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September 23, 1999
SCIENTISTS SAY FUTURE IS IN THE BALANCE
In 1992, Sir Michael Atiyah, president of the Royal Society of London, and Dr. Frank Press, president of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, issued a joint statement under the title, "Population Growth, Resource Consumption and a Sustainable World."[1] The Royal Society, founded in 1660, is sometimes called the United Kingdom's Academy of Science.
This joint statement, issued by two of the world's leading scientific organizations, was unprecedented. The Royal Society, in particular, had in the past been very reluctant to issue pronouncements on matters of public policy that might stir controversy.
Unfortunately, this important joint statement was almost entirely ignored by the world's media. Therefore, we are reprinting it verbatim as part of our series on "the meaning of sustainability."
The statement says that if population growth continues and patterns of human activity remain unchanged, "science and technology may not be able to prevent either irreversible degradation of the environment or continued poverty for much of the world."
"The future of our planet is in the balance" the statement says. "Sustainable development can be achieved, but only if irreversible degradation of the environment can be halted in time. The next 30 years may be crucial."
The joint statement:
WORLD POPULATION
In its 1991 report on world population, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) states that population growth is even faster than forecast in its report of 1984. Assuming nevertheless that there will in the future be substantial and sustained falls in fertility rates, the global population is expected in the UN's mid-range projection to rise from 5.4 billion in 1991 to 10 billion in 2050. This rapid rise may be unavoidable; considerably larger rises must be expected if fertility rates do not stabilize at the replacement level of about 2.1 children per woman. At present, about 95 percent of this growth is in the less developed countries (LDCs); the percentage of global population that live in the LDCs is projected to increase from 77 percent in 1990 to 84 percent in 2020.
THE ENVIRONMENT
Although there is a relationship between population, economic activity, and the environment, it is not simple. Most of the environmental changes during the twentieth century have been a product of the efforts of humans to secure improved standards of food, clothing, shelter, comfort, and recreation. Both developed and developing countries have contributed to environmental degradation. Developed countries, with 85 percent of the world's gross national product and 23 percent of its population, account for the majority of mineral and fossil-fuel consumption. One issue alone, the increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide, has the potential for altering global climate with significant consequences for all countries. The prosperity and technology of the developed countries, however, give them the greater possibilities and the greater responsibility for addressing environmental problems.
In the developing countries the resource consumption per capita is lower, but the rapidly growing population and the pressure to develop their economies are leading to substantial and increasing damage to the local environment. This damage comes by direct pollution from energy use and other industrial activities, as well as by activities such as clearing forests and inappropriate agricultural practices.
THE REALITY OF THE PROBLEM
Scientific and technological innovations, such as in agriculture, have been able to overcome many pessimistic predictions about resource constraints affecting human welfare. Nevertheless, the present patterns of human activity accentuated by population growth should make even those most optimistic about future scientific progress pause and reconsider the wisdom of ignoring these threats to our planet. Unrestrained resource consumption for energy production and other uses, especially if the developing world strives to achieve living standards based on the same levels of consumption as the developed world, could lead to catastrophic outcomes for the global environment.
Some of the environmental changes may produce irreversible damage to the earth's capacity to sustain life. Many species have already disappeared, and many more are destined to do so. Man's own prospects for achieving satisfactory living standards are threatened by environmental deterioration, especially in the poorest countries where economic activities are most heavily dependent upon the quality of natural resources.
If they are forced to deal with their environmental and resource problems alone, the LDCs face overwhelming challenges. They generate only 15 percent of the world's GNP, and have a net cash outflow of tens of billions of dollars per year. Over one billion people live in absolute poverty, and 600 million on the margin of starvation. And the LDCs have only 6-7 percent of the world's active scientists and engineers, a situation that makes it very difficult for them to participate fully in global or regional schemes to manage their own environment.
In places where resources are administered effectively, population growth does not inevitably imply deterioration in the quality of the environment. Nevertheless, each additional human being requires natural resources for sustenance, each produces by-products that become part of the ecosystem, and each pursues economic and other activities that affect the natural world. While the impact of population growth varies from place to place and from one environmental domain to another, the overall pace of environmental changes has unquestionably been accelerated by the recent expansion of the human population.
INTERNATIONAL ACTION
There is an urgent need to address economic activity, population growth, and environmental protection as interrelated issues. The forthcoming UN Conference on Environment and Development, to be held in Brazil, should consider human activities and population growth, in both the developing and developed worlds, as crucial components affecting the sustainability of human society. Effective family planning, combined with continued economic and social development in the LDCs, will help stabilize fertility rates at lower levels and reduce stresses to the global environment. At the same time, greater attention in the developed countries to conservation, recycling, substitution and efficient use of energy, and a concerted program to start mitigating further buildup of greenhouse gases will help to ease the threat to the global environment.
Unlike many other steps that could be taken to reduce the rate of environmental changes, reductions in rates of population growth can be accomplished through voluntary measures. Surveys in the developing world repeatedly reveal large amounts of unwanted childbearing. By providing people with the means to control their own fertility, family planning programs have major possibilities to reduce rates of population growth and hence to arrest environmental degradation. Also, unlike many other potential interventions that are typically specific to a particular problem, a reduction in the rate of population growth would affect many dimensions of environmental changes. Its importance is easily underestimated if attention is focused on one problem at a time.
THE CONTRIBUTION OF SCIENCE
What are the relevant topics to which scientific research can make mitigating contributions? These include: development of new generations of safe, easy to use, and effective contraceptive agents and devices; development of environmentally benign alternative energy sources; improvements in agricultural production and food processing; further research in plant and animal genetic varieties; further research in biotechnology relating to plants, animals, and preservation of the environment; improvements in public health, especially through development of effective drugs and vaccines for malaria, hepatitis, AIDS, and other infectious diseases causing immense human burdens. Also needed is research on topics such as: improved land-use practices to prevent ecological degradation, loss of topsoil, and desertification of grasslands; better institutional measures to protect watersheds and groundwater; new technologies for waste disposal, environmental remediation, and pollution control; new materials that reduce pollution and the use of hazardous substances during their life cycle; and more effective regulatory tools that use market forces to protect the environment.
Greater attention also needs to be given to understanding the nature and dimension of the world's biodiversity. Although we depend directly on biodiversity for sustainable productivity, we cannot even estimate the numbers of species of organisms -- plants, animals, fungi, and microorganisms -- to an order of magnitude [a factor of 10]. We do know, however, that the current rate of reduction in biodiversity is unparalleled over the past 65 million years. The loss of biodiversity is one of the fastest-moving aspects of global change, is irreversible, and has serious consequences for the human prospect in the future.
What are the limits of scientific contributions to the solution of resource and environmental problems? Scientific research and technological innovation can undoubtedly mitigate these stresses and facilitate a less destructive adaptation of a growing population to its environment. Yet, it is not prudent to rely on science and technology alone to solve problems created by rapid population growth, wasteful resource consumption, and harmful human practices.
CONCLUSIONS
The application of science and technology to global problems is a key component of providing a decent standard of living for a majority of the human race. Science and technology have an especially important role to play in developing countries in helping them to manage their resources effectively and to participate fully in worldwide initiatives for common benefit. Capabilities in science and technology must be strengthened in LDCs as a matter of urgency through joint initiatives from the developed and developing worlds. But science and technology alone are not enough. Global policies are urgently needed to promote more rapid economic development throughout the world, more environmentally benign patterns of human activity, and a more rapid stabilization of world population.
The future of our planet is in the balance. Sustainable development can be achieved, but only if irreversible degradation of the environment can be halted in time. The next 30 years may be crucial. [End of joint statement.]
September 16, 1999
The Meaning of Sustainability--Part 2
MORE ON THE NATURAL STEP
After writing about The Natural Step (TNS) last week, I received E-mail from Sarah van Gelder, the executive editor of YES! A MAGAZINE OF POSITIVE FUTURES. YES! is an important magazine, and one of my personal favorites.[1] (To subscribe, phone toll free: 800-937-4451; $24/year and definitely worth it.) Ms. van Gelder pointed me toward an interview with Dr. Karl-Henrik Robert -- the Swedish scientist who initiated The Natural Step -- which YES! had published in 1998.[2] She also told me that my reporting last week about Paul Hawken was badly out of date. (See REHW #667.) Hawken, who introduced The Natural Step to the U.S., has completely changed his view of Monsanto. Let's look at that first.
Hawken is an articulate, successful businessman who worries about the future of the planet and of business. After he began to introduce the Natural Step to the U.S., Hawken was being courted by Monsanto's top management and for a brief interlude he had nice things to say about them. Unfortunately, as Hawken explained in a published interview just a few weeks ago, Monsanto never took sustainability seriously.[3] After Monsanto invited Hawken to St. Louis, "Although I refused initially, I accepted reluctantly for a simple reason: if Monsanto could change, then any company could," he said.
However, he said, "I don't know of any new [Monsanto] products that came about because of any environmental commitment, and the old underlying divisional culture of ramming products into the marketplace without consulting a broader stakeholder community about effects, values, science, and other potential concerns -- with the arrogance that entails -- remains intact. What exists now is a company without any clear leadership, with divisional heads consistently putting their foot in their mouth, and a product line that is truly unnerving.
"I continue to follow their devolution," Hawken says, "especially in Europe where they have become the most reviled American corporation. No small achievement."
"... It is hard to say, looking back, what their interest in sustainability was. They... have largely dropped their sustainable development division and any pretense that sustainable is a word or concept that informs their activity," Hawken says.
Earlier in the interview Hawken had commented, "When you get an organization like Monsanto completely prostituting the concept of sustainability, that understandably raises the level of cynicism as other corporations announce that they are moving in that direction." So Hawken realizes the damage that Monsanto inflicted on the very idea of sustainability when they pretended to be interested in The Natural Step. It is good to finally hear Paul Hawken speaking plainly about Monsanto because The Natural Step is an important movement, full of hope, optimism, and real promise. A disingenuous embrace by Monsanto would have been the kiss of death.
The YES! interview with TNS founder Karl-Henrik Robert offers some unique insights into Robert's thinking. For example he perceives that humans have reversed evolution:
"Most people are not aware that it took living cells about 3.5 billion years to transform the virgin soup of the atmosphere -- which was a toxic, chaotic mixture of sulfurous compounds, methane, carbon dioxide, and other substances -- into the conditions that could support complex life.
"In just the last DECADES humans have reversed this trend. First we found concentrated energy like fossil fuels and nuclear power. As a result, we can create such a high throughput of resources that natural processes no longer have the time to process the waste and build new resources.
"Dispersed junk is increasing in the system as we lose soils, forests, and species. So we have reversed evolution. The Earth is running back towards the chaotic state it came from at a tremendous speed."
Robert describes our situation as moving into a funnel, with the walls of the funnel closing in on us dangerously. "I think most people in business understand that we are running into a funnel of declining resources globally. We will soon be 10 billion people on Earth -- at the same time, as we are running out of forests, crop land, and fisheries. We need more and more resource input for the same crop or timber yield. At the same time pollution is increasing systematically and we have induced climate change. All that together creates a resource funnel."
To avoid hitting the walls of the funnel, businesses need to turn away from activities that violate the four "system conditions" which are essential for life, essential for the common good, and which form the basis of The Natural Step.
The four system conditions necessary for life are:
#1: Substances mined from the Earth must not systematically increase in air, water, soil, or living things; this means that sustainable businesses need to decrease their dependence upon heavy metals and fossil fuels, substituting renewable sources of materials and energy.
#2: Substances produced by society must not be allowed to systematically increase in air, water, soil, or living things. This means that sustainable businesses need to avoid using persistent unnatural compounds such as brominated fire retardants, chlorinated plastics and solvents, and persistent pesticides.
#3: The physical basis of productivity and the diversity of nature must not be systematically diminished. This means we must live off the interest of what nature provides and we must not use up nature's capital. This means sustainable businesses must not derive wood or food from ecologically maltreated land, and must not use materials that require long-distance transportation. (Think of what this means for the "global free market" religion that has enraptured Wall Street and Capitol Hill in recent years.)
#4: We must be fair and efficient in meeting basic human needs. This means we must stop wasting resources.
Businesses that comply with the four system conditions will successfully flow through the hole in the funnel and thrive. Their ignorant competitors will run into the walls of the funnel where they will incur increased costs for resources, waste management, insurance, loans, international business agreements, taxes, and public fear. Competitors who direct their investments away from the walls of the funnel will be rewarded by their customers and will do well. Those who benefit in the short term by violating the system conditions, the essential requirements of life, are firms that have no future, Robert says.
The fourth system condition is as fundamental as the first 3, and flows directly from them, Robert says. He explains it this way:
"Fairness is an efficiency parameter if we look at the whole global civilization. It is not an efficient way of meeting human needs if one billion people starve while another billion have excess. It would be more efficient to distribute resources so that at least vital needs were met everywhere. Otherwise, for example, if kids are starving somewhere, dad goes out to slash and burn the rain forest to feed them -- and so would I if my kids were dying. And this kind of destruction is everyone's problem, because we live in the same ecosphere."
Will businesses voluntarily make the transition to sustainability? Robert does not think so. "My belief is that free will of individuals and firms will not be sufficient to make sustainable practices widespread -- legislation is a crucial part of the walls of the funnel, particularly if we want to make the transition in time."
Despite the need for legislation, businesses acting voluntarily have a tremendously important role to play. "The more examples we get of businesses entering the transition out of free will, the easier it will be for proactive politicians. In a democracy there must be a 'market' for proactive decisions in politics, and that market can be created by proactive businesses in dialogue with proactive customers. For example, in Sweden, some of these proactive business leaders are lobbying for green taxes. In that triangle of dialogue: business-market-politicians, a new culture may evolve, with an endorsement of the values we share but have forgotten how to pay attention to," says Robert.
How will the transition to sustainable behavior evolve? "A deepening intellectual understanding is a good starting point for change of values." And, he says, "The Natural Step introduces a shared mental model that is intellectually strict, but still simple to understand. These are the rules of sustainability; you can plug them into decision-making about any product."
"The first thing that happens is that this stimulates creativity, because people enter a much smarter dialogue if they have a shared framework for their goals...."
"A strict shared mental model can really get people working together," Robert says.
What does the future hold? Will we successfully make the transition to sustainable practices? Robert is not sure. He says the world is probably in for very difficult times in the years ahead, perhaps even collapse. He says,
"What worries me the most is the systematic social battering of people all around the world, leading to more and more desperate people who don't feel any partnership with society because of alienation, poverty, dissolving cultural structures, more and more 'molecular' violence (unorganized and self-destructive violence that pops up everywhere without any meaning at all).
"The response of the establishment is too superficial, with more and more imprisonment and money spent on defense against those feared, leading to a vicious cycle.
"If this goes on long enough, a constructive and new sustainable paradigm in the heads of governments and business leaders will not necessarily help us in time. We will have more and more people who are so hungry to meet their vital human needs that it will be hard to reach them," Robert says.
Thus -- though Robert does not say so -- we can see that the fourth system condition is ultimately the most important because if the "fairness" condition is not met, then society will not be able to organize itself to comply with the first three system conditions and sustainability will not be achievable. The world's slide into chaos, which has become increasingly evident in the past 25 years, will accelerate.
Thus environmental groups and government agencies (including the President's Council on Sustainable Development) who refuse to address the essential issues of economic opportunity and economic fairness are whistling in the wind, wasting our time, and misleading their supporters. For the most part, the U.S. environmental movement isn't working toward sustainability because it has never developed a complete view of what sustainability entails: sustainability requires more than salvaging ecosystems. It requires major efforts to assure economic fairness (in many countries, especially the U.S., this means confronting racism head-on) and to assure the survival of cultural diversity. Anything less is merely environmental hand-waving.
--Peter Montague
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