Sustainability and the Art of Long-Term Thinking

Bernd Klauer, Reiner Manstetten, Thomas Petersen, Johannes Schiller

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781134986255
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economía
• Subtopic: Desarrollo sostenible

Dealing with time is intimately linked to sustainability, because sustainability, at its core, involves long-term ethical claims. To live up to them, decision and policy-making has to consider long-term development of society, economy, and nature. However, dealing with time and such long-term development is a notoriously difficult subject, both in science and, in particular, in practical decision and policy making.

Rooted in philosophical and scientific reasoning, this book explores how the concept of time can be incorporated into effective practical action. The book describes a system and uses case studies to help sustainability practitioners and researchers consider the long-term consequences of our actions in a methodical way. The system integrates scientific and practical knowledge about time and temporal developments to help break down the sometimes overwhelming complexity of sustainability issues.

Combining theoretical conceptual thinking and practical applications, this book will be of great interest to students and researchers of sustainability science, environmental sciences, sustainable development, environmental economics, political sciences and practical philosophy.

Part I

Sustainability and time

1 Different approaches to sustainability policy

1.1 Time

How can we slow down global warming and how can people adapt to a changed climate? How can we ensure that everyone has access to enough clean drinking water and adequate food every day? How can we deal appropriately with an expanding world population on the one hand and with ageing populations in many industrialised societies on the other? How can global change be shaped and influenced? How can energy supplies be secured over the long term? What should be done to prevent the decline in biological diversity? How can the growth of megacities be kept within reasonable bounds? How can we preserve the beauty of our countryside landscapes? What can we ourselves do to solve these problems, and what is the role of policy makers? How can we create a decent and liveable future for our children? We might sum up these and many other questions by asking: what must we do to achieve sustainable development?

Sustainability has become a widely recognised normative model in which our concerns about the future find expression. While the current focus of the sustainability debate is on environmental and resource-related problems, issues of inter-and intragenerational justice are also being raised, doubts are surfacing about what technological progress can really achieve, and there is a debate about changes in environmental awareness and consumer behaviour. However, our impression is that one particularly crucial aspect is not being adequately addressed in the sustainability debate, and that is the dimension of time. This may seem paradoxical given that, after all, sustainability is about the rights of future generations and therefore about the future. Surely it is precisely this long-term perspective – the dimension of time – that sets sustainability policy apart from any other kind of policy. So what do we mean when we say that time is not being adequately addressed in the debate about sustainability?

Time is a word with several meanings. When we say that time is not given the attention it deserves in the sustainability debate we are not talking initially about the kind of time you can read on a clock or a calendar. Instead we are interested in two other meanings of time.

First, time can be talked about in terms of the time inherent to things. If we want to ask whether or not a specific type of development is sustainable or what sustainable development might mean in concrete terms, we need to look at the entire span of time over which certain things exist – things such as resources, contaminants, infrastructures, manufactured goods, landscapes, animal populations, laws, regulations and consumer habits, as well as other things that persist through time. Although these things are constantly changing as a result of circumstances either internal or external to them, they also display a certain inertia or persistence that becomes especially apparent when we wish to change something. A spent open pit lignite mine, for example, remains a huge hole in the landscape that can only gradually be filled with water, disused refrigerators are piled on refuse tips and rot down only slowly, and life without a car is inconceivable for many people who live in rural areas because mobility is an integral part of the way they imagine their life to be. Slow-moving processes of this kind are all too lightly glossed over in academic studies and policy discussions alike. Yet when it comes to dealing with global developments and the long-term well-being of humanity or when creeping changes to the environment threaten the very basis of survival for humans and animals, an analysis of slow-moving, persistent things and their ‘inherent dynamic’ may be the key to understanding what is going on. If the aim is to intervene and to steer change in a new direction, it is necessary to be aware of the inertia, persistence, durability and dynamics of things and to take them into account when conducting that intervention.

The other important meaning of time in the context of the sustainability debate can be described as the time for action. If we seek to change things, situations and structures in order to bring about lasting positive developments, it is necessary to identify the right moment – or, in current usage, to recognise a ‘window of opportunity’ and to make the most of it while it is still open. Taking action before the window opens means acting overhastily; acting after the window has closed means missing an opportunity.

It is probably not necessary to explain why time in both these senses is important for any sustainability policy. Nonetheless, time – especially if we are talking about more than just a chronological series of events – has proved to be difficult to handle when formulating theory. Time in the first sense of the ‘time inherent to things’ is indeed the object of study in various respects in the natural and social sciences and in cultural studies, depending on the research topic concerned, and yet the way each discipline approaches phenomena of persistence and dynamics varies greatly.

Academic advisers on sustainability policy and public policy makers alike need to consider the interplay among a range of factors – not just ecological but also economic, social and cultural; they are often at a loss when faced with research results from specific disciplines. Studies conducted by soil researchers, toxicologists, water researchers, ecologists, economists and sociologists are often so diverse in terms of their methodological approaches and the language they use that it is almost impossible to get an overall picture of the situation and of the dynamics of the things under consideration from the host of detailed information provided. There is no language available to express all the knowledge in the same terms and there is no way of establishing an overall view of it. Yet without a clear picture of the situation – its constraints and its possibilities – we know neither where we stand nor what we ought to do. In our view, the fact that there is no language (much less a method) for comprehending the time of things as a whole – beyond the separate disciplinary perspectives – is a major reason for the lack of clarity that threatens to obstruct policy action on sustainability.

By contrast, time in the second sense of ‘time for action’ is generally not regarded as a subject for theoretical debate at all; instead it is seen as a matter of the experience, intuition, gut feeling or instinct for power possessed by particularly gifted politicians. This means that something which is – literally – decisive for the success of any sustainability policy, namely, being able to do the right thing at the right moment in time, seems to be something irrational, something that exists not only outside the realm of scholarly theorising but is not even amenable to discourse or even to the careful weighing of lucid arguments. Because this is perceived to be the case, the notion of time for action does not command scholarly attention. We think this is a mistake, and it is one we seek to help rectify. As we will show, even if the time for action is not a discrete object of study in the individual disciplines, there are nonetheless ways of thinking rationally about this sense of time and of saying something meaningful about how it relates to sustainability policy.

In our view, sustainability policy all too often fails because politicians and their academic advisers have either not adequately understood the nature of time in relation to the things (including structures) to which their policies apply (one example of this is land use, which we examine in Chapter 10) or else they fail to recognise the time for action, missing the opportunity to act at the right moment or acting too quickly. Above all, there continues to be a lack of understanding regarding the interplay between the two senses of time¹. However, if we attempt to grasp this interplay, then those who are able to perceive them will find that occasionally, ‘in the course of things’, certain windows of opportunity will present themselves for appropriate action. In fact, it even becomes possible to look for – or actively bring about – such windows of opportunity.

Our concern here is to develop a set of concepts and methods that facilitate an understanding of the phenomena of time – in both its senses and in their mutual interplay – in sustainability policy. Using terms such as persistence (Beständigkeit), stock (Bestand), the inherent dynamic (Eigendynamik) of things and the judgement (Urteilskraft) possessed by policy makers and advisers, we seek to render time comprehensible in terms of the ways its different aspects fit together.

1.2 Academia and sustainability policy

The terms mentioned above are set to play a key role as the contents of this book unfold; some brief introductory comments on them form part of this introductory chapter (Sections 1.3–1.5). First, though, we wish to mention one general concern embodied in this work. Our discussion of the topic of time in this book is not a matter of ‘theory for theory’s sake’. Instead – all discussion of fundamentals notwithstanding – it is always conducted with a view to practical utility. In other words, all of us who have contributed to this book are keen to contribute towards the success of sustainability policy. To this end, we begin by elucidating the demands made on politicians dealing with sustainability before drawing conclusions from this regarding the underlying knowledge base and finally turning to the relationship between knowledge, or academia, and politics.

1.2.1 Demands made on politicians

The questions posed at the start of this introductory chapter about what needs to be done to achieve sustainable development in various situations contain challenges for society and for public policy in particular. Compared with a more traditional understanding of politics, the responsibility borne by policy makers facing sustainability issues is very much greater (Jonas 1984): their focus is no longer just regional or national but increasingly global as well, and it extends not only to the near future but to predicted medium - and long-term ecological and social processes and events².

In very general terms, good public policy requires a normative orientation, adequate information and the capacity to act. In other words, its objectives need to be reasonable (in the sense of achievable), existing circumstances and options for action need to be clear, and the relevant actors need to be in a position to carry out what they have identified to be the correct course of action. In the case of policies aimed at achieving sustainable development, these requirements are usually very hard to fulfil – indeed, they can often seem to be simply too much to handle. Normative issues need to be considered in relation to various ecological and socio-economic concerns whose relative merits are extremely difficult to calibrate. Information comes from different sources that do not communicate with one another; it comes with a considerable degree of uncertainty attached and is often heterogeneous or even contradictory so that its cumulative effect is one of numbing complexity. And since politics as a whole consists of many poorly coordinated regulatory systems, official bodies and individuals at different hierarchical levels whose efforts often have to be coordinated across country borders, the capacity of politicians to act on issues of sustainability is similarly constrained by all kinds of obstacles.

Some of these demands and stresses affect policy makers in particular, while others have an impact on all of a country’s citizens. As far as the information base is concerned, it is not only practitioners’ experiential knowledge that is required (and this should not be underestimated), but especially knowledge gained from academic or specifically scientific research.

1.2.2 Gaps in the knowledge base for sustainability policy

As scholars working on environmental and sustainability research we – the authors of this book – are keen to ensure that our understandings contribute towards successful sustainability policy. To this end, indeed, some of us are directly involved in policy advice processes. When we recall the many small and large research or consultancy projects and the national or international research programmes and funding calls with which we have been associated in some way or another in the course of our work and which claimed to be problem-based and relevant to practical concerns, we often ask ourselves: does the research community provide adequate support to politicians who seek to do justice to the challenges arising from the goal of sustainable development? Does it contribute all it is capable of contributing towards sustainability policy? Where are the gaps? What could it do better?

The various academic disciplines have certainly contributed a great deal towards sustainability policy: the array of knowledge that has been generated over the last few decades on issues relevant to sustainability in nature and society is impressive. It is true enough that there is uncertainty and considerable ignorance in almost all relevant areas, but the current generation cannot justify inaction on setting a policy direction or implementing measures by saying we do not yet know enough to do so. Uncertainty and lack of knowledge will never disappear completely, but even so in most cases we already possess enough knowledge to act – even if it would o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Preface
• Foreword – Malte Faber
• PART I: Sustainability and time
• PART II: The conceptual framework of stocks
• PART III: Applying the stocks framework
• PART IV: The art of long-term thinking
• Bibliography
• Index
• Persons index