Sustainability’ thinking seems to have declined in quality since the days of ‘The Limits to Growth’ Report and’ The Blueprint for Survival’, while the world’s woes, from global overwarming and wildlife extinction to wars and the looming threat from AI, have grown massively. We need sharp thinking to clarify why things go from bad to worse and how we might put human society on a more sustainable footing.
A recent ‘Comment’ article in the ‘Guardian[i] plugs the new ‘roadmap’ for a “better way” (UN “Roadmap for Eradicating Poverty Beyond Growth”). It is written by some of the ‘stars’ of the broad green movement and would seem to tick a lot of boxes.
Certainly the headline that “growth is a doomed strategy” is all too correct, while the content makes several good points, be it about the scale of poverty, indebtedness and more. Yet all that glisters is not gold and, sadly that is the case here. There is too much fudging, too much wishful thinking, too much evasion of real constraints.
Growth Points
Thus, not once, in the whole article is the unsustainable weight of current human numbers mentioned even once. Yet they are the critical driver of the problems the article spotlights.[ii] Of course, it is not the only driver but it makes just every problem worse whilst making them harder to solve. Population denialism and evasion are not better than, say, disavowal of the climate crisis.
More generally there needs to be more precision about ‘growth’. The key is human commandeering of physical space, energy, water and raw materials, in other words ‘throughput in the human economy. Too often it becomes equated with GDP, a most misleading metric. Then there is all the empty rhetoric about ‘good growth’, ‘human development’, ‘happiness index’ etc, none of which transcends limited ecological ‘wherewithal’. For example, happiness still depends on a range of physical things and is thus constrained by biogeochemical limits to growth as well as ones within society[iii]
North versus South?
Just when we need clarity the article muddies matters when to comes to its picture of the world. It deals in crude and indeed quite outdated stereotypes of a Rich North vs a Poor South (they also carry connotations of a ‘White West’ versus the Rest). They are little better than older term such as the ’Third World’. There are no such blocs ((though for rest of this critique the article’s terms will be used simply for convenience). Across all continents there are extremes of wealth and power INSIDE the bulk of countries. Based on the GINI Index, the worst three are in the said ‘South’.
Meanwhile, many countries in this ‘South’ are willingly pursuing all sorts of unsustainable mega-projects, from new capital cities to mega-dams, even, in the case of India, space programmes while many millions do indeed live in dire poverty as the article rightly spotlights.[v] At the same time, China and India are in the top five military spenders. China is architect of the world’s most destructive project, the Belt and Road Initiative.
[vi]
Victims
The article simply portrays the countries of what it calls the South as but helpless victims of the North, evading the reality that both governments and local cultures play an active role in maldevelopment. It is true that European imperialism badly distorted the economies of a great many countries. It is also true that Russia and USA did great harm by use of local ‘proxies’ in the Cold War (Vietnam etc).
Many countries in the South’ suffer terribly from local kleptocrats as well as religious fanaticism, deep sexism and other such ills. The top three most corrupt counties are all in the South. Slavery and peonage widespread.[vii]. Local wildlife suffers from a variety of indigenous factors such as beliefs about ‘traditional’ medicine and aphrodisiacs as well as dietary preferences such as bushmeat[viii] and shark fin soup.[ix]
It is quite dishonest to fail to acknowledge the debilitating role of ‘non-North’ forces. In recent centuries they include the Arab slave trade (bigger and longer lasting than the Transatlantic one), the Ottoman Empire, Chinese imperialism (continued under Communism, not least in Tibet), and, for a short period, the particularly brutal Japanese Co-Prosperity Sphere. Between 1937 and 1945, the Japanese killed millions of Asians.[x] The Indonesian Transmigration Programme has been the world’s biggest instance of ‘settler colonialism’, grabbing lands belonging to local peoples and followed by waves of deforestation.[xi]
The South has been home to some of the world’s worst home-grown monsters: Kim Il Sung, Mengistu Haile Mariam, Paul Kagame, Pol Pot, Papa Doc Duvalier, Yokubu Gowan, Idi Amin, Charles Taylor, Saddam Hussein, Robert Mugabe, the Taliban, Boko Haram, ISIS … Some were in alliance with the USA such as General Pinochet. Some were in alliance with the USA then against it, many acted all on their own.
The oppression and destruction across the ‘South’ caused by ethnic violence, caste discrimination, drug lords, civil wars and military dictatorships since the end of European empires cannot simply be blamed on the North’ or ‘neo-imperialism’.
Drivers of maldevelopment
Other drivers include perceptions of ‘modernity’ and a desire to ‘catch up’ with what look wealthy nations. New capital cities and the like are sometimes icons of national endeavour, not just a relief valve for overpopulated older cities.
[xii] The spread of tourism and the mass media further fuelled a mass desire to embrace lifestyles typical of, say, North America and Western Europe.
Such factors perhaps explain why India’s aviation industry is the world’s third-largest and fastest-growing domestic aviation market, with total passenger traffic projected to reach 1.1 billion by 2040.[xiii] The largest road project in human history Is in Africa, the Trans-African Highway network.
[xiv] The story of the Aswan Dam illustrates how a quite repressive ruler, Nasser, could mobilise widespread public support for a project, the Aswan Dam that was widely seen as a major step in modernisation and a source of national pride, regardless of its ecological and human costs.[xv]
Mention has been made of the number of home-grown dictatorships in the post-colonial ‘South’. The Nyerere government in Tanzania was free of the worst features of such regimes. Yet it too pursued various unsustainable development schemes of its own volition. It embraced Canadian style wheat monocultures.[xvi] Also ‘home-grown’ was its disastrous Ujamaa policy (‘Operation Planned Villages’).
[xvii]
The Bolivian government under made various pledge about the rights of nature. Yet too has pursued environmentally destructive policies in the name of ‘economic growth’.[xviii] In several cases it is the Chinese government that is working hand in hand with a regime such as Bolivia to pursue destructive development as in the case of Chinese mega-firm Sinohydro is building a major dam that will rip through the heart of Carrasco National Park, a jewel of tropical biodiversity. It is one of several such projects.[xix]
In Brazil the ‘progressive’ government of Lula da Silva embraced GMOs,[xx] nuclear energy,[xxi] the cross-Pantanal waterway which would create a thousand-mile canal and destroy the world’s most important and biodiverse inland wetland in order to promote trade between Brazil and Japan.
[xxii] Lula strongly backed the disastrous Blea Monte HEP project.[xxiii] His government also promotes onshore and offshore oil drilling.[xxiv]
Venezuela under Chavez was hailed as ‘progressive’ regimes but it was also an aggressive ‘petro-states’, fuelling oil pollution and climate breakdown.[xxv] ‘Meanwhile, Leftist President Rafael Correa in Ecuador also pushed major oil development.[xxvi]Ecuador has the highest deforestation rate in South America, thanks to the building of roads to facilitate oil exploration, which then open up the forests to illegal loggers and settlers. The state has pushed the giant Oleoducto de Crudo Pesado pipeline.[xxvii]Despite the huge financial reserves reaped from oil exploration, little of the wealth has trickled down to the poor. Ecuador hasn’t yet been able to provide a regular source of drinking water for its cities despite the presence of the Andes
While there are indeed some impressive grassroots movements against, say, deforestation, some ‘small-scale’ and ‘artisanal’ activities at those self-same grassroots can still be very destructive, especially, of course, if pursued by enough people, not least in fields such as ‘slash-and burn’ agriculture, fishing,[xxviii] mining and poaching.[xxix]
The point of the above is not to excuse the role of corporations from the ‘North’ in equivalent maldevelopment.[xxx] The appalling record of, say, Shell in the Niger Delta, Glencore in the Congo Basin, Nike in Asia speaks for itself. Nestlé in particular illustrated local desires to be modern could be exploited (i.e. formula milk instead of ‘old-fashioned’ breast-feeding).[xxxi] Local people often get a pittance, as illustrated by Kenya’s cut flower trade.[xxxii] ‘Fast fashion comes at both environmental costs and sweatshop conditions for workers.[xxxiii]
Shoppers in the North benefit variously from cheap clothing made in sweatshops, out-of-season foodstuffs,
[xxxiv] various consumer goods made from cheaply imported raw materials,
[xxxv] and more, including imported labour.[xxxvi] Thus the mass consumption of avocados in the USA is having devasting effects south of the Mexican border. Thus it is mass eating of avocados that is deforesting north Mexico (it is not just Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos devouring them!).[xxxvii] But the profits from the trade do not just go to mega-corporation. Small farmers also benefit.
[xxxviii]
This paper’s argument is simply to underline the need for nuance, recognising the variety of agents at work, external and internal, cultural and political as well as economic.‘Badness’ is, then, not confined to the ‘Global North’. Assaults against the sustainable common good come with people of all shades, sizes and colours from around the world The article is as evasive about home-grown ills across the South as it is about human numbers.
Blaming the super-rich
Though it is not explicit, it seems implied that the villain of the piece is the ‘market’ and corporate enterprise (often expressed in somewhat vague terms such as ’neo-liberalism’ and ‘market fundamentalism’). Yet many of the wasteful and destructive projects are planned and under state ownership or indirect state control.
It also sticks to the flawed narrative that blames not just the ‘North’ (aka ‘White West’) but, specifically the ultra-rich super-elite. To be sure there are some grossly wealthy whose greed is matched by their lack of social responsibility. Indeed many are found in the South. Thus roughly a quarter of the world’s billionaires are Asian, though the top twenty list is dominated by Northern individuals.[xxxix]
Yet it is wrong to conflate their personal consumption with the impact of companies they control. The latter are primarily driven by the consumer demands of the masses.[xl]
Indeed nearly 70% of global production is consumed not by the plutocracy but by the middles classes that straddle all part of the world.[xli] Their dramatic impact is obscured by a simplistic dichotomy of wealth and poverty. The biggest middle class is actually found in China.[xlii]
Carbon con
The article exaggerates the role of the wealthy by another trick. It focuses largely on CO2 emissions. But they are only part of greenhouse gas generation. There are other sources and some are found mainly in the ‘South’.
[xliii]
But global overwarming is but one symptom of what is a multi-headed ecological crunch, Some of those symptoms are caused by local activities in the South. Thus one of the worst instances of salinisation is in Pakistan. Deforestation is rampant across the Amazon basic, Central Africa and S.E. Asia. Mangrove destruction follows a similar pattern. The most eroded landscape on Earth is the Loess plateau in China The worst aquifer depletion is to be found in Arabian Aquifer System, the Indus Basin (India/Pakistan), and the Murzuk-Djado Basin in North Africa. The worst ground subsidence is probably in Iran, followed by China. The worst air pollution is in central and southern Asia.
We collectively face a multi-faced ‘polycrisis’, not just excessive CO2 emissions. If they suddenly turned out to be harmless ‘hot air’, the multiple threats from a combination of resource depletion, pollution and general environmental degradation would remain. Indeed, some purported ‘fixes’ for CO2 emissions such as nuclear power, (technological) carbon capture, desalinisation, giant sea barriers and ‘all-electric’ economy would aggravate other symptoms of a fast sickening planet. Many of them would, for example, require huge quantities of concrete, arguably the most destructive material on the planet.[xliv] We face ‘peaks’ in the ready and affordable supply of many raw materials needed for physical development. In some areas, even building sand is becoming a scarce resource.[xlv]
Draining the South?
The driver is a mix of export production and production for local consumption, not just the former as implied by the article. Thus some 80% of Chinese production is now for the home market, despite its dominance in the sale of several products in the world market, not least PV panels.[xlvi] Africa is beginning to catch up.
[xlvii] Often, of course, it is a mixed picture, as Chile illustrates.[xlviii] But it is plain wrong to paint a picture in which the South is solely a caterer for consumers in the rich North.
The key concept is that of overshoot of ecological capacities, from localities to the whole planet.[xlix] But some countries are worse than others. The three countries with the most unsustainable ecological footprint are not in the ‘North’ but the Middle East.[l] Obviously heavy weight consumers (literally as well as metaphorically so) in countries such as the USA and Australia place a great burden on the planet. The lifestyles of large sections of their population are characterised by what Elizabeth Farrelly aptly call “superfluous superfluity”.
[li]
The article fails to consider properly what is the sustainable level of equality. Thus, if everyone were to live an average Chinese person, we would need 2.4-2.6 planets. The Chinese people now eat more meat than Americans, for example.
[lii]
Intensifying overshoot
In line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals it talks about investment in “housing, health, education and transport through universal public provisioning” as well as “universal social protection floors” (not explained but presumably a strong welfare state).
Such provision will require huge amount of land, energy and raw materials for associated building (e.g. houses, schools and hospitals) and utilities (pylon lines, pipelines, assorted cables, pavements, roadways etc). All come with big ecological price tags in not just their construction but also operation (e.g. energy and plastics consumed in and medical wastes created by hospitals).
Shifting production from, say, armoured cars to ambulances, only shifts the ecological burden around. It does not reduce it. An overladen and sinking ship will still sink if the weight is only moved around.[liii]
So the question is begged: where will the requisite resources come from? Already there are plenty of examples of renewable energy schemes destroying or displacing wildlife as well as increasing pollution and general environmental degradation. That is even more the case if large-scale HEP and big biomass plantations are included in the mix.
[liv]
Indeed the ‘renewables revolution” is actually a mining revolution. The required new mines are indeed an all real threat to environmental systems, including wildlife habitat and biodiversity.[lv]There is little hint in the article of the limits to the sustainable provision of renewable energy when the abolition of poverty (lighting, heating, fuel and possibly air-conditioning) is deemed a sustainable goal.[lvi] Actually one of the article’s authors also stressed the limits.[lvii]
Instead calls for the eradication of poverty follow in the footsteps of the Brundtland Report and its call for “sustainable growth”. That particular phrase — an oxymoron for a finite planet — may have been dropped but basically there is the assumption that better management, careful planning, improved coordination and technological improvements can create as the UN Sustainable Development Goals put it, “peace and prosperity” for some 8.3 billion people (numbers still rising)
[lviii]
We are going to cut our ‘energy’ coat to much smaller cloth. People are going to have to learn to live on much less (and that applies to any mined resource too). The UK’s main experiment is living “off grid” illustrates some of the ways lifestyle options will be constrained.[lix] It ought to be remembered that the Eigg Community is to some extent ‘subsidised’ by fossil fuelled boats that bring in supplies and income-generating tourists.
Fairness for other species
As is de rigeur in some circles today, the article focuses on fairness between people (“ecological justice”). It makes no mention of justice for non-human species. Of course it is endorsing a report about human inequality and poverty. Yet attempts to redress them have profound implications for wildlife and wilderness areas. Many people do indeed live in poverty but human activity is wiping out whole species.[lx]. Global wildlife populations have plunged by an average of 73% since 1970.[lxi]
Many factors drive the extinction of wildlife. The biggest driver is habitat destruction and fragmentation caused by the expansion of agricultural land, infrastructure creation and urban sprawl. Reversing this catastrophic trend would dramatically reduce the resources and sheer physical space used by the humans.[lxii]
But the challenge is not just about physically sharing the Earth. It would require a decisive break from the anthropocentric thinking that pervades most thinking about ‘sustainable development’.[lxiii] It is certainly true that biodiversity is part of the foundations of the Earth’s life-support systems in which humans, like all species, inescapably depend.[lxiv]
Yet without a new ethic, there will most likely seem to be a compelling case in the short-term for just one more ‘bite’ out the habitats needed by other species: just one more chemical spraying to protect the next harvest, just another plantation to boost export earnings, just another dam to provide electricity, just one more housing estate build to ease the accommodation crisis, just one more ski slope, beach resort, or golf course for leisure ‘needs’ … Thus, cumulatively, richness and diversity of life on Earth continues to be eroded.
Consider also farm animals. It is hard to be precise but it seems impossible to generalise the meat consumption typical of, say, the average UK citizen without a massive expansion of intensive poultry units, ‘factory-farmed’ cows and ‘piggeries’.[lxv] The largest factory farm in the world is the Mudanjiang City Mega Farm in China, with more than 100,000 dairy cows and covering 22.5 million acres.
Of the top four countries for such factory farming, three are in the ‘South” as are the three top three consumers per capita terms (Belarus is counted as one along with Panama and Qatar with an estimated ten animals consumed per person annually). This food system is immoral and unhealthy as well as physically unsustainable.[lxvi]
‘Affluence’ for all?
The article rightly castigates the desperate hardship suffered by millions of people. Yet poverty is not simply the absence of material things. Anthropologists such as Marshal Sahlins showed that by some yardsticks ‘primitive’ societies were not only sustainable but also provided a great deal of satisfaction, including plenty of discretionary time.
[lxvii]Life in such societies cannot be stereotyped as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”, as Hobbes put it.
There is, then a need to tease out carefully what is meant by poverty as well as affluence. Certainly the trappings of consumerist affluence can easily become dangerous traps, not just ecologically but also in terms of healthy communities and individual well-being, physical and psychological.[lxviii] The article does not squarely face how much degrowth there is going to be needed for sustainability and what a limited cake there will then be to share out.
[lxix] If sufficient space and resources are to be provided for non-human species, then there would be still less wherewithal for people.[lxx]This challenge is simply ignored in what seems to be a strongly anthropocentric framework.
Instead there is a casual assumption that we can just provide good houses, education, jobs, health and social care, transport and so forth for everyone. The necessary message of ‘think shrink’ is befogged by vague talk of ‘new indicators’, ‘community wealth’, ‘non-domination’, ‘solidarity economy’ ……
Such language may sound good but it scarcely captures what might be quite frugal lifestyles in a truly sustainable society There is indeed a strong case for convergence and contraction but the authors are rather reticent about the cuts in consumption it will mean for a majority of people across the planet. We do need ‘contraction and convergence’. But overall sustainability necessitates major cutbacks while the ‘convergence’ will probably be to a level lower than expected. There may be a certain degree of public resistance that is not honestly recognised in the article.[lxxi]
At the same time, some dubious allies are signed up for the project. Trade union are thus deemed to be part of the crusade. Yet many trade unions are militant defenders of business-as-usual, fighting for a bigger share of the current economic cake. They often vigorously back unsustainable development, not least airport expansion, big high speed train networks, more road building and more nuclear power plants.[lxxii]
Meanwhile many farmers groups oppose actions need to make agriculture more sustainable. Many members of the general public want cheap petrol, cheap food and many other such things that come at unsustainable costs. Just look at how referendum voters in Switzerland rejected policies for fair trade and organic farming. Opposition to sustainability measures does not just come from the ‘fat cats’. Indeed there is some evidence that ‘popular’ barriers are growing.
[lxxiii]
We do need a roadmap to get to a sustainable society. But it will have to have much more recognition of obstructions within society, ‘North’ and ‘South’ as well as ecological limits ‘outside’, plus, a more realistic vision than wishful thinking about “peace and prosperity for all”
References
Go to the
original article for the list of references with links.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sandy Irvine was a member of The Ecologist magazine editorial board for many years. He is also a member of the national charity Population Matters. Amongst other published work, he co-authored the book A Green Manifesto for McDonalds Optima and a pamphlet Beyond Green Consumerism for Friends of the Earth. Recently he has been very active in local land use battles triggered by pro-growth strategies which, amongst other things, severely threaten wildlife and green spaces.
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