A CRONYMS AND A BBREVIATIONS
Premise 5: Humans (as Homo economicus) need to look for new processes that are low in entropy by virtue of operating as close to normal temperatures and pressures 51 (say bio & nano
4.5 The Entropic Framework of Sustainable Development: From Snake Oil to Sustainability
as the populations grow, especially health, education and livelihoods. Secondly, while the North needs to “degrow”, the South has a strong requirement to “develop”. The question is whether
“development” is what defined the material and energy trajectory of the North, or is a new development paradigm (Escobar, 2015). While degrowth is gaining ground, sustainable development, though a snake oil, is still very popular in all debates where growth and development are talked of, especially in the context of ecology and the biosphere. Could it be that sustainable development be the end and degrowth the means?
4.5 The Entropic Framework of Sustainable Development: From Snake Oil to
processes such as “green” & “low carbon” policies, they, in turn, drive the new elementary physical and chemical processes (low entropy) in production, distribution, consumption and reduction based on 3R principles. Plenty of such processes have been successfully demonstrated by Gunter Pauli (2010), all of which are “zero waste” connected processes, just as we find in nature. New processes would build new economies that would drive new life styles and well being, and strive at creating zero waste societies. Further, temperature would be most crucial factor in the new processes that would be designed in future. Similarly, the non economic processes that would govern policies, life styles and well being would need to be viewed from a totally different perspective- what is considered “developed” today would start appearing very backward tomorrow. With the current definition of development in vogue, we shall continue to be living in the era of snake oil of sustainable development, and forced to revert back to “berry picking economy” that NGR predicted.
Fig. No. 4.3: An Entropic Framework of Sustainable Development
New Economy: The present day dilemma is “To grow or not to grow?”. If we purse growth, the earth ecosystem gets endangered; and if we retard the pace of growth, it may lead to economic and social collapse. It is necessary to revise the ecological and social conditions of production of wealth (Jackson, 2015, Bonaiuti,2008). Some western economies have dematerialized by reducing heavy manufacturing and importing consumption goods from other countries, but it cannot be a good model. One needs to look at reduction in resource intensity, but the throughput of a 7.2 billion population projected to grow to 9 billion can tip the scales against resources as well as sink assimilation. On the other hand, unequal societies undermine well-being. A sustainable economic framework essentially should ensure economic activity within ecological limits, the working principles should be coded with the limits if a finite planet, the natural resources must be well accounted for in the System of National Accounts (Jackson, 2015).
Well-being: Well-being is social in nature and applies to a population as opposed to an individual, and is a higher goal than Quality of Life which is subjective and individualistic (Smith 1973, Rokicka, 2013). Life style changes driven by well-being are an effective and powerful approach to addressing sustainability issues, as they can provide multiple benefits like improved health, low fossil fuel based mobility, lower emissions, and nutrition, without reducing socio-economic status (Roy et al, 2012). QoL has a strong connotation with life style in industrialized nations (aspiring to western lifestyles), and hence promotes high per capita energy, high per capita CO2, and high per capita material resource. On the contrary, well-being connotes well with “zero carbon” and “low entropy” growth. It is the “common weal” - “Sarve bhavantu sukhinah, sarve santu niramayah, sarve bhadrani pashyantu, maa kaschit dukh-bhag bhawet”69 - of the society. NGR talked of enjoyment of life which was the real output of an economic process. A good measure of well-being would be Happy Planet Index70. Topping the Happy
69 Ancient Sanskrit Shloka meaning “May all become happy, may all be free from illness, may all see what is auspicious, May no one suffer”
70 http://www.happyplanetindex.org
Planet Index rankings for the third time, Costa Rica has shown that their citizens have higher wellbeing than the residents of many rich nations, including the USA and the UK, and higher longevity than even the people in the USA. The country is having a per capita Ecological Footprint that’s just one third of the size of the USA’s, and it uses 99% of electricity from renewable sources 13 and the government is far ahead of many wealthier nations, having committed the country to becoming carbon neutral by 2021.
A New Sustainable Development Framework: At the root of the new sustainable development framework is the concept of “new processes” which are low carbon, low entropy and
“dematerialized”, such as “Blue Economy” (Pauli Gunter, 2010) or “Permaculture” (Mollison &
Holmgren, 1978) accompanied by a set of policy drivers, such as NGR's “minimum bioeconomic program” (NGR, 1975), or “natural step” (Cook, 2004). The low entropy processes which operate at close to normal temperature and pressure, and have little or no carbon footprint, drive the new economic growth and development. On the other hand, the new policy stacks drive the economic as well as the development agenda. Since, the ultimate aim is to achieve social well- being, which cannot be achieved in absence of the new low energy, low entropy and low carbon driven processes, it is fed by the “right” kind of economic and development processes backed by a conscious societal policy framework and technology. This framework meets all the requirements of NGR's growth and development ideology as set in the Entropy Law and Economic Process (NGR, 1971) and the Entropy and Economic Myth (NGR, 1975), and is derived (though qualitatively) from thermodynamic considerations and the theoretical framework developed in Chapter 2, and the five premises given at the beginning of this Chapter. Instead of economic enterprises, let there be ecological-economic enterprises that follow the four principles:
1. Strive for lowest possible resource intensity and entropy footprint 2. The output promotes well being, does least harm environment
3. Account for all natural resources consumed, ecosystem services availed and environmental damage caused
4. Gives back to the environment what is taken from there or repairs what is damaged Entropy (waste heat and CO2 emission) could very well serve as an excellent indicator of sustainable development framework proposed above, as well as be a direct single measure the damages a process may cause to the environment, and thus induce climate change. An attempt has been made partially to apply the above framework, in coming up with a single entropy value of the outcome of a development process by taking the case urbanization. A perspective on urbanization is presented in the sections that follow.