The Fallacy of Sustainability

I originally wrote this article back in 2005 while a student at ECU. This was to be the article that I believe was to mark me as dangerous and to be shut up. As I discovered then there is a continuing battle for the meaning of Sustainability.

 

The Fallacy of Sustainability:

The fundamental questions have not been asked

A criticism of the Western Australian State Government's 'State Sustainability Strategy'

by

Gavin Edwards

Introduction

It is apparent to any thinking person that the Earth is under threat. Her oceans and wetlands are becoming polluted, agricultural land degraded and topsoils blown or washed away. The climate is changing and biodiversity is being lost at an alarming rate. Human beings are to blame (Beale & Fray, 1990).

In 1992, in response to this change over 150 national governments formally endorsed the concept of sustainable development at the UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro (the “Earth Summit”). In September 2003, the WA government released “Hope for the Future: The Western Australian State Sustainability Strategy”.

This essay argues that the WA governments approach to sustainability is problematic because fundamental questions have not been asked.

What is Sustainable Development?

According to Jacobs (1999, p.23) there are two definitions commonly used. The first is the “Bruntland definition” which says that sustainable development (SD) is “development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. The second or “Caring for the Earth” definition states that SD is “improving the quality of life while living within the carrying capacity of supporting ecosystems”. Jacobs (p.22) also note that some environmentalists reject sustainable development as a 'fuzzy' concept and “a smokescreen put up by business and development interests to obscure the conflicts between ecological integrity and economic growth,...”. The World Bank defines Sustainable Development as “Development that lasts” (Sachs, p.33)

What is Sustainability?

There are many definitions of sustainability. Robinson (2004, p.370) describes it simply as "the ability of humans to continue to live within environmental constraints". Around 1980 a global shift in perception took place in which "nature turned from a treasure to be preserved to a resource whose yield had to be sustained" (Hays 1959 in Sachs p.33). Sachs goes on to say that "the meaning of sustainability [then] slides from conservation of nature to conservation of development".

What is the WA Government's definition of sustainability?

The WA governments definition in the State Sustainability Strategy is interesting:

"Sustainability is defined as meeting the needs of current and future generations through an integration of environmental protection, social advancement, and economic prosperity" where "environmental protection is taken to be minimizing impacts and providing rehabilitation and renewal of damaged environments".

The governments definition seems more aligned with a definition of sustainable development than sustainability. There are also some flaws in this definition. What are our needs? Who determines them? Do we "need" economic prosperity? In Maslov's Heirachy of Needs (Russel p.186 - 189) there is no mention of economics but there is mention of food, water, shelter, love, esteem and enlightenment. What is meant by impacts? These are grey areas that have not been fully defined.

The Strategy starts from a false premise - if we don't have a clear definition for sustainability it's my view that we cannot produce an effective strategy to deal with the problem. To back up my view I quote Jacobs (p.24):

"there is a political concern among some environmentalists that the lack of clarity of the definition allows anything to be claimed as 'sustainable' or as 'promoting sustainable development'....At present the vagueness of the definitions, it is argued, allows business and 'development' interests (and their government supporters) to claim they are in favour of sustainable development when actually they are the perpetrators of unsustainability....there is a battle for the meaning of sustainable development"

Some fundamental questions must be asked

If the old structures of government do not seem to be working well with coping with the issue, should we change our structure of government so that we can deal with change itself? The government views sustainability as the interconnection of community, government and the market (Strategy p.222) however both government and the market are part of the community. They are not separate. Committees on sustainability policy can have their representatives from business, "community" and government - if it comes to a vote business and government usually side together and can control the result. This appears to be a ploy the government uses to maintain control. The government in it Strategy did do some public consultation. However it was a very short amount of time considering the importance of the document. Their method for consultation is typically "top-down" that is a proposal is released and a time period is set for submissions. Perhaps what is needed is a more bottom-up (grass roots) approach: ordinary people debating and deciding their own futures.

How do we want to live our lives? Masunoba Fukuoka in 'The One Straw Revolution' (1978, p158) says it sweetly:

"Why do we have to develop? If economic development rise from 5% to 10%, is happiness going to double? What's wrong with a growth rate of 0%? Isn't this a rather stable kind of economics? Could there be anything better than living simply and taking it easy?"

People work to obtain money to be able to eat, pay the rent or mortgage and do what they want to do. We seem to be working more and more. The gap between the rich and poor is growing. Miller and Shade in 'Foundations of Economics' (1986, p.4) say of memories, love and religious values that "These things cannot be valued in money terms and thus they lie outside the realm of economics". The western economic system doesn't appear to be sustainable. Perhaps we should investigate some other more socially just system?

Is our present form of agriculture sustainable? The Strategy contains some definitions of sustainable agriculture, however they look more like reasons for sustaining our current import and export agriculture (agribusiness). Bill Mollison, the originator of Permaculture (Permanent Agriculture), once remarked that "Modern agriculture is basically a continuation of world war two". By this he meant that scientists that worked in chemical companies manufacturing chemicals for chemical warfare after the war moved to companies that manufactured chemicals for modern agribusiness. Agriculture is responsible for damage to 9.6 million square kilometres of Australia - this is over half of the country (Beale & Fray, intro p. ix). Given agribusiness also has a poor history in third world countries should we be practicing it at all? Sargent (1985, p. 11) gives this example:

It takes a lot of vegetables to fill a jumbo jet. Yet three times a week, from early December until May, a chartered cargo DC10 takes off from Senegal's dusty Dakar airport loaded with eggplants, green beans, tomatoes, melons and paprika. Its destination? Amsterdam, Paris or Stockholm. These airlifts of food FROM the African Sahel began in 1972, the fourth year of the region's publicized drought. They increased dramatically as famine spread...

Promoting the entire venture as "development" [the agribusiness corporation Bud Antle] got the Senegalese government, the German foreign aid agency and McNamara's World Bank to put up most of the capital. The Senegalese government helpfully supplied police to clear away villagers who had always presumed the land was theirs for growing millet for themselves and the local market. The Peace Corps contributed four volunteers.

Today, more than sixty armed security officers not only guard the fields, but each day search the poorly paid field hands, mostly women, to be sure they don't sneak vegetables home to their families"

What is the carrying capacity for human beings in Western Australia? The Strategy gives no figures for this. Stamp (1960) developed figures for England forty-five years ago so it is surprising that it has not been done in WA especially given world-wide overpopulation. Wouldn't these figures be necessary to work out what is a sustainable population for WA? Can we keep on growing indefinitely?

Lastly, the Strategy (p. 75) reveals the "Healthy Country"project run by CSIRO and states that "One of the four focus regions is the South West of Western Australia. The research undertaken on biodiversity, land degradation and water can provide answers to many of the deep questions that face us by focusing on key areas of knowledge and innovation" [emphasis added]. Shouldn't the answers to these fundamental questions have been found before the government made policy on sustainability?

Reference List:

Beale, B & Fray, P. (1990). The Vanishing Continent. Rydalmere: Hodder & Staughton.

Fukuoka, M. (1978). The One-Straw Revolution. Goa: Other India Press.

Government of Western Australia. (2003). Hope for the Future: The Western Australian State Sustainability Strategy. Perth: The Department of Premier and Cabinet.

Jacobs, M. (1999). Sustainable Development as a Contested Concept. In A. Dobson (Ed.), Fairness and Futurity. Oxford University Press.

Miller, R. & Shade, E. (1986). Foundations of Economics (2nd edition). Melbourne: Longman Cheshire.

Robinson, J. (2004). Squaring the circle? Some thoughts on the idea of sustainable development. Ecological Economics 48 (2004) 369 - 284.

Mollison, B. In Grave Danger of Falling Food [video].

Russel, P. (1972). The Awakening Earth. London: Routledge & Keegan Paul.

Sachs, W. (nd). Sustainable Development and the Crisis of Nature: On the Political Anatomy of an Oxymoron. In Living with Nature: Environmental Politics as Cultural Discourse. Eds Fischer, F. & Hajer, M. (1999).

Sargent, S. (1985). The Foodmakers. Ringwood: Penguin Books Aust.

Stamp, L. (1960). Our Developing World. London: Faber & Faber.

© Gavin Edwards 2005. All rights reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced without prior permission from the author.