Distortions of Sustainability

On the Systematic Distortion in the Concept of "Sustainable Development"

by Trent Schroyer

A short definition of sustainability is to keep the volume of human extraction and emissions in balance with the regenerative and absorptive capacities of nature. But ecological balancing is only part of the meaning of sustainability. The ecology crisis has to be linked to the crisis of international justice too where sustaining equity of the South is essential Sustainability is a unified response to both the environmental crisis and the crisis of international justice.

But these interconnections are currently viewed in two ways and imply two different strategies for sustainability that get distorted in main stream discourse.

Weak Sustainability

A weak concept of sustainability assumes that economic substitutability can occur between natural scarcities and humanly introduced "substitutes" that changes natural environment by technology (e.g. biotechnology), or capitalized human interventions. It is this view which informs the official U.S. government position on Climate Change,"free trade" policy, and "development" programs as they are promoted by the G-8, the World Bank ,IMF and WTO. This is also the view that has been assumed in much of the North's interaction with Southern countries in the late 20th century.

In this view we can ultimately "eco-manage" the complexities of global
ecology and economics with the appropriate technologies and management
techniques associated with the "self-regulating" market system. This is the weak "sustainable development" that is promoted by the U.S. government (the "washington consensus"),the G-8 and other dominant institutions-such as the Bretton Woods ,WTO and the TNC's. But this path extracts natural capital much faster than it can be regenerated and economically overwhelms local farmers and businesses. However, these counter-productivities are ignored because of the supposed theoretical justification of Robert Solow's "substitutability" theorem. This is one of the principles on which a distinction between strong and weak sustainability can be systematically delineated.

A second principle that can be used to distinguish weak and strong sustainability is the approach to the inequality of north and south. The Washington Consensus - called "Global Neo-Liberalism"- presumes that justice of north-south interactions will be served by the results of future economic development. On this view the solution to poverty is increased economic growth and affluence that will result from increased production and consumption goals and associated money creation. This is a linear process driven by positive feed-back of higher levels of money flows and export driven development. This view does not question the environmental impacts of this dynamic, or the cultural assumption that greater material affluence is the end of human satisfaction.

Strong Sustainability

A strong concept of sustainability addresses the twin crisis of nature and international justice and asserts that issues of sustaining ecology can not be separated from sustaining the equity of southern countries. In order to assume inter-generational and international equity a constant "natural capital" has to be sustained too; the promise of increasing affluence does not substitute for a degraded biosphere. Destruction of primal forests or biodiversity can not be justified by a "sustainability" that substitutes more material affluence. A radical rethinking of national and regional economic policy as well as a greater understanding of the interaction of eco-systems and economics is required. To do this we need a knowledge
system that is capable of really dealing with strong sustainability; one that overcomes the outdated separation of natural and social knowledge fields.

        Thus a strong concept of sustainability is not a value neutral
concept of applied science, but a normative concept in which the values of:

        - inter-generational equity;
        - sustaining a constant natural capital;
        - international justice in terms of north/south 
access to an intact
          environment;
                are all intertwined.


Without confronting the difference between a neutral 
concept and a normative concept of "sustainable development" the so called "sustainable development movement" is a vague and distorting idea because the differences between weak and strong sustainability are not systematically distinguished. Without systematic recognition that northern nations have a responsibility to reduce the demands they make on the global environment and plan to transform their policies to reduce and transform their economies their can be no real sustainability. Presently the established
knowledge system institutionalized in the academy is part of the problem because it reinforces the weak sustainability path.

"Weak" Sustainability is an Ecocratic Ideal

Hence environmental technocrats, or "ecocrats", project that a new kind of global eco-management oriented to conserving an ongoing development process (including the expansion of free trade stimulated by NAFTA & GATT) by making production and distribution of goods and services more efficient and resource conserving. However, ecological economics shows there is no way to continually expand the use of resources, no matter how efficient such processes become. To the fundamental political economic problems of efficiency and redistribution it is now essential to recognize, as Herman Daly argues in "Beyond Growth", that "scale" is now a systematic policy issue that must be included in assessment of "economic development" at all levels.

What this means has been best articulated by Wofgang Sachs and the team from the Wuppertal Insitute in Germany in their book on "Greening the North".They argue that it is essential to delink development from the issues of international justice and focus on changing the behavior of northern nations to take responsibility for the consequences of their extractions of resources, food, cheap commodites,etc. from the third world. The northern countries must take responsibility for their "environmental footprint" , or the impacts of their material throughput on southern nations. This is especially relevant when it is recognized that international trade benefits mostly the rich nations. A total of 130
poorest states account for just 3.6% of world exports- which means that over two-thirds of all countries are virtually of no significance for the global market.

Instead of the illusion that the north is helping the south with major capital transfers it is essential to recognize that the north does not pay their share of the ecological and social costs of "development" which in practice means impoverishments,contamination, desertification, erosion of soils, uprooting of indigenous
populations, etc. But the south pays for the protection of the environment in the north and in the price of their imports. That is they are forced to trade with no charge included for the burdens of "development"-i.e., "market competition" reinforced by the "liberalization" of trade by GATT and the WTO. Nor are the markets open to their major products secur since prices for raw materials have fallen on world markets in recent years, while prices for industrial products have risen. Thus without rethinking the place of foreign trade in national economies, the development of local and regional economies with special attention given to self-sufficiency in foodstuffs, and the continued role a subsistence and social economy can play- being forceably integrated into the world economy is the opposite of strong sustainability.

In order to acheive these ends a new sustainability strategy has to be shared by all countries that include the integration of the Climate Change,Montreal Protocal and Biodiversity standards with new ways of making these objectives financially feasible thru debt relief, ecological tax reforms,producer cartels and fair trade system creation,formation of local Agenda 21's everywhere, redirecting of international funds and compensation payments by the industrial countries for the costs of strong sustainability on the economies of the south.

The strong sustainability path can also be aided by creating wider public recognition of the "right to development" that has been recurrently stated in recent U.N. conferences in ways that challenges ecocratic weak sustainability.(See Ward Morehuse's article in "A World That Works") Current differences between the European Unions policies in relation to the south and that of the U.S. should be recognized as the beginning of a counter-trend to the Washington Consensus's push for weak sustainability.

New Knowledge Integrations are essential for "Strong Sustainability"

The current scientistic faith in the progress of science and technology is not adequate for the integrations of knowledge for strong sustainability. Physical science knowledge must be integrated with the exploding knowledge of the biological and health sciences and the emerging technologies for disseminating information and distributing knowledge must be integrated with the new international policy imperatives,ecological economics and a deeper understanding of the causes of social violence. New approaches must be taken to the discovery of knowledge that includes stockholders such as communities, new academic integrations of knowledge and citizen learning processes as well as unprecedented colloborations of academic, business,government,and NGO's.

Currently the separation of science from the social sciences and humanities is a block to the type of learning needed for strong sustainability. Especially the global eco-management mentality continues the illusion of pure ecology and denies the interests of countries and communities who are concerned with cultural affirmation and self-determination. Europeans, and many people in the third world, question the tendency of American ecologists to treat ecological analysis of global eco-systems as continuous with the study of isolated eco-systems. This "ecocratic" tendency disconnects from the inseparability of ecology and equity, or implementation of a strong sustainability that includes justice.

2.2 Linking Ecology and Equity: Environmental Space Assessments

In addition to the elimination of pollution another issue is the amount of materials and energy moved around by the cuarrent and trade pattern- that is the problem of how much area humans can use without causing lasting damage. Interventions into nature to produce commodities also creates additional wastes that are the ecological costs of production - what Sachs calls the "environmental rucksack's" required for production. Hence reduction of inputs into the production process is now a stronger goal than simply pollution reductions.

Environmental space is the recognition of the carrying capacity of eco-systems and the finitude of natural resources and results in guidelines for use:
-renewable resources used no faster than can be regenerated
-materials released should be no more than can be absorbed
-throughput of energy and materials must be reduced to low-risk
levels.

These policies can be justified by the following international norms requiring low risks:
1. precautionary principle for future generations
2.protection of vulnerable communities and
eco-systems
3. political avoidance of ecocratic driving up of
carrying capacity limits

This means that Justice is delinked from development and changes the practice of the age of development which always linked justice to the future fruits of development. This utopia hope ended when the physical limits of biophysical limits where reached. Hence limiting the rich is prior to greater economic growth for the poor. The drastic unequal distribution of structural power and distribution of physical resources is the prime cause of south being deprived of justice. What is needed is the compensatory limitation of the north's behavior so that the south is not systematically deprived of their rightful due. Hence environmental space is calculated on basis of both ecological limits and others societies claims to utilization. In this sense a society can be called sustainable only if the maxims underlying its behavior can in principle serve all others ( an application of Kant's categorical imperative). When 20% of worlds population consumes 80% of world's resources an application of the above ethical principles means that ultimately equal rights for per head are the international standard and the north must reduce their over utilization of environmental space.

When Ecology is recognized as inseparable from equity the major problem for sustainability is reduction of the north's throughput of materials by a factor of 10 in the next 50 years. This provides a verifiable standard that is universally objective. But such quantitative goals are not enough. In addition to efficiency there is the normative dimension of sufficiency -or the creation of cultural limits to consumption and resource use that are appropriate for specific communities and regions. In addition to efficiency, which is about how to do things right, sufficiency is about how to do the right things. Understanding the roots of the compulsions and desires for a commodity intensive life style bring ethics and aesthetics into the picture in ways that go beyond economies and resources.