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The Future of Sustainability: Have Your Say! Week One - “Global Challenges to Sustainability in the Twenty-First Century”
Having posed a few questions at the beginning of this week, focussed on science and technology in support of sustainability, I am glad to see the diversity of responses that have been posted. I very much agree with the points made by Sanjeeva Pandey, though his contribution may be more directly relevant to the discussion in subsequent weeks. In fact, if I had to respond to the initial questions I posed, I certainly would have focussed on the importance of issues other than science and technology; sustainability is above all an ethical dimension to our work, and science and technology should be seen as merely tools to be used toward ethical ends. I therefore am especially pleased that IUCN, through its Commission on Environmental Law, has established an Ethics Task Force, to develop ethical guidelines to guide our work on biodiversity.
The submission from A. Gayle Hudgens discusses this point in much more detail, with a focus on principles and values. She makes the important point that the sustainability movement and the environmental movement are not synonymous, though healthy life-support systems are required to support any society that hopes to be sustainable. She preferred “optimism” to the sense of hope for which I called, which reminded me of Pandora, the first woman in Greek mythology. She was fashioned out of earth, and the gods had bestowed upon her their choicest gifts. She had a jar filled with all kinds of misery and evil, and was enjoined never to open the jar; when she inevitably opened the jar, all the evils flew out over the earth, leaving only hope remaining inside, Pandora having shut the lid before Hope could escape. The interesting point here is that hope was considered one of the evils, reinforcing the point of Hudgens about hope being what slaveholders gave their slaves. Hence optimism may be a better idea. The Natural Step framework she suggests is an intriguing one that IUCN should explore in both its work on ethics and in its various field activities.
The graphic submitted by Mohammad Pervaz is a useful metaphor that could be even more useful if the arrows had arrow heads at both ends, and additional arrows went across the box, linking energy with ecology and economy with environment. Whether all of this leads to global peace is quite a separate issue, and history is hardly encouraging on this point.
Bryan Furnass provides a very welcome historical perspective stretching back into the transition from hunter-gathering peoples to agricultural communities. That certainly was a revolutionary transition, though the development of tools and the control of fire – two fundamental technologies -- stretch back almost 500,000 years and also had a profound impact on the relationship between the human family and the rest of nature.
He, too, emphasizes ethics as part of the solution (along with ecology and education), making it part of the three Es.
David Mkwambisi adds his voice to the importance of considering sustainability as a social paradigm, emphasising that science and technology are only part of the answer. He sees education as a key component, like Bryan Furnass, linking education to access to appropriate forms of agricultural technology. The crucial implication of his comment is that more investment in education is more important than some of the other forms of development that have been proposed.
Antonio Claperols also underlines the importance of a change in attitudes and ethics, as well as consumption patterns. He implicitly recognizes the serious challenge that this will pose.
Jim Barborak focussed more on resource management issues, including the shortage of fresh water, over-exploitation of marine resources, and the threat of invasive alien species. All of these have been discussed in considerable detail by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, with which IUCN was deeply involved. I of course recognize the importance of these issues and we could easily add them to our “litany of woes”. But the real challenge is to find solutions to these problems.
Eduardo Guerrero is clearly a friend of scientists. His recognition that environmental bureaucrats need to rely more on the scientific community is very welcome indeed, and reminds us of the recent call in the prestigious international journal, Nature, calling for an international scientific panel on biodiversity. But he also points out the importance of linking the traditional biological sciences with social and economic sciences, implying that cooperation among different sciences and different institutions could lead to a sort of “intellectual hybrid vigour” that could contribute substantially to sustainability.
The issue of cultural diversity raised by Elizabeth Reichel is one that resonates very well with me, having myself training as an anthropologist. Back in 1985, I edited a book with David Pitt entitled “Culture and Conservation: The Human Dimension in Environmental Planning”, and a few years later I wrote a book entitled “Soul of the Tiger”, which dealt with the relationship between people and the rest of nature in southeast Asia. I also believe that cultural and biological diversity belong together, making a term like “bio-cultural diversity” a meaningful one. But of course the idea is not to freeze the cultures of the world in a museum-like setting of imagined innocence. Rather, cultures are evolving, often at the instigation of themselves; while some may well wish to remain in the remote vastness of the Amazon, many others would like to partake of the perceived benefits of technological change. Interestingly, one of the main technological means of cultural globalization, namely the internet and electronic communications, is also being used to revitalize cultures in all part of the world, enabling them to strengthen their traditions and languages by using the very means that have threatened their cultures.
Of course, this does not happen automatically, and all of us can do much more to support cultural diversity. The fact that IUCN has a Senior Advisor on Social Policy indicates that we are taking at least some steps in this direction, and we hope and expect to do more. The work that is being done by the World Commission on Protected Areas in the field of sacred natural sites is also making an important contribution. This most definitely is not to rest on our laurels, but to indicate that we are aware of the issues and certainly would like to do more in this regard. And the fact that many of the indigenous cultures that are most threatened are also deeply affected by poverty in all its many dimensions gives IUCN a clear mandate to work on cultural biodiversity as part of its poverty alleviation measures.
Freddy Vargas underlines the importance of working with these small communities in a respectful way that does not impose upon them unwelcome attention or ways of thinking. The Convention on Biological Diversity is also addressing issues of traditional knowledge and helping to give such topics greater credibility in international negotiations. But very few governments are particularly enthusiastic about maintaining cultural diversity within their borders; in fact, the opposite seems distressingly dominant, as governments are stressing national unity at the cost of cultural diversity. Thus we have a significant educational challenge in front of us.
Marcos Sommer underlines the importance of ensuring that scientific knowledge and technology is not forced on rural populations, but are presented in ways that are meaningful to the rural communities. This goes back to a point that has been mentioned several times, regarding the importance of education. |