Global Sustainability

Bending the Curve

Gilberto C. Gallopín, Paul D. Raskin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134501939
• Subtopic: Globalisation
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Unprecedented levels of wealth, technology and institutional capacity can forge a just, peaceful and ecologically resilient future. However, the authors argue, social polarization, geo-political conflict and environmental degradation are threatening the long-term well-being of humanity and the planet. Global Sustainability explores the alternative futures that could emerge from the resolution of these antagonisms.
Based on extensive international and interdisciplinary research, the book identifies the perils of market-driven scenarios and considers the possibility of the failure of conventional approaches. It also, however, presents a vision of the possibility of a 'Great Transition' in which revised human values and development goals bring a new stage of civilization. It will be essential reading for all scholars and professionals interested in the future of the environment, international affairs, and sustainable development.

Chapter 1

The challenge

Ours is an age of profound transformation and great uncertainty about the future. Over the last few centuries – a mere heartbeat of historic time – the human impact on the global environment has grown from diminutive to elephantine. A tightening web of environmental, economic, and social interactions progressively binds nations, regions, and communities into a single Earth system. The dynamics of the global whole increasingly govern the behavior of its parts.

This book aims to illuminate the character of the current global system, the dynamics driving it forward, and a spectrum of possible future states and pathways. But more, the endeavor is animated by a conviction. It assumes that informed human choice, mediated through governmental policies, civil initiatives and individual decisions, can shape the future in essential ways. While reflecting realistically on the perils for the future, we retain the optimism that there are attractive possibilities, as well, for humanity and the environment in the twenty-first century.

The human predicament

For most of history, the challenge for the human race has been survival against natural forces that often have been harsh and unpredictable. The power to shape, control, and transform nature evolved gradually over several million years. Then, the emergence of the capitalist economic system and the modern worldview accelerated the process of change. The pace of innovation in technology, growth in population, and transformation of the environment and the social order reached a crescendo in the two centuries since the industrial revolution. Since 1950 alone, global population has doubled, energy production has more than tripled and economic output has increased by a factor of nearly 7. The interdependent global system we observe today is a way-station in this sweeping process of growth, transformation, and expansion.

Inevitably, such a rapid growth must butt against the limits of a finite planet. A new and ominous feature of the current phase of history is that human impacts on the environment have reached global scales. Human claims on environmental resources and disruption of environment support systems exceed natural rates for the renewal of resources and capacities for absorbing a complex brew of wastes generated by human activity. The contradiction between the growth imperative of the modern world system and the constraints of a finite planet will be resolved. The critical question is, how?

With the end of the Cold War, the threat to civilization of massive use of weapons of mass destruction may have receded. But a new and subtler challenge that holds both exciting promises and troubling perils faces humanity in the twenty-first century – the challenge of creating a sustainable global civilization. The human species has the capacity to apply its technological wizardry and its foresight to fashion a transition to an environmentally sustainable and just global society. The possibilities are unprecedented for technological and economic progress to eradicate hunger, improve the human condition, enrich the human stock of knowledge and cultural achievement, and increase opportunity and choice.

Yet, a zeitgeist of apprehension about the kind of world that this generation will bequeath to its descendants is displacing the Enlightenment faith in progress and hope for the future. For the risks are ominous. High growth in population in poor regions and consumption in rich regions are increasing the size of the human footprint on nature. The global climate system is destabilizing, ecosystems are degrading, and the Earth's biological wealth is diminishing. Billions of the yet unborn may be consigned to an existence of poverty, hunger, and hardship. The destitution of multitudes amidst unprecedented levels of wealth for the privileged portends social unrest and violence with a global reach. Globally connected terrorist networks, exploiting and feeding the despair and anger of the dispossessed, challenge the very notion of a global civilization.

How humanity will cope with such challenges is not certain. Nor is the outcome determined – it will be influenced by individual and collective choices that we make. While it is widely perceived that current trends are ecologically and socially unsustainable, an alternative vision has yet to be well articulated and the suite of actions that could provide safe passage to a sustainable future has not been defined. Will we be able to pass on to our grandchildren a global society – and a planet – that is richer in possibilities than our present one, or will we leave a more impoverished Earth as a patrimony for future generations? Will human existence and human institutions such as families and communities be more secure or more fragile in the global society of the mid-twenty-first century?

Conventional development wisdom generally assumes the expansion of resource-intensive consumption and production patterns in industrialized countries, and their gradual extension to developing countries. A common theme is that societies everywhere will gradually converge toward common institutional and cultural assumptions in the context of globalizing economies (OECD 1997). This paradigm animates the programs of international banks, the discussions of world trade negotiations and the ideologies of prestigious thinkers and leaders. Yet, a critical pragmatic question is whether the extrapolation of market-driven globalization envisioned by the conventional development paradigm is feasible. A critical normative one is whether such a vision for global development is desirable.

To gauge the scale of increased environmental pressure, if the world's projected population of 9 billion people in the middle of the twenty-first century were to consume resources at the same level per person as in the United States today, world requirements would grow by very roughly a factor of 10. Can such resource-intensive lifestyles be maintained and extended to a growing population? Can conventional socioeconomic goals and environmental sustainability be simultaneously satisfied? Or would conventional development risk unacceptable deterioration of the resources and ecosystems of the biosphere, and social and economic instability?

War, social opposition, and stubborn traditionalism impeded the forward march of the ascendant market system in the past. But with the collapse of the socialist experiments in Russia and elsewhere, the expansion of global markets, and the heady advance of new technology, the millennial glee of cheerleaders for global capitalism who were anticipating a cornucopia for all in the new century was, perhaps, understandable (Schwartz and Leyden 1997). But such a sanguine prognosis is simplistic. Substantial hurdles must be overcome, wise policies fashioned and fundamental questions addressed. How will a growing human enterprise, one that already is significantly perturbing natural planetary processes, be reconciled with environmental limits? How will the deep social fissures between the North and the South, the rich and the poor, parochialism and globalism, be ameliorated? And the question posed by Socrates long ago remains: how shall we live?

Roots in the industrial revolution

The global system that unfolds before us in its multifarious dimensions is the culmination of an expansionist and transformative European capitalism that emerged over the last millennium. By liberating nascent human potential for innovation and ingenuity, capacity for greed and acquisitiveness, and hunger for liberty and modernism, the new system set in motion a perpetual revolution in values, institutions, technology, and knowledge.

This process was further accelerated by the industrial explosion, which continues to play out in the tumultuous technological, institutional, and cultural changes of our time. The prodigious growth in material consumption, human numbers, industrial production, and claims on land and the whole range of natural resources, is the culmination of the advance of industrial society toward a world system. The enclosure of lands, which displaced traditional livelihoods and brought common resource areas into the market nexus, the colonial period and the current market expansion are all manifestations of this growth imperative. Dynamic capitalism has transformed the societies at its center, while progressively incorporating those on the periphery – or marginalizing them.

A number of factors combined to form a powerful, growth-oriented, modernizing, and dominant world system, albeit with sad counterpoints in social disruption, loss of community and environmental degradation. The industrial revolution was catalyzed by an interlinked series of technological innovations that vastly increased labor productivity by substituting machines and inanimate energy for human craft and muscle power, and sharply improved the capacity to exploit and manipulate raw materials (Landes 1970). Technological and social change drove one another in a mutually conditioning process of system transformation. The value of possessive individualism became a secular religion sweeping away more traditional and community-oriented norms. In economic theory, but to a much lesser extent in practice, the modern individual was of a new species; a rational, informed and acquisitive agent in the free market. Material wants and needs were met, expanded and transformed in a continuing spiral of production and consumption. The principle of economic efficiency as the rational basis for a rational economy was associated with the private control of investment surplus, the free market and unfettered trade.

At the same time, a number of modern institutions, building on historic antecedents, gradually developed to regularize and reform the maturing capitalist system. A modern legal and constitutional framework arose to regulate economic conduct, guarantee contracts, and protect, to some extent, social and civil liberties. Meanwhile, oppositional institutions – labor unions, suffrage movements, and minority rights organizations – struggled for, and often won, better working conditions, democratic enfranchisement and social and economic opportunity for marginalized groups.

A parallel and reinforcing constellation of attitudes arose in religion (the Reformation), political philosophy, and modern science. The traditionalism of received dogma and birthright gave way to a modernism, which embraced values compatible with the industriousness and entrepreneurship of the new era. With roots in Judaeo–Christian attitudes toward nature, industrial society saw nature as a cornucopia for human domination, an essentially limitless wellspring of resources, space, and services. Spawned by the new order, the scientific revolution, in turn, greatly hastened the process of transformation, both by spinning off an endless stream of new technology and by altering human awareness of its place in nature and the cosmos.

The sustainability transition

The inexorable expansion of human activity unleashed by the industrial era was destined to reach a planetary phase. At the dawn of the new century, that era is upon us. Its most vivid expression is perhaps global environmental change. Where the critical environmental issues of 30 years ago, such as air pollution, were local, straightforward, and short term, the environmental agenda today includes issues – climate change is the epitome – that are global, complex, and long term. But global environmental transformation is one aspect of a unitary process of globalization, which also has economic, technological, cultural, and geo-political dimensions.

The concern for the long-term well-being of the planet and future generations has been captured in the notion of sustainable development. Sustainable development is an imprecise concept. Indeed, for some the very notion of development that is sustainable seems oxymoronic. Nevertheless, while precise technical definitions may be elusive, agreement on what is not sustainable is widespread. Like many powerful concepts, its ambiguity is constructive, allowing for wide discussion and debate on the content of certain broad principles – a commitment to reconciling environmental and social goals, and a concern for the rights of future generations. The sustainability paradigm increasingly infuses policy discussions, intergovernmental initiatives and even business philosophy. Moreover, by underscoring the importance of integrated and systemic perspectives and multi-generational time horizons, it gradually is influencing the scientific research agenda.

Sustainability is concerned with reconciling the long-term development of human society with the finite limits of the planet. Implicit in the notion of sustainability are such questions as: How shall we use the Earth? What kind of human society shall we build on it? How can we leave future generations a world with more opportunities rather than fewer? The classic formulation that sustainable development “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” reflects these broad notions (WCED 1987).

Two legitimate moral and social imperatives must be reconciled: the needs of the present and the needs of the future. The living standards of the billions today who do not enjoy the benefits of human progress – many of whom cannot satisfy even their basic needs – must be improved. At the same time, development patterns in both rich and poor countries must be altered in order to avoid leaving a bitter social and environmental legacy to future generations. For example, industrialization has relied on inexpensive and abundant fossil energy resources, particularly oil, natural gas, and coal. Yet, continued reliance on these fuels for the expansion of industrial activity risks committing the world to significant climatic alterations and extreme weather events for centuries to come (Nakićenović et al. 2000).

The profound challenge is to fashion a global development model that ensures rising standards of living without degrading the Earth's ecosystems, biodiversity, and climate. This requires a transformation in industrial processes, in the basis of modern lifestyles, and in the structure of economic development. A central theme of sustainability is harmonizing a complex and diverse set of goals that includes economic development, environmental preservation, and social justice. This coupling across issues and sectors is at the heart of the idea of sustainable development, suggesting that we may need to achieve these goals together, or not at all.

The implications are many. For policy, an integrated framework is needed to reflect the linkages between issues. For knowledge, a systemic perspective must complement specialization and reductionism. For popular values, a greater sense of connectedness to, and responsibility for, the human family, the broader community of life and the future must be cultivated.

There are those who downplay concerns about sustainability. Many hold philosophic objections to grand attempts to understand and guide human destiny, placing their faith in the capacity of the free market, human ingenuity and a homeostatic biosphere to provide timely responses to environmental and resource pressures. This worldview suggests minimalism toward development and environment policies, beyond steps to get competitive and maximally unfettered markets to function at local, national, and global scales. Indeed, this perspective is ascendant in many arenas, especially where economists of the neoclassical school advise governments and formulate policy (Beckerman 1995).

From the perspective of many ecologists and adherents of the sustainable development paradigm, this emphasis seems dangerously naive. The risks of relying on market and natural responses to correct perilous tendencies – and being wrong – are huge. The adoption of proactive policies and actions to avoid risks of ecological breakdown, resource degradation and related social friction appears the only prudent course under conditions of such uncertainty.

A major problem in joining these frameworks is the incommensurability of monetary costs as defined by markets, and environmental costs which are often long-term, multidimensional, and inherently normative (e.g., the cost of an “excess death” or of a lost species). There is no consensus, or even compelling methodology, for comparing the costs of climate change, for example, to the monetary costs of preventing it. Furthermore, there are great difficulties in embracing the interests of future generations – who cannot “vote” in today's market place – with the immediate bottom-line concerns of today's producers and consumers.

A source of hope is the growing realization that, once a sufficient standard of living has been reached, quality of life can expand without parallel increases in material requirements. The consumer society and its presumption of ever expanding material wants, is not synonymous with development and greater human welfare. Sustainable economic development can be based on qualitative expansion – growth in knowledge, in human capabilities, in social capital – that does not imply ever-increasing material wealth and environmental pressure.

Ultimately, the notion of sustaining the planet itself is a value that cannot be derived from economic doctrine. For those who adopt this value, a minimum requirement for policy will be to reduce the risk of undermining the conditions for human opportunity and activity in the future. We are at the early stages of operationalizing sustainability as a practical basis for action. This will require defining sustainability targets, laying out development scenarios that conform to those targets, and fashioning policy strategies for achieving goals.

The socio-ecological system

The evolving world system can be considered a socio-ecological system, comprised of environmental and human subsystems and their interactions (Gallopín et al. 1989, Shaw et al. 1991) as illustrated in Figure 1.1. The environmental subsystem, in turn, is composed of ecosystems, biophysical processes and other aspects of the natural world. The economic system includes capital, labor, other inputs, and the production processes in which they are used. The social subsystem includes consumption patterns, demographics, and culture. Subsystems interact in numerous ways and are mutually conditioning, so that a sharp distinction between dependent and independent variables is not meaningful. However, at a given time, certain processes may dominate the dynamics of the whole syste...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Global Sustainability
• Routledge/SEI global environment and development series
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Acknowledgments
• 1 The challenge
• 2 Scenarios of the future
• 3 Sustainability goals
• 4 Market-driven globalization
• 5 Bending the curve
• 6 Barbarization
• 7 Great transitions
• 8 Reflections at the branch point
• Annex
• Annex notes
• References
• Index