial. They

are virtual opposites.

• Denial of environmental crisis is rampant.

Long history (e.g. wilderness loss, DDT, acid rain).

• Ideological basis. Free market = liberty, so regulation to protect the environment seen as attack on liberty and must be opposed (along with the science!)

• We let denial prosper - Fear of change; failure in values; fixation on growth economy; ignorance of ecology; gambling on the future; ‘balance as bias’ in media. (Washington and Cook, 2011).

Taboo 5 – Worldview and ethics

• There is a ‘great divide’ in terms of our, worldview, ethics and values about Nature.

• ‘Doctrine of inherent human superiority’ (Taylor, 1986) and even ‘human supremacy’ (Crist, 2012)

• Anthropocentrism – focus on ourselves.

• Ecocentrism – focus on Nature, of which we are a part. Nature has intrinsic value and ‘rights’

• Dominance of anthropocentrism in society and academia, disseminated by globalisation.

Taboo 6 - The problem of ‘ideology’

• Modernism: strong anthropocentric view of the world as just a resource for human use (resourcism). Nature came to be seen as a machine (Oelschlaeger, 1991).

• Postmodernism: rejected Modernism but still anthropocentric. Skepticism of reason, denial of grand narratives, questioning of the ‘real’,

including ‘Nature skepticism’ where

Nature is seen as just part of culture.

• Neoliberalism denies any limits

and sees the market as a God.

• Much of academia is influenced

by ideology (but may deny this!).

What is a meaningful sustainability?

• Meadows et al (2004) believe a sustainable society is one that can ‘persist over generations’, is farseeing enough, flexible enough and wise enough not to undermine either its physical or it social systems of support.

• Of course if that was true, on a finite planet it could not be based on endless physical growth

• Terborgh (1999) notes that SD is seldom rigorously defined, and without definition can mean anything.

• Rolston (2012) concludes SD is ‘more charming than meaningful’, as it can be twisted to fit any ongoing worldview It risks being co-opted by those who wish to perpetuate the expansionist (growth) model.

Destination or journey? • Some see merit to a division where ‘sustainability’ is the

destination, while ‘sustainable development’ is the journey to this. There is passion around this debate.

• However, why is this distinction necessary? We do not make such distinctions for ‘conservation’ or ‘democracy’.

• If we want a term for the process to a sustainable future, is sustainable ‘development’ the appropriate one?

• Duchin and Lange (1994) have noted that realistically ‘the economic and environmental objectives of the Brundtland Report cannot be achieved simultaneously’. In other words, you cannot protect the environment (and ecosystem services) if you plan to endlessly grow human numbers and resource use.

Evermoreism

• Many environmental scholars argue the ideology of ‘growthism’ or ‘evermoreism’ (Boyden, 2004) is in fact the ‘root cause’ of the environmental crisis and not the way to reach sustainability (Daly, 1991; Rees, 2008; Jackson, 2009).

• It has been argued that SD is actually an ‘oxymoron’ or a contradiction in terms (Kopnina, 2012), that in many (perhaps most) cases more development cannot be sustainable.

• It has also been argued that SD doesn’t really assist in nature conservation (Soule, 2001).

• With the term ‘sustainable development’ the focus is on ‘development’, while with the term sustainability, the focus is on being sustainable – whether that involves development or not.

What does ‘development’ mean?

• The key question hinges around what ‘development’ means.

• For ‘Our Common Future’ it meant ongoing economic growth.

• Others define ‘development’ differently, e.g. Daly (1991) argues for sustainable development, but only where ‘development’ is qualitative and not quantitative. Daly points out however that ‘sustainable growth’ in population or resource use is indeed an oxymoron.

• However, the dominant meaning is not that of Daly, a ‘developer’ in common parlance clears land and builds things, he doesn’t work on his or her poetry or music.

Is SD a code for sustainable growth?

• Surprisingly, a question rarely asked.

• Giddens (2009) has noted that semantically ‘sustainability’ implies continuity, stability and balance, while ‘development’ implies dynamism and change.

• Gowdy (2014) notes that many well-meaning efforts in sustainability have gone off track ‘by trying to reconcile sustainability with the dominant ideology of growth and accumulation’.

• Elliott (2013) summarises the changing perceptions of ‘development’ over time – all are growth-focused.

Is SD a code for sustainable growth? - 2

• The history and discourse on ‘development’ shows a continuous support for economic growth being the key to development (Wijkman and Rockstrom, 2012)

• ‘Our Common Future’ called for a new era of economic growth’ (5%). Principle 1 of the accompanying Tokyo Declaration was to ‘Revive growth’.

• Rio Declaration Principle 12 stated that ‘States should cooperate to promote … economic growth and sustainable development in all countries’. 20 years later, the ‘Common Vision’ of the Rio+20 summit states: ‘We also reaffirm the need to achieve sustainable development by: promoting sustained, inclusive and equitable economic growth …’ (my italics).

Is SD a code for sustainable growth? - 3

• UNEP’s (2011) ‘Green Economy’ was a ‘new engine of growth’. Similarly, the OECD (2011) ‘Towards Green Growth’ to ‘devise new ways of ensuring that the growth and progress we have come to take for granted are assured’. The much-discussed ‘circular economy’ also sees itself as an engine of growth.

• All these statements by major international organisations on ‘sustainable development’ have helped to embed the idea that sustainable development and economic growth must go together.

Is SD a code for sustainable growth? - 4

• Key textbooks on SD support endless growth.

• Braungart and McDonough (2008) in ‘Cradle to Cradle’ argue for ‘good growth’

• Edwards (2010) argues for ‘thriveability’ but supports a green (but growth) economy

• Khalili (2011) argues for ‘sustained’ economic growth

• Cavagnaro and Curiel (2012) argue for ‘responsible’ economic growth

• Elliott (2013) agues for ‘revitalisation of economic growth’ albeit with ‘greater weight given to environmental concerns’.

Is SD a ‘sleight of hand’?

Several authors (e.g. Bonnett, 1999) argue that the appeal of SD is the idea of sustaining what is valued (nature), while still accommodating human aspirations to develop (grow). • Shiva (1992) suggests that to the Western mind

‘development’ cannot escape market connotations as being seen as economic growth

• Victor (2008) observed that the absence of an unambiguous definition of SD in ‘Our Common Future’ (1987) makes it possible for governments/ business to adopt a goal of SD without compromising their adherence to economic growth

• Rist (1997) argues that trading on the ambiguities of SD has allowed policy-makers to pretend to sustain nature, while focusing on economic growth

• Wijkman and Rockstrom (2012) conclude that ‘green growth’ is a myth that can give false hope and be an excuse, where nothing fundamental changes.

Move focus away from sustainable development

• If you mean growth by the ‘development’ in sustainable development – as most do (e.g. the UN) – then ‘sustainable development’ in that meaning is actually stopping us reaching a sustainable future.

• In a finite world, we need to accept once and for all that sustainability cannot be about further physical growth.

• Hence, SD is NOT the appropriate term to describe the journey to a sustainable future.

• This understanding is essential, though still denied. Indeed, some in academia will disagree violently with this conclusion.

• We must speak of sustainability, rather than

a ‘sustainable development’ that means growth.

• The reason why we have gone backwards and become less sustainable since 1987 is because so many still believe in the ‘magic pudding’ of growth.

• ‘Sustainable growth’ is a con that has been used to justify continuing unsustainable business-as-usual.

• Even UNEP however justifies growth via the magic words ‘100 decoupling’, where growth has no envt. impact. However, there is evidence for relative decoupling but not absolute 100% decoupling (Victor and

Jackson 2015).

Focus on ‘sustainability’

What sustainability cannot be • It cannot be sustainababble , it cannot mean all things to all

people. It cannot remain delightfully vague. • It cannot be a denial of reality, it has to be about ‘realism’. Accept

problems and solve them. Sustainability and denial are mutually exclusive.

• It cannot ignore the ecological limits of the Earth. • Thus it cannot be about endless physical growth on a finite planet.

Any project based on continuing physical growth is a delusion. Our wisdom and ethics can keep growing, but our physical impact cannot.

• Hence, if we mean growth by ‘development’ (and most people do), then sustainability cannot be the same as ‘sustainable development’. Growth is now the cause of unsustainability.

• Sustainability cannot be about a ‘weak sustainability’ that believes we can substitute money for ecosystem services, for this breaks ecological reality. At a minimum it should be about ‘strong sustainability’, which retains functioning ecosystem services.

• Sustainability cannot be ethics-free. It cannot be based on an anthropocentric ‘human supremacy’ approach.

What sustainability should be

• ‘Sustainability’ first and foremost

must be about solving the environmental crisis

• It must be about a realism founded on mainstream environmental science

• It should involve a recognition that our economy is broken, our society is broken, and that the ecosystems that support us are breaking.

• It will involve a change in worldview and ethics

• It will be the ‘Great Work’ (Berry, 1999) of Earth repair, of healing these broken things

A Framework for Solutions • Accept ecological reality and roll back denial.

• Need to change our worldview, ethics and ideologies, abandon the false dream of ‘Mastery of Nature’.

• Scale of problem huge but not hopeless (people need hope).

• Move past growthism to a steady state economy.

• Roll back the deliberately constructed consumer ethic.

• Move to 100% renewables within 2-3 decades (feasible and economic).

• Control population growth through education, family planning and non-coercive, humane strategies.

• Ecologically sustainable biosphere as key focus.

• Creating the political will for change.

• The Great Work (Berry, 1999) of Earth repair.

Solutions exist (but we need to prioritise)

• There are humane non-coercive solutions to over-population (Engelman, 2016)

• There are viable solutions to redesign the consumer culture to become a ‘conserver’ society (Assadourian, 2016)

• The endless growth economy is clearly the cause of unsustainability, we need to move to ecological economics and a steady state economy (e.g. Daly, 1991) where population is stable, resource use is minimal and there is greater equity and equality.

• Many people already espouse an eco-centric worldview and an Earth ethics (e.g. Australian Earth Law

Alliance; Deep Ecology). Build on this speedily.

Magnitude of the task

• Reaching a sustainable future is huge

task, seemingly overwhelming

• If we ‘give up’ then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. We will then fail

• However, there are many things we know we can do, some of them are already happening

• The environmental crisis can be solved. We can still reach an ecologically sustainable future

• We can all do small but meaningful parts of it.

Can we change people?

‘Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.’ Margaret Meade

• Society has not always been like it is today. Once we gave greater respect to nature. We can again.

• People can change.

• There is more altruism and compassion in society than neoclassical economics predicts (Wilkinson and Pickett, 2010)

• Change can in fact happen quickly – such as the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Moving past waffle and denial

• Break the denial dam. Talk about the

reality of the environmental (and social and economic) crisis. Dialogue beats denial

• Then talk about the real and exciting solutions we can all be part of

• Don’t fall for weasel words such as ‘100% decoupling’ or the ‘soft and easy’ approaches

• Realise that change happens by many small positive acts, so network to create these

• Abandon both denial and despair (for you then do nothing). It is never ‘too late’ – all action is useful.

‘Saving our civilisation is not a spectator sport’ Lester Brown (2006)

Just be present, when your worrying about whether you’re hopeful or hopeless or pessimistic or optimistic, who cares? The main thing is that you are showing up, that you’re here, that you’re finding ever more capacity to love this world, because it will not be healed without that. Joanna Macy (2012)