A New Agenda for Sustainability

Bo Elling, Erling Jelsøe, Kurt Aagaard Nielsen, Kurt Aagaard Nielsen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317187387
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Tecnologia e ingegneria
• Subtopic: Agricoltura sostenibile

Two decades after the Brundtland Commission's Report "Our Common Future" adopted the concept of 'sustainable development', this book provides a renewal of the concept exploring the potential for new practices and fields for those involved in sustainability activity. The book addresses a number of themes concerning firstly, the provision of a "next generation perspective", which was a central, and still unresolved, notion of the original Brundtland definition and, secondly the provision of new milestones for policy and research that can expand the discussion on this second generation concept on sustainability. The material dealt with in the book offers a wide variety of perspectives on sustainability and reflects the importance of interdisciplinary and transdiciplinary work in the field. Suggesting targets for future analytical and political efforts in achieving global sustainability, this book offers new analytical opportunities for holistic politics and research at a general and sector level.

PART I
Challenging the Concept of Sustainable Design

Chapter 1
Sustainable Rhythms: When Society Meets Nature

Helge Hvid

Sustainability, the Grand Project for the Twenty-first Century

Sustainability is civilisation’s main project for the twenty-first century, just as democracy was the new project of civilisation in the nineteenth century, and the welfare state was the new project of civilisation in the twentieth century in Europe and North America (Hvid 2006). It is still quite unclear what sustainability really is (as is also the case with ‘democracy’ and ‘welfare’), however, numerous articles, reports and official documents state that sustainability is based on three pillars: environmental protection and regeneration, social protection and development, and economic regeneration and development.

The concept of sustainability is used in many contexts: international organisations, governmental institutions, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), local authorities, trade unions and, not least, in business. It has received many interpretations. However, the openness of the concept makes sustainability a possible meeting point for many different actors in a common attempt to civilise global society and create a (more) sustainable balance between human production and consumption, on the one hand, and regeneration of resources, both natural and human, on the other. We cannot expect that these different actors will work together in complete harmony for sustainability. On the contrary, there are a lot of conflicts related to sustainability. However, the fact that the actors are meeting creates a dynamic for sustainability of some kind.

Sustainability calls for big changes in the ruling systems: governmental rules must be changed, the priorities of business must be changed, the planning systems must be changed, new economic incentives must be developed, common values and cultures must be changed – a huge and perhaps unrealistic project? Optimism can be gained from the fact that changes in the ruling systems and in business are happening all the time. What the notion of sustainability is asking for is a new direction for these changes, namely towards sustainability. In a non-totalitarian society, such a shift in the patterns of social change can, however, not be realised without a broad acceptance by the population, and even more importantly, it cannot be realised without active support from daily life, in workplaces, in families and in local communities. Therefore it is crucial to create an understanding about what a sustainable everyday life is like. Where do we find the roots for sustainable rhythms in everyday life? What can make a sustainable everyday life attractive?

This chapter will not give a definitive answer to these big questions. It will, however, argue that the concept of rhythm is fruitful for finding the big answers. In this chapter I argue that the character of the rhythms of everyday life is crucial for sustainability. Rhythms are here understood as repeating activities in time and space – activities related to production, to consumption, to family activities, to local community, to cultural traditions, etc. Here I will define what sustainable rhythms are. In the rest of the chapter I will argue for this definition:

1. Sustainable rhythms are a combination of repetitive structure in time and space AND individual opportunities (for man, animals and plants) to differentiate, to adjust the rhythm, to adapt activities and to recreate the rhythm in new forms. That creates opportunities for regeneration of resources, survival, learning and development. The combination of repetition and discontinuity strengthen each living rhythmic circle.

2. Sustainable rhythms are interconnected with many other rhythms. That is what bio-diversity is about. That is what social diversity is about. That is what collaboration between different competences is about. That is what producer-customer relations are about. That is what a living local community is about. The interconnections between rhythms are sustainable when the one living circle creates resources for the other living circle: when the one species creates resources for another. When the one qualification creates resources for the other.

The claim is that even smaller changes in the rhythms of daily life could create bigger changes in the governing system in the direction of sustainability, and that again could change daily life in a way that provides even stronger support for sustainability.

To understand what sustainable rhythms are, it is necessary to understand their opposite, namely unsustainable rhythms. It is necessary to describe the restricted and unsustainable rhythms of daily life.

Restricted Rhythms of Daily Life

Most of us are living quite unsustainable daily lives. Let us take an example that most people in the highly developed part of the world know more than less. A type of family where the quality of life is strongly related to the quantity of consumption. They work to get the maximum amount of money which they use to maximise consumption. Because of that they use a lot of time driving in their car to different discount markets with good parking opportunities, and they always go for the cheapest offers. The diversity they meet in the shopping mall is strictly planned and controlled by multinational retail companies.

This restricted behaviour in the consumption system (the family) creates a pressure on the retail sector – they have to rationalise their own services, and they have to lay pressure on the suppliers to make the products cheaper. One of the supplier groups, the farmers, reacts to that pressure by intensifying the use of their land. Almost all land is gradually occupied by rational farming, supported by pesticides and fertiliser. That kind of farming reduces biodiversity dramatically, it pollutes the streams and rivers, and it affects the groundwater.

All the problems related to sustainability come from the social orientation of the consumption unit (the family). Or do they? Are not the family’s consumption habits created by a controlled and restricted working life, where performance expressed in money is the only thing of value? And are not the consumption habits of the family created in a local community, strictly planned and controlled in every detail, where the work in the household is standardised, the local community is nothing more than the shopping mall, including commercialised entertainment. This picture is the rationality of daily life described by Ritzer in his famous book about McDonaldization (1996).

It seems as if daily life is locked into a rationality in which companies are under pressure from consumers which results in a rationalised and performance-orientated working life, and planned and controlled local communities that in turn results in a quantitative orientation in consumption which creates a further pressure on the companies … The system is not rational but functionally coherent, and the system cannot by itself create a new functional rationality – for instance, related to sustainability. The system is locked. The only hope seems to be a strong (wo)man coming from somewhere outside who takes the necessary power to put forward an ecological reason and pacify all who oppose such a reason. Our only hope seems to be what Gorz called ‘eco-fascism’ (Gorz 1980).

Or is it really so bad? We could ask: If it really is so bad, why do living social and natural systems still exist? There must be something in daily life that allows people to arrange a street party, even though the planner of the suburb did not plan it. There must be something in daily life that makes it attractive, at least for some people, to buy organic food. There must be something in working life that sometimes gets workers to improve the quality of their products and services even though they are not asked to do that. In the rhythms of daily life there must be some openings for creating new connections, new insights and new aspirations. I wish to identify these rhythms.

Living Rhythms: An Opening

Sustainability is about regeneration and the development of social, natural and economic resources. Sustainability is about the creation of equilibrium and balance that makes regeneration and development possible. However, equilibrium and balance are not stationary, but rather rhythms that work together. The tightrope dancer can only keep her balance as long as she is in an alert rhythmical movement. Balance in life is achieved through a rhythmic interaction between performance and enjoyment, and between exertion and rest. Balance in nature is achieved through a rhythmic interaction between the various rhythms of the species. The problems of sustainability are most likely rooted in the fact that the rhythmical interplay is not working, that rhythms have been disconnected from each other and have therefore begun to work against each other.

All living processes are rhythmic in nature. The seed sprouts in the ground in spring, sets the first leaves, flowers, sets seed and withers, only to repeat the same rhythmic process the following year. Human lives are also rhythmic, although the element of repetition from generation to generation is less than for the flower. The rhythm of life runs from childhood to youth, through the adult years to old age. The year has its rhythmic cycle of seasons, festivals, holidays and working periods. The week has a rhythm of working days and days off. Each weekday has a rhythm of sleep, waking up, travel to work, work, lunch, work, travel, household chores, leisure and sleep. Weekends have a slightly different and more individual rhythm. Being in a rhythm is to live. Being outside of rhythm can threaten one’s identity and life.

Many individual rhythms are temporally and functionally connected and coordinated. This coordination used to be more directly linked to the movements of the sun. The rhythms of nature and humanity were linked together, and both social and natural rhythms were controlled by the sun’s rhythmic movements (or more accurately, the movements of the Earth in relation to the sun). The sun, with its daily and annual rhythms, was the natural conductor of the rhythms of everyday life. This was very clear in the ‘primary industries’ (agriculture and fishing), to which the large majority of the population used to be linked. The fisherman had to follow the movements of the weather and the tides. He had to adjust his catch according to the various annual rhythms of the fish species. For the farmer, life was largely linked to the seasons, weather and the rhythms of the animals.

However, one of the great conquests of modern technology has been that it has made us – partially – independent of nature’s rhythms. Employment in ‘primary industries’ has become vanishingly small due to huge rationalisations, and these industries have sought to break loose from the cycles of nature: heated and lit greenhouses and livestock buildings have been built so that vegetables can be grown and chickens hatched all year round. Annual fish migrations have been halted by constructing ocean farms.

For the vast majority of the population, who do not have direct contact with the ‘primary industries’, daily life is almost completely removed from the rhythms of nature. We have evaded the weather’s oscillations by creating our own indoor climate in temperature controlled houses and vehicles. Electric light makes us no longer dependent on sunlight. You can buy strawberries in the supermarket all year round. Chickens are not born at Easter time, but all year round. We like to be able to wear summer clothes all year round, eat the same food all year round. Travel with the same ease all year round, shop any time of day, any day of the year. We can work at all times of day and, in some sectors, in any location. The rhythms of work have been split up and compartmentalised through work and time studies. This decoupling of rhythms has made us (partially) independent of time and place.

Rhythms have been detached from each other with the aim of optimising and rationalising each function separately. Rhythms have been reduced to controlled repetition. Modern technology has been the most significant means of achieving this fragmentation, but modern scientific forms of organisation have also contributed.

Throughout this modernisation process, there has been a loss of rhythmic coordination and cohesion. This loss represents a serious ecological and social impact. ‘Put briefly and simply, the social time regulators subject the biological regulations to ever more serious tests’ (Eriksen 2004: 244). Social and environmental sustainability is basically about re-establishing greater rhythmical cohesion. Balance, both ecological and social, is coordinated and cohesive rhythms.

It is not be possible to return to the former nature-dependent society. Eco-romantic ideals of returning to local communities linked to nature cannot create a sustainable foundation for humanity today. We are too numerous for local communities to be able to provide the necessary foundation for life, and we have a social orientation that goes beyond the local community.

Instead we have to develop new sustainable rhythms in the modern industrialised and globalised society. Rhythms that unite the activities of everyday life with the rhythm of nature; rhythms that allow human and social regeneration and development; rhythms that bring work, production and consumption in rhythmic balance with nature; rhythms that allow individual regeneration and development, and regeneration of social institution such as families, workplaces, local communities, cultural institutions and traditions; rhythms that create a structure of everyday life, but also rhythms which each and every one who participates in the rhythm influences. Rhythms that are interconnected, where the one rhythm supports the other.

To develop this idea I will, in the following, draw on three different theories: (1) Gunderson and Holling (2002) who develop a theory about adaptive cycles and what could be called natural rhythms in the relation between nature and man. (2) Giddens’s theory of structuration (Giddens 1984), which conceptualises a social system in which social institutions are created by repeating activities which are constantly adjusted to each other. Both Gunderson and Holling and Giddens provide inspiration to a rhythm analyses related to sustainability. They create an approach to analysing rhythms, and they are used as an approach for interpreting ‘rhythm analyses’ developed by (3) Henry Lefebvre (2004). For Lefebvre ‘rhythm analyses’ is an approach to analysing everyday life.

Rhythms in a Chaotic Relation Between Man and Nature

A new systems approach is developing. It understands systems as incalculable complex entities in which change is discontinuous, in which chaos and order exist at the same time. Systems are organising themselves in non-linear behaviour. Sustainable systems are adaptive and have the capacity to change themselves in a world dominated by uncertainty. I will present that new approach by referring to Gunderson and Holling’s book Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems (Gunderson and Holling 2002). Gunderson and Holling’s, and the network they have created, main interest is in the management of regional ecosystems in which natural systems, social systems and economic systems interact. Regional ecosystems are, however, only their reference for creating a general theory for understanding natural systems, social systems and economic systems.

Both natural and social systems are under tremendous pressure because of one-sided exploitation. Gunderson and Holling argue that even planning and management for sustainability quite often create an unexpected pressure on natural and social systems. Many water management programmes, for instance, where water has been regulated in large controlled systems, have caused catastrophic flooding when man and nature have acted unforeseeably. Another example is pest control in the natural environment which has unbalanced the ecological balance. Against this background Gunderson and Holling ask a very fundamental question: How is it that many natural systems, social systems and economic systems have not collapsed in spite of one-sided exploitation of nature, one-sided exploitation of human resources, and economies being under constant pressure? The systems must have a very strong resilience to survive. This leads to the main argument: planning for sustainability should understand and recognise the resilience of the systems, and it should not aim to establish detailed control systems, but rather support the resilience of the systems.

Resilience, as Gunderson and Holling use the concept, is based on what I would call sustainable rhythms. Gunderson and Holling define resilience not as a fixed condition. Resilience is created in a moving system where a multiplicity of different rhythmic cycles interplay and adapt to each other.

Resilience is low in a fixed system. It has no ability to adjust itself to changing conditions. Also, a heavily controlled system has a low resilience because it is not able to act rationally in a complex situation, where reality looks different from different positions and where the context is changing constantly. A water system constructed by well-dimensioned drainage works can create disasters when the weather or the humans do not act as expected. ‘Water systems’ consisting of different biotopes, wetlands and constructions that are prepared for flooding are much better...