CHAPTER 5 DESCRIPTION AND INTERPRETATION OF THE ENTRY TEXT
85. Key actions
5.3 STEP 7: INTERPRETATION (PROCESSING ANALYSIS)
the environment. In particular, the following are important characteristics of the text.:
they were participatory, aimed to improve world wide equity and included reference to up-to-date environmental management technology.
5.3.1.1 The Monterrey recommendations were participatory
The Monterrey recommendations were part of a participatory process which was designed to ensure that high-level decision makers from around the world could contribute to a world consensus on the best way forward for business and industry with regard to sustainable consumption and production.
5.3.1.2 The Monterrey recommendations aimed to improve global equity In addition to providing a forum for the world’s high level decision-makers to
contribute to the recommendations, the Monterrey seminar was also sensitive to issues of equity. The final recommendations aimed to help address poverty (15, 59), made a link between social and environmental issues (32) and aimed to support developing countries (38) and small and medium enterprises (53) in their efforts towards improved sustainability. Furthermore, they aimed to reduce unequal distribution of knowledge through technology sharing (21, 191, 197, 203) and partnerships (155, 192, 194) amongst relevant organisations.
5.3.1.3 The Monterrey recommendations included reference to up-to-date environmental management technology
The Monterrey recommendations were bold in suggesting management approaches to production and consumption that will require significant changes to business practice.
For example, they suggested green procurement practices (30), green accounting (54), internalisation of environmental costs (55), life cycle management (64), alternative energy sources (116) and even the possibility of achieving zero emissions (216).
These approaches are well-documented as resulting in improved environmental performance (for example, Onita, 2006).
5.3.2 Reading against the text
In reading against the text, I will follow the general headings used in the description. I am asking: what are the business and industry education and training language
characteristics that perhaps form the preconditions for questionable characteristics of environmental/social practice?
5.3.2.1 Absences and strategic concealment of information
The high-level decision-makers have agreed only to activities that will not change the preconditions they need to ensure high profit margins. In the words of Sharon Beder (2005:14), “Sustainable development seeks ‘win-win’ solutions to environmental problems that do not interfere unduly with business activity.”
In line with the trend described by Beder, the Monterrey recommendations mention production and consumption, but only in the context of changing it, not reducing it.
Indeed, ironically, there is evidence that they are using the sustainability movement to increase their market, and increase consumer activity, for example, they suggest advertising and marketing strategies for sustainable goods (121, 155) and they want well-known personalities to advertise these products (158-161). This is in line with the claims made by business critics such as Levett (1994:254) who states,
“(Companies’) pro-environmental actions are directed to exactly the same end as their anti-environmental ones: commercial security and success”.
The critique of excessive production and consumption is well-established. For
example, Welford and Starky (1996:xii) suggests that, “Sustainable production would therefore be production where the throughput of materials and energy was reduced to a level where the regenerative and assimilative capacities of environmental sources and sinks were maintained.” Levett (15 May 2006:iv) states:
Hearing that I am an environmental consultant, people often ask me what they should buy to reduce their climate change impacts. (…) A Toyota prius? A condensing boiler? Solar panels? I try to say something positive about whatever gizmo has caught their fancy, but add that the really big, foolproof savings come from just using less.
It therefore seems questionable that the changes we need to protect our environment can be effected through increased production, even if it is an increase in ‘sustainable’
products, and even if we are using more environmentally friendly technologies. It seems it is largely the excessive production itself that is the problem. This is not to say that the development of sustainable goods and technologies are not welcome, but it is to say that these developments should perhaps be coupled with a commitment to decreasing production and consumption. I have tried, in the section on ‘reading’ with the text (Cf. Vol.1, Chap. 5.3.1), to show some of the positive contributions being made to the environmental cause, in business and industry.
Also not mentioned in the Monterrey document is an attempt to reduce our extraction and consumption of minerals. Again, reduced production of these materials seems an imperative given the destructive effects of their extraction and the pollution problems posed by their processing and often their consumption. It seems possible that in failing to mention the need to reduce extraction and consumption of minerals, the authors are setting up conditions to allow their extraction and consumption to continue unchecked.
Furthermore, the decision-makers want to reduce the use of our water resources, but do not mention reducing the use of fossil fuels, or the reduction of energy. As with the consumption and production of goods, it appears that they are willing only to add sustainable energy production to the world’s energy production, and not to reduce energy production. This conservative approach does not seem adequate to deal with the environmental crisis. The now well-established effect on the world weather patterns of global warming, most likely linked to burning fuels, especially fossil fuels (Hansen, 13 July 2006), would seem to suggest that reduction in energy consumption should be an imperative. The absence of suggestions for decreased production and consumption, of manufactured goods, raw materials and energy, perhaps forms a precondition for continued excessive production and consumption of these.
It appears that the document has obscured the responsibility for carrying out activities related to production and consumption and resource management. Technically, the
and industry establishment have agreed to all the activities that: “develop”, “expand”,
“support,” “establish”, “apply”, “enhance”, “secure”, “work with”, “create”, “identify and share”, “motivate”, “compile”, “strengthen”, “promote” and “enhance”
sustainable production and consumption. However, we also know that it would be inappropriate for them all to do all of this work. Just as was made explicit at the beginning of the document, with regard to less threatening, non-
production/consumption-related networking and frame-work building opportunities, certain organisations will be better positioned to do certain things. However,
removing explicit reference to responsibility in the section on production and consumption and resource management and leaving it up to the readers’
interpretations as to how the labour should be divided, may provide the precondition that allows organisations to avoid doing anything, assuming (strategically?) that someone else will do it.
For example, with reference to energy systems, one might ask which are the agents responsible for: building capacity at the local level (99); developing awareness and willingness amongst local banking and community financing schemes (105, 106); and promoting sustainable energy systems? (119).
With regard to the absence of the recommendation that business achieve set standards of environmental performance, committing instead only to only continual
improvement (134), this might be because managers do not want to damage their commercial positions by setting high environmental performance targets. Managers reading the Monterrey recommendations would be aware that environmental
management standards such as ISO 14001 (1996) only suggest continual
improvement according to criteria set by the company itself. Although companies are required to stay within the law, legislation does not consider many of the possible environmental protection strategies or provide strict enough emissions controls. If a company voluntarily implemented environmental performance beyond that required by the law, this may give non-environmentally-concerned competition an economic advantage. Continuous improvement therefore seems impracticable since there are competitive disincentives to make improvements beyond that required legally (Levett, 1996:265).
The absence of direct reference to the inclusion of marginal groups and women is surprising given the recent necessity for most high level documents to include them.
The absence of their mention seems like a reversion to earlier ways of writing and perhaps serves as a precondition for them to become invisible such that their needs are overlooked.
5.3.2.2 Reproduction of unequal social relations
As mentioned in 5.1.2, the very nature of the document as ‘high-level’ implies exclusivity and non-human collectives such as business, financial institutions, governments, industries, multinational corporations and perhaps environmental experts are given active roles whereas the consumers, the youth, the elderly, local entrepreneurs and developing countries are given passive roles. The text therefore provides a precondition that allows the reproduction of unequal social relations amongst these social players, such that the businesses, financial institutions,
industries, multinational corporations and environmental experts (often sponsored by the above) decide what sustainable behaviour is. The youth, the elderly, the local entrepreneurs and the developing countries, it is assumed, will, after appropriate education, passively change their behaviour accordingly.
5.3.2.3 Tendency to avoid discussion and dissent and thus potentially avoid challenges to the status quo
The authors of this text provide preconditions for the avoidance of challenges to the truth of what they are saying in three ways:
• Firstly, the style of the document, its publication in UNEP’s “Environment and Industry” magazine, and reference to institutions such as the United Nation, the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) and the Marrakech process suggest international consensus with regard to its truth.
The Monterrey seminar participants therefore assume epistemological privilege based on international agreement. They assume that these recommendations must be based on true premises, and must therefore be
well-established organisations consider the premises to be true? Supported by such impressive credentials, this document is bestowed with powerful
institutional legitimation and it is thus difficult to argue with it. However, epistemological theorists such as Haack (1993, 1998) and Bhaskar have demonstrated that consensual agreement is not an absolute measure of truth. It is possible for a million Frenchmen to be wrong (Bhaskar, 1993:214).
• Secondly, the authors assume that knowledge is a given, something to be found, developed and then transferred or transmitted. By hiding the social constructedness of knowledge, contestation of that knowledge is avoided. How can one argue with something that just is? The recipients of the knowledge passively consume it; they are not given a role in helping to develop it.
However, contemporary educational theorists largely agree that there is a social element to knowledge (Price, 2005a in Vol.2, Chap). Knowledge is not something to be found and disseminated.
• Thirdly, the author/s avoid epistemological uncertainty with strong modality.
When a text is written with such epistemological confidence, it makes it hard to argue with it; it must be right if it is so sure of itself. However, much contemporary philosophy has put into question our ability to arrive at an absolute certain truth. Post-positivist, contemporary researchers generally admit that knowledge is fallible (Cf. Vol.1, Chap. 3.5.1).
5.3.2.4 Evidence of the author/s political orientation
The military, civil engineering and mechanical metaphors are typical of a business orientation (Cf. Vol.1, Chap. 2.6.1), as are the structure of the text (well defined headings and bullet points), the strong modality and the re-description of things of value as products and educational processes as marketing strategies (Cf. Vol.1, Chap.
7.3.2).
The application of the idea that marketing strategies should be employed to create a market for sustainable agriculture products is particularly provocative as it implies that the authors are employing the later generation of business strategies where demand for a product is created, through marketing, where it was previously absent
(Cf. Vol.1, Chap. 2.6), resulting in the net increase in agricultural production, already suspected.
This business orientation-style would perhaps provide a precondition for the
‘naturalness’ of the assumption that production and consumption must increase, not decrease. The military metaphors also perhaps provide a precondition for it to seem natural that decision-makers should use aggressive power2 strategies to achieve their aims, for the military consists of a well-defined hierarchy whereby the soldiers on the ground (the consumers, youth, elderly, local entrepreneurs?) carry out the orders made by the officers (high-level decision-makers?). The civil engineering and mechanical metaphors perhaps provide the precondition for it to seem natural that we can solve the problems of the Earth’s floundering ecology (a machine?) with training in expert- devised case studies and strategies (technical know-how). It perhaps makes it seem simply logical that we can treat people like machines too: we can build their capacity (as we would an engine’s capacity); integrate sustainable consumption and production into their survival strategies (as we might integrate a new program into our computer network); and engage them (as we might engage gears).
Whilst these metaphors achieve the strategic aim of maintaining power2 centrally, with the decision-makers, it seems unlikely that they are appropriate for dealing with the Earth’s ecological complexity. It also seems unlikely that they provide
preconditions for the free flourishing of all human beings, since they assume that a majority of humans are significantly dispossessed of agency and structurally determined, that is., they are the ‘machines’ that the decision-makers ‘manipulate’.
5.7.2.5 Relatively concealed challenges to the status quo
Some of the absences mentioned above might indicate challenges to the status quo, such as the absence of reference to dissent and the avoidance of controversial issues.
The author/s might be ignoring these things because to admit them would be to put the legitimacy of the whole document into question. That is, ignoring them might be a precondition for avoiding them.
The presence of the words ‘consumption and production’ in the heading and their frequent use in the text in a way which does not mean their reduction, is perhaps best explained as a strategy to provide a precondition to deal with the challenge to world economics posed by critics calling for decreased ‘consumption’ and ‘production’
(Shiva, 1997; Sachs, 1999; Levett, 15 may 2006). The use of these words has the effect of implying (unjustified) solidarity with those people who would seek to challenge world economics by suggesting reduced production and consumption. The use of a watered-down interpretation of the words ‘sustainable production and
consumption’ is perhaps an attempt to defuse that challenge but is at the same time an indication of the presence of that challenge.
Fairclough (2003:103) refers to the concept of the “dialectic of colonisation and appropriation”. Using this concept, we could say that the discourse of ‘sustainable consumption and production’, initiated in circles antagonistic to the general ethos of business, has colonised the discourse of business. But business has neutralised the transformative potential of this colonisation by appropriating the (challenging) language to its own purposes. Thus, the Monterrey recommendations exhibit a
“texturing” of discourses related to a dialectic of colonisation and appropriation (Fairclough 2003:126).
Charges made of business and industry, that they are not socially and environmentally responsible, may explain (provide the preconditions for) the presence on the agenda of the SCP8 of environmental/social responsibility, triple bottom line reporting, poverty reduction, partnerships between multinationals and developing countries, youth, elderly, local entrepreneurs and greening the supply chain. Therefore, the very presence of these items is perhaps evidence of challenges to business and industry.
Like the texturing mentioned in the previous paragraph, the presence of these items is evidence of intertextuality, “(…) linking this text to an ill-defined penumbra of other texts (and thus) to what has been said or at least thought elsewhere” (Fairclough, 2003:17).