Mother Pelican
A Journal of Sustainable Human Development

Vol. 7, No. 10, October 2011 Luis T. Gutiérrez, Editor

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Gender Balance for Solidarity and Sustainability Source: Comenius Project SUMMARY It is proposed that gender balance - deeply internalized, not merely a matter of numbers - will be a source of "new energy" to overcome the masculinist culture of violence and domination. Gender balance can help individuals and nations to start considering both self-interest and the common good. "We have a special responsibility to the ecosystem of this planet. In making sure that other species survive we will be ensuring the survival of our own." Wangari Maathai, Kenya (+ 26 September 2011) Gender balance at all levels of responsibility and authority can pave the way for a sensible transition from consumerism to sustainability. It can make possible the exploration of new initiatives such as transferring tax burdens from earned income to financial speculation, natural resource usage, and environmental degradation; declaring some form of debt jubilee and/or creating debt-free money by central and regional banks; enhancing distributive justice via a democratically set level of universal guaranteed personal income; balancing globalization with financial and monetary localization via local currencies and/or exchange trading systems; adopting business practices such as the triple bottom line; working out the economic and technological issues that must be resolved in order to migrate from fossil fuels to clean energy; consolidating democracy by firm adherence to the wise principles of solidarity, subsidiarity, and sustainability; and giving top priority to sustainable human development rather than unsustainable resource exploitation and wealth accumulation. So there is no lack of reasonable ideas about ways to manage the transition, but political will is utterly lacking; and political will cannot possibly emerge as long as masculinist patriarchy remains normative. The transition from consumerism to sustainability has already started, even though it remains invisible for many. But attaining gender balance in human affairs, and the process toward energy balance and ecological sustainability, will reinforce each other in many significant and mutually beneficial ways. Gender balance is the catalyst that will brake the current impasse and get the process going. Since the "patriarchs" will seldom pour the catalyst down from the top, it must gently percolate upwards from the grassroots: individual citizens, families, groups, and local communities. OUTLINE Page 1. Editorial Essay ~ Gender Balance for Solidarity and Sustainability Page 2. Five Axioms of Sustainability, by Richard Heinberg Page 3. Deus ex Machina: Will Economic Collapse Save Us from Climate Catastrophe?, by Dan Allen Page 4. The Global Prisoners' Dilemma of Unsustainability, by David Lempert and Hue Nhu Nguyen Page 5. The Numbers: Population, Consumption, and Reproductive Health, by Victoria Markham Page 6. Economic Development Leaving Millions Behind, by Kanya D'Almeida and From King Coal to Carbon Tax: A Historical Perspective on the Energy and Climate-Change Debate, by Paul Sabin Page 7. The Masculinity Conspiracy - Part 1, by Joseph Gelfer Page 8. Land Rehabilitation on the Central Plateau of Burkina Faso and Building Resilience to Climate Change through Farmer-Managed Natural Regeneration in Niger, by Pauline Buffle and Chris Reij Page 9. Shaping the Future: A Proposal to Hasten a Global Paradigm Shift , by Judith L. Hand Source: Ecological Footprint This issue also includes the following supplements: Supplement 1: Advances in Sustainable Development Supplement 2: Directory of Sustainable Development Resources Supplement 3: Strategies for the Transition to Clean Energy Supplement 4: Tactics for the Transition to Clean Energy Supplement 5: Status of Gender Balance in Society Supplement 6: Status of Gender Balance in Religion    "Only when the last tree has been cut down,    only when the last river has been poisoned,    only when the last fish has been caught,    only then will you learn that money cannot be eaten."        -- Plains Sioux Editorial Essay Gender Balance for Solidarity and Sustainability The convergence of gender balance, energy balance, and sustainability emerges from gender imbalance and energy imbalance jointly driving human civilization toward unsustainability. Many other factors are involved, but gender and energy imbalances are the most pervasive, and balancing them would have a neutralizing effect on all the other factors that conspire against a sustainable human society. If the transition from consumerism to sustainability is to be attained in a timely and civilized manner, i.e., before it is too late and minimizing violence as much as possible, balancing gender relations and energy flows should be top priorities. Balancing gender relations is more than just gender equity, even though attaining gender equity is a good start. It also goes beyond gender equality as a merely theoretical recognition of human dignity regardless of gender, but one that fails to exorcise patriarchal modes of thinking and behaving. Gender balancing for sustainability would require wide open access to all roles of authority and responsibility without any artificial gender-based limitation. Sanitizing hearts and minds from patriarchy is needed in all dimensions of human life, both secular and religious. Then, and only then, can human behavior - and policy decisions - exhibit the mix of masculine and feminine traits that will be required to reconcile humanity with the human habitat. With regard to balancing energy flows, it is a matter of facing two realities and acting accordingly. One reality is that balancing energy flows through the global system is an unavoidable requirement of the physical laws of thermodynamics. Life is more than physics, but physics is part of the web of life; there is no way around that. Another reality is that extracting energy from carbon-intensive fossil fuels always entails a net energy flow imbalance (i.e., energy input > energy output). Therefore, using fossil fuels as a source of energy must give way to using clean (renewable) energy sources, and the sooner the better. Since energy is needed for all human activities, the transition to clean energy is bound to mitigate carbon-induced climate change and drive adaptation in all industrial sectors of the global economy. Hypothesis The following synthesis is a "working hypothesis" that attempts to encapsulate our current understanding of the issues and suggests an important priority for scholars and activists: WORKING HYPOTHESIS Human willingness and technical innovation can make it possible to integrate the behavioral and technical sides of the transition from consumerism to sustainability. However, it is reasonable to anticipate that technological innovation alone will not be sufficient. Strong economic incentives, and significant human adaptation, will be required. By "significant" is meant a radical departure from extreme capitalist and socialist mindsets, both of which are rooted in a patriarchal culture hardened by the masculinist propensity to violence traceable to primitive religious violence. This urge to attain control and domination - of people and of nature - is deeply ingrained in human culture, with roots traceable to human evolution, human biology, and human psychology. It induces stress on individuals and communities to the point of seeking aggressive (and often even violent) short-term "solutions" to real or imaginary threats with almost complete disregard for the long-term wellbeing of humanity and the human habitat. Furthermore, the energy return on energy investment, and therefore the financial return on capital investment, is much higher for non-renewables than for renewables. As long as this is the case, the worldwide carbon-based economic and financial systems - conditioned as they are to minimize "time to market" and maximize short-term profits "one quarter at a time" - are utterly unable to shift priorities from unsustainable growth to sustainable stability. Men are not the problem. Women are not the problem. Business is not the problem. Government is not the problem. Patriarchy is the problem. Indeed, patriarchy is the problem. Patriarchal civilizations beget dysfunctional societies - and communities, and families - because their concept of civility is corrupted by power. Violence goes around, and comes around, in many different forms and flavors; sometimes presumptuously disguised as "the hand of God," very often viewed by both victims and victimizers as the "natural order of things." Needless to say, victimizers eventually become victims, and the vicious cycle continues ... ad nauseam. A testosterone-driven culture is bound to be a violent culture, and experience confirms that this applies to both the secular and religious dimensions of human affairs. As long as patriarchy remains normative, a civilized (i.e., humane, sensible) transition from consumerism to sustainability is humanly impossible; for such a transition would entail a radical renunciation of violence that will remain biologically and psychologically impossible as long as patriarchy is not superseded by gender balance in all social (and religious) roles of responsibility and authority. Then, and only then, can a sensible transition unfold by overcoming the masculinist culture of violence and pave the way for individuals and nations to take into account both legitimate self-interest and the common good; transferring tax burdens from earned income to financial speculation (e.g., derivatives trading), resource depletion (at the point of extraction), and environmental degradation ("polluter pays" principle); declaring some form of debt jubilee and/or creating debt-free money by central and regional banks; seeking distributive justice via a democratically set universal guaranteed personal income; balancing globalization with financial localization via local currencies and/or exchange trading systems; adopting business practices such as the triple bottom line (people, planet, profit); working out the economic and technological issues that must be resolved in order to migrate from fossil fuels to clean energy; consolidating democracy at all levels by firm adherence to the wise principles of solidarity, subsidiarity, and sustainability; and giving top priority to sustainable human development rather than unsustainable resource exploitation and wealth accumulation. This is not to imply that a complete exorcism of masculinist demons, and perfect gender balance, must be achieved before the transition to sustainability can start. On the contrary, the hypothesis is that the process toward sustainability has already started, even though it remains invisible for many. But attaining gender balance in human affairs, and the process toward energy balance and ecological sustainability, will reinforce each other in many significant and mutually beneficial ways. Pursuing gender balance is the catalyst that will break the current impasse and get the process going. Since the "patriarchs" will seldom (if ever!) pour the catalyst down from the top, it must gently percolate upwards from the grassroots: individual citizens, families, groups, and local communities. Maximizing revenue at the expense of human beings, and minimizing costs at the expense of nature, are undeniably part of both masculinist capitalism and masculinist socialism. The proposed transition entails maximizing human development and wellbeing as much as possible, and minimizing ecological impacts as much as possible, in a manner that leads to economic and ecological stability. Clearly, maximizing human wellbeing and minimizing ecological impact are mutually contradictory goals as long as human wellbeing is measured in terms of material consumption per capita. Since there are resource limits, and there are limits to efficiency improvements via technological innovation, something must give: humans must adapt by shifting expectations of wellbeing from economic affluence to other human development goals. Summary It is proposed that gender balance will be a source of "new energy" to overcome the masculinist culture of violence and domination, thus paving the way for individuals and nations to start balancing self-interest and the common good. Then, and only then, can a sensible transition gain impetus and make possible the exploration of new initiatives such as transferring tax burdens from earned income to financial speculation, natural resource usage, and environmental degradation; declaring some form of debt jubilee and/or creating debt-free money by central and regional banks; enhancing distributive justice via a democratically set universal guaranteed personal income; balancing globalization with financial localization via local currencies and/or exchange trading systems; adopting business practices such as the triple bottom line; working out the economic and technological issues that must be resolved in order to migrate from fossil fuels to clean energy; consolidating democracy by firm adherence to the wise principles of solidarity, subsidiarity, and sustainability; and giving top priority to sustainable human development rather than unsustainable resource exploitation and wealth accumulation. So there is no lack of reasonable ideas about ways to manage the transition, but political will is utterly lacking; and political will cannot possibly emerge as long as masculinist patriarchy remains normative. The transition from consumerism to sustainability has already started, even though it remains invisible for many. But attaining gender balance in human affairs, and the process toward energy balance and ecological sustainability, will reinforce each other in many significant and mutually beneficial ways. Gender balance is the catalyst that will break the current impasse and get the process going. Since the "patriarchs" will seldom pour the catalyst down from the top, it must gently percolate upwards from the grassroots: individual citizens, families, groups, and local communities. It must be noted that none of the ideas in this editorial is new; many of them go back to the 1950s and even earlier. Focusing on the convergence of gender balance and ecological balance (energetically or otherwise) is not a new idea, albeit one that is timely to recall given the current backlash against feminism in some secular and religious quarters. What is new is the increasingly widespread sense of urgency as manifested in the avalanche of published scholarly research - and the number and variety of field initiatives - on the coupling of gender and ecological issues since the turn of the century. The third wave of feminism may be faltering, but the masculinist paradigm is alive and well. The gap between the very rich and the very poor is blooming, and the (presumably sedative?) background music is about absurdities such as "infinite" growth, "clean" coal, and the "abomination" of homosexual relations. But it is a new world out there. It is time to keep what is good, stop pointing fingers, do something positive, and let go of fossilized machismo and ecological violence. For supporting information on the content of this editorial, see the following: Strategies for the Transition to Clean Energy Tactics for the Transition to Clean Energy Status of Gender Balance in Society Status of Gender Balance in Religion |Back to SUMMARY & OUTLINE| Page 1      Page 2      Page 3      Page 4      Page 5      Page 6      Page 7      Page 8      Page 9 Supplement 1      Supplement 2      Supplement 3      Supplement 4      Supplement 5      Supplement 6 PelicanWeb Home Page

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