The brave new world of SUSTATNABLE DEVELOPMENT

Forest and Bird, Volume 21, Issue 1, 1 February 1990, Page 8

The brave new world of SUSTATNABLE DEVELOPMENT

By

Gerard Hutching

T THE BEGINNING OF 1989, Alan Miller from the Department of Conservation and Resource Studies of the University of California told a Ministry for the Environment seminar that New Zealand's attempt to establish in law the principle of sustainability "is utterly unique amongst the nations of the world." For that reason, he said, other countries were closely watching New Zealand's much vaunted legislation to see if it could give them a lead. Spurred on by the deliberations of the Brundtland Commission which published the much heralded Our Common Future, governments around the globe are pondering on how to deal with what has been described as the ultimate crisis — the state of the world environment which threatens the continuation of life itself The phrase the Brundtland Commission coined as the key to heading off ecological catastrophe — sustainable development — has become the environmental buzzword of the decade and generated heated debate over its meaning.

Sustainable Development — A Contradiction in Terms?

In an ecologically finite and entropy-bound world, belief in sustainable development has been likened to a belief in perpetual motion. Scientist and ecologist Paul Erhlich has neatly summed up the blinkered vision of humans: "Economists are the only major group of scholars who believe in perpetual motion. They believe in an infinity of resources." The Brundtland Commission's definition of sustainable development, more or less adopted in the Resource Management Bill, states: Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Or, in the words of a Canadian speaker at a recent conference in Ottawa, sustainable development means "do unto the next generation as you would have the past generation had done unto you." According to the Brundtland Commission, then, growth will be sustainable only if it is environmentally sound. However the Brundtland Commission's recipe for raising the living standards of the Third World appears on the face of it to be a recipe for ecological disaster — a five to ten percent increase in world industrial output by the middle of the next century. In his call for an annual growth rate of 3 percent, Prime Minister Geoffrey Palmer is one world leader who appears to believe that growth does not conflict with environmental sustainability. Professor of Urban Planning at the University of British Columbia, Bill Rees, points out that the Brundtland Commission's definition has become in some quarters a justification for the status quo. Business especially has seized upon the concept to continue the business as usual approach. The better notion, according to Lees, is "sustainable environment." "It becomes a real question whether the ecosphere can sustain even a doubling of the current rates of economic activity. I really do not think that a five to ten fold increase in the rate of material consumption by a much more massively demanding economy is on the ecological cards,’ says Lees.

He notes that many environmentalists have taken the Brundtland Report as a message to lower growth in the "overdeveloped" world and to think of ways to change the unequal division of wealth around the globe. But on the other hand, others, usually non-environ-mentalists, have taken the term "sustainable growth" to mean that the poorest countries will increase their material wealth while the wealthiest countries will not have to make any sacrifices. The implications of increasing the world’s middle class were dramatically shown by a 1983 study by N Keyfitz entitled "World Resources and the Middle Class’. The world middle class is considered to be in the order of 800 million people at present. Most of those consume at rates 8-10 times higher than people in the developing world. This means that 800 million people have a global resources impact equivalent to 6.6 billion people in the developing nations. An expanded middle class of 1.6 billion would have a resources impact equal to that of 12.8 billion people in the developing world.

Sustaining What?

Another question that has been vexing those interested in the notion of sustainability is: exactly what are we trying to sustain when we talk of sustainable development? Is it the environment, jobs, economic progress? Is it all of them at once, or are these goals inevitably in conflict? For example, sufficient work has now been carried out by scientists to allow us to predict the effects of logging of native forests on native species such as kaka. In Western Southland continued development — that is, logging — will obviously jeopardise the sustainability of kaka. On the other hand, the Ministry of Forestry continues to claim that the logging regime they have been operating in the Western Southland forests is sustainable because no more timber will be taken out than will be allowed to regrow. Meanwhile, people in the timber town of Tuatapere will argue that their community viability is at risk if logging is halted. The fact that there might not be any community left in a decade because of the high rate of cut is not an argument they wish to discuss — their concerns are more with the here and now.

Sustainability — For Whom?

Humans being humans, it is perhaps understandable that they have chosen to measure sustainable development in terms of the impact it will have on them. However, there are possibly 20 million other species on the planet, many of which have suffered because of human belief that nature must be "mastered." In the past 2000 years Homo sapiens has exterminated 3 percent of the Earth’s mammal species. In the last 150 years exterminations have increased 50-fold. At this rate it will not be long before many of the remaining 4062 mammal species are gone. All over the world, plant and animal species are disappearing at the rate of 20,000 a year. What is called for, argue some environmentalists, is a completely new way of looking at the world. The Brundtland Commission also agrees that humans are going to have to adopt a new ethical approach — one in which other species are valued for their own sake, in which rainforests are not mea-

sured in terms of their economic worth. It is an ethic that native cultures have always known, expressed most eloquently by Chief Seattle in 1855 to US President Franklin Pierce: "How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land? The idea is strange to us. We do not own the freshness of the air or the sparkle of the water. How can you buy them from us? Every part of the earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the memory and experience of my people. If I decide to accept your offer to buy our land, I

will make one condition. The white man must treat the beasts of this land as his brothers. Iam a savage and do not understand anyother way. I have seen a thousand rotting buffaloes on the prairies left by the white man who shot them from a passing train. What is man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, men would die from great loneliness of the spirit, for whatever happens to the beasts will also happen to man. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the earth, befalls the sons of the earth." There is a strong linkage between the concerns of the environmental movement and the spiritual beliefs of many native peoples. The beginning of the growth of that new ethical movement by Westerners can be traced back to last century, with the creation of the first national parks, and in the last two decades the trend has accelerated.

Barriers to Sustainability

As the Economist magazine pointed out recently, given the right incentives and political will, humans could fashion a sustainable future. For example, in the field of energy, we are on the threshhold of a revolution, where more will come from less (see article on energy). However, says the Economist "there's the rub. The reason that countries do not pursue sensible economics is that powerful lobbies benefit from the foolish kind." In the end, if countries do not become clean and green, environmental collapse will provide a check to growth, but at the risk of unimaginable suffering. Ecological sustainability is a potent concept if set in the context of the limits to growth and the rights of future generations and other species. fo