[p2p-research] Pushing Reset on Sustainable Development

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  Sent to you by Ryan via Google Reader: Pushing Reset on Sustainable
Development via Worldchanging: Bright Green by Alan AtKisson on 12/7/09


Essay originally submitted to the "Conclave of Thought Leaders on the
Future of Sustainable Development," United Nations Division for
Sustainable Development, New York, 11-12 May 2009; Updated 6 October
2009


In Fall 2009, when the scale and magnitude of the world's economic
meltdown began to settle in, I posted the following update to Twitter
(which was automatically copied to my Facebook page):

Alan AtKisson is wondering how to continue accelerating sustainable
development in an era of financial collapse.

Responses posted to my Facebook wall (apologies to readers who do not
know that I am referring to short text messages published on popular
social networking websites) and by email were uniformly optimistic.
Corporate sustainability champions, university leaders, and other
consultants all said the same thing: "This is the best opportunity for
advancing sustainability that we've ever had."

The collapse, went the implied thinking, would make it more evident
that a massive overhaul was necessary in our use of energy and
materials, our treatment of the world's poor, the perverse incentives
in our economic models, etc. Everywhere one looked, someone
was "pushing the reset button" on everything from diplomatic relations
between countries to the structure of the global financial system. Now,
finally, the envisioned transformation to sustainability would
inevitably occur.

Time has marched on since then, and while there are obvious encouraging
signs of change, the case for unbridled optimism about a rapid
sustainability transformation has become more difficult to make. The
Obama Era was officially launched with its eco-friendly politics and
even a White House organic garden -- though the garden immediately came
under public relations attack by the chemical industry. More
importantly, the new Obama Administration hurried to reestablish a
privileged, instead of an embattled and diminished, role for science in
public policy making, and to effect the restitution of the rule of law
where it was deeply frayed, including the observance of international
agreements such as the Geneva Convention. (The mere fact that such
restitution was genuinely necessary still weighs heavy.)

These were American moments, but they were emblematic of a global
mood. "Yes, we can" was the Obama phrase snapped up by center, left and
right, around the world. Massive funds were committed to restart the
global economy, and all our most prominent and powerful leaders -- the
words of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are typical --
dedicated all their energies to "get growth going again."

Meanwhile, aid-dependent sustainable development programs in the
world's poorer countries began preparing for an era of greatly reduced
generosity. Natural systems remained harder pressed than ever, in
virtually every way they could be measured, and environmental
protection budgets could hardly expect increasing attention when the
jobless were marching in the streets or taking their former bosses
hostage. At a much smaller (and certainly much less tragic) scale of
indicator, sustainability officers and consultants were among the first
to look into their options as they joined the swelling ranks of the un-
or underemployed.

As of late-2009, despite some interesting new developments in the
global dialogue, the "global reset" still does not look uniformly
positive for sustainability-as-usual. Can it be that sustainable
development itself requires a reset?


Redefining "Reset"

Computers and video games have so permeated industrial consciousness
that even the statements of CEOs (Jeffrey Immelt of GE, writing about
capitalism and the world economy in his introduction to GE's 2008
Annual Report, published in 2009) and top diplomats (Hillary Clinton,
describing relations with Russia in early 2009) grabbed onto this
all-pervasive metaphor. What does "reset" mean?

Wikipedia (the free, crowd-sourced, internet-based encyclopedia)
defines it this way: "to clear any pending errors or events and bring a
system to normal condition or initial state usually in a controlled
manner."

We can see immediately that "reset," at least in its original computing
sense, is an inappropriate metaphor for our times. With the combination
of financial collapse, climate change urgency, shaky geopolitical
security, and weakening ecosystems, it will be quite impossible
to "bring the [world] system to normal condition or initial state" in
any manner whatsoever, much less a controlled one, in the foreseeable
future. There is no going back to a previous, apparently more stable
situation: that situation was, in fact, the cause of our current
instability.

So, if we are to continue using the "reset" metaphor, we must redefine
it. Let us say that it should mean truly starting afresh -- but
starting from where we are, taking a hard look at current conditions
and emerging trends, and setting a new and very different course that
is more likely to lead to the positive outcomes that (most of) the
world aspires to.

Here is a proposition: if the world is indeed in "reset" mode,
involving the transformation of many core institutions, policy
envelopes, and ways of structuring the collective game we call
the "global economy," then sustainable development must hit the "reset"
button as well. It needs a fresh start if it is to be meaningful and
effective in this increasingly different and difficult world. But a
fresh start compared to what?


Rethinking "Mainstream"

For the past twenty years, sustainability and sustainable development
work (there is a difference, we will come back to it) have been
pursuing a pathway of increasing professionalism and mainstreaming.
Sustainability has sought – with apparent success –to place itself
nearer and nearer to where fundamental decisions are made. Efforts to
promote integrated indicators and assessment in the 1990s evolved into
processes like the Global Reporting Initiative and Corporate Social
Responsibility, and finally into strategic investment, green product
development, and even the building of whole "eco-cities." Institutions
and governments have whole departments of sustainability. Corporate
leaders, especially, have moved dramatically to embrace the family of
concepts that place their operations in a more positive ethical light.

Sustainability proponents achieved this remarkable advance by embracing
two fundamental strategic principles:

1. Significant changes are necessary to safeguard the future and to
prevent calamitous loss or collapse in critical environmental and
social systems.

2. These changes are wholly compatible with mainstream planning,
management, and market-based investment processes, and will lead to
new, more effective, and more profitable ways of doing business in
every sector.

Principle 1 remains truer than ever. I submit, however, that in a reset
world, Principle 2 is no longer tenable.

First, and most obviously, the rules of the game for business and
management are in a process of real-time, continuous revision. While
optimism is a strategic necessity for the world's political leaders,
the reality is that they are making the global recovery up as they go
along, by trial and error; and the odds are that the trials will
continue, probably for years, before a new equilibrium is reached in
the structure and function of the world's economy. New global powers
like China, newly empowered protest movements, and the thrashings of
the old guard are all demanding to have a greater say, and will
continue to do so. Much of what was once "mainstream" in business,
financial, and government practice has become obsolete; and much of how
sustainability is professionally practiced is likely to require
adaptation or reinvention, along with the rest of the management
machinery in our world.

Second, and more controversially, it may be that several of the core
aims of sustainable development will be finally shown to be in
irreconcilable opposition to the aims of the predominant global
economic machine -- and that an over-reliance on economic instruments
and arguments is therefore an inadequate, even dangerous way forward.
The world's governments have, after all, shifted into hyperactive
efforts to restart the consumption-based economy. Yes, the Stiglitz
Commission has discovered, at long last, that the Gross Domestic
Product is "an inadequate metric to gauge well-being over time." Yes,
there are greatly enhanced efforts to build cleaner and more efficient
cars, and expand the production of renewable energy. Many continue to
see this as the great Moment of Opportunity, when the chaos of collapse
opens wide the door for innovations that previously were reduced to
pushing and squeezing their way through the small cracks opened by
corporate CSR programs, the Clean Development Mechanism, and similar
real, but symbolically small-scaled, nods to social and environmental
idealism.

But as trillions of dollars are electronically printed and mobilized,
it must be observed that the great majority of gears that they are
aimed at restarting are not particularly green, humane, or just. They
are the gears of GDP-measured economic-growth-as-usual. One may easily
be blinded by the new funds going into building windmills, or the
restructuring of car companies around more efficient models (the demise
of vehicles like the Hummer certainly looked to many like the righteous
judgment that will be meted out to sinful souls during the Last Days).
Fundamentally, we are still watching a mad scramble to get people back
into the shopping malls and charter-trip aircraft of the world.


"Reset" is Radical

This global effort to push "reset" in its original computer-based
definition (a controlled return to pre-disturbance normalcy) continues
largely unchallenged, even as the visible disturbances and anomalies
continue to proliferate. The painfully obvious mismatch of unfolding
events with inadequate responses should, one notes ruefully, have been
sufficient to call the reset-to-normal project into question; instead,
the world watched heads of state debate the merits of exorbitant bonus
pay for bankers. One might assume in the face of such spectacle that
efforts to push for a more radical version of reset are fated to be
ineffectual, at least until the world suffers a far more catastrophic
meltdown in the global nexus among economic markets, fiscal policy,
geopolitics, and our planet's ever-weakening ecosystems. There is,
however, much else at play in the world system that one can, and
should, point toward in pushing for a more fearless diagnosis and a
more innovative and ambitious set of prescriptions -- the kind of
diagnosis and prescription that is (or should be) sustainability's
stock in trade.

For example, there is a growing consensus among many opinion leaders
that the global targets set as the expression of the world's
sustainability ambitions -- e.g. most prominently the Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs), and the various greenhouse gas emission
reduction targets (certainly the old Kyoto numbers, and probably the
new Copenhagen ones) -- are not going to be met. With regard to
climate, this observation is hardly controversial. With regard to the
MDGs, there remains some hesitancy to speak out: one does not wish to
poison the well of motivation with pessimism.

Despite the foresight some now claim to have had, the MDGs were
never "unmeetable" in any fundamental sense; we simply have not taken
the actions and made the investments sufficient to meet them. Nor were
these goals unrealistic in the first place; indeed, they were not
terribly ambitious.

True sustainable development, most would concede, is not to be measured
in halving the world's poverty or modestly reducing greenhouse
emissions, but in the elimination of poverty and the causes of
anthropogenic climate disturbance altogether. Goals like these are
usually not articulated in the world's centrally important public fora
for fear of being seen as infeasible or overly idealistic. "Realism,"
which has become nearly a synonym for fatalism, rules.

Meanwhile, while there are glimmers of progress in important
dimensions, some of that progress is illusory and masks a decline, not
an improvement, in the conditions of peoples and their countries. On a
visit to Nairobi in April 2009, I read in the daily newspapers that the
rapid improvement in gender balance in that nation's school system
(from 54/46 male/female just a few years ago, to 50/50 today) is not
the result of successful policies or cultural changes. It is the result
of thousands of young, poor teenage boys leaving school and joining the
Mungiki sect, a mafia-like quasi-religious movement making daily
headlines with horrific acts of violence, and a regime of protection
rackets that have poisoned the politics of Kenya's country towns
(beheadings are the Mungiki sect's preferred form of enforcement). The
girls of Kenya are now "more equal" because the boys, unable to see the
future in education, are abandoning the schools. A seeming contribution
to the MDGs is in fact a terribly worrying leading indicator of decline
in economic and social stability.

Similarly, progress of "cap-and-trade" legislation through the United
States Congress -- hailed as an historic breakthrough, and an exciting
reversal of policy after years of high-level scientific censorship in
America -- is not likely to bring more than a somewhat less awful
emissions future for the country. James Hansen, the NASA scientist
whose willingness to be out in front on raising the alarm on global
warming has unfortunately been justified by two decades of observed
data, calls cap-and-trade "worshipping at the temple of doom." He warns
that it will "lock in disasters for our children and grandchildren."
Once again, progress may in fact be regress in disguise.

Finally, it may in fact be highly problematic that sustainable
development has become so mainstream. While I am an avid and public
defender of the term "sustainable development" against all comers, it
is also the case that this mainstreaming has generally proceeded within
the framework of the dominant economic paradigm which, to say the
least, deserves to be inspected more closely for design flaws. There
may in fact be ways in which the most common forms of sustainable
development practice itself -- incrementalist, conservative,
market-privileging -- are contributing now to the kinds of
progress/regress illusion-making described above. In many contexts, it
might be masking the fact that the things that matter are getting
worse; or, it may in fact be making them worse.

At this juncture, a revisiting of definitions is in order. Sustainable
development is the practice of aiming development toward
sustainability. At least, that is what it should be -- and what it so
often is not.

Sustainability is a system state that can be fairly easily defined and
even quantitatively described for a vast array of ecological, economic,
and social systems. Skyrocketing crime rates are not sustainable;
social and economic development grinds to a halt or reverses. Decaying
ecosystems are not sustainable; water sources disappear and previously
free ecosystem services (e.g. pollination) start costing measurable
money. Ever-increasing leverage in the global financial system is not
sustainable; it leads inevitably to instabilities and crashes. (This
has recently been shown to be the case in complex simulation modeling
of the global economy, an after-the-fact theoretical explanation for
what seemed obvious when it was actually happening.) Analyzes of this
type are now elementary, and easily supported by reams of research.

And yet, one is often hard-pressed to find this elementary
understanding of sustainability's absolute requirements in the context
of sustainable development initiatives. The problem with sustainable
development is that it has not been properly coupled to its actual
goal: the achievement and maintenance of sustainability in every major
system on which the health, well-being, and stability of our world
(human and natural) depends.


Reset Means Putting More Sustainability Into Sustainable Development

Because sustainability is an idealized or at least optimal system
state, it can and ought to be a powerful global driver for more
ambitious and accelerated change, and more honestly defined standards
of achievement. Why is setting ambitious goals still seen as
controversial in the context of global agenda-setting? After all, even
Toyota markets itself with the aid of "zero emissions" as a vision
(though its car fleet is far from being zero emissions in actual fact).
It is standard practice in corporate management to strive for
perfection, for zero defects, for the best possible performance. The
most successful companies are often distinguished by this practice, and
management literature is full of such exhortations. Why is excellence
and idealism not more clearly embraced and promoted by those pushing
for the attainment of the world's most urgent goals?

I propose an explanation: excellence and idealism in sustainable
development lead us inevitably to a confrontation with business,
government, and economics as usual. The goal of sustainability carries
with it an imperative to go beyond incremental improvements, and to
consider transformative changes in the deeper structures of these
systems -- changes that are very likely necessary to achieve our most
urgent goals.

Professionals in the practice of sustainable development have a special
ethical obligation to act as advocates for sustainability. This ironic
but all-too-necessary plea involves standing up for those system
conditions that we know, via current research as well as the
observations of history, to be sustainable. It also involves not shying
away from the imperative of transformative change, if that is what
sustainability requires.

This obligation includes, among other things, speaking out more
strongly for values, and methods of valuation, that are not limited by
neo-classical economics and methods of monetization. A climate-neutral
economy ... a world free from hunger and poverty ... all children
afforded the education and other essentials promised to them in the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights ... these things cannot be
achieved through Clean Development Mechanisms and other market-based
instruments alone. They must also be achieved by ethical commitment, by
social change, by building public understanding and willingness to
sacrifice (in the sense of undergo wrenching transitions) for the
greater good, the good of future generations, and the health of
planetary ecosystems.

When the world's markets have failed so miserably even to deliver on a
rather narrow band of materialistic promises, we cannot continue to
pretend that those same, now rickety, markets can still be hitched to
the wagon of sustainable development and prove adequate to make the
journey.

It is not that the economics is unimportant. There remains, to be sure,
a centrally important place for markets and market mechanisms in the
pursuit of sustainability goals. It is simply that these kinds of
instruments, and the mindsets behind them, have increasingly been
allowed to hog that central position. And when singing solo, they sing
false. Their voices lead us astray. This is part of what reset means:
for sustainable development to have any chance of producing actual
sustainability, the spotlight must widen to shine on a much broader
array of approaches and motivations, which can in turn mobilize a much
wider array of forces for positive change. The solo voice of economics
must be joined by the strong voices of social and natural science,
principled political leadership, idealistic citizen activism, cultural
questioning of consumerist habits and values, and much more.

This change should be seen as a corrective to the earlier strategic
success of the sustainability movement. In the early 1990s, I was one
of the many people who urged professional environmentalists to learn
the language of economics. By framing sustainability ideas in economic
and incrementalist terms, went our reasoning, the perceived relevance
and acceptability of these ideas would be increased. That strategy
succeeded, but the pendulum has now swung as far as we dare let it. I
believe that the theorists and especially the practitioners of
sustainable development are now called upon to speak, and act, in ways
that reflect a more holistic, more principled, and much more ambitious
view of what sustainability requires. And how to achieve it. And why.

Which brings us back to the word "reset". The origins of sustainability
as a concept, and sustainable development as a practice, can be found
in ground-breaking studies from decades ago, such as
The Limits to Growth (1972) -- a book which suffered the scathing
attack of economists for most of its history, but which was recently
lifted up by no less than the front page of The Wall Street Journal (as
well as some of its former economic critics) as both prescient and
urgently relevant. If we continue down this path, we will come to
catastrophe, warned the authors of books like Limits, thereby earning
scorn and derision and dismissal as modern "Cassandras"
and "Neo-Malthusians." But their uncompromising look at what the
requirements of sustainability would be in an industrialized world, and
their willingness to speak clearly about it, were matched by a second,
more optimistic, and more helpful message which was largely ignored by
their critics: We can change, and we must. But we will not change
enough if we rely exclusively on the steerage of economics as currently
practiced. That message is more relevant today than it has ever been.

Perhaps the word "reset" -- a return to an original state, in this case
the origins of our understanding of sustainable development, in terms
of both systems science and social change -- is the right metaphor
after all.



References and Reading List

Cho, Adrian. "Leverage: The Root of All Financial Turmoil," Science, 24
April 2009, pp. 452-453.

Clinton, Hillary. "Secretary Clinton’s Interview with Reporters
Previewing Asia Trip," 13 Feb 2009, Interview Transcript.

Immelt, Jeffrey. Introductory letter, 2008 Annual Report: We Are GE.

Lahart, Justin, Patrick Barta, and Andrew Batson. "New Limits to Growth
Revive Malthusian Fears," Wall Street Journal, 24 March 2008, page A1.

Meadow, Donella H., Dennis Meadows, and Jørgen Randers. Limits to
Growth: The Thirty-Year Update, Chelsea Green Pub., 2004.

Snyder, Jim. "First Lady's organic garden concerns chemical firms," The
Hill, 9 April 2009.

Stiglitz, Joseph E., Amartya Sen, and Jean-Paul Fitoussi. "Report by
the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social
Progress," 2009.

United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs -
IRIN. 'AFRICA: "Crisis upon crisis" for poor countries,' 7 May 2009.

World Bank. Global Monitoring Report 2009: A Development Emergency,
Washington, 2009.



This piece was originally published by The Pardee Center

Comments for Alan AtKisson can be sent to:
information(at)atkisson(dot)com

Image credit: Grace*c*

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