The Future of Sustainability: Have Your Say!

Week One - “Global Challenges to Sustainability in the Twenty-First Century”
Comment / Comentario / Commentaire

Narpat S. Jodha, International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, Kathmandu, Nepal

Moderating team: Narpat Jodha asserts that the problem of unsustainability should be presented in concrete, practical contexts and offers the success story of a Himalayan community as an example.

Narpat Jodha afirma que el problema de la insostenibilidad debería abordarse desde contextos concretos y prácticos. Comparte una historia exitosa de una comunidad en el Himalaya

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Friends,
While sharing the concerns and questions raised by Jeff McNeely and others, I would like to suggest that in order to mainstream the concerns and approaches to sustainability, it will be worthwhile to present the problem in practical and down-to-earth contexts. Accordingly, rather than confining to futuristic views, focus should also be put on present day do-ables. This may call for identification of simple and practical indicators of emerging unsustainability at micro levels; and have steps to address them, which would mean restoration of sustainability.

Some concrete examples of easy to understand and operationalise the indicators of unsustainability from rural areas of the Himalayas are indicated below:

In parts of the Himalayas where, to day as compared to a period about 40 years ago, the deep rooted crops can not be grown because the deep soil has been eroded;
- during the same period the dry season availability of spring water for irrigation and drinking has declined from 6-8 months to 2 1/2 months;
- distances and time involved in gathering fodder/fuel and water by women have almost doubled in most of the studied areas;
- decline in the yields of staple crops has caused the deficit of self produced food to the extent of 4-6 months (in place of 1-2 months in the past).

These and other indicators of unsustainability have been suggested and recorded by the illiterate villagers themselves, who know little about the formal sustainability concepts. Again over a period of last 8-10 years, efforts to reverse the above negative changes have led to near restoration of part of the past situation, ie. restoration of sustainability. To the extent, in several contexts, sustainability is an aggregation of such place-based positive achievements, what has been stated above would make more and practical sense for the grass roots level decision makers, even if it does not find any space even as a foot note in the learned discourse on sustainability or future of sustainability. Thanks for your attention.