Sustainability, fear and excitement: Change is in the air

You can't open your email anymore these days, or for that matter turn on the television, without an explicit or implicit invitation to talk about the state of the world and sustainability. Even politicians - campaigning for election on classic agendas of less taxes, smarter government and law and order - have to try hard not to be distracted from these 'voter priorities'. At a live leadership debate on New Zealand national television, WorldChanging.com New Zealand editor Craig Neilson used a question pre-recorded on YouTube to ask what vision was on offer as climate change was accelerating. The responses were ambivalent. The assurance that economic priorities could be balanced without undue sacrifices was perhaps reassuring for those in the audience that didn't want to hear the bad news. But in more and more forums, leadership is being called for.

A Swedish model for social change

Emails had been circulating to invite participation at a forum held at the Business School of the University of Auckland a few days later, on the 21st of October. It had brought nearly a hundred business leaders, government staff, academics and activists to hear and discuss if it could be possible to import proven ideas and models. One country that had managed to put climate change and sustainability at the top of the political agenda, and to reduce very high emission rates by finding collaborative approaches to do so with a national consensus, was Sweden. The parallels between New Zealand and Scandinavian countries nourished a belief that this may be possible here also. In spite of the geographic distance, both have relatively affluent economies by international standards, are well endowed with natural resources, share environmental traditions and have many commonalities in political governance systems. Parallels that made it possible to imagine a more sustainable future for New Zealand.

What is the Swedish model? The track record of Sweden and the neighbouring Scandinavian countries, a New Zealand government funded study showed, has been enviable in achieving stakeholder agreement, commitment to change and radical outcomes on environmental issues. Doing it 'Swedish style' means letting all stakeholders be involved right through the process, beginning with defining the problem and drafting the plans, and with the government agencies one among equals. This reverses an approach that New Zealand government agencies are too frequently accused of, taking finished plans out for 'consultation' with little intent to accommodate criticisms.

Common ground and common paradigms

Collaboration is more than just sitting together around a table and talking, it is about finding common ground. This common ground must come from shared understanding of problems and shared belief in the solutions, what is called a common paradigm. In science, a paradigm is a set of practices that define a discipline during a particular period of time. A paradigm is a mindset and body of assumptions shared by a professional community. And a paradigm shift is a major and often radical change in the way that experts and public leaders talk about a discipline, when enough unresolved questions have accumulated. It revolutionizes basic assumptions and ways of seeing the world. Ideas of them and us, important and negligible, ordinary and extraordinary are turned upside down. Einstein's relativity theory did that for Newtonian physics.

Discussing sustainability and development, the participants at the 'Swedish Style' forum were in agreement that problems and solutions needed to be redefined, and paradigms should be shifted, in ways that were relevant at both local and global levels. And that would have to begin with a better awareness of one's own neighbourhood in relation to linkages reaching all the way around the globe. Everything is interrelated. A culture shift towards a sustainable society recognizes this, was said, but how could that be achieved? The history of international development and sustainability can show some of the difficulties with such an ambitious goal.

The economics of sustainability

The term sustainability has inherited contradictions from a process rooted in historical ideals of economic development. During the 1970s the development of 'underdeveloped' countries had become the principal - and enthusiastic - goal of international aid. The common practice to assess development prospects was largely in terms of economic development, so stress tended to be on the rapid economic progress of 'Third World' countries. This really reflected a belief that economic development was a path shared by all nations and that it was a question of helping the stragglers catch up.

The political concept of sustainability was made known and popularized by the 1987 report "Our Common Future" of the World Commission on Environment and Development. In it, economic interests were 'married' with environmental concerns. Better known by the name of the well-respected Norwegian statesman that had been asked to lead the effort, the Brundtland Report was premised on the argument that poverty is caused by two processes: low levels of growth and inequity. Sustainable development would entail economic growth with a 'different content' from that prevalent at the time, that is, growth with improved equity and distribution and without degradation of the environment. In this way, environmental degradation would be decoupled from growth.

Sustainable development

By this time a paradigm change was also taking place in development practices. A more sober assessment of the development trends and prospects of these countries, and a better understanding of the need to focus on all dimensions of social development. The new development paradigm thought that development must be human-centred, coming from within. And rather than imposed from the outside, it must be built with collaboration.

In spite of the wide criticism of, and frequently imbalanced approaches to, sustainable development, the paradigm has underscored the understanding of environmental problems and the justification for development solutions addressing poverty as a cause of environmental degradation. But as in other fields of sustainable practices, progress has been disappointing on many fronts. Is the paradigm outdated, forum participants asked themselves? If so, what could take its place?

The 'Sustainable Development Strategy' that most major aid donors and many of their implementing partners have embraced, is characterized by four goals: 1. support equitable economic development; 2. support social development, with particular emphasis on people living in poverty; 3. support environment and natural resources management; and 4. support progress in democratic governance and human rights. But despite the prominent campaigns under the banner of sustainability, questions have not gone away.

The Millennium strategy

The concept was fundamental in discussions at the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio. In September 2000, the Millennium Summit took place, where 147 heads of state and Government adopted the Millennium Declaration, and made a commitment to work towards a world in which sustaining development and eliminating poverty would have the highest priority. This was reaffirmed in 2005 at the UN MDG World Summit. The Outcome Document refers to the "interdependent and mutually reinforcing pillars" of sustainable development as economic development, social development, and environmental protection. These are goals that were built on a reflective understanding of problems and pragmatic solutions. Some progress has been made.

In 2007 it was reported that - except for HIV/AIDS, and deforestation rates - there had on the whole been satisfactory progress towards all national MDG goals in the neighbourhood of New Zealand, the Asia/Pacific region - at least from the perspective of the Asian Development Bank. But in the same report it was also noted that rising inequality of income and MDG progress indicators within countries could not be ignored. National statistics notwithstanding, not everybody was on the development train, remembering that the goals of sustainable development as defined by Brundtland were to especially address both growth and inequity.

The paradox of sustainability

These and other problems can be, and have been, blamed on insufficient resources, lack of capacity and other reasons that justify – rightly so – the argument that more efforts have to be made. But comments are increasing that the ideal of sustainability has actually turned out to be unattainable, that "we assume that sustainability is an 'end-state' of a social system. [...] But in practice it is only an ideal of development efforts in a much more complex system," write Swedish researchers Bagheri and Hjorth.

The complexity and scale of the problem of sustainable development and achieving more sustainable societies is daunting. And if sustainability is packaged with economic development, to what extent can that transmit global concerns to, for instance, a no longer underdeveloped China? The sense of powerlessness, made some forum participants ask if efforts to stem the inevitable change may not prove hopeless and the only alternative would be isolationist responses of a 'safe walker' i.e. a lifeboat mentality – each for themselves. Arguably, that is already going on if the paltry contributions of international assistance are compared to, for instance, military expenditure.

Leading by example

But the idea of common ground and globally shared paradigms may offer an alternative. If New Zealand would export less agricultural products and more agricultural technology – the sustainable kind we are just trying to learn, that is - then that may prove a more realistic goal to achieve positive change, a forum participant argued. As far-fetched as that may seem, that is the same logic that New York Times columnist and best-selling author Thomas Friedman used to imagine an America that would lead the world again - this time by example. But the US is not seen as a popular model by everybody at the moment.

"Now it is our turn, you have had yours," he was told in China when he touched on the environmental impacts of rapid economic growth. "That's fine, we don't need to tell you what to do," he responded. "We'll be back when you need clean, efficient energy technology to sell to the world. Because clean, alternative energy will be the next boom that will replace the era of consumer electronics that we are in now," he responded. And he noted that it took only 30 seconds for that message to penetrate.

Potential for change

The prospect of an upcoming US government ready to invest massively in alternative energy technologies and the revolutionary implications this may have, is also dawning on bloggers in the financial investment scene (see www.altenergystocks.com). All it will take to ignite that change is determined leadership, Friedman said, just the kind of leadership that has been woken by the current financial crisis, animating European and North American statesmen to overturn previously immutable free market ideoligies.

What happened in Sweden, the Auckland forum had been told, was made possible by proactive leadership from government, business and civil society, not a difference in values held by the Swedish public. That made possible collaborative governance of well-informed citizens, which created a supportive climate for radical changes requiring many compromises and shared costs.

Leading change

It was leadership that was at stake at another election debate across the street that same evening. There, the debate between the current Minister for Trade Negotiations, Phil Goff, and the foreign affairs spokesperson from competing parties were also grappling with what sustainable development for New Zealand's neighbours should mean. The lecture hall full of people had come to hear the party representatives invited by Oxfam New Zealand explain what should be done about poverty and inequality. A debate clearly necessary but also limited by the prevalent paradigms of them and us, by talking within economic parameters.

These are indeed times of change, Rod Oram, said in his closing statement. It was a mix of fear and excitement that had brought people together that day to talk about sustainability, as a sense of imminent change is reaching a tipping point. But what could this new paradigm be called? The answer to the most pressing global environmental issues that Thomas Friedman suggests in his newest book "Hot, Flat and Crowded" is to move on from lost battles like whales, and instead focus on the notion of "regeneration" – a notion that can offer new paradigms of action.



Rendt Gorter is a PhD student at the University of Auckland ("Participation in Environmental Governance"), with ten years experience as project manager in international development aid.