Technology, Globalization, and Sustainable Development

Transforming the Industrial State

Nicholas A Ashford, Ralph P Hall

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138605534
• eBook ISBN: 9780429886478
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Sustainable Development
• Index: Economics

Technology, Globalization, and Sustainable Development offers a unified, transdisciplinary approach for transforming the industrial state in order to promote sustainable development. The authors present a deep analysis of the ways that industrial states – both developed and developing – are currently unsustainable and how economic and social welfare are related to the environment, to public health and safety, and to earning capacity and meaningful and rewarding employment. The authors offer multipurpose solutions to the sustainability challenge that integrate industrial development, employment, technology, environment, national and international law, trade, finance, and public and worker health and safety. The authors present a compelling wake-up call that warns of the collision course set between the current paths of continued growth and inevitable unsustainability in the world today.

Offering clear examples and real solutions, this textbook illustrates how the driving forces that are currently promoting unsustainability can be refocused and redesigned to reverse course and improve the state of the world. This book is essential reading for those teaching and studying sustainable development and the critical roles of the economy, employment, and the environment.

Part I
The multidimensional concept of sustainability

In Part I of this book, we discuss the nature (Chapter 1) and evolution (Chapter 2) of the multidimensional concepts of sustainability and sustainable development.

Chapter 1 begins by exploring two central components of sustainable development – meeting basic human needs and equality, which are discussed in the context of governance. We then consider the current economic growth model and the importance given to technological innovation as the key to solving the sustainability challenge. The chapter ends by highlighting several critical issues that we argue must be included in future development strategies. A narrow focus on one issue, such as climate change, or even a small group of concerns will limit options and ignore opportunities to develop cross-cutting approaches to address unsustainable trends in a comprehensive manner.

Chapter 2 provides a brief historical context for the ideas and themes discussed in Chapter 1. It identifies a number of important texts, national and international events, U.S. regulations from 1951 to 2018, and Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs) that helped shape the current and continually evolving notion of sustainable development. It also discusses the 2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and makes the argument that employment is a critical and overlooked component of sustainable development.

1 Concern for a global future

1.1 Human needs and sustainability

1.1.1 The measurement of (human) development

1.1.2 Consumption and well-being

1.1.3 Employment and well-being

1.2 Social justice, inequality, and the social contract between the governed and the government

1.2.1 The social contract and the theory of justice

1.2.2 Equality of what?

1.2.3 Rising inequality

1.3 Living beyond our ecological means: the technology debate

1.3.1 Growth, technology, and substitution versus a steady-state economy

1.3.2 The environment and affluence: the environmental Kuznets curve

1.3.3 Technological optimism

1.3.4 The reformulation of sustainable development in terms of tipping points

1.4 Rationalizing the competing pressures on sustainability

1.5 Additional readings

1.6 References

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the industrialized world might have been described as one of significant technological progress, industrialization, and globalization. In developed nations, energy systems supply power to our homes, places of work, and general environment. When we become ill, we find an abundance of modern drugs that can ease or cure our suffering, maintaining or improving our physical and emotional well-being. Global financial and commodity markets provide trillions of dollars a day to supply our investment and consumption needs. The agricultural sector, through mechanization and other technological and biological advances, has been able to supply our growing sustenance requirements. Telecommunications systems have enabled friends, families, businesses, organizations, and governments to communicate verbally and visually across thousands of miles. Combine these technologies with our modern transportation systems, and we remove the notion of the frontier.

Having achieved such progress, why should we now be concerned about the future of humankind on a global scale? Primarily, because this progress has not been equitable or sustainable. In 2013, 766 million people lived in extreme poverty on less than $1.90 a day (UNDP 2016). It is estimated that some 3 billion people live below the “ethical poverty line,” which is defined as the income needed for someone to achieve a normal life expectancy of 70 years (Edward 2006; Oxfam 2017). Thus, a majority of the 7.3 billion people alive today may not have any meaningful access to the resources and quality of life described above. Even within the developed countries, many people do not have access to an adequate supply of essential goods, services, housing, health care, and other necessities and, in a financial crisis like the one in 2008, are at risk of losing their homes and/or their jobs. Furthermore, inequality is increasing, leading toward a world of growing disparity both between industrialized and developing nations and among different segments of the population within those countries. In effect, the communities of less-developed regions and poor areas are held captive to the needs and wants of those who are well-off in industrialized (and some in industrializing) nations, whose living and consuming habits are in many ways condemning billions of people to a lower (material) quality of life. Put simply, if each member of the global community were to live the lifestyle of the average U.S. or UK citizen, holding technology constant, we would need the resources of somewhere between 1.5 and 8 planet Earths (McLaren et al. 1997; Wilson 2002; WWF 2006, 2016; McDonald 2015). It is clear that a global drive to reach the Westernized view of the good life, without a drastic change in production processes and consumption patterns, will soon bring us up against ecological and physical limits and force us to rethink what we mean by a secure and fulfilling lifestyle.

These introductory paragraphs present a highly simplified view of the world, and there is clearly a continuum of positions between those presented. The central argument of this book is that if we are interested in the well-being of current and future generations, we not only should be concerned for the future of the world but also should be actively searching for new ways to enable individuals, communities, and nations to live a sustainable life through sustainable livelihoods. If present trends continue and the structural forces driving them remain substantially unchanged, there is a strong possibility that within a few generations the world will be incapable of sustaining the human population at an adequate level of material well-being and health, and that it will lack sufficient and equitable opportunities for the realization of human potential. These trends include persistent (and often growing) inequalities between and within nations (including the United States) and persuasive evidence that we are living beyond our ecological and physical means.

Further, the social and political environment in which policy responses to these trends must be made is a difficult one. It is defined by globalization and rapid technological change, which are mutually reinforcing and create a set of conditions that shortens the necessary response time for policy, restricts national policy options, and possibly exacerbates distributional inequality and ecological damage. This chapter lays out the challenge of meeting human needs in a sustainable and equitable way, given these social and political conditions.

1.1 Human needs and sustainability

Understanding the fundamental needs of humans is essential if we are to develop strategies to transition society toward more sustainable forms of development. We define a human need as any need, both physiological and psychological, that is inherently universal, across both space and time, for our species. What it is not is a want or desire, nor is it the specific means with which we seek to fulfill a need. Furthermore, unlike Maslow’s hierarchy of human need (1943), it is increasingly apparent that “human needs are irreducibly plural” and neither hierarchical nor substitutable (Gough 2015, p. 1201). Despite the universality of fundamental human needs, any individual, group, or society will develop actions and value systems in an effort to realize only their perceived needs, based on the information and opportunity available. This is especially important when considering differences in the needs of people in developed versus developing nations, where livelihoods and opportunities vary significantly. It also means that the satisfiers of needs will change over time and across cultures with socioeconomic change.

For example, if societal and cultural values perceive and nurture basic psychological needs, it is likely that the social fabric of a community will strengthen, which in turn will facilitate the well-being and integrity of individuals within that community (R. M. Ryan 1995). Not acknowledging or supporting basic psychological needs will likely result in the opposite effect, as the underlying human need remains, whether perceived or not. Hence, if we are concerned for humankind, then we need to understand the difference between basic needs that are inherent in human nature and those that are a product of the socialization of humans. This understanding will optimize the economic, social, and political decision-making process we must undertake in order to create a sustainable future.

While historically the purpose of development was to develop things (for example, to transform resources into commodities/products), this was first rejected and redefined in the 1970s, shifting the focus of development to satisfying the needs of humankind. This process could be said to have begun with Schumacher’s 1973 publication Small Is Beautiful, which challenged the prevailing patterns of development and approach to global economics. Schumacher (1999, p. 139) rejected the idea that what “is best for the rich must be best for the poor” and redirected the conventional view of development toward human needs. “Development does not start with goods; it starts with people and their education, organization, and discipline. Without these three, all resources remain latent, untapped, potential” (ibid.).

A year later, the Cocoyoc Declaration built on the ideas of Schumacher and placed basic human needs at the center of development efforts, stating that “any process of growth that does not lead to their fulfillment – or, even worse, disrupts them – is a travesty of the idea of development.”¹ The following year the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation (1975) articulated a similar position on the objective of development in What Now: Another Development. It called for the “development of every man and woman – of the whole man and woman – and not just the growth of things, which are merely means” (ibid., p. 5). Further, the report emphasized the importance of satisfying the basic needs of the poor, as well as the universal “needs for expression, creativity, conviviality, and for deciding [ … one’s] own destiny” (ibid.). It continues: “Development is a whole; it is an integral, value-loaded, cultural process; it encompasses the natural environment, social relations, education, production, consumption and well-being” (ibid.).

In 1987, over a decade later, the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) published Our Common Future, which again placed “human needs” at the center of concerns for “sustainable” development.

Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It contains within it two key concepts:

• The concept of “needs,” in particular the essential needs of the world’s poor, to which overriding priority should be given; and
• The idea of limitations imposed by the state of technology and social organization on the environment’s ability to meet present and future needs.

(WCED 1987, p. 43)

The WCED’s conceptualization of sustainable development, which built on the development vision articulated in What Now: Another Development, made an influential case for “the need to integrate economic a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Detailed table of contents
• List of illustrations
• Author biographies
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Overview
• Part I The multidimensional concept of sustainability
• Part II Economic development, globalization, and sustainability
• Part III Industrial policy and the role of the firm in pursuing sustainable development
• Part IV National, regional, and international efforts to advance health, safety, and the environment
• Part V International trade and energy
• Part VI Strategic policy design for sustainable transformations
• Index