Sustainability and Well-Being

The Middle Path to Environment, Society and the Economy

A. Bandarage

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781137308986
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137308993
• Topic: Ciencias físicas
• Subtopic: Filosofía política

Asoka Bandarage provides an integrated analysis of the twin challenges of environmental sustainability and human well-being by investigating them as interconnected phenomena requiring a paradigmatic psychosocial transformation. She presents an incisive social science analysis and an alternative philosophical perspective on the needed transition from a worldview of domination to one of partnership.

1

Introduction: Environment, Society, and the Economy

Abstract: This chapter refers to the depth of the current crisis of environmental, social, and economic collapse; limitations of current approaches; and the need for alternative cultural and philosophical perspectives. It defines the concepts of sustainability and human well-being, their inseparability, and the need for an integrated approach to environment, society and the economy. It questions the dominance of the economy over the environment and society emphasizing the need for a transformation of the growth-driven economic system toward more balanced alternatives. It calls for an ethical reorientation to build a partnership-based society that upholds sustainability and well-being. It points to the “Middle Path” drawn from the Buddhist teachings for guidance in that direction.

Bandarage, Asoka. Sustainability and Well-Being: The Middle Path to Environment, Society, and the Economy. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. DOI: 10.1057/9781137308993.

Humanity has achieved incredible technological and material growth. Yet the ecosystem and human communities are collapsing due largely to that very advancement, causing insecurity, fear, and conflict across the world. As human beings become more and more the appendages of technology and the global market, we face an existential crisis of what it means to be human in nature. The challenge we face is not the further acceleration of competitive, economic, and technological growth and the creation of a postnature, “post-human” world¹ but a fundamental transformation to a balanced and ethical path of social and psychological development.

But as we face that challenge, we live in a time of intellectual and ideological myopia and confusion. Narrowly based social movements present themselves in the guise of upholding truth and freedom while actually fomenting fear, inciting divisions, and fostering ethno-religious and nationalist conflict. Analyses that go to the root of our predicament have virtually disappeared, even in academia.

The unprecedented challenge facing the world—namely, the transformation of the global economy to a sustainable basis²—is not receiving the attention that it urgently requires. Conventional academic and policy analyses focus on separate aspects of the global crisis rather than approaching it comprehensively as a crisis of human and planetary survival. Alternative interdisciplinary perspectives are needed at this time to broaden the discourse and the search for nonviolent solutions. This work is dedicated to that endeavor.

Sustainability and Well-Being seeks to contribute a synthesis of research-based social science analysis and a philosophical perspective on social and psychological transformation. Transcending traditional academic and disciplinary boundaries, it brings together research and perspectives from sociology, history, political economy, gender studies, humanistic psychology, deep ecology (which recognizes humans as part of and not separate from the Earth), and the expanding field of consciousness studies that integrates Western science and Eastern philosophy, especially Buddhism. The book also brings together perspectives from a wide range of regions and societies in the Global North and South, including traditional worldviews from disappearing indigenous and peasant communities and cutting edge, technology-based cyber networks and communities.

An integrated approach

A philosophical and political convergence has emerged in recent years around the twin concepts of sustainability and well-being, defining a sustainable world as one in which the “earth thrives and people can pursue flourishing lives.” ³ Unlike conventional environmentalism, the integrated approach defines sustainability as constituting both the well-being of the human species and that of the natural world.⁴ What we normally think of only as environmental problems—climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution, and so on—are also problems of human health and survival. In recent years, global environmental and social justice movements have come closer together in common struggles against the twin forces of environmental destruction and human impoverishment.

The term sustainability has degenerated into a cliché in common usage, but its underlying meaning and values call for serious consideration. The word is derived from the Latin sustinere, which means to hold up, support, or endure.⁵But how can sustainability of ecosystems and species be ensured when impermanence is the fact of life? Human and nonhuman forms of nature (including plants and animals) experience constant evolution: birth, growth, decay, death, and regeneration. Human survival requires consumption of natural resources, which in turn entails environmental change. Sustainability does not mean stasis and mere conservation but conscious development that honors balance and harmony between societal needs and the regenerative capacity of the planet’s life-supporting systems. In 1987, the seminal United Nations’ Brundtland Commission report, Our Common Future, defined sustainable development as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” ⁶ As this book argues, the needs of the present have to be determined in relation to both environmental sustenance and the well-being of all people (across gender, race, and class), not just elites. The book discusses the history of the class- and race-based politics of environmental movements in the West and the need to prevent a resurgence of those tendencies as economic crises and conflicts worsen today.

While social justice is a key component, human well-being is not reducible to social equity. The term well-being requires a broad understanding of life, one that goes beyond the quantitative, materialist dimension to encompass the qualitative aspects of social and psychological health. There are enough natural resources and technical know-how today to meet human physiological needs if the necessary organizational changes and standards of environmental sustainability and social equity are met. With reorganization of production and distribution, there could be greater balance between the quantifiable dimensions of well-being (food, water, shelter, and health care) and what psychologists call subjective well-being, including the individual’s need for love and belonging, esteem, self-actualization, and self-transcendence.⁷ This book argues for a holistic approach to human development that goes beyond the reductionism that prevails in conventional economics and science, which approach complex phenomena in terms of their separate components.

Transformation of the economy

The modern global economy approaches the environment and humanity as mere resources and outlets for production and consumption. In so doing, it is destroying the natural integration of planetary life, seeking instead to reintegrate the environment and society through modern science, technology, and the market system .⁸ This book argues that instead of attempting to dominate and subsume society and the environment within the logic of economic growth (Figure 1.1), the components of the economy—technology, property relations, the market, and finance—must be redesigned to serve the needs of environmental sustainability and human well-being. The prevailing unsustainable market and technological approach and alternative sustainable approaches broadly represented by Figures 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3 in this Introduction will be elucidated in the course of the book.

Figure 1.1 Unsustainable market and technological approach

The boundary between the environment and society is not distinct and tight but fluid, and the connection between them must be seen as a mutually evolving flow of energy and materials between them. Conventional approaches to sustainable development, such as the United Nations Agenda 21, promulgated by the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, approach the environment, society, and economy as three equivalent sectors, or pillars, that need to be brought into greater balance for the purposes of sustainable development (Figure 1.2 ).⁹ But in reality these three sectors are not equivalent. The environment—planet Earth—encompasses human society and the economy within its fold (Figure 1.3). The economy, the production, and distribution of the material means of existence is only one subsystem of society.¹⁰ The environment has primacy over the human-created spheres of society and the economy. The natural world does not need humanity for its survival, but humanity cannot survive without the environment.¹¹ The central idea of the ecological approach (as opposed to conventional environmentalism) is that we are part of the Earth, not apart and separate from it.¹² This does not negate the fact that in the process of adaptation and evolution humanity has made a great impact on the environment.¹³

Figure 1.2 Conventional approach to sustainable development

Source: Adapted from Bob Giddings, Bill Hopwood, and Geoff O’Brien, “Environment, Economy and Society: Fitting Them Tog...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1  Introduction: Environment, Society, and the Economy
• 2  Environmental, Social, and Economic Collapse
• 3  Evolution of the Domination Paradigm
• 4  Ecological and Social Justice Movements
• 5  Ethical Path to Sustainability and Well-Being
• Bibliography
• Index