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The Future of Sustainability: Have Your Say! Week One - “Global Challenges to Sustainability in the Twenty-First Century”
It is highly encouraging to see so many excellent perspectives being contributed to the discussion. Narpat Jodha presents a great example of local communities correcting unsustainable practices, leading to the question of whether we will only find sustainability when we are forced to do so when unsustainability becomes so obvious that it can no longer be ignored. Another implication from this submission is that sustainability is more likely to be achieved through millions of site-specific actions rather than grandiose global schemes (though of course the global concept can provide some glue to the whole). This point is made, slightly differently, by Mourad Ahmim as well, adding some of the reasons why approaches to sustainability can, and must, vary across the landscape. This also relates to the submission from Stephen Jameson, who sees our historical unsustainable behaviour as natural. But accepting that point makes it difficult to expect political leaders to provide the necessary leadership; instead, perhaps we need a more “natural” solution which, as suggested by Jodha, will require a shock to our system to bring us to our senses. Perhaps politicians are not able to provide the necessary leadership because the conditions are not yet appropriate for doing so. Is it possible that things need to get worse before they can get better? Perhaps this is so at a global or national level, but experience from many parts of the world illustrate that at the village level, many people have already recognised the importance of sustainability and are seeking to practice it. One focus for action, therefore, might be to avoid counter-productive measures that will prevent local people from living sustainably; I sometimes worry that mainstream forms of development that make people more dependent on external inputs over which they have no control, are more likely to lead to unsustainability than sustainability. So perhaps our natural behaviour is to constantly push the limits of our resource consumption, testing them until we go too far, and then retreating to a more sustainable level of consumption. That retreat is seldom pleasant. Many of the commentators, including Cesar Ipenza and Maria del Conseulo Carranza y Simon, highlight the importance of water to sustainability. Water is a classic renewable resource that is being constantly recycled. But the efficiency that is applied to the recycling is highly variable and certainly requires greater attention. The work of IUCN’s Water and Nature Initiative (WANI) is working precisely on this issue. For further information see http://www.waterandnature.org. Steven Salmony highlights the critical role of the UN, which hosted the Stockholm Conference, the Rio Conference, the Millennium Conference, the Johannesburg Conference, and has generated numerous international environmental agreements, all of which are aimed to contribute to sustainability. He highlights the importance of leadership, and this point is very well taken. But the era of Kofi Annan is quickly drawing to a close, and a critical decision is now being negotiated in the capitals of the world on a successor to Secretary General Annan. Finding a successor with his wisdom and compassion will be challenging, but let us all do everything we can to encourage our governments to choose a strong leader who is committed to sustainability. Having such a person at the top of the international governance system would be a critical factor in helping to encourage the broad concept of sustainability around the world, with local and culturally appropriate applications in the various corners of our planet. Bhubaneswor Dhakal argues for more benefits from environmental management to be delivered to the poor. His criticism that conservation for the rich sounds a bit anachronistic, and IUCN, at least, includes poverty alleviation at the heart of its practical work. Since the 1980 World Conservation Strategy, we have been focussing sustainable development on providing benefits to rural people, many of whom are poor. In Nepal, Mr. Dhakal’s home country, the Community Forest Programme is an excellent example of a major policy change that has fundamentally led to an improved relationship between people and forests, to the benefit of both. Protected areas increasingly are being managed to ensure that they provide a reasonable share of benefits to the people living in and around them. Again in Nepal, the growth of tourism around Chitwan National Park has given many local people a new source of income and shown how conservation benefits can be shared with the rural poor. The Community Forest Programme in Nepal has enabled people to remain in their communities, not abandon them. And rather than expecting sustainability to come only from the rich, the people who use relatively few resources have much to teach about sustainability. This is not to celebrate the poor, but rather to acknowledge their relevance in any discussion about sustainability. Obviously, a far better balance between wealth and poverty is critical to sustainability. All for now. |