Stefanie Klappa
With its wide spectrum of topics and theoretical and professional orientations of speakers, the attendance of the International Sustainable Development Research Conference proved very valuable for me, both in terms of introducing me to ideas about Sustainable Development that were new to me or with which I had been concerned only peripherally, and for raising and reinforcing doubts as to the paradigm of Sustainable Development itself. Also, I met various people whose ideas inspired my thinking and with whom I hope to stay in contact for possible discussions or co-operation.
The Conference Proceedings, handed out on registration, will continue to be a valuable reference about the various strands of theory and action in current research. However, being printed on apparently bleached and virgin paper the Proceedings might raise the question how much the organisers themselves are committed to, and want to convey a message for, sustainability.
For its duration, the Conference was divided into three parallel sessions, either of which was devoted to--broadly--theoretical discourse, practical problems and local experiences with Sustainable Development. Since I attended on the first day of the Conference only and had to select one of three possible presentations, I can merely report on a sixth of the actual event--i.e. the following presentations:
The keynote address by Michael Jacobs (London School of Economics, UK)--Reconnecting sustainable development: towards a second generation research agenda--constituted an appeal for reducing the gaps between research on Sustainable Development and reality. The speaker pointed out the great value and success of the concept of Sustainable Development, having allowed for the integration of both `growth' and `environment', and fostered thinking about issues of democracy, power, poverty and equity, thereby bringing together all parties and linking both different groups within society and northern and southern NGOs. Yet, the `first generation agenda' had remained essentially normative, defining how the world should be, not how it is, and had thereby created a `parallel universe'. He identified gaps between research and reality in three areas: 1) the economic sphere, where the most striking trend is not Sustainable Development but globalisation; 2) the socio-cultural field, where the discourse of Sustainable Development, being formulated within an older paradigm, has not even tried to understand the changes occurring in communities and has failed to communicate meaningful information to people (he quoted the comment of an unemployed Lancashire man, as recorded by a study: "They keep you in the dark and then come up with terms like Sustainability."); 3) the State, from which the debate on Sustainable Development has been disconnected through the crisis of legitimacy which nation states face, although this is the level on which regulations are set and taxes levied. He therefore advocated a `second generation research agenda' that would reconnect research on Sustainable Development with the real world.
Anastássios Perdicoúlis (University of Salford, UK--session Defining Sustainable Development) investigated How do growth and change relate to sustainability? While the latter implies maintenance and conservation, definitions of development are founded on a notion of directed change and growth. As for temporal analysis, it was observed that development stages in history represent controlled states, termed `stases', whereby any stasis is only more favourable to particular interest groups, but not inherently better than any other. As for spatial analysis, a systems view was taken to accommodate the most suitable level for the discussion of growth in relation to sustainability, and it was observed that directed change of growth patterns is becoming more difficult with increasing complexity of the system, while change of the growth pattern itself is meaningless to the system. Therefore, sustainability, far from suggesting immutability, was characterised as a series of successful--as defined by human value judgement--stases, or the human maintenance of control over directed change.
Desta Mebratu (Lund University, Sweden--session Defining Sustainable Development) established a Conceptual Framework for Sustainability as a scientific paradigm. To overcome the normative approach to Sustainable Development, he proposed an evaluation of the underlying concepts which are based on our value judgements: existing definitions of Sustainable Development can be grouped into `institutional versions'--based on need satisfaction--, `academic versions'--relying on epistemological reductionism, whereby some disciplines add a secondary holistic or even holistic-reductionist perspective--and `ideological versions'--variations of the classic liberation theories. While each version represents a strand of truth, neither can give a complete picture. To pull all strands together, a new combination of metaphysical and epistemological orientation is required. This is to be achieved by 1) reordering the epistemological chain to a holistic-reductionist-holistic sequence to avoid factual errors in the premises and logical errors in analysis (observed to be actually the typical feature of thinking in ordinary people); 2) revamping systems thinking, to place systems in their field of significance, whereby `organised simplicity' can be treated analytically, `unorganised complexity' statistically and `organised complexity' by systems thinking--the latter of which has to be applied to the concept of sustainability; 3) reorienting the cosmic view from a model of interaction of the three principally independent biological, social and economic systems--represented by three overlapping circles in the intersection area of which Sustainable Development is to take place--, to a model of cosmic interdependence--represented by gradually increasing circles each of which encompasses the next smaller, with the outer circles being the abiotic and biotic cosmos, the next smaller being the social cosmos and the smallest the economic cosmos--since the human universe has never been independent.
Werner Hediger (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zürich, Switzerland--session Defining Sustainable Development) strove at Reconciling `weak' and `strong' sustainability. Literature on Sustainable Development concentrates on either environmental preservation, based on physical principles and with the call for maintaining the stock of ecosystem capital--termed `strong' sustainability--, or economic development, based on value principles and with the call for a non-decreasing value of aggregate economic activity and ecosystem capital, thus involving possible trade-offs between both--termed `weak' sustainability. The latter can be represented as a concave `preference-based aggregate social value function' that asymptotically approaches the axes of ecological capital and consumption. Introduction of a minimum standard of consumption and a level of critical ecosystem capital on either of the axes, and an adjustment of the curve to asymptotically approach these new boundaries in order to avoid abrupt changes into unsustainability, leads to a `sustainability-based social value function'.
Nick Wilding (Centre for Human Ecology, Edinburgh, UK--session Defining Sustainable Development) asked whether theory and practice are Hiding behind `sustainable development'? Professionals, the academy and sustainable development. He pointed out that the issues drawn up by the keynote speaker had not been addressed yet and stressed that part of the answer would be to look at sustainability from within people. He wondered what someone trying to achieve sustainability does or should feel in their hearts, and as an answer to a quote by Susan Griffin--"We who are born into this civilisation have inherited a habit of mind. We are divided against ourselves. We no longer regard ourselves as part of this earth. We regard our fellow human-beings as enemies. And, very young, we learn to disown parts of our own being."--he got his violin and played some folk tune. Having thus illustrated that humans are and should be sentient beings, and as such the personal level of working towards sustainability and the power to change ourselves, he advocated that rather than applying a model for change it is in fact the attitudes of experts that have to shift. To understand that there are other realities `out there' he suggested to use tools from community education and drew on his experience with the development of community sustainability indicators with Fife Regional Council. Referring to the (abovementioned) quote by the unemployed Lancashire man, representing such a huge frustration with whoever seems in control of the situation, he described how conversely the reduction, or indeed rejection as in the case of direct action, of authoritarian prescriptions leads to empowerment. He stressed that pursuing Sustainable Development as based on a paradigm that does not embrace an ecological ethic means to hide behind the term, and he urged that apart from technical issues sustainability should concern us personally, so that we start working from our hearts.
Axel Klaphake & Guido Spars (Technical University of Berlin, Germany-- session Ethical Issues for Sustainable Development) were Addressing environmental concerns in the in the international trade system. `Eco-duties' and the concept of sustainability. They investigated the potential for, and role of, trade restrictions for the achievement of international sustainability in cases of transnational environmental concern. While they concluded that international co-operation should take priority over eco-duties or other trade policy measures that try to internalise environmental costs but are not sufficient to solve transnational environmental problems, they conceded that the latter might however be an appropriate instrument to encourage the former. To allow for the operationalisation of such measures, they identified a need to reform the GATT/WTO regime in this respect.
Joe Buchdahl (Manchester Metropolitan University-- session Ethical Issues for Sustainable Development) spoke about Ethics and sustainable development. He critically examined the rationales of the two most prominent contemporary environmental ethics--commonly referred to as anthropocentrism and ethnocentrism--on which the varying concepts of sustainability are built. Analysing the various dimensions of value ethics--according to the object of value (i.e. anthropocentric, sentientric, zoocentric, biocentric, ecocentric), the nature of value (i.e. instrumental or intrinsic), the source of value (i.e. anthropogenic through intuition, reason or social prescription, ecogenic, divine decree), the theory of value (i.e. objective or subjective), the attribution of value (i.e. equal or hierarchical)--he identified anthropocentrism as anthropocentric-instrumental-anthropogenic-subjective-hierarchial, and conversely ecocentrism as ecocentric-intrinsic-ecogenic-objective-equal. Both could be blamed of logical inconsistencies: the former poses the difficulty of finding morally relevant characteristics that are exclusively present in humans, and the paradox of instrumental value of the goal, that either leads to infinite regress or attribution of intrinsic value; the latter commits the naturalistic fallacy to link what is with what ought to be, and overlooks that the allegedly objective values are perceived by a subjective mechanism. To reconcile both doctrines, he emphasised the distinction between the object of value, i.e. the first-order, or normative, ethical judgements, and the source of value, i.e. the second-order, or meta-ethical, judgements, and consequently advocated an ethnocentric, though anthropogenic, perspective with hierarchical attribution of value, which he termed anthropogenic ecocentrism or ecocentric subjectivism, and introduced the concept of inherentism--value not exclusively derived from human values but dependent upon human consciousness.
Austin Williams (Urban Research Group, UK-- session Ethical Issues for Sustainable Development) questioned The ethics of sustainability. Based on the observation that during the last decade the paradigm of sustainable development has become adopted by governments and business enterprises and thus incorporated into the mainstream, he voiced his concern about the motivations and consequences of this process. Relying on the existing economic relations, the agenda of sustainable development focuses on social reorganisation, change of individual behaviour and coping strategies rather than on real development and material provision, and thereby cements capitalist relationships between the First and the Third World and could prove hostile to the individual liberties of ordinary people. Supporting this argument with videos of what is by institutions promoted as Best Practice, he argued that the ethically charged discussion surrounding the current sustainability agenda blurs the capitalist social relations on which it is based and the reactionary direction towards it is therefore heading.
Steve New (Oxford University & Ken Green & Barbara Morton, Manchester School of Management, UK-- session Business and Sustainable Development) investigated The sustainable supply chain: theoretical perspectives and practical development, exploring the potential for achieving a sustainable economy with the grain of capitalist practice. While it is reasonable to doubt that green consumerism can bring about sustainable development, and to suspect that much of business enterprises' green rhetoric is lip-service, there are indeed mechanisms within capitalist economies that might effect some change. Industry, rather than representing an amorphous blob, against which merely consumers, the state and shareholders can apply pressure, is in fact a complex web of interactions, the trade volume within which by far exceeds that with the consumer. Moreover, the inextricable linkage of production, supply and consumption forms a complex `system of provision' which offers the possibility for the establishment of environmental standards via a detour: rhetoric of an organisation, rather than being aimed at directly influencing consumer behaviour, is often directed towards relative positioning within the field of competitors as part of a risk aversion process, termed second-order marketing-purchasing effect, which in the long run leads to a diffusion of ideas; therefore, similar to the case of the `Quality Revolution', it might be expected that green rhetoric may indeed lead--via the pervasion of manager mind-sets--to the actual adoption of new environmental standards. Yet, speed and extent of such changes may be viewed sceptical, wherefore a position of `critical empathy' was advocated.
Matthew Simon (& Andrew Sweatman, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK-- session Business and Sustainable Development) presented Products of a sustainable future. With design determining a large proportion of the resources consumed in the industrialised world, and consumer expenditures on commodities affected heavily by design choices representing a considerable economic volume, products of such kind assume a significant importance for sustainability. While `design for the environment' (DfE) measures relative improvement in existing products as progress--leading to e.g. so-called `factor 4'-products with halved energy and material consumption--'sustainable product design' (SPD) measures absolute benefit according to a scale of eco-efficiency--whereby 100% would be attributed to (hypothetical?) products that could be made in large quantities indefinitely--and is therefore the preferred approach. To accommodate all the variables influencing the degree of sustainability, a three-dimensional model was proposed with the axes representing `nature', `technology' and `culture', towards the positive ends of which can be found biodegradable products, renewable products/DfE and reduced demand, respectively, with the combination of the two former industrial ecology and of the two latter service-intensive products/dematerialised products, and with the combination of all sustainable products. Since unfortunately the global degree of penetration is reciprocal to the degree of innovation, support for small local companies was advocated. The developing world was regarded as in a potentially beneficial position, since it could still bypass ways of mass-production, and retained a high ratio of material-value to labour-value and service commodities to product commodities.
Sandrine Simon (Keele University, UK-- session Policies for Sustainable Development) presented a research project about The defensive expenditure of households: the cost of being green? She explained the concept of defensive expenditures, as the monetary burden resulting from the negative environmental consequences of economic activity, that therefore have to be extracted from undiscriminating figures such as the GDP to give a more realistic picture of the economic performance of a country. The questions are how methodology can be transferred, or developed, for the assessment of defensive expenditures of households, and how the results have to be interpreted in respect to the design of environmental policies.
Chris Smith (Manchester City Council, UK-- session Local Agenda 21 Initiatives) spoke about Young people, Agenda 21 and sustainable development, presenting the results of a consultation of young people (in the age-range between 5 and 25 years) in Manchester by the Manchester Local Agenda 21 Forum and herself as its Young People's Co-ordinator for Local Agenda 21. The rationale behind this study was to give planners an insight into the views of young people and to enable them to give young people, who represent one third of the city's population and spend 25 years of their life there, a say in the process that would affect their future. Three questions were asked, about the things most liked, most disliked, and most liked to be changed during the next 25 years in Manchester. Participation was very high; `likes' comprised different leisure activities, mainly major events and shopping; `dislikes' were dirt, pollution and issues of safety and security, which also corresponded well with the wishes for change. The speaker concluded therefore that young people's ideas for change were a realistic list of ways to improve their lives and environment, that there might be a strong tendency for consumerism, and that, worryingly, many `likes' appeared to be singular events while `dislikes' were affecting young people on a day-to-day basis.
Without prejudice to the sessions which I did not attend, many of the presentations did not follow the appeal of the keynote speaker to shift from the normative to a more reality-oriented approach to Sustainable Development. Rather, many of the speakers appeared struggling with coming to grips with the paradigm of Sustainable Development or the possible translation of its current agenda into practice; a prominent concept appeared to be systems thinking. Causes for unsustainability were hardly addressed, Sustainable Development, as defined by the relevant institutions, mainly accepted as a desirable process, and the tradition of thought in which it evolved not questioned. Major exceptions to this bent represented the presentations by Matthew Simon, challenging the acceptance of the consumer society and thereby a large part of its industrial activities and economic foundations, by Austin Williams, questioning the ethical pretensions of the recently formed Partnerships for Sustainable Development, pointing out the potential consequences of such process as opposed to those portrayed by these Partnerships and implied by the term `development', and challenging the underlying capitalism, and by Nick Wilding, challenging both the prescriptiveness of the current approach to Sustainable Development and addressing its underlying inconsistencies that derive from a neglect of an ecological ethic and of an individual commitment to such an ethic. He was also the only speaker to address the personal component of a process to achieve sustainability.
Despite the frequent reference to the importance of systems thinking I missed conclusions that would have emphasised the existence of limits to the system Planet Earth, the need for the sustain-ability of the human race to remain within these limits, and therefore the question how adequate `development' that does not entail at least the same extent of reduction as it entails growth can be to achieve this aim. Anastássios Perdicoúlis, who concentrated specifically on the perceived opposition between growth and sustainability, however did not point out this apparent necessity, but rather emphasised the importance of human control over systems. Most of the other speakers also appeared to tacitly assume a situation in which humans retain or gain control over conditions among which Sustainable Development is supposed to take place, illustrating the `western' tradition of thought that was prominent throughout the conference. In addition, many of the speakers apparently relied on, or did not explicitly reject, neo-classical economics as explanatory framework and tool to effect change. Therefore, the conference for its major part seemed to seek solutions for problems possibly generated or aggravated within the same cultural framework; an intercultural perspective was not taken.