Visions of Sustainability

Stakeholders, Change and Indicators

Stephen Morse, Nora McNamara, Benjamin Okwoli

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138713130
• eBook ISBN: 9781351776042
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

This title was first published in 2000: Sustainable development has grown to compass cultural, socio-economic, political and environmental issues, and the use of Sustainability indicators (SIs) is seen by many as central to its implementation. After all, how can one 'do' sustainable development unless one knows when it has been attained? The adoption of SIs in such a context is logical, but does present a number of practical difficulties. So far much of the published material consists of theoretical SI frameworks, with little practical experience on their use in development scenarios. In contrast, this volume is based on the results of a six year project designed to develop and evaluate the use of SLs in a Nigerian village. For the first time this takes into consideration the views and perspectives of the local population, and in doing so addresses key issues that are vital for anyone attempting to put sustainable development into practice.

1 Agricultural Sustainability: A brief tour

Introduction

The notion that development should be sustainable was a central theme of the Earth Summit held in Rio in 1992, and of many others before and since. Two definitions of sustainability commonly quoted in the literature are:

development that meets the needs of current generations without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs and aspirations.

World Commission for Environment and Development (1987)

development that improves the quality of human life while living within the carrying capacity of supporting ecosystems.

International Union for the Conservation of Nature (1991)

Agriculture is a major human activity, providing income and sustenance for much of the rural and urban poor in developing countries, and for this reason it was given a prominent position in the Rio conference debates. Sustainability in terms of maintaining adequate production with minimal damage to the environment predates the Rio conference by many centuries. The modern form of sustainable agriculture largely arose as a reaction to accelerated change in agricultural practice that took place predominantly in Europe and North America in this century. Increasing farm sizes, loss of woodland and hedgerows, indiscriminate use of pesticides and inorganic fertilizer have had a detrimental impact on the environment for everyone to perceive. A counter attack was inevitable.

The rhetoric behind sustainability (development or agriculture) is appealing, but to be operational one must know when it has been attained (Goldman, 1995). Some have argued that the absence of sustainability (unsustainability) is far easier to recognise than its presence (Jodha, 1989). For example one can look for environmental damage. The problem is the means by which one should recognise sustainability - what do you look for, and when and where do you look?

This book is about agricultural sustainability and rural livelihoods, and how it can be practically measured. To do this, the current thinking in the debate must be summarised, and in particular some of the commonly employed associations with agricultural sustainability. The emphasis will be on crops rather than livestock, as this was what was important in the study area. Others have stressed the importance of crops in developing countries:

Since crops are the main output of most agricultural systems, the dynamics of crop sustainability should be an initial focus of attention.

Goldman (1995)

The associations with agricultural sustainability that have been selected are: cropping systems, production, energy, soils and pests. These are headings under which agricultural sustainability is often discussed, and used here to provide the reader with an overview of the topic. At the same time issues of fundamental concern are raised. Following this is a brief introduction to the importance of people in agricultural sustainability, and an outline of progress towards identifying and gauging sustainability.

The magnitude of the sustainability debate and the diverse range of opinion means the list employed here is by no means complete. The topic of environmental valuation and how this relates to what some call weak sustainability as opposed to strong sustainability (Common and Perrings, 1992; Rennings and Wiggering, 1997) is only touched on. The importance of impact assessment is readily acknowledged, but not included here because of the context within which this work was done.

Agriculture and sustainability - an overview

It can be argued that the management of natural resources lies at the heart of the debate surrounding sustainability. The birth of ecology as a science has also been a major influence in the origin and history of sustainable development (Kidd, 1992). Ecology brought the notion of carrying capacity, a finite set of resources supporting a finite number of individuals, and helped spawn the concept of Maximum Sustainable Yield (MSY) – replacement must equal removal otherwise the population will decline. Agriculture has been particularly influential for the following reasons (Lele, 1991):

1)the end product of agriculture is often food. It is therefore one of the foundations of human society.

2)agricultural systems occupy large areas of land - far more land than any other industry with the possible exception of forestry. In the UK, for example, agriculture accounts for approximately 77 per cent of the total land area (Pearce, 1993).

3)in some countries agriculture has also undergone substantial change over the past century, moving from subsistence to what is aptly termed agribusiness.

The rapid change towards agri-business has inevitably been at some cost. The desire to produce more, increase quality and decrease cost has resulted in a series of adaptations - fewer farms, larger fields and a replacement of human energy with that derived from fossil fuels. The scale and rapidity of the change meant negative effects on the environment (human and physical) were unavoidable. The result has been an increasing desire to look at alternative approaches within agriculture that may alleviate some of these negatives. Terms such as agroecology, alternative agriculture, ecological food production (Begon, 1990), low input sustainable agriculture (LISA; Beets, 1990), organic agriculture and integrated crop production have become commonplace although often confused. To each of their proponents they offer some distinctive feature, but the common denominator is widespread use of the adjective sustainable. As a counterpoint, conventional (= intensive or high input) agriculture is seen as unsustainable. There is a general notion that sustainable agriculture encompasses environmental/ecological (also referred to as biophysical), social (or human community) and economic spheres (Flora, 1992; Olson, 1992; Spencer and Swift, 1992; Yunlong and Smit, 1994). Sustainability is often seen as the classic holistic vision of nature and the world, while intensive systems are seen as simplistic, narrow in focus, with little intrinsic concern for the environment.

However, beyond this commonality, they represent a very diverse family. To take a specific example, LISA is assumed to be sustainable agriculture with an accepted low-level of artificial inputs (Reijntjes et al., 1992), while ‘organic agriculture’ is demarcated by the absence of defined substances (mostly pesticides and artificial fertilizer) during production. Some proponents of organic agriculture may have little, if any, empathy with LISA, and may not see the use of ‘sustainable’ ap...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Agricultural Sustainability: A brief tour
• 2 Rationale and Method
• 3 Eroke Village
• 4 Some Life Histories
• 5 Production and Consumption
• 6 Livelihood and Leisure
• 7 Visions of Sustainability
• Appendix A
• Appendix B
• Appendix C
• References
• Index