The concept of "sustainable development" and its definition "that it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs" were originated by Gro Harlem Brundtland in Our Common Future (Oxford University Press, 1987) in the report of The World Commission on Environment and Development. That report in essence stated that while the developed world has achieved its gains from processes that, if continued, would bring unsustainable damage to the environment, the developing world has had to wreak unsustainable damage to the environment merely to survive. The environment and future development of the world are interdependent, and the inequality between the developed and developing worlds is the main problem facing both the world's development and the world's environment. Moreover, different aspects of the world's development are interrelated, as are also different components of the world's environment. The challenge is to support twice the present world population in the future with our present environment with a quality of life acceptable to the developed world. Sustainability at STS-14
This is a tall order, indeed, and no one has yet been able to fill it. Our Spring 1996 issue listed as Resource #15 a Status Report from the President's Council on Sustainable Development, dated April 1995, and only recently have we heard from them again -- co-sponsoring a "National Town Meeting for a Sustainable America" on 2-5 May 1999 in Detroit. Not an organization to shirk issues that are meaningful and difficult to deal with, the National Association for Science, Technology, and Society (NASTS) has a history of highlighting issues related to sustainability, and this was especially pronounced at its Fourteenth National STS Meeting in Baltimore, 4-6 March 1996, beginning with the Ian Barbour Lecturer, Dr. James A. Nash, of the Churches' Center for Theology and Public Policy in Washington, DC. His title was "Humility as Predisposition for Sustainability: A Moral Constraint on Environmental Management and Technological Efficiency."
Sustainability, Nash began, is absolutely essential for dealing with ecological issues of our time. But, he continued, achieving it requires humility -- as opposed to managerial arrogance and technological efficiency of extracting resources.
Sustainability, he went on, has always been assumed in ethical thought but never debated. It is not synonymous, he emphasized, with sustainable development, an anthropocentric term which by its vagueness has been invoked in different quarters for different reasons. Sustainability is "living within the assimilative and generative capacities of nature" -- indefinitely. According to Edith Weiss, the planet is a "global commons shared by each generation."
In the same vein as Our Common Future, the WorldWatch Institute defines sustainability as not depriving future generations of their needs. While we cannot know these needs exactly, Nash said, we can expect our descendants' needs to be similar to ours. Future generations will be victims of our consumption and reproduction.
Sustainability, Nash added, requires us to think in holistic terms. Individual ecological setbacks which alone might be tolerable can become overwhelming over time when faced cumulatively. Sustainability requires designs to fit in with natural processes -- no more depletion of nonrenewable resources. It defends the future with "environmental accounting." It depends on complex as well as controversial calculations.
Understanding virtues requires understanding the corresponding vices, Nash maintained. The vices endangering sustainability include managerial arrogance. Environmental management goes to the extreme of ideological mastery, in which humans consider themselves to be a segregated species responsible for managing all the others, a concept Nash calls "technocratic dominionism" (and which was also raised by the 1997 Ian Barbour Lecturer, Harvey Cox). Ecosystems have suffered from our actions in spite of our limited knowledge of them, Nash said. They should not be reduced to instruments for human benefit, he added. One managerial problem has been overfishing and overlogging -- from pretending to know more and trying to harvest more than is sustainable. Sustainability requires that maximum harvest be lower than natural limits. The most difficult aspect of environmental management, he observed, is managing ourselves. This, more than anything, points up the need for humility.
Another vice counter to sustainability cited by Nash is superefficiency. Usually regarded as positive, efficiency is the ratio of output to input -- ideally reducing and eliminating waste. But in some areas efficiency can be dangerous, causing decline in eleven of the world's fifteen fisheries. The efficiency of fishers is now great enough to render species extinct and reduce biodiversity. Another example of superefficiency is clearcutting of forests.
Nash pointed out that in Christianity humility has traditionally been the antidote to the sin of pride. But the humility we need is not self-abasement, he said, but rather an antidote to arrogance. It is an awareness of limits within ourselves and the circumstances of our existence. It is not anti-technological, but a challenge to scientists and technologists to fit in rather than defy natural limits. It means minimizing the risks of errors and avoiding overconfidence in technological fixes.
Humility expects the unanticipated -- such as resistance of bacteria (to antibiotics) and pests (to pesticides). It accepts relations with other species and embraces them. It regards all creatures as worthy of consideration and is interested in mastery of ourselves rather than of our environment. The humble may not inherit the Earth, Nash concluded, but they will increase the odds that there will be an Earth to inherit.
The concept of sustainability in the context of religion and in relation to the concept Nash called "technocratic dominionism" was subsequently discussed by Donald Conroy of the North American Coalition on Religion and Ecology and Rodney Petersen of Boston Theological Institute in "Religion and Science: Dialogue on Sustainable Society." It was also discussed by a panel on "Sustainable Development and Environmental Justice" headed by John Byrne of the University of Delaware. On this panel Lawrence Agbemabiese discussed "Sustainable Energy for Sustainable African Development." Africans, he said, had been indoctrinated that large central electric power plants were the key to growth and progress, but pointed out that most African countries lost ground in their quest for energy in this way. He cited the Inga hydro site on the Zaire River, which has a capacity of 1.8 GW but uses only .550 GW, because there is no way to distribute the rest of the power to where it is needed. Agbemabiese recommended "leapfrogging" to more renewable energy projects with greater end-use efficiency, citing a recently-launched South African solar electrification project to provide electricity for 50,000 homes.
Citing the same definition of sustainability as that quoted by Nash, Darren Bouton addressed "Sustainable Development - Rhetoric or Reality?" in an attempt to build a sustainability agenda for utility restructuring (deregulation). Since 1983, he pointed out, industrial electric rates have declined, while residential rates have increased. He saw deregulation resulting in less public control, while major generators merge and provide less rather than more choice. The choice of cheapest energy under deregulation, he cautioned, could mean the environmentally dirtiest energy. He also expressed concern that cheaper energy would stimulate more energy use. Neither of these consequences would be sustainable.
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