Sustaining What?
April 14, 2007 by river2sea72
The term “sustainability” has become something of a catch-all word for any activity that is lower impact than conventional activity. But in certain rarefied circles (and in my thoughts) there are the questions of “What is Sustainability?” and “What are we Sustaining?”
The environmental philosopher Bryan Norton has written extensively on this topic and admits that the terms sustainability and sustainability are used imprecisely. He notes:
…it is often said that the terms sustainability and sustainable development mean all things to all people, that they have become banners around which environmentalists rally only to find that the banners are of all colors and that to follow these banners is to go in many directions simultaneously.
…One simply cannot overemphasize the role of problem formulation in seeking cooperation and success in environmental management. And at the heart of problem formulation is the question of how we talk about - how we articulate and discuss - environmental problems. (Bryan Norton, Sustainability: A Philosophy of Adaptive Ecosystem Management, p. xi)
The major debates that I see surrounding sustainability arise from those who think technology will provide the solution and those who think that going back to a simpler way of living is the One True Way.
Both of these viewpoints still avoid the question: What are we Sustaining? My background is in the natural sciences. I have spent a large portion of my life working with biologists who monitor the status of extremely rare species in fragile environments. While the loss of species and marginal habitats is only a small piece of the environmental puzzle, I always viewed it as the “canary in the coalmine” warning us of the potential for our own demise. Short of causing our own extinction, how much biodiversity loss are we willing to allow and still consider it sustainable?
Some biologists spend their careers debating the evolutionary pathways of obscure species and delineating detailed habitat requirements, and economists and political scientists quantify our willingness to pay to save biodiversity, I can’t help but marvel at how most people couldn’t even name the living things in their own back yard. How can we save what we cannot even identify?
I think we can all agree that sea level rise of several feet is an unacceptable outcome. We certainly don’t want a garbage dump in our neighborhoods. But beyond that, what do we consider a sustainable situation on this planet? How much are we willing to give up to achieve sustainability? Whose definition of sustainability will we subscribe to? And what if we don’t really subscribe to any?
I was wondering what sustainabilily meant just this week when a magazine said to email questions about sustainability to them - I wasn’t sure what would really fall into that category! There probably does need to be an umbrella word as a beacon for people to look out for - maybe sustainability has replaced the word green?!
I think there is a growing sense of unease today about many things and in response people seek sustenance for themselves - physically, emotionally, intellectually. This is a definition of sustainability that many would subscribe to.
The technology vs simple life is also manifest in the debate about the relative merits of working for policy change at a large scale vs individual efforts. We need both approaches. If more people stop and take the time to think about the implications of their actions then surely we are moving in the right direction. We may be moving too slowly, however….
Gwyn: I think sustainability, green, and environment or environmentally-friendly have all come to mean more or less the same thing. The focus of action seems to be on reducing carbon dioxide emissions at the moment, although I would argue that there is a lot more to sustainability than just ensuring a hybrid car in every driveway.
donna: Interesting. That’s not a definition I would have thought of. I tend to think of sustainability as ensuring the long-term continuation of ecological and cultural communities through policy and individual actions aimed at conservation and technological improvement. I do agree we are moving too slowly. If, at some point in the future, we achieve sustainability, I think we’ll be sustaining something very different from what we see around us today.
I think your definition of sustainability IS generally what is meant by the term. I agree that it is a rather vague word that has come to cover a lot of things. A very handy marketing word.
I was thinking about what brings people to consider sustainability issues and I think it is this unease at a very basic personal level that something is wrong rather than a grasp of the larger biological situation. Perhaps you could say it is their own, internal canary.
You act, in the first instance, to ease this sense. Once you start to act you realise the choices become clearer. You move from doing something ‘for the planet’ to being part of the planet.
donna: Another thing I always like to say is that it doesn’t matter what brings you to the table, as long as you are there. For example, when I first heard about “evangelical environmentalism” I was really turned off. But then I thought about it and realized, hey, if some people need to invoke God’s creation to move them to life more environmentally-responsible lives, then more power to them.
How much planetary damage would you allow?
Sara Gottlieb, who blogs at Visualize Whirled Peas, raised the perennial eco-question in a recent post: what is the balance to be maintained between preserving our “way of life” and our efforts to keep the planet healthy? How healthy do
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“Unrelenting drive”
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