Capitalism

As If the World Matters

Jonathon Porritt

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781136570438
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Business

As our great economic machine grinds relentlessly forward into a future of declining fossil fuel supplies, climate change and ecosystem failure, governments are at long last beginning to question the very structure of the global economy. In this fresh, politically charged analysis, Jonathon Porritt wades in on the most pressing question of the 21st century: can capitalism, as the only real economic game in town, be retooled to deliver a sustainable future? Porritt argues that indeed it can, and it must, as he lays out the framework for a new ?sustainable capitalism? that cuts across the political divide and promises a prosperous future of wealth, equity and ecosystem integrity.

PART I

OUR UNSUSTAINABLE WORLD

1

Conflicting Imperatives

INTRODUCTION

Wouldn’t it be great if any book dealing with sustainability could open with a resolutely upbeat account of the state of the planet? But that’s just not possible – not in this decade, at least. As this chapter confirms, things are going from bad to worse, and they’ll get worse yet. Despite a growing number of countervailing success stories, almost all of the trends are still heading in the wrong direction.

There is no mystery here: burgeoning human numbers, a spectacularly vibrant, consumption-driven economy, and a continuing inability to accept that there really are natural limits, make for a lethal combination. But no politician can currently gainsay that drive for increased prosperity – offering people more (at almost any cost) – has become the number one political imperative. The resulting impasse poses the greatest challenge we face today: we know that change is necessary, but that doesn’t necessarily make it desirable. Nevertheless, this chapter ends with a brief and optimistic account of what it would be like to live in a more sustainable world, just to show how close that already is to most people’s idea of a better life.

THE ASSAULT ON NATURE

At the start of the 21st century, our lives are bounded by two very different and potentially irreconcilable imperatives. The first is a biological imperative: to learn to live sustainably on this planet. This is an absolute imperative in that it is determined by the laws of nature and, hence, is non-negotiable – this side of extinction, it permits no choice. The second is a political imperative: to aspire to improve our material standard of living year on year. This is a relative imperative in that it is politically determined, with a number of alternative economic paradigms available to us. These imperatives are therefore very different in both kind and degree.

The need to find some reconciliation between these imperatives has never been more urgent. The world has been completely transformed over the last 60 years, with a combination of rapid population growth and massively increased economic activity (driven by access to relatively cheap sources of coal, oil and gas) exacting a harsh and continuing toll on the physical environment.

It has become fashionable in some quarters to disparage this kind of sweeping assertion. Predominantly right-wing media in the US and the UK have taken to their hearts a succession of dissenting scientists and commentators anxious to reassure people that the environmental and social problems we face today are not nearly as serious as environmental activists and poverty campaigners make out.

Accusations of exaggeration and scaremongering abound. Given that environmentalists started talking in these apocalyptic terms back in the 1970s, how is it that there has been no hint of any terminal breakdown during the last 30 years? The understandable consequence of this barrage of complacency is that many people really don’t know who to trust in terms of gauging just how serious things are, especially on issues such as climate change (to which I will return at the end of this chapter) where the ongoing controversies about both the science and the politics are at their fiercest.

Yet, these days, most of the information about the state of the physical environment (and, indeed, about the state of people living in the world’s poorest countries) comes from government departments, the United Nations (UN) or other international agencies, and independent academics. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are rarely involved in commissioning original research, and concentrate primarily upon disseminating and interpreting the data that comes into the public domain from official sources. With the best will in the world, I find it very difficult to explain how these official sources might have been subverted to falsify information, peddle untruths or generally seek to play games with the general public by exaggerating the seriousness of today’s environmental dilemmas. For most environmentalists, this continuing denial on the part of ‘contrarians’ such as Bjorn Lomborg (2001) is but the last gasp of a 40-year endeavour to make out that all is well with the world, even as our impact upon it grows exponentially year on year.

It may be helpful to briefly review the official position on some of these key environmental problems. In country after country, the data reveals a similar state of affairs: we are continuing to destroy natural habitats of every kind through conversion for human purposes. More than half of the world’s original forest area has been lost and one third of what is left will be gone in the next 20 years at current rates of deforestation. A report from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in March 2007 (FAO, 2007) described the destruction of forests in the developing world as being ‘out of control’. Africa lost more than 9 per cent of its trees between 1990 and 2005; the world as a whole lost another 3 per cent of its total forest area. An even larger proportion of original wetlands has been destroyed, and more than one third of the world’s coral reefs are either dead or severely damaged. Not surprisingly, this habitat destruction has had a huge impact upon wild species, with various estimates of loss of biodiversity from the World Conservation Union (IUCN) and other international bodies a source of intense concern. This situation has often been exacerbated by the impact of alien species on many indigenous ecosystems, with billions of dollars now being spent across the world on control and eradication programmes.

This litany of bio-devastation has been shouted out so often that it’s clear politicians have simply switched off on hearing it. After the relative failure of the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity, and the near silence that greeted publication of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment report (MA; see below), perhaps we should be rethinking our entire approach to biodiversity. In July 2006, leading biologists from around the world called for the creation of a new international body for biodiversity to match the impact of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – for whatever you may think about the IPCC’s overall impact, it has compelled governments to take the advice of their scientific institutions far more seriously than they would otherwise have done. And with a ‘potentially catastrophic loss of species’ now unfolding in front of our eyes, the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report (IPCC, 2007) couldn’t possibly have contained worse news: up to 30 per cent of all plant and animal species are likely to be at increased risk of extinction if global temperatures rise by more than 2°C.

In terms of managed (rather than wild) areas, we have seen little improvement in management techniques over the last two decades. Soil erosion is a chronic problem in many parts of the world, as is salinization, often caused by hugely wasteful and poorly designed irrigation schemes. There are different estimates as to the collective impact of all this upon farmland, but the UN FAO believes that a minimum of 20 per cent of total cultivated acreage is now seriously damaged. Overgrazing of grasslands has resulted in a similar loss of productivity in literally dozens of countries.

More recently, there has also been growing concern about freshwater impacts, both in terms of quantity (with severe water shortages now affecting a large number of countries) and quality, as both rivers and groundwater aquifers are increasingly affected by diffuse pollution of many different kinds. It is true that river quality has often improved substantially in many Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries during the last decade through much tighter regulation and a growing reluctance to allow companies to use rivers and streams as their private sewers. But the situation continues to worsen in most developing countries. The same is true with local air quality.

When the will is there, it has occasionally proved possible to get on top of major environmental problems. Quite rightly, the phasing out of gases such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) that were having such a damaging impact upon the protective ozone layer in the upper atmosphere is seen as one of the most effective examples of international diplomacy working to protect the environment and people’s health. But even here, we’re not exactly out of the woods. There is a thriving black market in banned CFCs, and growing resistance in the US and elsewhere to further measures to phase out other ozone-depleting substances such as methyl bromide. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) still reminds politicians that it is likely to be another 40 years before levels of ozone in the atmosphere are restored to where they were during the 1980s.

One of the biggest problems in all of these areas is that the deterioration is usually incremental, acre by acre, town by town, pollution incident by pollution incident, species by species – and hence all but invisible to people living in the midst of this progressive decline. The position in any one year may not be much worse than in the preceding year, but go back 30 or 40 years and the changes are stark. It is death by a thousand cuts, rather than by some traumatic shock to the system which would be far harder for citizens and politicians to ignore.

Nowhere is this demonstrated more clearly than in the MA released in April 2005 (MA, 2005). This extraordinary study took four years to compile, involving hundreds of scientists all over the world, assessing literally thousands of peer-reviewed papers covering the principal aspects of the relationship between ourselves and the natural world, and bringing those findings together in a single, extremely powerful analysis. Its principal focus is on what are known as ‘ecosystem services’ – in other words, the benefits that we humans obtain from different ecosystems.

The MA describes ‘services’ in four categories: ‘provisioning services’, such as food, water, timber and fibre; ‘regulating services’, which affect climate, flood control, disease, waste and water quality; ‘cultural services’, which provide recreational, aesthetic and spiritual benefits; and ‘supporting services’, such as soil formation, photosynthesis and nutrient cycling. This serves to remind us, however buffered against the impact of environmental damage we may think we are through new technology, that we are still fundamentally dependent upon the constant and reliable flow of ecosystem services to secure our own wellbeing. The MA identifies the essential constituents of human wellbeing as having access to the basic materials for a good life (such as food, shelter and clothing), sound health, good social relations, security, and freedom of choice and action, and its overall conclusions are deeply disconcerting:

• Over the past 50 years, humans have changed ecosystems more rapidly and extensively than in any comparable period of time in human history, primarily in order to meet rapidly growing demands for food, freshwater, timber, fibre and fuel. This has resulted in a substantial and largely irreversible loss in the diversity of life on Earth.

• The changes that have been made to ecosystems have contributed to substantial net gains in human wellbeing and economic development; but these gains have been achieved at growing costs in the form of the degradation of many ecosystem services.

• Approximately 60 per cent (15 out of 24) of the ecosystem services examined are being degraded or used unsustainably, including freshwater, fisheries, air and water purification, and the regulation of regional and local climate, natural hazards, and pests.

• The full costs of the loss and degradation of these ecosystem services are difficult to measure, but the available evidence demonstrates that they are substantial and growing.

• The harmful effects of this degradation are being borne disproportionately by the poor, are contributing to growing inequities and disparities across groups of people, and are sometimes the principal factor causing poverty and social conflict.

• The degradation of ecosystem services is already a significant barrier to achieving the Millennium Development Goals, and the harmful consequences of this could grow significantly worse during the next 50 years.

• There is established but incomplete evidence that changes being made in ecosystems are increasing the likelihood of non-linear changes in ecosystems (including accelerating, abrupt and potentially irreversible changes) that have important consequences for human wellbeing.

Blind optimism in the face of such a litany of continuing destruction and mismanagement is a strange phenomenon. It is premised on the hope that the planet’s self-healing capacity remains resilient enough to weather these constant assaults, despite growing evidence of irreversibility in terms of lost productivity and diversity. There is something deeply unhistorical about this cornucopian optimism, as if there wasn’t a robust body of evidence available to us – captured authoritatively in Clive Ponting’s A Green History of the World (1991) and, more recently, in Jared Diamond’s Collapse (2005) – demonstrating that there really are ‘points of no return’ when ecosystems are systematically overexploited and abused. A rather more historical perspective would be helpful in all sorts of ways.

Over the last 550 million years, there have been five mass extinctions on planet Earth, the last one just 65 million years ago when the dinosaurs disappeared. For one reason or another (meteor or asteroid impact, dramatic climate change, volcanic or other planetary traumas, or the normal process of speciation and extinction as evolution unfolded), most life-forms that have appeared on planet Earth have turned out to be unsustainable. We are the first species (as far as we know) that is able to reflect upon where we have come from and where we are headed. We are, therefore, able to conceptualize the necessary conditions for our own survival as a species and, in the light of that understanding, so shape our living patterns in order to optimize our survival chances.

It is only in the last few decades that our survival as a species has become an issue. Slowly, painfully, we are coming to realize that there is nothing automatic or guaranteed about our continued existence. If we don’t learn to live sustainably within the natural systems and limits that provide the foundation for all life-forms, then we will go the same way as every other life-form that failed to adapt to those changing systems and limits. Deep down in our collective psyche, after hundreds of years of industrialization that systematically suppressed a proper understanding of our continuing and total dependency upon the natural world, that atavistic reality is beginning to resurface.

All else depends upon this. If we can’t secure our own biophysical survival, then it is game over for every other noble aspiration or venal self-interest that we may entertain. With great respect to those who assert the so-called ‘primacy’ of key social and economic goals (such as the elimination of poverty or the attainment of universal human rights), it must be said loud and clear that these are secondary goals: all else is conditional upon learning to live sustainably within the Earth’s systems and limits. Not only is the pursuit of biophysical sustainability non-negotiable; it’s preconditional.

Having said that, these are really two sides of the same coin. On the one hand, social sustainability is entirely dependent upon ecological sustainability. As we continue to undermine nature’s capacity to provide humans with essential services (such as clean water, a stable climate and so on) and resources (such as food and raw materials), both individuals and nation states will be subjected to growing amounts of pressure. Conflict will grow, and threats to public health and personal safety will increase in the face of ecological degradation.

On the other hand, ecological sustainability is entirely dependent upon social sustainability. With a growing number of people living within social systems that constrain their ability to meet their needs, it becomes increasingly difficult to protect the natural environment. Forests are cleared to make way for land-hungry farmers; grazing lands are overstocked, aquifers depleted, rivers over-fished; and the rest of nature is driven back into ever smaller reserves or natural parks.

Fortunately, all species have a deep survival instinct. Ultimately, they do everything they can to secure their own survival c...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Contributor
• Endorsements
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I - Our Unsustainable World
• Part II - A Framework for Sustainable Capitalism
• Part III - Better Lives in a Better World
• Index