What does 'sustainable' mean?

[steve]

Chris has posted the flyer for Embedding Sustainable Development in the Region – How you can be involved to the wiki. This is a project run from December to February by the Yorkshire and Humber Assembly and also includes Yorkshire Forward, Local Government Yorkshire and Humber, Government Office, and the Environment Agency.

For me this raises the whole issue of what 'sustainable' actually means. I'm interested to hear people's definitions.

In a talk by Jay Hanson (who set up one of the first peak oil web site in the 90s) he says simply that any activity that requires digging holes in the ground is not sustainable. He points to the fact that batteries, even if powered from renewable energy, are not sustainable because the lead in their creation is a finite resource.

Is the term 'sustainable development' simpy an oxymoron? If not what does it mean?

One of 'the top 10 IRF (Integrated Regional Framework) sustainable development challenges' is sustainable growth. Surely on a finite planet there cannot be any such thing?

The top 10 IRF sustainable development challenges facing the region

• Supporting sustainable transport
• Reducing the impact of future climate change
• Increasing the Region’s Resilience to Climate Change
• Improving Productivity and Increasing Innovation
• Improving Educational Attainment and Skills
• Participate in one of four events in the region to debate and test the emerging findings.
• Meeting Housing Availability and Affordability Needs
• Improving Public Health and Reducing Obesity
• Reducing Violent Crime
• Reducing Inequality and embracing diversity
• Achieving Sustainable Growth

Anyway here's a start from dictionary.com:

sus·tain·a·ble (sə-stā'nə-bəl)
adj.
1. Capable of being sustained.
2. Capable of being continued with minimal long-term effect on the environment: sustainable agriculture.

[chris]

Of course they don't get it, the use of the term "sustainable" by corporate and government bodies is, as far as I can see, almost always, "greenwash".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwash

The use of fossil fuels is un-sustainable and an un-sustainable activity cannot be sustained, the book I posted about yesterday makes this point:

At the moment, most of the energy the developed world consumes is produced from fossil fuels; that’s not sustainable.

So where is the zero-carbon Yorkshire plan from these fine folk at the Yorkshire and Humber Assembly...?

[Bob Thorp]

I think that this is a discussion that needs to be taken up with yorkshire and humberside assembly in these meetings - can they be flash mobbed? Sustainable development is an empty vessel - I don't think that policy makers can give it meaning but it would be good fun to ask questions. Raising a debate about growth economics versus steady state economics would be interesting but I think that they are so locked into the growth paradigm that they'll look at us as if we are barking mad. Now that the recession here expect more growth mantras.

What it would be interesting to do is ask them some specifics - have they factored in the risk of peak oil and high oil prices to their plans and what point do they think peak oil would impact. The IEA's grudging move to accept a peak oil scenario, somewhere between now and 2030 is leverage on the policy makers.

Another angle is to ask where the carbon savings to the Government's 80% by 2050 are going to be met and when and what impact will this have on the regional economy. The way the targets are moving as policy makers and politicians catch up with the science we should probably be asking them about 100% or 120% cuts by 2050.

What is the YHAs approach to the regions big coal burners along the humber and trent - when are they going to phase these out, what will replace them?

[chris]

Bob's suggestion sounds good to me, perhaps we should flesh out the questions we have for them and see if we can fit on a sheet of A4 so we can make sure they have all the references... We could use the wiki for this...

[steve]

Well as always the Wikipedia has quite a long page comprehensively covering the term. From the intro:

Sustainable development is a pattern of resource use that aims to meet human needs while preserving the environment so that these needs can be met not only in the present, but in the indefinite future. The term was used by the Brundtland Commission which coined what has become the most often-quoted definition of sustainable development as development that "meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."

Sustainable development ties together concern for the carrying capacity of natural systems with the social challenges facing humanity. As early as the 1970s "sustainability" was employed to describe an economy "in equilibrium with basic ecological support systems". Ecologists have pointed to the “limits of growth” and presented the alternative of a “steady state economy” in order to address environmental concerns.

The field of sustainable development can be conceptually broken into three constituent parts: environmental sustainability, economic sustainability and sociopolitical sustainability.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_development

A good example of conflicts with in the definintion is given:

example, a cutting edge treatment plant with extremely high maintenance costs may not be sustainable in regions of the world with fewer financial resources. An environmentally ideal plant that is shut down due to bankruptcy is obviously less sustainable than one that is maintainable by the community, even if it is somewhat less effective from an environmental standpoint.

There are also several critiques of the term including from the new Degrowth movement in France which says SD is an oxymoron:

on a planet where 20% of the population consumes 80% of the natural resources, a sustainable development cannot be possible for this 20%

And goes on to say:

the right term for the developed countries should be a sustainable de-growth

[Gordon Ferguson]

Development: n 1. The act or process of growing, progressing or developing. (Chambers)
Isn't this what we want? Progressing from where we are now to our imagined better future? Isn't this what 'Transition’ is all about?
But not any old development - Surely we want Sustainable development.

Growth: n 1. the process or act of growing, esp. in organisms following assimilation of food. (Chambers)
Isn't this what we do? Children grow into adults, we grow or mature (hopefully) into better people.
But not any old growth – Surely we want Sustainable growth.

Change, growth, development, transition – these are fundamental to being human. As organisms and persons we cannot stand still or turn the clock back. We grow, we die, generation to generation, the cycle of life.

What is wrong with us now is that we are growing by stealing the future. We can just as easily grow in the present, so that we actually pass on to future generations more than we use up.

A carbon economy can only grow by stealing resources from the future. There is just no way we can keep on having more stuff. But there is more to life than stuff.

A zero carbon economy can grow organically and personally, and who would not want it to? Surely we want more and better services? Surely we want everyone gainfully employed? Surely we want more and better education? And better health. And can't we have them all without using carbon, otherwise what are we transitioning to?

I can see no problem with the 10 IRF sustainable development challenges. In fact I think they are all quite laudable - the problem, as always, is in the detail. Are the targets realistic? Are the means achievable? Is everything being counted? Capitalists just love externalising costs, since it is an easy way to make profits – will they be challenged to only make future-proof profits?

If we put a money value on the future, and included it in the GDP and budget, we would discover that there has been no true economic growth for some considerable time. The markets have being perpetuating the biggest fraud, the biggest pyramid selling scam of them all, the ultimate ‘Ponzi Scheme’ – by selling our future before it has been invested.

So let’s have a steady state economy when it comes to stuff - with a lot less stuff around, and a growth economy for what really matters – let’s grow our quality of life. Money is just numbers on a screen – having more money does not necessarily damage the environment. We have just got to stop using it to buy stuff.

The transition initiative teaches us that people are afraid of change, and people in business and government are no exception – at the end of the day they are just people like us, stuck in a paradigm that we might know will not work, but that they can see no way out of. If we attack them, they will react defensively. It’s time to stop thinking in terms of ‘we’ and ‘they’, and start thinking in term of ‘US’.

[steve]

A zero carbon economy can grow organically and personally, and who would not want it to?

I think we've got to be very careful with words. Most people think of a growing economy as one in which the money supply is growing combined with an increase in productivity.

Surely we want everyone gainfully employed?

Personally I'd prefer a society in which one worked much less and had more free time. Most work entails the unsustainable use of resources. We could certainly change that but then what is the purpose of work at all?

So let’s have a steady state economy when it comes to stuff - with a lot less stuff around, and a growth economy for what really matters – let’s grow our quality of life.

I agree. Unfortunately most people today equate a better quality of life with more stuff. Trying to change that perception will be no easy task. However as less stuff is available hopefully people will look of for positivity elsewhere and changing that perception may be much easier.

What you seem to be saying is we should reclaim these terms and interpret them in a different way. Probably a good idea although I think changing the way 'growth' is currently understood would be quite an uphill battle.

[Gordon Ferguson]

Steve said:

What you seem to be saying is we should reclaim these terms and interpret them in a different way. Probably a good idea although I think changing the way 'growth' is currently understood would be quite an uphill battle.

Is this not the very essence of 'transition'? We all know that all of it is an uphill struggle. But the seeds are already sprouting in the fields of the 'conventional' economy. Read about Triodos bank here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/oct/15/social-enterprises-triodos-bank.

Charles Middleton, Triodos UK managing director says:

I have always been completely in awe of what individual people have been able to achieve. Moving to Triodos gave me the opportunity to take some of that experience and use it to work with inspirational people and businesses in the UK. They've shown me that there really is a different way to do business that is sustainable and fun.

Triodos uses the term 'Sustainable Investment', another aspect of 'sustainable’ that perhaps we need to get our heads around. It is pretty obvious that borrowing from the Chinese (so we can buy stuff) to give to the Saudi Arabians (for the oil) is totally unsustainable, but that does not mean that the whole money economy is by definition unsustainable. This is merely yet another symptom of our hopeless addiction that the transition model identifies that we need to recognise as the necessary first step.

We also need to define ‘Sustainable Work’, as Steve rightly point out. Working just to get more and more stuff is yet another sign of that pernicious addiction. However, if we are going to have a sophisticated economy based on specialisation, then at least some of our work needs to be able to be exchanged for that stuff that we actually need – like food and public services. This is what I call 'gainful employment'. We could all go back to subsistence farming and direct bartering, but the benefits of civilisation only really come when some people are freed to pursue other goals than just subsistence, and the more productive and efficient we can be and so the more wealth we generate, the more those benefits can be spread around for all to enjoy.

I can speak from experience: I was able to work half time for several years when my children were young because we decided that there were more important things than just having more stuff – for instance my peers at the time had car loans the size of our mortgage, while we did not even have a car. By choosing to live on a relatively low pension due to taking early retirement, I now do not need to have any ‘gainful employment’ at all, freeing my time and energy for much more useful types of work – like participating in Transition Sheffield right now and looking at super-insulation of our house for instance.

[steve]

Interesting to see a positive definition of "sustainable development" on Jay Hanson's site WarSocialism

Sustainable development both improves quality of life and retains continuity with physical conditions; it requires that social systems be equitable and physical systems circular (industrial outputs become industrial inputs).

http://www.warsocialism.com/unnecessary.htm