CHAPTER 3: Sustainable Development or Sustaining Crises?
3.5. Dilemma of Sustainability
We have already reiterated how our current climate change and global warming crises are a result of environmental degradation caused by developmental patterns that do not consider the impacts of extensive use of fossil fuels and the consequent greenhouse gas emissions on our ecosystem. According to the Brundtland Report, ‘Much of the improvement in the past has been based on the use of increasing amount of raw materials, energy, chemicals, and synthetics and on the creation of pollution that is not adequately accounted for in figuring the costs of production processes’(WCED1987:28). We have also seen how the GNP does not account for the impacts of global warming and climate change on our ecosystem and the vulnerable poor. How then can we tackle the issue of sustainability in a way that addresses the plight of our natural ecosystem and the poor and vulnerable?
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Daly writes clearly that capitalism is not entirely to blame for the model of growth based on economic progress. He writes that, ‘Economic growth is currently the major goal of both capitalist and socialist countries and, of course, of Third World countries’ (Daly 1995:333).
This insight draws us closer to the dilemma of sustainability. Having established that developing countries acquired their present economically superior statuses due to a flawed and dangerous paradigm of rapid economic growth oblivious to ecological consequences;
can developing countries be allowed to also follow a similar development path out of their poverty? If they are not allowed and yet the developed countries do not extensively cut their carbon emissions, is this not a way of maintaining the status quo of developed countries as superior and developing countries as inferior in the name of sustainable development?
Would this not just sustain the present global warming and climate change crises or even intensify it?
3.5.1. The Priorities of Sustainable Development
Boff is adamant in maintaining that the concept of sustainable development is an oxymoron (1997:67). According to Boff, ‘The expression “sustainable development” masks the modern paradigm operative in both capitalism and socialism, even of the green sort, always with its all-devouring logic’ (Boff 1997:67).Kirkby et al interpret the paradigm of sustainable development in a similar light and write that sustainable development has become ‘anti-developmental’ and is used ‘to pursue a status quo development framework that was essentially against the South. The North turned “green” and the South was turned away’ (Kirkby et al 1995:10). The belief in Boff’s statement above is that sustainable development is mere rhetoric concealing the continued propagation of a development model which does not really address the concerns of our ecological system and the poor in the light of global warming and climate change. At the same time the accusation by Kirkby et al above as well, suggests a political manipulation of sustainable development in which the development gap between the developed and developing countries is maintained, and even widened, at all costs. These points lead us to probe the priorities of sustainable development.
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Rolston manages to unearth how the question of priorities can shed light into our understanding of the dilemma surrounding sustainable development. He begins by noting that on one hand proponents of sustainable development hold that the concept is adequately flexible and allows ‘peoples and nations the freedom and responsibility of self-development’ (Rolston 2010:567). On the other hand, as Rolston highlights, that critics of sustainable development view the term as merely ‘an umbrella concept that requires little but superficial agreement, bringing a constant illusion of consensus, glossing over deeper problems with a rhetorically engaging word’ (Rolston 2010:567).Having divided the views into two poles, Rolston then identifies the assumptions behind the prioritization of either the economy or the environment in sustainable development.
3.5.2. Prioritizing the Economy
We can interpret the prioritization of the economy in two ways. The first is what was happening until the Brundtland Report in which it was taken for granted that developmental issues did not have direct moral responsibility towards the environment. This is the kind of development criticized by the Brundtland Report (WCED 1987:28). The message was clearer. The current paradigm of development was unsustainable and there was a need for change. However, the solution that came from such realization maintained the fundamental view of economic growth. Within this second way of prioritizing of the economy, ‘the underlying conviction is that the trajectory of the industrial, technological, commercial world is generally right –only the developers, in their enthusiasms, have hitherto failed to recognize environment constraints’ (Rolston 2010:567). This is the paradigm of sustainable development that Boff criticizes that, ‘it never gets away from its economic origins, namely rising productivity, accumulation, and technological innovation’ (Boff 1997:66). This seems to be the developmental paradigm that both the developed and developing countries actually practice despite the talk about climate change mitigation.
3.5.2.1 Ethical Implications
According to Rolston, such a stance in which the economy has the priority of sustainable development validates any action as long as ‘the continuing development of the economy is not jeopardized thereby’ (Rolston2010:567). This view is so subtle and can be easily
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mistaken as move genuinely inspired by environmental concern. It evokes an image of the developed countries battling with the developing countries for the same kind of economic development. Faced with the ethical need to cut greenhouse gas emissions as to stop global warming and climate change, developed countries delay mitigation and make empty promises about assisting developing countries with adaptation. Developing countries also demand that they embark on economic development and eradicate poverty. The paradox with this paradigm, which Daly refers to as ‘growthmania’, is that economic growth is seen as a solution to poverty (Daly 1995:33) and yet there is no absolute guarantee that in the long run the poor will really benefit from such growth driven by the insatiable quest for profit.
The Brundtland Report has evidence of this view when commenting about sustainable development it says that, ‘Far from requiring the cessation of economic growth, it recognizes that the problems of poverty and underdevelopment cannot be solved unless we have a new era of growth in which developing countries play a large role and reap large benefits’ (WCED 1987:40). At what costs to the ecosystem can developing countries reap these ‘large benefits’? No amount of funding for adaptation can compensate Mother Nature for endangered species and the poor people suffering the effects of climate change in flooded or drought stricken regions of the world where food and water security is not guaranteed.
3.5.3 Prioritizing the Environment
Taking environmental concern as the priority in sustainable development attempts to readdress the imbalanced approaches to development that led to our global warming and climate change crises. Those who genuinely prioritize the environment in sustainable development even proceed to bemoan the fact that the definition of sustainable development is anthropocentric and focuses ‘on the satisfaction of human needs, rather than, for example on the protection of the environment in general’ (Kirkby et al 1995:2). The argument is that we cannot continue to prioritize the economy at the expense of the environment since, as our current ecological crises have shown, ‘The economy grows in physical scale, but the
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ecosystem does not’ (Daly 1995:331). This stance accentuates the exigency for the mitigation of global warming and climate change more than mere adaptation.
3.5.3.1. Ethical Implications
According to Rolston, prioritizing the environment in sustainable development ensures that,
‘the economy must be kept within an environmental orbit. One ought to conserve nature, the ground matrix of life. Development is desired, but even more, society must learn to live within the carrying capacity of its landscapes’ (Rolston 2010:567). This is a genuine concern; however if generalized it can actually cover up serious inconsistencies that need to be addressed. Sen, a renowned economist and scholar of development asserts that,
‘Development requires the removal of major sources of unfreedom: poverty as well as tyranny, poor economic opportunities as well as systematic social deprivation, neglect of public facilities as well as intolerance or inactivity of repressive states’ (Sen 1999:3).Grubb et al capture the fear that developing countries had in the discourse on global warming, climate change and sustainable development. The consternation was ‘that environmental issues would intrude in the form of new constraints on their development, and new conditions on aid received from rich countries: the intrusion of Northern concerns on the Southern priorities of development and poverty alleviation’ (Grubb et al 1995:26). The concern remains that sustainable development maintains the development gap between the developed and developing countries by restricting the economic development of latter countries in the name of environmental concern. If this is true, then the poor will continue to suffer as they will be no hope for their dire situation and global warming will not really be mitigated since the chief perpetrators, the developed countries, the affluent nations, would not have radically changed their lifestyles.