Introduction+to+Sustainable+Development

8/13/2019 Introduction+to+Sustainable+Development

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INTRODUCTION TO SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENTBy Jim Blackburn

Copyright August 2012

Sustainable development is a concept about the future of humans, humansettlement patterns and the Earth. It requires a fusion of social, economic and

ecological issues into a composite approach to addressing problems that are

beyond past human experiences. As a global society, we who live in the 21st

century are pioneers of a new and different typewe are full world pioneers.

The concept of empty world and full world thinking was articulated by the

economist Herman Daly, and it provides an excellent way of considering a wide

range of problems we are facing today. The empty world was a world that was

relatively empty of humans and human impacts and the full world is the

opposite. Today, we are living in a world that is full of humans and growing

moreso every day, yet much of our thinking and many of our social traditions

originate from the empty world.

In many respects, our norms and traditions are a map to a place that no longer

exists. We find ourselves today in Chicago with a map to Detroit. No matter how

hard we try, the map does not work.


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http://sites.duke.edu/biology217_01_s2011_mkg14/achieving-sustainable-

development/achieving-a-sustainable-lifestyle/

A key issue in understanding our dilemma today is that we have no clear means to

understand how many people we can support and at what style of living. Aspopulation grows, the ability of each of us to consume is diminished unless

technology develops new and different innovations than we have seen in the past.

The basic concern is that there is a carrying capacity of the Earth and that we are

growing and consuming at a rate that is exceeding the ability of the Earth to

support us at the style to which the currently developed world is accustomed.

http://8020vision.com/2010/06/21/the-real-population-problem/

Sustainable development was a concept created to respond to these challenges andarises out of a series of disasters and certain trends and patterns that first became

obvious in the 1980s. Major disasters struck with the drought and desertification

in the Sahel in northern Africa, the Chernobyl nuclear explosion in the Ukraine as

well as continuing deforestation in the Amazon and other tropical rain forests.

Global population was rapidly expanding, yet many of the people of the world
http://sites.duke.edu/biology217_01_s2011_mkg14/achieving-sustainable-development/achieving-a-sustainable-lifestyle/http://sites.duke.edu/biology217_01_s2011_mkg14/achieving-sustainable-development/achieving-a-sustainable-lifestyle/http://8020vision.com/2010/06/21/the-real-population-problem/http://8020vision.com/2010/06/21/the-real-population-problem/http://sites.duke.edu/biology217_01_s2011_mkg14/achieving-sustainable-development/achieving-a-sustainable-lifestyle/http://sites.duke.edu/biology217_01_s2011_mkg14/achieving-sustainable-development/achieving-a-sustainable-lifestyle/


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were unable to meet basic needs of food, water and housing. At the same time, the

rate of loss of biological diversity was increasing at rates exponentially higher than

previously observed, and the scientific community discovered that human activities

were altering the Earths atmosphere, first with the hole in the Antarctic ozone

layer and then with the detection and documentation of global climate change.

These issues and more were set out in Our Common Future, the report of the

World Commission on Environment and Development that was published in 1987.

Also known as the Brundtland report after Gro Harlem Brundtland, the chairman

of the committee, this report envisioned sustainable development as a response to

these multiple challenges facing the world community. This concept of sustainable

development was adopted by all nations of the world through the signing of the

Rio Principles at the World Conference on Environment and Development in Rio

de Janeiro in 1992.

Since 1992, sustainable development has been a concept of great interest and

importance throughout the world. Many nations have implemented the concept

into their national planning. The United Nations has a directorate devoted to

sustainable development. Many corporate web sites devote substantial attention to

sustainability, and many cities have embraced the concept. We now have building

and landscape standards for sustainable projects and certifications. In many

respects, the world has been changed by the concept.

On the other hand, the world has not begun to change to the extent that it will in

the future. To achieve sustainability requires the dedication of time, energy and

budget in schools, corporations, governments and institutions of all types, and

these changes will happen. The key question iswill it happen soon enough to

address the major challenges facing the Earthsoon enough to prevent irreparable

harm to the atmosphere, to social structures and to the global economy?

Sustainable development has many dimensions. If one agrees with the view that

our institutional structures, our intellectual framework and our basic beliefs were

established during an empty world and that we are now in a very different place

in space and time, then the challenges and opportunities for change are unbounded.

We have not begun to explore and understand the width and breadth of this issue.


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It is the challenge and opportunity of the next several decades. And we are only

just beginning this journey.

What is Sustainable Development?

Sustainable development means to maintain humans and human settlements into

the future in a manner that does not destroy our natural system in the process. It is

about human health and safety. It is about the manner that we build things. It is

about maintenance of social order. It is about realizing that the Earth is a planet,

uniquely adapted to give rise to life of all types, and that if we want to continue on

this planet, we need to find a way to preserve our home as well as ourselves.

Without a healthy home, we cannot meet our basic needs.

In the Brundtland Report, sustainable development was defined as:

Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the

ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

This definition is accepted around the world and is a great starting place for

discussion and action. It sets out that basic needs must be met today and in the

future. This definition integrates the concept of equity into sustainabilityequity

for today and equity toward future generations. Without doubt, the equity focus of

sustainability is controversial and many proponents of sustainability shy from this

issue, yet it is very important. If people do not have adequate food, water and

shelter, basic needs will not be met. At the least, we must address these issues of

needs, for if needs are not met, people will do what they feel necessary to provide

for their needs.

Implicit in the Brundtland report definition is the protection of the Earth, leading to

an expanded definition of sustainable development as:

Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the

ability of future generations to meet their own needs while observing the

ecological limits of the Earth.

This definition adds a further controversial concept, the idea that there are limits to

the ability of Earth to adsorb impacts. Limits were not a part of empty world


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thinking. We had not progressed to the point where human activities threatened

the very stability of the planet. We have now, yet our mores, standards and

intellectual concepts seldom incorporate the real challenge of limits.

At its simplest, sustainable development is about understanding the impacts ofhuman activities and modifying these activities to minimize if not eliminate

impacts. It is about reducing the footprint of human activities and designing future

activities with the goal of minimizing that footprint. It is about understanding how

human activities transform the natural system and designing to minimize these

transformations. And it is about understanding how our actions affect other

humans and attempting to minimize those impacts.

In sustainability thinking, there is an unstated implication that we shouldfor

some reasoncare about our impacts to the Earth and to others. As we progressdeeper into sustainability, we must and will adopt a system of ethics to guide

behavior in a full worldethics that may differ from those of an empty world,

ethics that may lead to development of new spiritual outlets and connections, for

our religious mores are certainly founded in the empty world.

Key Concepts In Sustainability

Several ideas are central to sustainability. First, sustainability requires the

integration of economic, ecologic and social information. These topics are thecornerstones of sustainabilitywe need to protect the social structure, we need to

provide ourselves with goods and services and we need to protect the natural

system if we humans are to have a sustainable human web of life into the future.

Secondly, information is a key to sustainable development and the integration of

these three topicsinformation about our Earth, information about our social and

economic structures, information about how we impact social and natural

structures, information about alternative ways of doing things. Third,

sustainability is about change. We need to be open to changeto doing thingsdifferentlyand this may be the hardest of all issues. To paraphrase Einstein, we

cannot solve these problems by thinking the way we were thinking when we

created them. We must be open to new ways of thinking, to challenging the old

ways, the empty world ways, and be creative and imaginative in developing


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rules for living in the full world. That is the excitement and the challenge of

sustainability.

Why Sustainable Development?

As mentioned above, sustainable development was articulated at the end of

the 1980s when a number of very disturbing global trends first emerged. Today (in

2013), we are beginning to see the impacts of our failures to address many of these

emerging issues. Global climate change is happening. It is a scientific fact that our

climate is changing, that the atmosphere is getting warmer, that rainfall patterns are

changing and that sea level is rising. Here, there are two levels of issues. First,

actions must be taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But even with those

actions, climate change will continue, and we must design today to live with these

changes which will be pervasive.

Climate change will have impacts in many disparate areas. As shown in the

diagram below, climate change has impact on many different subject matters.

These issues in turn have impacts on many other issues. For example, climate

change leading to desertification or changed rainfall patterns can have a major

effect on farm production. A major reduction in farm production can have a

serious impact on the ability of a region or even a country to meet their basic

needs. Similarly, water supplies will be substantially and severely impacted by

climate change. Reservoirs may dry up. Groundwater recharge will be altered.

Surface water supplies will dwindle, thereby affecting the ability to provide water

for basic needs as well as for irrigated agriculture which again affects food supply.

And of course a rising sea level will cause those of us living in very low areas to

evacuate to higher ground. At the least, such change will lead to regional

relocations of population and development. At worst, conflicts could result over

the absence of land suitable for resettlement.


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Climate

Change


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It is overly simplistic to suggest that addressing climate change is the key

action needed to achieve sustainability, yet it is impossible to foresee a sustainable

human system on Earth if climate change is not addressed. Undoubtedly, there areregions that will have problems meeting basic needs for food and water without

taking into account climate change, but climate change will worsen that problem.

There are major issues about resource availability and loss of biological diversity

without consideration of climate change, but climate change will worsen that issue.

And there are sustainability issues that appear independent of climate change -

issues about the failure of our economic system to accurately capture the full costs

of goods and services that we exchange, making our transactions improperly priced

- issues about the structure of corporations and the security of our highly leveraged

and interconnected global economy. There is much work to be done independent

of climate change, but all work on sustainability must include climate

considerations. Without such action, we will not succeed.

Combining Ecology, Economics and Social Considerations

It has been readily accepted that sustainable development requires the integration

of social, economic and ecological considerations. Some have described

sustainability as a three legged stool, with each of these subjects being a leg of the

stool. Others prefer a triangle with these three topics at the corners. Or perhaps a

Venn diagram or a pyramid. Each of these approaches attempts to tie these three

concepts together, but we know very little about how to actually combine these

three concepts because our understanding of these concepts was developed in the

empty world independent from one another. Each is their own academic

discipline. Each is housed in their own tower - apart rather than integrated.


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My personal favorite is the triangle with interpretive comments between the

corners. For example, consider the diagram below. Between social and economic

lies meeting basic needs. Between economic and ecologic lies eco-efficiency.

And between ecologic and social lies resilience. These terms are useful in better

understanding the interface between the various subjects, and offer a way ofbreaking down issues a bit more specifically than the generic categories.

Each of these six sub-categories should be defined. The following is a suggested

definition for these various sub-categories as developed by the students in the

CEVE 325/SOSC 325 from the Spring, 2009:

Meeting Basic Needs: Access to and ability to attain primary and secondary

basic needs in order to maintain a reasonable quality of life

Social: Aspects of the equity of distribution of wealth, resources and impacts

Place: Characteristics of the surrounding environment including geography,

climate, ecology, and available resources and the choices made, actions

taken or decisions informed by those characteristics


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Ecological: The human impact on water, air, land and biodiversity.

Eco-Efficiency: The efficiency of the movement and utilization of materials,

energy and people

Economic: The production, distribution, and consumption of goods andservices that meets the needs of today without compromising the needs of

future generations

These diagrams and these concepts are important because an idea is being

developed herethe idea of fusion of economic, social and ecologic concerns.

Currently, we do not achieve this goal. We are not successful yet, and in fact we

have only begun. While some of us may be able to conceptualize from words,

images are helpful to others. And it is the idea that is important.

While the goal is integration, it is both important and useful to fully understand

each of the key subject areaseconomic, social and ecologic - separately, but in

the context of thinking sustainably.

Economics

Typically, economics is concerned with consumer demand and production, with

the economy often depicted as an ever-enlarging circle of increased consumer

demand leading to more production leading to more demand, etc. And in fact,most of our economic policies are structured to induce economic growth. To the

extent that the term development is used, it is linked by the conjunction and to

growth as in growth and development. Yet with sustainable development, the

goal is to achieve a result different than growth as usual. In fact, the very concept

of growth as it has been practiced and pursued in the past and even today must be

challenged, at least the concept as practiced in the empty world. Simply stated,

unmitigated growth in consumer demand worldwide cannot be sustained with

present resources and within known limits of the Earth.

The concept of Earth limits is illustrated below. Here, the ecological footprint of

the average citizen of the United States is projected across the worlds population

and a staggering fact emergeswe currently are consuming ecological resources at

a rate thatif used by all of the people of the world - would be beyond the current


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capacity of the Earth. If that track is maintained into the future, it will take two

Earths to maintain us. And we only have one. And our goal should not be to

consume all of that single Earth. Some is needed by other living things if not

humans. The same is true for water resources and many other examples. We are

simply living beyond the ability of the Earth to assimilate us and remain a viableplace for life and other living things.

As practiced today, economics is by far the most dominant of the legs on the stool

a stool which is unequal and unbalanced and unable to stand when viewed

through the sustainability lens. Our capitalist economic system is all about growth.

Governmental officials follow the gross domestic product (gdp) like a religious

icon. If the graph slopes upward, all is good. If the graph slopes downward, all is

bad. The same can be said of any number of metrics of economic growth,

including housing starts, new jobs created, new sales records set, new construction

loans made. Similarly, our system in the United States and Europe has also been

about borrowing. As growth slows, we create money to stimulate new bursts of

growth. And every so often we observe that the system collapses to some extent, a

readjustment occurs and we restart the process, climbing back up the growth curve.

Unfortunately, supposedly positive trend lines from an economic standpoint can bevery damaging from an ecological standpoint. Consider, for example, the trend

lines from the report on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the

IPCC). Here, growth in consumption of coal, petroleum and other fossil fuels has

led to an increase in greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2) that are

associated with global climate change. According to the best science, continued


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increases in the release of greenhouse gases will lead to continuing increases in the

temperature of the Earth. We as a global society either have or will soon reach a

tipping point where we must reshape this curve. In this case, the continued growth

in fossil fuel usage and greenhouse gas combustion is inimical to sustainability.

As such, as currently practiced, such patterns of consumption are contrary tosustainable development.

Now, that does not mean that all use of petroleum products must be stopped

immediately. That would be socially and economically destructive. Instead, we

need to find balanced measures to reduce and stabilize petroleum combustion and

greenhouse gas production. Eventually, the market will change to reflect this

reality, but the market is slow to respond to situations such as climate change

which is a so-called external diseconomy, or externality, of the use of fossil fuels.

Regulation may be coming in the United States through the Clean Air Act, but

more likely, consumer and global pressures will exert changes. In the short term,

the simple solution is increased efficiency, or eco-efficiency, so labeled because

it is beneficial economically and ecologically. It is the starting point for mitigating

the negative impacts of current unabated growth.

And it is not just with regard to greenhouse gases that we see conflicts between

traditional growth concepts and ecological sustainability. Increased use of water in

agriculture, industry and residential sectors can dewater aquifers and threatensurface systems with a loss of riverine flows. Increased use of fertilizer has led to

a dead zone off of the Mississippi delta. Increased deforestation leads to loss of

biodiversity. Unmitigated growthgrowth without consideration of consequences

growth without boundariesis not sustainable.

So, in considering the economic realm of sustainability, one might keep in mind

stability. Over time, we have to maintain our economy as well as our ecology and

social order. We cannot have one leg out of kilter with the rest of the stool. There

needs to be balance in order for there to be a stool. There needs to be balance forsustainability.

Ecology


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The Earth is magnificent. Our current understanding of the universe has found

only one planet in all the galaxies that can maintain life and that is the planet Earth.

We who live on Earth often take life for granted. It is, therefore it is. I am,

therefore, I am. And as we expanded as humans in the empty world, the Earth

was bountiful and without limit, at least with regard to expansion and resources.To the extent that humans found themselves lacking, our ingenuity often overcame

immediate physical limits. The idea of denuding the Earth of vegetationof

covering it with human footprints of burning, deforestation, farming, paving and

erectingwas unthinkable because we humans and our impacts were small and the

Earth was large.

Today, such a futurea future where humans have removed natural ecosystems

from the Earthis certain to occur if we humans continue to grow, develop and

consume as we learned to in the empty world. We are directly destroying natural

systems for myriad reasonsall of them certainly reasonable from one perspective

or another. However, when the net result is to threaten the ability of Earth to

maintain a diversity of life and living things, the very nature of the Earth is lost.

When we threaten to lose that which is the essence of the Earth, we must rethink

our goals, objectives and methods of human settlement and development.

Documentation abounds regarding the loss of biological diversity, the genetic

resource pool that makes humans different than frogs, corn different than rice, etc.According to recent estimates, we are continuing to lose genetic diversity at a rate

that is unprecedented in the human past, with current estimates being in the range

of 10,000 to 100,000 species being lost per year, compared to the empty world

number of about three species per year. Rainforests are still being denuded at a net

loss rate, although it has slowed in most areas of the world.

The changes noted above are basically due to human settlement patterns, Climate

change offers the potential of further adding to this rate of loss, with the most

notable impacts being in the cooler climates. However, issues about role oftemperature in plant maturation and propagation are only now being fully

understood, and we may discover that these impacts are worse than previously

thought.

Social


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Social issues are concerned about the equity of the allocation of goods and

resources in society. Sustainability does not guarantee equality, but it does hold

equity - that fundamental concepts of equal treatment and opportunity - be met. At

the least, it would require that all people within a community, a state, a nation, the

world have their basic needs for food, water and shelter met. Many people in theworld make less than $2 per day. Almost 15% of the people in Houston are

undernourished. Over 30% of Houston residents live below poverty. So there is

certainly a general concern about basic needs being met.

But on a larger level, there are major concerns about equity between nations,

particularly between less developed and developed nations. Many of these areas of

the world have not yet begun to consume in the manner to which western societies

have become accustomed. United States citizens consume about 20 tons of carbon

per person per day, compared to the global average of less than 5 tons per day and

the developed world average of less than 2 tons per day. If we are to reduce our

carbon footprint and also see economic development of less developed counties,

the developed world is going to have to reduce its carbon footprint. Otherwise, the

rest of the world will have no capacity for expansion, a patently unfair and

untenable outcome.

At the far end of the social spectrum is potential for a failed statethe collapse of

the social system. That has happened in several war-torn countries but thepotential exists that this problem will become more widespread as food and water

supply issues become worse and population relocations are caused by sea level rise

and other climate-related factors. At a more local level, we have extensive

personal bankruptcies throughout the United States due to our living beyond our

means, piling up debt without hope of relief. We are beginning to observe

bankruptcies at the municipal level as well, not to mention countries such as

Greece and Spain that appear to be on the brink of economic collapse under the

weight of debt. When government financial systems fail, the social system will

also risk failure.

Needed An Integrated View

The more one delves into the subject of sustainability, the more it becomes

apparent that new systems must and will emerge to address the deficiencies of the


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current system. At the center of these changes is the transition from empty

world thinking to full world thinking. The concepts upon which the

sustainable society of the future will be built will be holistic rather than separate,

integrated rather than apart. New behavioral boundaries and norms will emerge.

And no concepts will be more pervasive than efficiency, full disclosure of social,ecological and economic impacts and pursuit of alternative ways of solving

problems across these three dimensions. In fact, the philosophy of the alternative

will emerge as the cornerstone of all designs as we endeavor to maintain our life

style, our comforts at lower and lower investment of carbon and other

environmental footprints.

An efficient society of the future will be a secure society. And that is what most of

us wantsecurity for ourselves, our children and those who come after us.

Growth as we currently practice it will become a relic, left behind as we mitigate

our impacts, reduce our footprints and honestly come to grips with the dilemma of

limits.

As we move forward, we might do well to look to the ecological system for

guidance. The natural world has ways of solving problems of limits. There are

growth phases and then there are climax phases, the time when the growth spurt is

left behind and the system begins to stabilize. It is the flattening of innumerable

growth curves that should be the major goal of a successful human system, aneconomic system that is inclusive of ecological considerations. And we need to

achieve this while still meeting basic needs for all in a manner that is at least

arguably equitable.

At its core, sustainability is about a very hard conceptenough. This is a very

simple word conveying a very difficult concept that must be fully appreciated,

understood and embraced. Relative to the concept of enough, I am reminded of

a conversation with a plastics company about sustainability, about the layers and

levels of issues. We talked about efficiency, about alternative products that useless resources and produce less pollution, and then we talked about

dematerialization, about the removal of plastics from certain products. And then I

tossed out the concept that I saw as the end point of sustainabilityabout reaching

a place where there was enoughplastic product and we did not need any more. I


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have seldom encountered a response so filled with lack of understanding. It was

not that the company was against the idea of enough. It was that the idea did

not compute. The concept that there could be enough plastic simply was not part

of the corporate mindset, nor is it currently within the mindset of most of us. But it

will be.

We must approach sustainability not as idealists pursuing some noble goal, but as

pragmatists solving a very real problem that ultimately threatens the livelihood of

every citizen of the planet. Without a different model of the human future, we are

on a path that cannot be maintained over time and certainly not into future

generations. We know that from what we can see today, We need to stabilize the

planet. We need to work with corporations. We need to work with governments.

We need to work at every level where people assemble. And we need to start

today.

To achieve such a stable system will be a huge feat. It will require hard work for

decades. It will not happen overnight.. The question isare we wise enough to be

able to make the changes that have to be made? That is the challenge of

sustainability, that is the adventure of sustainability, and that is the future of

sustainability. It promises to be quite an interesting ride.

In summary, the goal is to develop pragmatic ways to integrate economic,

ecologic and social thinking into a new methodologies and analytical constructs

that do not view these issues separately but rather integrate them holistically. When

that has been achieved, we will be embarking on a course of action suitable for

living in the full world.


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