Demystifying Sustainability

Towards Real Solutions

Haydn Washington

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317606680
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Sustainable Development
• Index: Economics

What is sustainability? Much has been said about the terms 'sustainability' and 'sustainable development' over the last few decades, but they have become buried under academic jargon. This book is one of the first that aims to demystify sustainability so that the layperson can understand the key issues, questions and values involved.

Accessible and engaging, the book examines the 'old' sustainability of the past and looks to the future, considering how economic, ecological and social sustainability should be defined if we are to solve the entwined environmental, economic and social crises. It considers if meaningful sustainability is the same as a 'sustainable development' based on endless growth, examining the difficult but central issues of overpopulation and overconsumption that drive un sustainability. The book also explores the central role played by society's worldview and ethics, along with humanity's most dangerous characteristic – denial. Finally, it looks to the future, discussing the 'appropriate' technology needed for sustainability, and suggesting nine key solutions.

This book provides a much-needed comprehensive discussion of what sustainability means for students, policy makers and all those interested in a sustainable future.

1

THE ‘OLD’ SUSTAINABILITY

A story of listening and harmony

It tells me
That actually to care
To listen,
To love the land
To revere harmony
Always was, always will be
In the vast scheme of things
So ethically and spiritually …
Sane.

(From ‘Madness’, Haydn Washington 2013)

‘Sustainability’ did not spring forth new-born in 1987 in the report ‘Our Common Future’ (WCED 1987). What we mean by sustainability today draws on a long history of people thinking (and feeling) about living in harmony and balance with Nature, and recording this story as lore or ‘law’ (Knudtson and Suzuki 1992). However, one could be excused for thinking this is not the case, as almost every book and article on sustainability starts with ‘Our Common Future’ in 1987 (WCED 1987), or possibly with Rachel Carson’s seminal book ‘Silent Spring’ in 1962. Indeed there is a curious blindness in academia as to the underpinnings that form the foundation for the common parlance of ‘sustainability’. Many books will not mention it, while others will touch on it briefly in passing (Edwards 2005). The philosophical, ethical and historical roots that support ideas of harmony and sustainability are not immediately obvious. They are worthy of explanation and acknowledgment and hence form the first chapter of this book. This history, I believe, is essential to understanding the thinking and the thrust of concern within society as to ‘why’ we want and need to be sustainable, as to why we should bother to care.

The new terms ‘sustainability’ or ‘sustainable development’ are after all quite prosaic and dry-as-dust. In themselves they are not inspiring, they don’t engage people’s creativity and imagination. And they don’t in fact explain the deep ethical and spiritual concerns that have driven people for thousands of years to speak of how we should ‘live in harmony’ with Nature. ‘Harmony’ and ‘balance’ are essential words here, ones we don’t use much regarding sustainability today. They have fallen out of favour with science in academia, in part because they are deemed ‘unscientific’, and partly (as we shall see in Chapter 5) because ‘balance’ is criticised by some ecological theorists. The old ‘sustainability’ is in fact a lot broader than the new sustainability, so broad that many would argue it is not ‘sustainability’ but something else, either philosophy or environmental ethics. Perhaps it may even be described disparagingly as ‘tree-hugging’. However, I believe the old sustainability is actually critical to understanding why people argue for and believe in sustainability. It is especially important to help us demystify the term, to help us think about what sustainability ‘should be’, if we are to be successful and turn our environmental problems around so as to reach a sustainable future. The old sustainability underpins the need to discuss ‘worldview’ and ethics when one talks about ‘sustainability’. How do we see our relationship to Nature, are we part of it or are we its masters? How do we deal ethically with Nature? Does it have ‘rights’, and do we have a responsibility to respect and care for it. These are considered in detail in Chapter 8.

I come to the understanding of the ‘old’ sustainability as both an environmental scientist and a long-time conservationist (and bushwalker) working on wilderness issues in Australia. I did my PhD ‘The Wilderness Knot’ (Washington 2006) on the confusion and tangled meanings around the term ‘wilderness’ (see Wilderness Truths website, online, available at: w­w­w­.­w­i­l­d­e­r­n­e­s­s­t­r­u­t­h­s­.­c­o­m). So I have read widely the works of those who loved the land and argued for its protection, for its long-term sustainability in the sense that it would still be natural in the future. A number of scholars report that ‘conservation’ is seen as being separate from environmentalism (e.g. Harding et al. 2009), the latter of which is deemed to be focused more on pollution and biodiversity loss. That is why some argue that environmentalism started in 1962 with the publication of ‘Silent Spring’, which dealt with pesticide pollution. Perhaps conservation and environmentalism do have a different focus (Foreman 2012), but that doesn’t mean that conservation has not had a huge influence on our interest about ‘sustainability’. Yet this distinction is in many ways artificial, first because large natural areas (aka ‘wilderness’ as defined by IUCN 2008) are necessary to clean up pollution and maintain ecosystems, ecosystem services and biodiversity (Mackey et al. 1998). The supposed separation is a false distinction, since sustainability as a concept is built on the foundation of how people relate to Nature, and that has been influenced strongly by writers and conservationists around the world for hundreds (indeed thousands) of years. To understand sustainability we need to look at the history of human interaction with the land, and the ideas and ideologies that affect this. People’s desire to protect Nature (conservation) is thus central to understanding ‘sustainability’.

The broadness in the old meaning of sustainability is about how we as a society continue to live in balance and harmony with Nature into the future, so that both continue to exist as dynamic, creative entities. I should explain up front that ‘balance’ as a term is open to co-option, just as ‘sustainability’ has been. Many developers argue for ‘balance’ each time a development proposal comes forward. In their PR spin, Nature (which provides essential ecosystem services for our society) has ‘too much land and resources’ and the supposed ‘balance’ is to give more to society (read developers) for their particular project. This fundamentally misunderstands how ecosystems work and that ecosystem services and processes underpin our society (see Chapter 5). Such a twisted idea of ‘balance’ has led to the ongoing cumulative impact or ‘death by a thousand cuts’ that increasingly whittles down ecosystems to the point of collapse. The ‘balance’ that past and present indigenous cultures understood was an acknowledgment that humans should not take too much, that they must work with the natural world in harmony (e.g. Neidjie et al. 1985). As we shall see, such a balance in the past was based on respect. This was a ‘sacred balance’ (Suzuki and McConnell 1999).

The idea of humans living in harmony and balance with Nature is not something ‘new’ that we have just ‘discovered’, this is something humanity (or at least its thinkers and ‘feelers’) has always pondered. In fact, this is the ‘Wisdom of the Elders’ that goes back to pre-history (Knudtson and Suzuki 1992). We have an environmental crisis precisely because we (as a society) have forgotten the old sustainability and the teachings and wisdom of millennia. The old sustainability speaks of terms such as: harmony, balance, reverence, sacredness, spirituality, respect, care, witness, responsibility, custodianship, stewardship, beauty and even love. These terms rarely appear in the new and sanitised ‘sustainable development’. In fact some have labelled this as ‘neo-environmentalism’, the situation where people have moved to speak only of ‘carbon footprints’, ‘natural resources’ or ‘energy audits’ and cease to speak about caring for the land (Kingsnorth 2013). That is a great pity to my mind.

The old sustainability may still grant us an inkling about how humanity, especially modern society, can live in harmony with Nature in the long-term. If we reconnect with the old sustainability again, then arguably this might have value in judging between the many conflicting views regarding ‘sustainability’ we are deluged with today.

A history of caring

The old sustainability considers things such as: harmony, beauty, responsibility, guardianship, custodianship, co-existence, values, humility, ethics and worldviews. In this sense ‘sustainability’ has been passed down in oral traditions (e.g. Neidjie et al. 1985) and is seen in the writings where people recorded their thoughts and feelings. This idea of harmony and respectful co-existence with (and reverence for) Nature has been around probably for as long as humans have existed. We see signs of such reverence even in the waterfall ceremonies of chimpanzees (Goodall 2013). It can be seen in the idea of the Magna Mater, the ‘Great Mother’, that can be seen in the incredible beauty and loving artistic expression present in pre-historic art (Oelschlaeger 1991). Indeed, some anthropologists describe this ancient human worldview as Homo spiritualis, that humanity was centrally focused on its spiritual relationship with Nature (Herzog 2010). Of course today it could be said we are Homo economicus (Daly and Cobb 1994, p. 89), but it is worth understanding we were not always so, and to consider whether we need to remain so.

The old sustainability can be seen in the lore and ‘law’ of traditional cultures, in the ‘Wisdom of the Elders’ (Knudtson and Suzuki 1992). It can be seen in the surviving stories and poetry of many cultures (Washington 2002). This respect and reverence for Nature is thus a continuing well-spring within our cultures that has underpinned the idea of ‘sustainability’ that has re-emerged in recent decades. It is thus important we understand the roots of the term, that ‘sustainability’ gives expression to a feeling that most human cultures have espoused: humanity must live in harmony with Nature. This feeling of being part of Nature, of believing Nature is sacred, of a feeling that we must maintain the harmony of the Universe, has emerged again and again in cultures across the world (O’Hanlon 2012). I examine below a few of these records that relate to harmony with Nature, and thus underlie the idea of ‘sustainability’.

A Guatemalan ‘Maya’ prayer to the guardian of the forest, Pokohil expresses a joyous gratitude towards Nature, and the sense of only taking what you need (Knudtson and Suzuki 1992):

O Pokohil, today you have shown favour,
And have given some of your beasts, some of your deer.
Thank you Pokohil
See, I bring you flowers for your deer.
Perhaps you have counted them.
Two of them are missing;
They are the ones the Old One (the hunter) caught,
You gave them to him.

The eleventh-century Chang Tsai placed this inscription on the west wall of his office (so it would always be before him) (Berry 1988):

Heaven is my father
and earth is my mother,
and even such a small creature as I
finds an intimate place in its midst.
That which extends throughout the universe,
I regard as my body
And that which directs the universe
I regard as my nature.
All people are my brothers and sisters
And all things are my companions.

The Great Law of the North-American Hodenosaunee people (Josephy Jr 1995) says:

Whenever the statesmen of the League shall assemble they shall offer thanks to the earth where men dwell, to the streams of water, the pools and the lakes, to the maize and the fruits, to the medicinal herbs and trees, to the forest trees for their usefulness, and to the animals that give their pelts for clothing.

Black Elk of the Sioux evoked the unity of life (Knudtson and Suzuki 1992):

It is the story of all life that is holy and is good to tell, and of us two-leggeds sharing in it with the four-leggeds and the wings of the air and all green things; for these are children of one mother and their father is one spirit.

Luther Standing Bear (1928) of the Dakota spoke of when a young Dakota man went off on a vision quest. During such a quest one spends several days naked and fasting in the mountains. In a prayer to the Universe, the Dakota asked:

O Wakan-Tanka, grant that this young man...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: sustainability – seeking clarity in the mist
• 1 The ‘old’ sustainability: a story of listening and harmony
• 2 The 1960s to the present: key conferences and statements
• 3 Rise of the ‘new’ sustainability – the weak and the strong
• 4 Economic sustainability: coming to grips with endless growth
• 5 Ecological Sustainability – Essential but Overlooked
• 6 Social Sustainability – Utopian Dream or Practical Path to Change?
• 7 Overpopulation and Overconsumption
• 8 Worldview and Ethics in ‘Sustainability’
• 9 An Unsustainable Denial
• 10 Appropriate Technology for Sustainability
• 11 Solutions for Sustainability
• Index