The Sustainability Challenge

Richard Sanders

 

Sustainability is fundamentally about the welfare of future generations – if the welfare of future generations was not an issue, the sustainability question would not arise.

Summary

 

The sustainability challenge in a nutshell   Over hundreds of millions of years, nature has built up an enormous store of plant and animal life, soil, minerals, fossil fuels and life-supporting ecosystems that provide air, water and climate;   Until relatively recently, humans met their material needs primarily from the ‘interest’ flowing from this store of ‘natural capital’;   The invention of industrial society powered by vast stores of fossilised energy has enabled an explosion in population and consumption over the past 200 years – humanity has transitioned from ‘living off the interest’ to liquidating the natural capital basis of that ‘interest’, using up natural capital roughly a million times faster than it can be regenerated (in the case of fossil fuels);   This rapid liquidation of natural capital has resulted in crises such as climate change, destruction of ecosystems and rapid depletion of natural resources – it begs the question, “what will future generations live off?”;   Sustainability is fundamentally about the welfare of future generations – if the welfare of future generations was not an issue, the sustainability question would not arise;   The sustainability challenge is therefore to ‘live off the interest’ (a relative ‘trickle’) from the remaining natural capital, and restoring it wherever possible in order to maintain sufficient natural capital for future generations;   The only way this can be achieved indefinitely into the future is by humans urgently inventing a new mode of social organisation consistent with living off the ‘interest’ from natural capital rather than from the consumption of natural capital base itself.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Introduction

 

I’ve prepared this brief paper for our group to clarify the sustainability concept. Such a clarification is necessary if we are to make an informed, and more importantly, coherent response to the crises confronting us (we cannot solve a problem if we misunderstand it). Without an agreed understanding of what sustainability is, we will have ongoing debate between the different views with little progress towards sustainability, and at best, many well-intentioned endeavours all pulling in different directions which add up to making little progress towards sustainability.

 

This paper contends that ultimately, sustainability is about the viability of the relationship between the human system and the planet's ecosystems that underpin the human system. Concern about the welfare of future generations requires us to ensure that the planet’s ecosystems continue to provide for the needs of these future generations.

 

Interpretations of sustainability

 

There are political, ideological and perceptual reasons for the plethora of interpretations of sustainability. Politically, a number of economic ‘imperatives’ (particularly growth) are seen as inviolate and any solutions that reduce or do away with these imperatives are immediately dismissed.

Consequently, economic growth is a key element of political interpretations of sustainability. The Brundtland paradigm of sustainable development is the most notable of these.

 

Ideologically, there is a spectrum of interpretations ranging from ecocentric (living within limits) to cornucopian (unending progress with no limits). Perceptually, there are the preconceptions or narrow angles of vision associated with various worldviews and the multiplicity of disciplines of knowledge. Each sees sustainability in ways that are most congruent with their particular view or discipline. Economists tend to see sustainability in cornucopian terms, physical and life scientists in terms of limits, while the majority sees it as some kind of balancing act trying to achieve growth within limits.

 

Is it possible to come to some more definitive interpretation of sustainability? I believe it is not only possible but it is essential.

 

Matter and energy in motion

 

If we consider the biosphere simply as matter and energy in motion and/or undergoing transformation according to the laws of physics and reflecting ecological, climatic, geological and economic processes, we can come to a holistic, systemic understanding of sustainability.

 

From this viewpoint, humanity is just another species within the ecological web of life on Earth. All animal species evolved to depend for their survival on consuming matter and energy that has the quality of being structured, concentrated, organised or maintained in a far from equilibrium state (i.e. it has the quality of low entropy) by natural processes (primarily photosynthesis but also geological activity).

 

For example, a seed organises matter from the environment into the form of a tree; bacteria concentrate iron over millennia into an iron ore body; coal, oil and natural gas bodies are stores of fossilised sunlight derived from plant material; and collectively, the web of species constitute ecosystems that generate life support (air, water, soil, climate, etc).

 

These useful forms of matter and energy include food (i.e. other species), water, air and habitats. For humans they also include mineral and energy resources from which humans create their artifacts.

 

How animals live

 

Animals live by seeking out low entropy matter and energy from their environment. They may harvest plant material or hunt other animals or both. ‘Knowing’ how to extract low entropy from the environment is largely based on genetic information transmitted from generation to generation with higher order animals also relying on learning to varying degrees.

 

Bees for example, driven by their evolved genetic knowledge of ‘what works’ radiate out from their hive to harvest nectar and bring it back, cooperating socially in a range of roles, building complex structures (hives), and so on. Humans do essentially the same thing. They obtain low entropy matter and energy through hunting/gathering, agriculture or building global industrial societies. Both bees and humans organise in ways to obtain low entropy matter and energy (or usefulness) from their environment. Essentially, this constitutes economic activity (i.e. organising themselves in ways to meet their material needs).

 

Most species are limited in their capacity to extract low entropy from their environment. For example, they may have evolved a diet that is sourced from a very limited number of species. While the natural inclination for all species is to expand their population to a point that comes into some dynamic equilibrium with available sources of low entropy (i.e. food), humans have tended to invent clever ways of circumventing such constraints.

 

Hunting/gathering is the human mode of organisation most akin to that of other species, with availability of food species limiting population expansion. Domestication of plant and animal species (agriculture) increases the relative abundance of useful species that provide food, fibre and materials (useful forms of matter/energy), allowing greater human populations to exist.

 

Humans have circumvented environmental constraints

 

The modern industrial economy, made possible by knowledge in the form of science and technology, and fuelled by fossilised energy, has allowed humanity to harvest vast quantities of low entropy sourced from all over the planet thereby allowing the human population to expand far beyond what would be possible in the absence of such fossilised energy.

 

For example, Smil (2004) showed that 40 percent of the protein in human bodies, planet-wide, could not exist without the application of synthetic nitrogen to crops during most of the 20th century. That means that without the use of industrially produced nitrogen fertilizer, about 2.5 billion people out of today's world population of 6.2 billion simply could never have existed.

The influence of culture

 

In the case of bees, economic activity is genetically motivated with outcomes influenced by external factors (eg. a forest fire destroying flowers, weather, poisonous crop sprays). In the case of humans, what happens is genetically motivated to some degree, but is largely a reflection of ideas transmitted from generation to generation as worldview, culture and knowledge and is equally subject to external factors (eg. drought, cyclones or diminishing natural capital).

 

Each culture has its worldview and mythology (story that makes sense of reality) that is made up of a suite of many memes (just as our DNA is made up of a suite of many genes). Each worldview (or the culture reflecting it) has its own way of organising the relationships of its members (its social system) and its way of extracting low entropy or usefulness from the environment (its economic system). The ‘social’ system and the ‘economic’ system are not really separate systems; they simply reflect different analytical perspectives on how humans organise to extract low entropy as we play out our part in the web of life.

 

Holistic view of sustainability

 

From a holistic point of view, sustainability is simply concerned with the ecological viability of how humans choose to organise to extract low entropy (natural capital) from the biosphere. Sustainability is an issue because the way the majority of humanity is currently organised is ecologically unviable. The sustainability problem is that the aggregate consumption of natural capital by humanity has been growing exponentially and now far exceeds the rate at which ecosystem processes can regenerate it. Indeed, whole ecosystems are being demolished in the process. Concern for the welfare of future generations requires that we maintain sufficient natural capital to underpin the existence of those future generations.

 

Many species that become extinct do so when their genetically determined mode of organization becomes unviable. For humans, memes (ideas) play a significantly greater role than genes. The advantage of memes is their capacity to rapidly change in response to changing circumstances. This confers huge adaptive potential on humans. Conversely, if we cling to maladapted memes, then we are in deep trouble. May I suggest that any meme or associated institution that facilitates or locks us into exponentially increasing consumption of natural capital is maladaptive when planetary ecological limits (carrying capacity) are approached or exceeded.

 

Thermodynamic reality

 

Humans meet their material needs through consuming both flows and stocks of natural capital.

 

The thermodynamic reality is that when we use natural capital, some or all of natural capital’s quality of ‘usefulness’ is lost or dissipated. For example, petrol exhausts its ‘usefulness’ through combustion; and iron ore is transformed into steel that eventually rusts and dissipates back into the environment in a form that is no longer useful. This ‘usefulness’ can only be regenerated by ecological processes fuelled by an external source of energy (the Sun). If terrestrial energy is used, the thermodynamic reality is that there will be no net regeneration of ‘usefulness’ (i.e. more ‘usefulness’ will be consumed than is produced). For example, industrial agriculture will use up to 10 units of fossilised energy to produce one unit of, say, potato energy, not to mention the greenhouse impact of using the fossil fuel and the land degradation associated with that form of agriculture (Pimental, 1992).

 

The key point here is that all economic activity uses up or dissipates natural capital. If the economic system consumes natural capital from the biosphere more quickly than it can be regenerated, this is by definition, unsustainable. A fundamental condition for sustainability is that the economic system consumes natural capital from the biosphere no more quickly than it can be regenerated by natural processes that are essentially ecological.

 

Natural capital is a non-negotiable constraint

 

Sustainability, therefore, requires humanity to live within the ecological carrying capacity of the planet. This requires that remaining stocks of renewable and replenishable natural capital be maintained so humanity can meet its future material needs from the sustainable flow of natural income these remaining stocks can generate without being further liquidated. Beyond this, the challenge is to allow the remaining stocks to grow to ensure adequate natural capital for future generations.

 

In economic terms, sustainability requires humanity to live off the relatively limited and fixed sustainable flow of ‘interest’ or natural income generated by each type of natural capital so the stock of each critical type does not diminish through time. This ensures that each successive generation, indefinitely into the future, will have no less natural capital to meet their material needs than each preceding generation (intergenerational equity).

 

Implications

 

• Meeting human needs from a ‘trickle of interest’ from natural capital is a non-negotiable constraint that nature imposes upon humanity;

 

• Humanity in the aggregate must learn/develop new modes of organisation in order to meet its needs from this ‘trickle of interest’;

 

• Our current mode of organisation is based on consuming a ‘torrential flow’ of natural capital that continues to grow exponentially. This cannot continue!