Dynamic Sustainabilities

Technology, Environment, Social Justice

Melissa Leach, Ian Scoones, Andy Stirling

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781136541667
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Sustainable Development
• Index: Economics

Linking environmental sustainability with poverty reduction and social justice, and making science and technology work for the poor, have become central practical, political and moral challenges of our times. These must be met in a world of rapid, interconnected change in environments, societies and economies, and globalised, fragmented governance arrangements. Yet despite growing international attention and investment, policy attempts often fail. Why is this, and what can be done about it? How might we understand and address emergent threats from epidemic disease, or the challenges of water scarcity in dryland India? In the context of climate change, how might seed systems help African farmers meet their needs, and how might appropriate energy strategies be developed?

This book lays out a new 'pathways approach' to address sustainability challenges such as these in today's dynamic world. Through an appreciation of dynamics, complexity, uncertainty, differing narratives and the values-based aims of sustainability, the pathways approach allows us to see how some approaches are dominant, even though they do not produce the desired results, and how to create successful alternative 'pathways' of responding to the challenges we face.

As well as offering new ways of thinking about sustainability, the book also suggests a series of practical ways forward - in tools and methods, forms of political engagement, and styles of knowledge-making and communication. Throughout the book, the practicalities of the pathways approach are illustrated using four case studies: water in dryland India, agricultural seeds in Africa, responses to epidemic disease and energy systems/climate change.

Published in association with the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)

Chapter 1

Sustainability Challenges in a Dynamic World

DOI: 10.4324/9781849775069-1

Today’s world is highly complex and dynamic. Environmental conditions are changing fast as water, land and other ecological systems interact with climate change and new patterns of disease incidence. Developments in science and technology are proceeding faster than ever, with the spread of technologies shaped by new and often highly globalized patterns of investment and information. Social systems are changing rapidly too, linked to population growth, urbanization and market relationships. Such dynamics are, in turn, driven by shifting patterns of mobility – of people, practices, microbes, ideas and technologies – and globalized economic change, as some areas of the world transform, while others remain in deep poverty.

Yet the policies and institutions that have to deal with this new dynamic context are often premised on far more static views of the world. Where the rapidity of change is acknowledged, it is often seen to follow relatively clearly determined, single linear trajectories. Either way, assumptions of stability, equilibrium and predictable, controllable risks dominate. Yet the failures of such approaches to intervention and policy are everywhere to see. Simple blueprints, technological fixes or the transfer of technologies and regulations developed elsewhere frequently fail to work and create further problems. Standard approaches all too often betray their intended beneficiaries. Complex, dynamic contexts often undermine the neat assumptions of imported models. Emerging backlashes – from nature, from social movements, from politics – reveal this widening gap between standard policy approaches and dynamic systems.

Indeed, a major contradiction is emerging in contemporary responses to environment and development challenges. On the one hand, there is now a wide recognition of growing complexity and dynamism – evident across high science, popular media and the experiences of daily life. On the other hand, there appears to be an ever-more urgent search for big, technically driven managerial solutions – whether in the form of ‘magic bullet’ seeds and drugs, continent-wide roll-outs of high-impact solutions or top-down emergency-type responses aimed at shoring up stability and providing security. When such responses falter in the face of local dynamics and uncertainties, the response tends to be to implement with greater force or to blame locals or critics – rather than to question the underlying assumptions. The result can be a perpetuating cycle that narrows options, excludes alternative and dissenting voices, and fails to learn from mistakes and failures. This matters because it ultimately fails to tackle big problems of environment and development that affect us all, while often perpetuating inequalities and injustices.

All this raises some major policy and development challenges. For instance, how are shifting human–animal interactions and food production systems altering the likelihood of new global pandemics? How can the world respond to these interactions in ways that do not constrain poor people’s livelihoods and freedom? What are the challenges of sustainability in rapidly growing Asian cities? As technology and economic growth bring wealth for some, how can the fall-out for those living on the margins – in overcrowding, pollution, ill-health and hazard – be addressed? How are farmers in dry parts of Africa coping with the challenges of climate change and disease? Can the potentials of new agricultural and health biotechnologies be harnessed to help, or will they provoke new uncertainties and missed opportunities to build on farmers’ own adaptations? And how, in a world of rapidly advancing technologies and markets for drugs, seeds, energy and water use, can supply and regulatory arrangements be developed that suit the interests of the poor? How must global models of regulation be rethought to work in dynamic social and political settings? And how can these models respond to poorer and marginalized people’s own perspectives on risk and uncertainty, grounded in their everyday lives and livelihoods?

Today, such questions are becoming ever more pressing. This book offers a way of thinking about these core relationships between ecology, technology, poverty and justice in a world of pervasive and growing inequality. Our starting point is that linking environmental sustainability with poverty reduction and social justice, and making science and technology work for people who are poor have become central practical, political and moral challenges of our times. We argue that meeting these challenges in a dynamic world requires an approach that embraces the dynamic interactions between social, technological and ecological processes; takes seriously the ways that diverse people and groups understand and value these; and acknowledges the role of economic and institutional power in shaping the resulting choices. In short, we need to recognize the essentially plural and political nature of our quest for pathways to sustainability.

Why are Dynamics and Complexity So Important?

In meeting the challenges of sustainability, why is it so critical to take a perspective that treats dynamics and complexity seriously? Newspaper headlines across the world regularly highlight rapid rates of environmental and social change – and their threats and consequences. Even the World Bank acknowledges (Chen and Ravallion, 2008) that one and a half billion people are currently living ‘without sufficient means for human survival’ (Parsons, 2008). As disparities between rich and poor worsen (Worldwatch Institute, 2003), global environments are deteriorating (UNEP,¹ 2007). Carbon emissions are increasing (Met Office, 2009). Climate change is accelerating dangerously (Houghton, 2008). Multiple threats are posed to global food supplies (Beddington, 2009; Watson, 2009); and an array of other vulnerabilities are increasing (UNISDR, 2009).

Such reports and the dramatic statistics they cite can easily give the impression of impending catastrophe and disaster. While not diminishing the existence of serious environment and development problems, however, we argue that responding to these effectively requires a closer look at these dynamic systems and a deeper, more nuanced analytical approach that allows us to respond in effective ways. This requires looking at the interactions of different systems (social, ecological, technological) across multiple scales and as they play out in particular places with particular contexts. It also requires looking from the perspectives of different people with different views of these dynamics and their consequences. In particular this book argues that four major hurdles have to be addressed if more effective approaches to sustainable development are to be realized.

First, dynamics have often been ignored in conventional policy approaches for development and sustainability. Conventional approaches have often been rooted in standard equilibrium thinking, underlain by deeper-rooted notions of a ‘balance’ in nature. This tends to centre analyses – and so recommendations – on what are assumed to be aggregative, equilibrium patterns and on attempts to control variability, rather than adapt and respond to it. Equally, conventional methods often assume that models developed for one setting – usually the more controlled, managed contexts favoured by privileged interests – will work in others. This is so whether the export of models is from the developed to the developing world or from the laboratory or research station to the field. By contrast, this book recognizes the limits to planned intervention and argues for a more located, context-specific approach.

Second, governments and institutions are of course increasingly preoccupied with risk and with the insecurities that real and perceived threats seem to pose. However, as we argue in this book, dominant approaches involve a narrow focus on a particular (highly incomplete) notion of risk. This assumes that complex challenges can be calculated, controlled and managed – excluding other situations where understandings of possible future outcomes are more intractable. Some of these involve uncertainty, where the possible outcomes are known but there is no basis for assigning probabilities, and judgement must prevail. Other situations involve ambiguity, where there is disagreement over the nature of the outcomes, or different groups prioritize concerns that are incommensurable. Finally, some social, technological and ecological dynamics involve ignorance, where we don’t know what we don’t know, and the possibility of surprise is ever-present. Whereas conventional, expert-led approaches to analysis and policy are well-attuned to handling risk, they become highly inadequate in the increasingly common situations in which these other kinds of incomplete knowledge can be recognized to prevail. A wider appreciation of the dimensions of incomplete knowledge, this book argues, is essential if we are to avoid the dangers of creating illusory, control-based approaches to complex and dynamic realities.

Third, underlying such approaches are often wider assumptions about what constitutes the goals of ‘development’ or ‘sustainability’, often assuming a singular path to ‘progress’ and a singular, ‘objective’ view of what the problem might be. Yet of course different people and groups often understand system functions and dynamics in very different ways. They bring diverse kinds of knowledge and experience to bear – combining informal and more experiential ways of knowing with the disciplines and procedures associated with formal science. People also value particular goals and outcomes in very different ways. Rather than singular notions of ‘progress’ in relation to environment, technology or development, we can increasingly recognize situations in which there is a multiplicity of possible goals, which are often contested. Put another way, systems, and their goals and properties, are open to multiple ‘framings’. Here, the concept of framing refers to the particular contextual assumptions, methods, forms of interpretation and values that different groups might bring to a problem, shaping how it is bounded and understood. In many situations, such understandings take the form of diverse narratives or storylines about a given problem: how it has arisen, why it matters and what to do about it. Paying serious attention to multiple, diverse framings and narratives, we argue, brings vital opportunities to advance debates about sustainability and connect them more firmly with questions of social justice.

Fourth, while debates about sustainability have become mainstream over the last two decades, they have also given rise to a great deal of confusion and fuzziness, in which easy rhetorical use masks lack of real change and commitment. In addition, ideas of sustainability have become co-opted into inappropriately managerial and bureaucratic attempts to ‘solve’ problems which are actually far more complex and political. This has led some to suggest abandoning the term ‘sustainability’ altogether. However, in this book we re-cast the notion of sustainability as a more explicitly normative (and so overtly political) concept. Rather than treat sustainability in a general, colloquial sense, implying the maintenance of (unspecified) features of systems over time, we are concerned with its specific normative implications. Thus sustainability refers to explicit qualities of human well-being, social equity and environmental integrity, and the particular system qualities that can sustain these. All these goals of sustainability are context-specific and inevitably contested. This makes it essential to recognize the roles of public deliberation and negotiation – both of the definition of what is to be sustained and of how to get there – in what must be seen as a highly political (rather than technical) process.

These are the reasons why we elaborate in this book an approach both to understanding sustainability and responding to challenges which we term a pathways approach. This addresses these four hurdles, highlighting the importance of ‘dynamics’, ‘incomplete knowledge’, ‘multiple framings’ and ‘normativity’. Our pathways approach is thus explicitly normative, focused on reductions in poverty and social injustice as defined by/for particular people in diverse settings. Particular narratives are produced by particular actors and so co-construct particular pathways of response. Some are dominant; shaped by powerful institutions and substantial financial backing – these are the ‘motorways’ that channel current mainstream environment and development efforts. But these can often obscure and overrun alternatives; the smaller by-ways and bush paths that define and respond to different goals, values and forms of knowledge. This is what we mean by ‘pathways’: alternative possible trajectories for knowledge, intervention and change which prioritize different goals, values and functions. These pathways may in turn envisage different strategies to deal with dynamics – to control or respond to shocks or stresses. And they envisage different ways of dealing with incomplete knowledge, highlighting and responding to the different aspects of risk, uncertainty, ambiguity and ignorance in radically different ways.

We argue in this book that there is a pervasive tendency – supported by professional, institutional and political pressures – for powerful actors and institutions to ‘close down’ around particular framings, committing to particular pathways that emphasize maintaining stability and control. In so doing, these often create universalizing and generalizing approaches. These can in turn obscure or deny the reality of alternatives. Yet addressing the full implications of dynamics and incomplete knowledge requires, we argue, ‘opening up’ to methods and practices that involve flexibility, diversity, adaptation, learning and reflexivity, and an alternative politics of sustainability that highlights and supports alternative pathways.

Some Examples

So how might such an approach respond to some of the major environment and development challenges of our times? In this section we introduce a series of examples, drawn from a range of research from the STEPS Centre and beyond, which we return to throughout the book. These include a focus on water in dryland India, seeds in Africa, policymaking on epidemic disease and energy systems as responses to climate change. Across the book, these cases illustrate both the contradictions between dominant approaches and dynamic realities and how a pathways approach helps to pose questions, unpack problems and identify alternative ways forward.

Water in Dryland India²

Solutions to the problems of drought, climate change and agricultural development in dryland India often rest on two competing narratives about water. Perhaps the longest running and most heavily backed narrative, politically and financially, is centred on aggregated notions of water scarcity which need to be addressed through large-scale technical and infrastructural solutions, such as large dams, river diversions and massive irrigation schemes. This is often set in the context of an impending water crisis, where violence and conflict might be the result unless urgent action is taken at scale. A competing narrative contests this vision and focuses instead on small-scale, often community-based solutions responding to a similar scarcity and water crisis narrative. Yet both of these offer planning-based technological solutions which assume that the need is to fill a scarcity gap. Yet, for example, farmers in the dry zones of Kutch in Gujarat, India, approach the issue of water scarcity in a different way. There are multiple scarcities – it depends on the place, the time and the purpose to which the water is being used. Water carries multiple meanings, with cultural values and symbolic importance interplaying with people’s material needs. There is huge uncertainty and a number of ways of responding to the situation, some of which involve living with and responding to uncertainty in a more flexible way, adjusting cropping, livestock-grazing and domestic practices accordingly. There is thus not one solution, but many. And the issue is not so much one about absolute amounts of water, but its distribution. Who gets access, and when? Here, as well as for the small-scale irrigation tanks of southern India (Mosse, 2003), the dynamics of gender, caste and power – often deeply embedded in history and cultural context – shape patterns and inequalities in resource use in ways that confound comfortable assumptions that small-scale, community-based approaches will be sustainable, equitable or both. Hydrological solutions, at whatever scale, often fail to respond to inherent uncertainties and are not geared up to cope with surprises. Given the unfolding dynamics of climate change in dryland areas across the world, how might diverse pathways be built that respond to cross-scale water dynamics in ways that meet the needs and values of currently marginalized groups?

Seeds in Africa³

Debates about the global food crisis have re-energized green revolution narratives which were present in the 1960s and 1970s, which see technology-driven solutions as the core to any response. Thus investments in new seeds, genetic modification and breeding programmes, and associated packages of inputs (fertilizers etc) are seen by some advocates as the solution to Africa’s food production problems and hunger more generally. Yet this supply-led, technology-push narrative is challenged by others. They argue that the challenge of hunger is less a question of production than of distribution and entitlement to food and that processes of market failure, social and power relations and the politics of access to resources influence who goes hungry. Others agree that production remains a challenge, but question both the appropriateness and efficacy of so-called modern seed technologies and systems. Instead, alternative technology pathways are suggested based on low external inputs, which are argued to be more ecologically and socially appropriate in the complex, diverse and uncertain settings in which farming happens. Another narrative focuses less on the technological end-products and more on the processes through which innovation occurs and who...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures, Tables and Boxes
• Preface and Acknowledgements
• List of Acronyms and Abbreviations
• Glossary
• 1. Sustainability Challenges in a Dynamic World
• 2. Dynamic Systems: Environment and Development Challenges
• 3. Pathways to Sustainability: Responding to Dynamic Contexts
• 4. Governance in a Dynamic World
• 5. Opening Up, Broadening Out: Empowering Designs for Sustainability
• 6. An Alternative Politics for Sustainability
• 7. Towards Pathways to Sustainability
• References
• Index