Human Development and Environmental Discourses

Chapter 5 Human Development and Environmental Discourses 5.1 Human Development and the Dilemma of Continuous Economic Growth After visiting the far distant future, it is time to return to the reality of the current problems regarding human development and the environment from local to global scales. The human development concept used here encompasses all its aspects but is mostly centred in the educational, social, political, and economic components. There is a strong, although far from universal, convergence of opinion to the effect that there are troublesome difficulties at the present time concerning global economic growth and its impact on the environment. This fairly generalised perception is an important step in defining the problems we are facing, from which it should be possible to construct appropriate strategies to address them. A point to bear in mind from the outset is that the challenges of human development and the environment are closely related and hence inseparable. The essential characteristic of the social and economic development models adopted by contemporary societies is their foundation on robust and continuous economic growth based on industrialization. Economic growth is assumed to be a necessary condition to assure a better quality of life, social development, and lasting prosperity. Countries unable to achieve significant economic growth have a much slower rate of social development and tend to become socially unstable and ungovernable. Improvement in the quality of life, especially in developed countries which already have high standards of living, is widely identified with an increase in the capacity to consume, access to ever more sophisticated goods and services, greater availability of free time, and a continuously increasing mobility. There are profound psychological motivations for consumption. The impulse to acquire and to possess is an essential behavioural trait of our heritage as a biological species, spontaneous, immediate, irrepressible, and insatiable. Consumption favours the exercise of our basic psychological tendencies to construct an identity and to establish differences in social status and power relative to others, while promoting self-esteem. F.D. Santos, Humans on Earth: From Origins to Possible Futures, DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-05360-3_5, © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012 297 298 5 Human Development and Environmental Discourses Novelty is a very important factor in consumption because it carries important information about status. Thus the profit motive stimulates a permanent search by the economy for more innovative and better products. The basic drive to consume constitutes the fundamental basis for the economic growth paradigm. Political history since the industrial revolution shows that the most diverse ideologies, from liberalism to Marxism, have advocated economic growth through industrialisation, albeit along different paths and with different emphasis. The paradigm of continuous economic growth is fiercely competitive and unequivocally favours the countries that are more successful in its implementation. It generates a global dynamics of human development, involving different forms of integration for its social, political, and economic components, and this dynamics is increasingly dominated by the emerging economies, such as the BRIC countries. Furthermore it contributes decisively to the process of globalization, while at the same time the forces it creates in the global economy are at the core of the current problems regarding human development and the environment. There are many signs that continued worldwide acceptance of the economic growth paradigm involves an increasing risk of environmental degradation and instability. Furthermore, it has been argued that the 2008–2009 crisis proved that the paradigm is also financially and economically unstable. In fact the growth imperative was in part responsible for relaxing financial regulations and promoting the development of the complex financial derivatives that became toxic. The speculative expansion of credit for the housing and commodities markets was deliberately used as a mechanism to stimulate economic growth. On the other hand, if the economy does not grow, unemployment increases, output falls, the ability to service public debt diminishes, the economy enters into a recession, there is social instability, and people lose their quality of life and security. Apparently, continuous economic growth is the only mechanism available to prevent collapse. We are forced to conclude that both economic growth and degrowth are unsustainable. So what is the solution to this dilemma? Before addressing this question, let us consider the various types of environmental discourse. 5.2 The Origins of the Environmental Movements Environmental concerns were only recently identified and expressed clearly, more precisely in the second half of the 19th century. Nevertheless, since the middle of the 18th century, some natural philosophers and statesmen showed interest in the preservation of nature, adopting views that were to become the precursors of the environmental movements. One of the most striking figures in this group was José Bonifácio de Andrade e Silva (1763–1838), a naturalist, poet, and statesman, and the patriarch of Brazilian independence. He was born in Santos, Brazil, and went to Coimbra University where he became professor, then Secretary of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences, and was well known throughout Europe for his scientific work, especially in mineralogy. 5.2 The Origins of the Environmental Movements 299 Influenced by the Enlightenment and by other European naturalists, he developed in his works a harsh criticism of the predatory use of natural resources, with a special emphasis on deforestation. When he returned to Brazil in 1819, he defended and tried to implement in his country an integrated and sustainable form of development, especially in agriculture, forestry, and fishing, through better practices in the use of natural resources. His goal was to achieve a balance between human activities and nature, and he clearly identified some of the adverse consequences of breaking such an equilibrium (Pádua, 2004). The roots of environmentalism in the USA are associated with George Perkins Marsh (1801–1882), David Henry Thoreau (1817–1862), John Muir (1838–1914), and Gifford Pinchot (1865–1946), and resulted from a preoccupation with the impacts of intensified natural resource use, particularly deforestation and damming of rivers, and from the will to protect the magnificent beauty of nature, especially in the west of the country. There were two key strands in the early environmental movement. The protectionists, such as George Marsh, David Thoreau, and John Muir were primarily concerned with the protection of nature in its pristine state, while the conservationists such as Gifford Pinchot were mainly interested in the sustainable management of natural resources. John Muir was born in Scotland and his family immigrated to a farm near Portage, Wisconsin, when he was eleven years old. He enrolled at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, where he learned some botany and geology, but did not graduate. At the age of 26 he left school and went to Canada, wandering in the wilderness near Lake Huron, collecting plants. Following a serious accident, where he nearly lost his sight, he was determined to “be true to myself” and follow his dream of exploration and the study of plants (Wolfe, 1945). He then walked for about 1 600 km from Indiana to Florida, through the wildest, leafiest, and least trodden ways he could find and went on to explore the Yosemite in California. There, in 1871, he met the naturalist Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was delighted to finally meet the prophet-naturalist he dreamed about and offered him a teaching position at Harvard. John Muir declined and later wrote: “I never thought of giving up God’s big show for a mere profship” (Tallmadge, 1997). His studies and activism were crucial for Congress to establish the Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks in 1890. Amazed by their pristine nature, almost free from the transformations and impacts of human activity, he dedicated his life to preserving it. The conservationist movement founded by Gifford Pinchot had distinct concerns. Its first objective was to ensure that natural resources such as forests, water, energy, and minerals were used in a controlled way so that they could support a growing economy, and never exploited in an irresponsible or unsustainable way. There is a fundamental ideological difference between these two types of pioneering ideas for the environmentalist movements. While the protectionists wanted nature to be set aside and protected for its own sake, the conservationists focused on the relation between man and nature, seeking forms of economic growth that were compatible with conservation of the environment. In Europe, the origins of the environmental movements were centred on a reaction to industrialization, urbanization, and air and water pollution. The first clear 300 5 Human Development and Environmental Discourses example of confrontation between an organized protectionist movement and the defenders of social change and economic growth at the local level took place in 1876, when the Thirlmere Defence Association tried to block the building of the Thirlmere reservoir in a valley of England’s Lake District to supply water to Manchester (Ritvo, 2003). The point of view of those advocating the building of the dam prevailed in parliament, but environmental protection in the Thirlmere reservoir and surrounding countryside and throughout the whole of the Lake District became a very important objective that has been granted ever-growing support right up to the present day. This sequence of an initial conflict, followed by a resolution in favour of economic growth associated with an increased awareness of environmental problems has been very typical and frequent, especially in the developed countries. In most developing countries the situation is different, as the predominance of problems regarding food security and social and economic issues leads to a lower sensitivity to the environment, and a reduced capacity to prevent its degradation. 5.3 The Environmental Discourses What kinds of environmental discourse address the current situation and its projection into the future at the local, national, regional, and global levels? An environmental discourse is a coherent and shared way of apprehending the world, its environmental problems and the possible solutions to these problems (Dryzek, 2005). Each type of discourse enables those who subscribe to it to interpret and process the relevant information and to construct coherent accounts of the state of the environment and future scenarios at various scales, so that they can form substantiated opinions and plans of action. They are universal in the sense that we are all affected by the environment and by its problems. We all have the responsibility to obtain reliable information, study, analyse, debate, formulate opinions, and adhere to a coherent point of view regarding those problems. To deny or ignore the current environmental problems is also a discourse, but of an antithetical nature. Michel Foucault (Foucault, 1980) has clearly shown that political discourses embody power since they condition the way we perceive, act, and defend what we consider to be our interests. With environmental discourses, the situation is analogous. The power of an environmental discourse is often revealed by the capacity it has for attracting followers and by its efficiency in achieving given environmental objectives and making these objectives compatible with others of a social, economic, political, or institutional nature. The evolution of environmental policy at the various scales is strongly influenced by the substance and dynamism of the most powerful environmental discourses. Success in the application of environmental policies depends largely on the institutional capacity to implement them, the quality of the environmental laws and regulations, the degree of compliance, the level of environmental education and training, 5.3 The Environmental Discourses 301 and the awareness and willingness of the public sector, businesses, and citizens in dealing with and contributing to the solution of environmental issues. It is possible to identify a wide variety of environmental discourses throughout human society, regarding both content and form of expression. They range from the sophisticated intellectual circles of the more industrialized countries to the hundreds of millions of people that live in the ever-expanding slums of large urban areas, especially in the developing countries, and the last remaining indigenous populations in remote and nearly pristine areas, who still maintain primordial forms of relationship between human life and the natural environment. All these people, in fact all of us, have an environmental discourse, because we depend on the natural resources provided by Earth subsystems: air, water, soils, oceans, terrestrial and marine ecosystems, fossil fuels, and ores. We all have a more or less structured and cultured opinion about the subject. Across the broad range of social groups, there are common concerns shared by the greater part of the world’s population, but they manifest themselves in very different ways. To promote information, communication, dialogue, and sharing of experiences between these manifold perceptions is a very important contribution to the creation of a well-founded and diverse global conscience, with sufficient strength to face current and future environmental challenges. A person’s professional activity often has an influence on the choice of environmental discourse and these correlations tend to become stronger with the industrialization of the society in which they are imbedded. If, for example, the environmental discourses of biologists and economists are compared, one is likely to find significant differences in emphasis on subjects such as the negative consequences of biodiversity loss, the vulnerability of ecosystems, and the sustainability of their services, or the capacity that market mechanisms have to solve the scarcity of a given natural resource, with the help of science and technology. In a given environmental discourse it is possible to distinguish an interpretive and an active component. The former refers to the analysis and interpretation of the current state of the environment, along with the trends and projections of future evolution, while the latter refers to action programs that should be implemented in society on the basis of the interpretive component. Coherence requires that the active component of discourses be in accordance with the behaviours and attitudes of its practitioners toward the environment. However, there is often a significant gap between interpretation, commitment, and action. This inconsistency partly results from the deep-rooted and often subconscious association between the current concept of prosperity and the unquestionable paradigm of economic growth. Environmental ethics is the discipline that studies the moral relationship of human beings to, and also the value and moral status of, the environment and its nonhuman contents (SEP, 2008). In this field it is very important to distinguish between instrumental and intrinsic values. One of its main challenges is to find rational arguments to assign intrinsic value to the environment and to its nonhuman contents, for instance to a wild flower with no instrumental value. Many traditional Western ethical perspectives are anthropocentric in that they only assign intrinsic value to humans, or a much greater intrinsic value to humans than to any nonhuman beings. 302 5 Human Development and Environmental Discourses The human-centred tradition was already clearly present in Greek civilization. Aristotle expressed it by saying that “nature has made all things for the sake of man” (Politics, Book 1, Chap. 8), which implies that the value of nonhuman things is merely instrumental. The essential connection between man and the environment is also reflected in the fact that an environmental discourse is always associated with a certain way of apprehending and assessing the questions of human development throughout the world. Thus an environmental discourse is simultaneously a discourse about human development. 5.4 The Limits Discourse and the Difficulty to Act The assessment of the state of the environment at the various spatial levels, along with current trends and future projections, varies significantly between two extremes. At one end there is the limits discourse, also known as the survivalist discourse, and at the other the Promethean discourse. The first was initially formulated in a detailed way by the Club of Rome in The Limits of Growth, published in 1972 (Meadows, 1972). The projections of this report indicate that, if the contemporary growth tendencies of production, consumption, environmental degradation, and world population were to prevail, disastrous crises would become inevitable within the coming 100 years, that is, up to around 2070. These results, obtained through computer models, were at the time interpreted as an update of the discredited Malthusian catastrophe, and heavily criticised. On the one hand they were considered to be relatively obvious, because approximately exponential growth in consumption and world population cannot be indefinitely sustainable in a finite system. On the other hand the timing of the presumed crises was regarded as erroneous, because the role of price mechanisms in the control of consumption and the role of science, technology, and innovation in the calculation of the theoretical expiry limits for the various natural resources was judged to be underestimated. Nevertheless the book had an enormous influence and was the first to clearly characterize the limits discourse. The authors also presented an alternative model of a global economy in a stationary state, with stabilised consumption and world population, but they did not fully explore the means to achieve that goal. Meanwhile the limits discourse evolved and became much more sophisticated and credible (Meadows, 1992; Brown, 2003; Ehrlich, 2004; Meadows, 2004; Constanza, 2007). A 2002 report from the US National Academy of Sciences (Wackernagel, 2002) concludes that the total human demand on ecosystem services provided by the biosphere has already exceeded its carrying capacity. More recently, a comparison of historical data for the 1970–2000 period on industrial and food production, pollution, and environmental degradation with the scenarios presented in The Limits to Growth accords with the key features of the business-as-usual standard run of the report, which results in the collapse of the global system around the middle of the 21st century (Turner, 2008). This result can be 5.4 The Limits Discourse and the Difficulty to Act 303 interpreted as indicating that we should move away from the current growth pattern of business-as-usual and seek a steady state economy. The key idea in the limits discourse is that sooner or later the present pattern of economic growth will inevitably lead to critical situations and an eventual collapse, because it relies on unsustainable levels of consumption of natural resources and interference with the Earth subsystems, especially the biosphere. The specific nature, incidence, and spatial extent of these crises is uncertain, although they are very likely to cause high levels of hunger, destitution, morbidity, suffering, and misery, and a significant global decline in the quality of life. They do not constitute a serious threat to the survival of humans on Earth, but they may generate violent conflicts that seriously increase the mortality rate. The active component of the survivalist discourse was initially characterized by arguments proposing radical action, such as intervention and controls established by governments and by the scientific elite to coercively abandon the paradigm of continuous economic growth. According to its advocates, only in this way would it be possible to avert the so-called tragedy of the commons that consists in the eventual collapse of limited common resources due to conflicts between individual and collective interests (Hardin, 1977; Hardin 1993). According to Robert Hellbroner, the only hope to cure humanity’s profligate ways and avoid the serious critical situations that will arise when the voracity of consumerism far exceeds the carrying capacity of the Earth systems would be monastic forms of government, capable of combining “religious orientation with a military discipline” (Hellbroner, 1991). More moderate attempts to find an active survivalist discourse rely on the democratic process and on the capacity of people and their non-governmental organizations to overcome the business-as-usual growth path (Brown, 1992). The globalized nature of the limits discourse combined with the profound inequalities of social and economic development and per capita use of natural resources make it difficult to construct an active discourse that is coherent at the local, national, and global levels. The main difficulty is to formulate a program of moderate action directed specifically at uprooting the paradigm of business-as-usual continuous economic growth. The active survivalist discourse has a very important environmental component and justification, but it should also address the economic and political questions of development and quality of life in a very unequal world that is becoming increasingly polarized economically (Dumont, 1973). If it does not try to meet this challenge, the survivalist discourse will be unable to provide a credible active component, despite its increasing relevance. Anthropogenic global warming exemplifies this problem. According to some authors (Rockstrom, 2009), the safe planet boundary for atmospheric CO2 concentration is 350 ppmv and this limit has already been largely exceeded. However, it is very difficult to achieve world agreement for a significant reduction in the global emissions of greenhouse gases because of the large disparities of historical and present-day emission responsibilities between the developed and developing countries. Without addressing this question in an effective way, it is very unlikely that we will be able to solve the problem of climate change. 304 5 Human Development and Environmental Discourses 5.5 Success of the Promethean Discourse and Its Dependence on Energy The limits discourse was fiercely opposed by the defenders of the current paradigm of economic growth after the publication of The Limits of Growth (Meadows, 1972). The opposing discourse, frequently referred to as Promethean or Cornucopian, is based on a practically unlimited confidence in the ability, determination, and inventiveness of humans to solve all the problems created by the unrelenting pursuit of economic growth, including those of an environmental nature. In fact the major concern of virtually all governments is to promote economic growth. It is considered essential for development and the key to promoting political and social liberalization throughout the world (Friedman, 2005). It tends to increase wealth, income, profits, and employment, and also to produce a greater number of houses, cars, domestic appliances, energy and communications equipment, number of miles travelled per person, gadgets, toys and so on. The political and economic discourse is presently based on the virtues of growth, with moderate concerns of an environmental nature, mostly in the industrialized countries. News reported by the media that covers the economy is always made with the underlying assumption that growth is good. Environmental problems are recognized and addressed, but they are usually considered to be disconnected from growth, under the conviction that they are secondary and that it will always be possible to solve them in a way compatible with continued growth. The arguments against the limits discourse were developed mainly by economists, notably Wilfred Beckerman (Beckerman, 1974; Beckerman, 1995) and Julian Simon (Simon, 1981; Simon, 1984; Simon, 1996). These authors claim that energy, natural resources, and commodities in general will continue to be available and have accessible prices for consumption in such a way that economic growth can be supported indefinitely. Questioned as to how far into the future, Simon replied (Simon, 1984): “We expect this benign trend to continue until at least our Sun ceases to shine in perhaps seven billion years, and until exhaustion of the elemental inputs for fission (and perhaps for fusion).” This is a bold statement that disagrees with current models of Solar System evolution and the long term duration of life on Earth. In 2001, Bjorn Lomborg, a political scientist and former professor of statistics in the Department of Political Science at Aarhus University in Denmark, published a very successful book entitled The Sceptical Environmentalist (Lomborg, 2001), thereby becoming one of the most visible leaders of the Promethean discourse. Like Simon, he opposed the survivalist discourse and most of the theses of the environmentalist movement, defending the idea that natural resources, energy, and food are becoming more abundant and accessible, while the world environment has been improving. He also claimed that the quality of life indicators show generally positive trends worldwide. The book was received ecstatically by the majority of the media with stronger links to the economy, industry, and government, in many developed countries, and widely used to alleviate the pressure applied by environmentalists. The Economist, 5.5 Success of the Promethean Discourse and Its Dependence on Energy 305 in its issue of 6 September 2001, considered that: “This is one of the most valuable books about public policy — not merely on environmental policy — to have been written for the intelligent general reader in the past ten years. The Sceptical Environmentalist is a triumph.” Some US media figures claimed that its publication marked a critical turning point that would relegate into oblivion the limits discourse of Paul Ehrlich and Lester Brown, and initiate a new age of eco-optimism. However, the book did not stand up to critical analysis by several scientists, some of whom had publications cited in it. Its scientific credibility was placed in doubt, and Scientific American dedicated one of its issues (January 2002) to debunking some of Lomborg’s arguments and conclusions. The author was criticised for misleading use of statistical methods, selective presentation of evidence, and inadequate treatment of the uncertainties associated with complex systems. Faced with several complaints, the Danish Committee on Scientific Dishonesty ruled in January 2003 with a mixed message stating that the book did not reach the standards of good scientific practice, but that the author could be excused because of lack of expertise in the fields in question. However, in December of the same year, the Danish government revoked that ruling, and in April 2004, Lomborg was designated by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Lomborg, now a professor at the Copenhagen Business School, has long opposed international curbs on greenhouse gas emissions to combat climate change, saying that they would be too expensive and not cost-effective. Recently, however, he reversed his opinion in a new book (Lomborg, 2010), arguing that global warming is a challenge that humanity must confront and proposing the investment of 100 billion US $ a year in mitigation. The Promethean discourse looks more like a human development discourse, while the limits discourse is more oriented towards environmental issues. Furthermore, the fundamental entities and assumptions of the limits and Promethean discourses are quite different. The first is based on the concept of ecosystem, the principle of sustainability of ecosystem services, and the finiteness of natural resources, both renewable and non-renewable. The second tends to ignore the concepts of ecosystem, nature, and natural resources and focuses on the abstract physical concept of matter, which is assumed to be transformable into whatever product we may need, given enough energy to do it. It defends the idea that it is possible to produce all the required resources for continuous economic growth by means of transformation processes applied to brute matter. Thus energy and access to energy play an essential role in the Promethean discourse. The discourse is based on the belief that human ingenuity and perseverance in science, technology, and innovation will find the primary energy sources needed to replace scarce natural resources by suitable substitutes and to depollute the environment. Energy is thus the key to business-as-usual continuous economic growth. Prometheans claim that, with access to enough energy, it will always be possible to obtain sufficient water by desalinization, to transform arid or hyper-arid lands into cropland, and to produce all the required scarce elements by the transmutation of the more abundant ones through nuclear reactions in appropriate accelerators, for instance, producing copper and nickel from iron. 306 5 Human Development and Environmental Discourses All this is in fact possible with our scientific and technological knowhow, but to do it on a large scale would require huge amounts of investment and energy. Pollution in the air, water, soils, and oceans is regarded as just matter in undesirable forms and places. Hence, theoretically, it can be transformed or removed by the skilful application of appropriate technologies. This program, although feasible, would be very expensive and therefore inaccessible to the vast majority of countries in the world. But confidence in science and technology, provided mainly by the success of the industrial and energy revolutions, has persuaded people to believe in the Promethean discourse. In contrast to the survivalist discourse, the Promethean discourse has an active component with a long history of success (Friedman, 2005). Its practical application flourished throughout the industrial revolution, especially since the end of World War II, with the growing domination of capitalism and globalization. The main function of the political and institutional systems in the democracies of the developed countries has been to facilitate the conditions for economic growth, on the assumption that it will always lead to an improvement in the prosperity and quality of life of their citizens. Although the Promethean discourse is widely used throughout the world, it is in the USA that it has been most visible and active. The decision of the George W. Bush administration not to sign the Kyoto Protocol on climate change mitigation, on the grounds that this would slow down US economic activity, is a good example of the prevalence of economic concerns over environmental ones. The underlying assumption is that it is preferable to adapt, and maybe develop geoengineering to combat climate change, rather than to mitigate, since this response involves the risk of negatively affecting the economy. There are many other examples where, at an international level, especially in the environmental organizations within the United Nations system, the USA has preferred to privilege economic interests over environmental ones. Between the more extreme expressions of the limits and Promethean discourses, there is a whole spectrum of more moderate discourses. The current trend is that the limits discourse is mainly regarded as an environmental discourse with an increasingly influential interpretive component, and a much weaker action component that tends to be radical. On the other hand the Promethean discourse is mainly regarded as a prosperity discourse with an interpretive component considered often to be unrealistic and an action component that enjoys a great success. Its success in developed countries has often led to increased environmental degradation in the developing world. In part, the improvement of environmental conditions in the more industrialized countries results from exporting some of the more polluting industries to developing countries where environmental legislation and pollution controls are weaker. 5.6 Radical Environmental Discourses: Deep Ecology and Social Ecology 307 5.6 Radical Environmental Discourses: Deep Ecology and Social Ecology The interpretive component of the limits discourse is probably the main inspirational source for the radical environmental discourses. These question or reject the presuppositions, values, beliefs, and power structures of industrialized societies, and the way in which environmental problems are addressed by them. They are radical and imaginative discourses seeking new ways of life that are less aggressive towards the environment. Because of their creative and innovative character, they propose a very wide range of analyses and solutions. This diversity tends to generate lively debates and controversies. Regarding politics, their views are graded from complete rejection of the social, economic, and political systems, to a collaborative and participative attitude toward the institutions and political activities of the democracies in industrialised countries. There are two main trends with regard to the active component of the radical discourses. One aims at raising people’s awareness and modifying the way they think and behave in relation to the environment. The other prefers a direct intervention on institutions and on political and economic activities. These two tendencies are not mutually exclusive: some movements strive to combine behavioural change with politics. Deep ecology is a movement that practices one of the more radical environmental discourses. The name and initial formulation was established by Arne Naess, a Norwegian philosopher born in 1912 and strongly influenced by Spinoza, Buddha, and Gandhi. The fundamental principles of deep ecology (Naess, 1989) are based on self-realization, through the identification with a larger organic unity embracing all nature’s ecosystems, and on the idea of biocentric equality. According to this concept, there is no species that can be considered more intrinsically valuable or in any sense higher than another, humans being no exception to this rule. This is indeed a point of view that is radically opposed to the anthropocentrism that results from acknowledging the domination of all species by humans. Deep ecology vigorously defends the idea that the preservation and expansion of broad areas of wilderness, in pristine condition or only slightly modified by human presence, is vital to ensuring ecological integrity, the preservation of biodiversity, and the possibility of biological evolution. Reducing the human population is considered essential, but there are no plans of action to solve current environmental problems, such as pollution in most megacities and the environmental degradation in many areas of the world. The deep ecology discourse does not address the contemporary problems of human development and how to solve them in a way that might be compatible with the preservation of the environment. Some of its more extreme forms adopt manifestly utopian and misanthropic positions (Manes, 1990). The main philosophical opponent of deep ecology in US radical environmental circles is social ecology, a movement established by Murray Bookchin (Bookchin, 1982). Contrary to deep ecology, it emphasizes the social dimension of human life and claims that the main problem in human societies is not the relation with nature, 308 5 Human Development and Environmental Discourses but their strong hierarchical structure considered to be an unnatural phenomenon without counterpart in the nonhuman living world. It points out that the relations that we perceive as competitive in nature are in fact cooperative, always involving some benefit for the competing actors. Human societies do not conform to that pattern according to the eco-anarchist social ecology movement. Bookchin, a long time socialist and ecologist, interprets the current ecological crisis as a consequence of modern global capitalism. Social ecology proposes an anarchist solution of radical municipalism, where small self-sufficient local communities live in harmony with each other and with the environment. This may be regarded as a utopian proposal, when confronted with the size, complexity, and interdependence of urban areas all over the world. However, when compared with deep ecology, it has the virtue of indicating a social and political strategy. 5.7 The Environmentalism of the Poor Deep ecology and social ecology are radical environmental discourses that have emerged in the developed countries and that have the majority of their followers in the USA, Canada, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. To have a balanced view one should also consider the environmental discourses arising in the developing countries, in an ever more vehement and frequent manner, and which have been called the ‘environmentalism of the poor’ (Guha, 1997). In a large number of developing countries, local populations suffer from, and some protest against, the degradation of the environment and their livelihood conditions. The main problems result from deforestation, overexploitation of water resources, unsustainable forms of agriculture, soil erosion, desertification, implantation of industries that produce high air, water, and soil pollution, and the relocation of populations caused by the installation of large scale projects, like dams, extensive agricultural and livestock farms, oil exploration and extraction, and mining. The environmental arguments used by the affected populations are relatively simple and spontaneous. They are based on empirical knowledge derived from a long past experience of equilibrium with the environment. The agents in such conflicts do not usually see themselves as environmentalists, but they are aware that the degradation of the environment is threatening their livelihoods. Well known examples are the fight for the preservation of Amazonia by rubber tappers led by Chico Mendes, and the struggles of the Ogoni, the Ijaw, and other ethnic groups in the Niger Delta against the environmental damage caused by oil extraction conducted by Shell. These protests combining economic and environmental concerns, frequently against large multinational corporations, tend to be readily associated with anti-globalisation movements. When they manage to call the attention of international non-governmental environmental organizations and the media, the resulting negative publicity for the corporations can lead to a solution or to the mitigation of the problems. However, in most cases, the protests of rural populations 5.8 Eco-Feminism 309 concerning the degradation of their environment are seldom heard and rapidly forgotten. Deep ecology and social ecology are very far from being able to provide solutions to these problems. Furthermore, some of the characteristic objectives of deep ecology may go against the interests of the populations in developing countries. The preservation and expansion of huge areas of wilderness may seriously endanger the livelihoods of the indigenous populations that live in and around these areas. A well known example occurred in Kenya at the beginning of the 1990s, when the Masai, Turkana, and Ndorobo tribes were forcibly displaced from their lands to build a game reserve for the protection of elephants (Haynes, 1999). More recently, such trade-offs have started to be addressed by emerging markets for ecosystem services, such as biodiversity protection, which can help mitigate the development impacts of conservation. These payment systems for biodiversity can take several forms, such as biodiversity offsets, habitat credit trading, biobanking, and a growing number of conservation standards or certificates. The main idea is the preservation and creation of protected areas in the biodiversity hotspots of developing countries through public and/or private partnerships and investments from developed countries, including compensation mechanisms for the indigenous populations. Another promising mechanism is to promote responsible eco-tourism. Nature in high biodiversity wilderness areas, especially in the tropical regions, is a wonderful and ever rarer spectacle that attracts the curiosity and admiration of a growing number of people. To visit these sanctuaries of wild natural beauty, which still exist mostly in Africa, Asia, and the Americas, is an opportunity to rediscover the ecological foundations of the primordial human communities and feel the magnitude of our cultural evolution since that time. 5.8 Eco-Feminism In contrast with the deep ecology movement, eco-feminism considers that the root of the environmental problems does not lie in anthropocentrism, but rather in androcentrism. Françoise d’Eaubonne, born in Paris in 1920, proposed the concept of eco-feminism in her book Le Feminisme ou la Mort, published in 1974 (d’Eaubonne, 1974). The movement considers that there is a profound relationship between the prevalence of a society of a patriarchal nature, in which women are frequently oppressed, and environmental degradation and the destruction of nature. The ecofeminists defend the idea that the search for new and radically different cultural sensibilities could lead to the replacement of the relationships of domination, control, and transformation of nature by others more harmonious and ecological. Val Plumwood (Plumwood, 1995) goes a step further and defends that, while democracy is under the control of liberalism, it will not be possible for it to serve as a basis for the development of a truly ecological way of life for human societies. The current forms of liberalism are considered to be socially unjust and a threat to the environment. 310 5 Human Development and Environmental Discourses Eco-feminism has a more universal following than the deep ecology and social ecology movements, as it is present in both developed and developing countries. In the latter, one of the most active voices is Vandana Shiva, who has a degree in theoretical physics and has dedicated her life to the defence of eco-feminism and the anti-globalization movements. She became well known in the Chipko movement of the 1970s for the protection of forests in the north of India, where people embraced trees so that they could not be cut down. Shiva defends the idea that the current imperative of economic growth, associated with the overwhelming influence of science and technology in human development that started with the industrial revolution, tends to destroy the diversity of human life and its sacred aspects. She opposes scientific reductionism and proposes as an alternative the search for holistic forms of knowledge and the valorisation of traditional ways of life. She points out that in many developing countries women have a very important role in environmental protection. However, their contribution is overlooked and diminished by the implantation of new agricultural and industrial technologies in these countries, which frequently have negative impacts on the environment and on the quality of life of the populations. She considers that biodiversity is intimately linked with cultural diversity and has campaigned against biopiracy, the illegal appropriation of biological material, from microorganisms to plants and animals, by a technologically advanced country or corporation without fair compensation to the peoples or nations where they were found. Regarding agriculture she criticises the ‘green revolution’ because of its negative impact on ecology, agriculture, politics, and social relations, particularly in the state of Punjab in India, and defends an organic model of agriculture. She is the founder of the Navdanya movement that trained more than 500 000 seed keepers and organic farmers in India. In ecology, she proposes solutions inspired by the wisdom and traditional knowledge contained in the Vedas (Shiva, 2002). It could be argued that the generalized implementation of her proposals in developing countries, particularly in India, instead of the green revolution methodologies, would decrease grain production and increase the risk of malnutrition and hunger. It would also increase imports from the more industrialized countries, where production has significant subsidies. From this point of view, bearing in mind the continuous growth of the world’s population, this approach would considerably decrease food security, and become rapidly unsustainable. However, others would argue that organic farming is a solution to global rural poverty, although its implementation would require profound transformations in the prevailing international economic and trade systems. Identifying and implementing new forms of sustainable agriculture that are able to feed the world is clearly one of the greatest challenges facing humankind. 5.9 Environmental Discourses and the Use of Genetically Modified Organisms 311 5.9 Environmental Discourses and the Use of Genetically Modified Organisms Some radical environmental discourses share a romantic rejection of the Enlightenment principles when they emphasize that science and technology are the primary cause of the degradation of the environment and the continuous destruction of nature. However, the dominant tendencies in contemporary environmental radicalism accept the value of science and technology and search for a conjugation of human development with ecology, based on the protection of the environment, but not a return to the ideals of an outmoded romanticism (Hay, 2002). It is significant that the radical environmental discourses have distinct expressions and values in the more industrialized countries and in the developing countries. The basis for the deep ecology discourse is the absolute valorisation of both the natural environment surrounding us and of our human nature, integrating its physical and spiritual expressions. The goal is to bring together and harmonize these two natures by changing sensibilities and values. This is an ideal and abstract individualistic objective that implies a discontinuity with the past but has no definite proposals on how to deal with the current problematic relationship between human development and the environment. In the developing countries, radical environmental discourses tend to be more pragmatic. Some propose the return to the environmental wisdom and practices of the ancestral civilizations, and they look with suspicion upon the contributions of science and technology to improve their livelihoods. However, without such contributions to enhance agricultural productivity, levels of malnutrition and hunger would be much higher. The spectacular increase in grain production achieved by the so called green revolution, initiated in the 1940s, was only possible through the selection of high-yield varieties, mechanized agriculture, modern large scale irrigation systems, distribution of hybridized seeds, and the intensive use of synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides. These requirements have negative collateral effects, such as the loss of biodiversity among species of agricultural value and among wild species, a greater dependence on fossil fuels needed for mechanization and manufacture of agrochemicals, flooding of fields due to water table rise caused by irrigation, soil erosion and degradation, increased salinity, perturbation of the natural nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, and pollution caused by fertilisers, pesticides, and herbicides. Nevertheless global food production has grown remarkably with the green revolution, through scientific and technological advances, and through investments that depend strongly on the globalization process and on its continuity. More recently, since the early 1990s, genetically engineered, transgenic, or genetically modified organisms (GMO) have been used to produce food in many countries, but especially in the USA, Argentina, Canada, and China. GMOs are obtained through a biotechnology that allows the introduction of foreign genes into the genome. Genetically modified plants, such as rice, corn, canola, banana, tomato, cotton, and soybeans, have the advantage of being resistant to pesticides, herbicides, pests, or viruses. 312 5 Human Development and Environmental Discourses The use of biotech crops and foods started a fierce and often polemic debate regarding possible health and environmental hazards. The main concern is that it may introduce new allergens, generate higher levels of toxins, and spread resistance to antibiotic. Furthermore, the use of GMOs in food production introduces gene pollution into the environment, which in the medium and long term may have irreversible negative impacts. Environmental movements emphasize these risks and oppose the use of GMOs. However, up to now, there has been no undisputable evidence that the use of GMOs presents health risks greater than those associated with other breeding processes. GMOs may have medium to long term harmful effects which are probably impossible to identify at present, since they have been in use for less than 20 years. The governmental institutions of the countries that allowed the use of GMOs considered that the resulting advantages outweighed the benefits of a strict application of the precautionary principle as regards its potential medium and long term effects. Another important aspect of GMO food production is that the intellectual property rights regime makes the improved seeds unaffordable to poor farmers in developing countries. Moreover, research in plant breeding is mostly oriented toward the requirements of farmers in developed countries rather than to those of the poor countries which involve a much higher number of people. It is important to emphasize that increasing food productivity does not necessarily solve the problem of malnutrition and hunger. If the poor are unable to buy food because of their very low income, increased production would not allay their destitution. The introduction of new agricultural technologies without addressing the problem of a biased social and economic system that favours the rich against the poor in accessing technological benefits will not improve global food security. Redistribution of economic power, especially as regards access to land and purchasing power are essential to solve the current problems of malnutrition and hunger. 5.10 Eco-Theology There is yet another type of radical environmental discourse, namely, eco-theology, which focuses specifically on the relationship between the current ecological crisis and the various religions and forms of spirituality. The basic idea is that the root of our arrogance, aggression, and disregard for nature that currently coexists with human development is a shortcoming of spiritual or religious nature, and so too must be the appropriate response. The front line of the debate was initially established by Lynn White (White, 1967), who argues that the origin of the present environmental situation, critical in many respects, can be traced back to Judeo-Christian religious principles, which consider God above nature, with man created in his own image. God and man are placed outside nature, although both are God’s creation. According to White: “Christianity is the most anthropocentric religion the world has seen” (White, 1967). God commands man to subdue the Earth and rule over nature, as stated in the Bible: 5.10 Eco-Theology 313 “God blessed them and said to them: fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground” (Genesis, 1:28). By eradicating animism, Christianity made it possible to exploit nature while being indifferent to the guardian spirits of trees, springs, streams, rivers, hills, and mountains. The new dualism between man and nature became stronger in the Christian Middle Ages and led to a long tradition of unlimited exploitation of nature. St Francis of Assisi is a remarkable but lonely exception, because of his profound love for animals, and was declared patron saint of the environment by Pope John Paul II in 1980. The oriental religions, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, and Shintoism, have no dualism between man and nature, in contrast with the Judeo-Christian ones. Divinity is not placed above nature, but nature and its very diverse manifestations have a divine value that must itself be venerated. Even though this closer relationship between man and nature strengthens respect for nature and therefore also for the environment, critical ecological situations are nevertheless relatively frequent nowadays in countries where the oriental religions are dominant. The beneficial influence of such religions has been unable to counteract the increasing risk of environmental degradation. Eco-theology promotes a form of constructive theology for the well-being of humanity in harmony with nature and the cosmos. There is also a connection between this movement and the active component of the survivalist discourses. Some survivalists (Ophuls, 1977; Heilbroner, 1991) claim that the solution to the current environmental crisis requires a strong and enduring change of behaviour, which must be deeply motivated, as deeply as spirituality and religiousness. A mass conversion to new lifestyles would be needed, similar to those that in the past led to the growth and territorial expansion of the major religions, a conversion based on the conviction that the present paradigm of unlimited economic growth will become unsustainable due to the increasing irreversibility of its negative environmental impacts and the inequalities it generates. It would not be a movement of a religious nature, but a social phenomenon with a strong collective expression, only comparable with conversions moved by faith. Clearly, for this transformation to be achieved at the personal level and reach its objectives, simultaneous structural changes would also be required at a macroeconomic level. It would be necessary to change the system that rewards and reinforces the more materialistic and egotistical forms of behaviour, change the social, economic, and employment structures that tend to isolate people and exhaust the free time people need in order to be well informed, to study, to understand, to act, and to create, and develop various types of active organizations in society at large. In the current global economic system, most conflicts between the imperatives of the market, especially those resulting from the need to reassure the confidence of investors, and the defence of environmental values end up being resolved in favour of the former. Thus, for a conversion of the kind proposed by some of the more radical environmental discourses to be successful, it would be necessary to change those structures that now provide a relatively stable foundation for the established 314 5 Human Development and Environmental Discourses economic order. This program is generally considered to be utopian and highly unlikely to be adopted in the near future. Still, it is also likely to be less utopian in the middle and long term, as the unsustainability of the current global financial and economic model of development becomes increasingly apparent. 5.11 The Green Parties The environmental movements have been especially active at a political level since the beginning of the 1980s. Since that time green parties have been represented in the parliaments of various Western countries. The first were the Belgian green parties — Agalev, Flemish, founded in the 1970s by the Jesuit Luc Versteyler, born out of a combination of progressive Catholicism and environmentalism; and Ecolo, Francophone, founded later, in 1980. In the 1981 elections, these two parties won seats in the Chamber of Representatives and the Senate. There is a wide variety of green parties, although mostly adopt the four pillars of the German green party as fundamental values: ecology, social justice, participatory democracy, and peace and non-violence. Most of those that have significant parliamentary representation are found in the democracies of Europe, North America, and Oceania. There are few green parties in the developing countries and most of them have been organized with the help of their partners in the developed countries. Some are considered clandestine organizations, such as the Green Party of Saudi Arabia. One of the most influential is the German Green Party, founded in 1980, because of its success as a social movement, its ability to attract votes in the elections, and its record of political parliamentary intervention. It is divided into two tendencies: the ‘Realos’, or realists, who believe in the need and capacity for effective action in party politics, and the ‘Fundis’, or fundamentalists, who privilege the characteristics of a social movement over those of a political party, and denounce what they consider to be the irrationality of the current political system. This division was attenuated in 1998 when the Realos, led by Joschka Fisher, joined a coalition that governed Germany until 2005. Curiously, during that period, Joschka Fisher was the member of government who received greatest public support in the opinion polls. One of the most striking achievements of the German Green Party at that time was the 2000 decision to phase out the use of nuclear energy in Germany. A common feature of environmental movements and in particular of green parties, throughout their history, is a systematic opposition to nuclear weapons and nuclear power reactors. The representation of the green parties in parliamentary politics remains very limited, almost always less than 10%, both in votes and in seats. They are very far from acquiring a sizeable majority and leading parliament. This situation can be interpreted as a signal that Western democracies welcome the parliamentary representation of the environmental movements, but are unwilling to give them more power because they believe that it would threaten economic growth, viewed as a sine qua non condition for the improvement of well-being and quality of life. For the 5.12 Merits and Limits of the Environmental Movements 315 other parties, especially those situated more to the left, the green parties represent a potential threat, due to their ability to attract votes. Perhaps the most important contribution of the green parties is the implementation of environmental policies, usually in a weak form, by the parties in power, as a means of facing the ‘green challenge’ in the context of parliamentary and local elections. The presence of green parties in parliament and especially in coalition governments, as has already happened in Belgium, Germany, Finland, France, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, and Sweden, has served to influence and reorient the political debate towards a greater awareness of environmental problems, and consequently to a stronger commitment to solve them. Recently, in September 2010, the German Green Party received a record support of 22% of the electorate in the polls, just two percentage points behind the Social Democrats (Der Spiegel, 2010a). However it remains to be seen whether this is a stable tendency or results mainly from the government decision to extend the lifespan of Germany’s nuclear reactors by up to 14 years. In 2011, following the Fukushima nuclear disaster of March, the German government announced a plan to end the use of nuclear power by 2020, replacing it by renewable energy sources. 5.12 Merits and Limits of the Environmental Movements Many supporters of the more radical environmental movements consider that engagement in parliamentary party politics is ineffectual, dispensable, or secondary compared with other more direct forms of action with greater impact on society and on the media. They prefer to organize activities at the level of local communities, including education and dissemination programs, demonstrations, sit-ins, boycotts, sabotage, and other actions that catch the attention of the largest possible number of people. There is an enormous variety of non-governmental organizations in the area of the environment. Some act forcefully and with maximum visibility against activities they consider to have strongly negative environmental impacts or that lead to the destruction of nature. Greenpeace specialises in the fight against pollution of the oceans, the loss of biodiversity, whaling, deep sea bottom trawling, global warming, nuclear energy, the destruction of the rainforests, and the use of genetically modified organisms. Other organizations are more radical in their objectives and methods, such as Sea Shepherd, which seeks to protect the oceans and marine life, Earth First, and the Earth Liberation Front. All have practiced ‘ecotage’, a word derived from the ‘eco-’ prefix and ‘sabotage’. It consists in direct actions of civil disobedience and sabotage to defend the environment, like lying down in front of bulldozers about to destroy particularly valuable environmental assets, staying in the top of trees of primary forests that are about to be felled, sabotaging earth-moving vehicles, destroying roads opened for deforestation and burning SUVs in car showrooms. These environmental organizations are extremely careful to avoid human aggression, direct or collateral, and there 316 5 Human Development and Environmental Discourses are no examples of physical harm to people. Nevertheless, in some cases, economic losses have been inflicted. Because of such incidents, the US FBI classified the Earth Liberation Front as a terrorist organization, and imprisoned some of its members. However, the FBI has been less diligent in seeking out those responsible for acts of violence against radical environmental activists (Dryzek, 2005). Over the past 30 years, the environmental movements have made important contributions to the development of a coherent critical and integrated analysis of the environmental, social, political, and economic situation at the local, national, and global scales. They have disseminated and strengthened an awareness of the major environmental problems worldwide. These achievements constitute one of the most important ideological advances to face the challenges of the deteriorating relationship between mankind and the environment, both today and in the future. In spite of their diversity the environmental movements converge when they attribute the ecological crisis to the current paradigm of a global economy that does not incorporate the protection of the environment. However, they are far from having the capacity to change that paradigm, at least in the short term future. Regardless of the 2008–2009 financial and economic crisis, economic liberalism is ever more firmly implanted and expanding throughout the world. Environmental movements do not offer a competitive and coherent social, political, and economic alternative. Nevertheless, they propose various solutions with the common objective of developing active social and political structures to defend the environment, based on a participatory democracy that is much stronger at the regional and local levels. 5.13 The Origins of the Sustainable Development Discourse What are the viable solutions leading to a transition to a sustainable global civilization? To answer this question, one must first analyse the origin and development of the conceptual and institutional aspects concerning the environment at the global level. The United Nations Conference on the Human Environment held in Stockholm in June 1972 marked the beginning of international political awareness of global environmental problems. This was only possible through the recognition of the very strong relationship between human development and the environment, and the deep social and economic inequalities between developed and developing countries. Initially, the governments of the latter group considered the environmental concerns of the developed countries to be a luxury of the rich, compared with the urgent problems of hunger, poverty, disease, and lack of water, sanitation, and electricity in their own countries. In her address to the representatives of the 113 countries convened, Indira Gandhi, the Indian prime minister and the only national leader to participate in the Stockholm Conference, apart from the prime minister of Sweden, said: “Poverty is the worst pollution”. One of the most significant results of the conference was the establishment of the United Nations Environment Programme. 5.13 The Origins of the Sustainable Development Discourse 317 Its headquarters were established in Nairobi, and its first executive director was Maurice Strong, a Canadian who chaired the Stockholm Conference. Strong introduced the term ‘eco-development’ as a contribution to reconcile the desires of human development with the protection of the environment. Stockholm succeeded in placing environmental problems on the international agenda. Significantly, only two years later, the idea of building a ‘sustainable society’ emerged at an ecumenical conference on Science and Technology for Human Development, organized by the World Council of Churches (WCC, 1974). The most important aspect of these new ideas was to address simultaneously and coherently the need for equity among people and nations, the need for the sustainability of access to natural resources, and the need for the democratic participation in decision-making processes. Shortly afterwards, in 1980, the concept of sustainable development emerged in a document published by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, defined as “the integration of conservation and development to ensure that modifications to the planet do indeed secure the survival and well-being of all people”(IUCN, 1980). In 1983, the United Nations General Assembly created the World Commission on the Environment and Development, chaired by the Norwegian prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland. The commission was asked to formulate “a global agenda for change”. The first term of reference for the Commission’s work was “to propose long-term environmental strategies for achieving sustainable development by the year 2000 and beyond”. It is amazing how far away we are in 2011 from achieving that goal. Probably, even further away than in 1983. The commission’s report, published in 1987, recognized that “many critical survival issues are related to uneven development, poverty and population growth. They all place unprecedented pressures on the planet’s lands, waters, forests and other natural resources, not least in the developing countries” (WCED, 1987). The report focused on the importance of the principle of intergenerational equity and defined sustainable development as “development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. This definition did not satisfy everyone and other definitions arose. It gradually became clear that sustainable development is not a concept of a strictly scientific nature which can be defined without ambiguities, because opinions differ on what precisely should count among the human needs that should be considered for the application of the principle of intergenerational equity. These can be categorized into the social, economic, and environmental realms, but the relative importance of the different components is a matter of opinion. Sustainable development is a discourse used by distinct concerns and interests, sometimes contradictory. Those more concerned with the environment stress above all the need to ensure nature preservation, ecosystem services, and the sustainable use of natural resources. Some survivalists tend to adopt the sustainable development discourse and claim that its active component implies a non-growth economy. Those more concerned with the profound inequalities of human development and the needs of the poor consider that the priority for sustainable development must be to combat hunger, poverty, disease, lack of water, basic sanitation, commercialized 318 5 Human Development and Environmental Discourses energy, and institutional capacity for education and professional training, especially in the developing countries. Finally, those closely linked to business and to the economic sphere tend to emphasize the idea that sustainable development means primarily economic growth. This growth is considered essential to eradicate poverty and hunger, to sustain the growing world population and eventually to stabilize it. 5.14 The Challenge of Sustainable Development The diversity of discourses that claim to implement the concept of sustainable development is not necessarily a disadvantage. Sustainable development is nowadays a meeting point for the debate about the state of the world and how to respond to the social, economic, environmental, and institutional challenges we are facing. An increasing number of people believe in and work toward sustainable development, although they may not know all the challenges and problems that must be overcome to reach it at the world level. They feel that it is the discourse that generates the greatest consensus, while being somehow inevitable on the global scale. For many it is an acceptable utopia that must be pursued in spite of all the odds. Sustainable development is nowadays a politically correct discourse that many politicians all over the world adopt and claim to apply. The sustainable development discourse has its own frontiers that distinguish it from the limits and Promethean discourses. It recognises that there are ecological limits to growth, but contrary to the limits discourse, claims that economic growth can continue probably indefinitely if the right policies and measures are adopted. It emphasizes that the limits for the use of energy, water, land, and natural resources will manifest themselves in the form of rising costs and diminishing returns, and not in the form of sudden losses with critical consequences (WCED, 1987). The discourse assumes that it will be possible to satisfy the sum of all the growing needs of humankind, without specified limits and without changing the current fundamental social and economic models, through an intelligent and integrated management of human and natural systems. This is a very ambitious proposition, especially if it is intended to be applicable in the distant future. The discourse endorses a vision where economic growth, global equity, population stabilization, peace, and environmental protection can all coexist. Critics point out that there is no demonstration of how to put such a program into practice and therefore that it is utopian. Some go as far as saying that there is an intractable contradiction in the juxtaposition of the words ‘development’, interpreted as implying continued economic growth, and ‘sustainable’, meaning the uninterrupted availability of natural resources in a protected environment. In any case, it should be remembered that sustainable development is a discourse, and not a concept that can be unambiguously defined. The sustainable development discourse is distinguishable from the Promethean discourse because it recognizes the need to integrate the social, economic, and environmental components, rather than limiting itself to relying on human ingenuity 5.14 The Challenge of Sustainable Development 319 and endeavour, supported by science and technology, to solve the problems of human development. The latter looks at nature as raw matter that can be transformed into whatever resources we may need, while the former acknowledges the complexity of the problems and searches for equilibrium between the requirements of social development, economic growth, protection of the environment, and nature preservation. The greatest challenge of sustainable development is to bring the quality of life in the developing countries up to standards comparable to those currently enjoyed by the majority of people in the developed countries, while preserving environmental integrity. Let us try to evaluate the scale of this challenge. The average per capita income in the 30 richest countries is about seven times the average income in the other 134 countries, excluding those where no reliable information is available (Friedman, 2005). To bring all those 134 countries to the same standard of living as the last country on the list of the 30 richest ones in the next 50 years, admitting an annual increase of 1.3% in the total population of those countries, would require an increase in the world economic output by a factor greater than four. This calculation does not include the economic growth that would result from the rise in living standards of the richest countries during the same period of time. The consequences of quadrupling the world economic output in 50 years as regards natural resource availability and environmental degradation are staggering. When making such estimates, various questions arise. Is it possible to significantly reduce the inequalities in the world with the current paradigm of economic growth? Will it be possible to fully globalize the lifestyles in industrialized countries? How could we find alternative development paths and can they become attractive to a considerable part of humanity? What are the primary energy sources that will support the transition to a much more equitable world? How could we ensure the sustainability of the transition as regards natural resource availability, especially water, soils, ecosystem services, and biodiversity? How could we ensure that the transition does not seriously aggravate global changes, in particular climate change? These are some of the major challenges that face us on the path to sustainable development. One of the main virtues of this discourse is that it presents a global and integrated framework to address them through coordinated collective efforts. In spite of all its shortcomings, the sustainable development discourse is currently the most balanced and promising. Its innovative re-conceptualisation of the environmental problems through integration with social and economic concerns stimulates creativity for new solutions acceptable to the different interest groups involved. Nevertheless, the discourse is mainly interpretive, and has great difficulty in transforming itself into effective action plans at the local, national, and global levels. 320 5 Human Development and Environmental Discourses 5.15 Hope in Rio de Janeiro, Uneasiness in Johannesburg, and Resignation in Rio+20 After the publication of the Brundtland report in 1987, the sustainable development discourse acquired increasing visibility and notability, especially in international governmental and non-governmental organizations dedicated to environmental issues. This process reached a high point at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, often called the Earth Summit, held in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992, with the participation of 182 governments and 108 heads of state or government. The Rio Earth Summit enjoyed a climate of hope and confidence in the future and proposed a significant change of course that would put the community of nations on the path to sustainable development. Even so there was a considerable tension between the G77 group of southern countries and the group of more industrialized countries. The south insisted on restructuring global economic relations so that it could obtain debt relief, increased official development aid, higher commodity prices, increased technology transfer and access to markets in the north. At the time, the industrialized countries had the financial and economic power that enabled them to negotiate from a much stronger position, and their main concern was with global environmental problems. Significantly, the Stockholm Declaration was more constructive when it emphasized environmental protection and international cooperation. In the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, there is more emphasis on development and national sovereignty, which reflects the growing north–south confrontation regarding inequalities of development and how to overcome it. Nevertheless the Rio Declaration included two new and very important principles: the precautionary and the polluter-pays principles. Another breakthrough was the approval of the Agenda 21 intended to be the framework of action for sustainable development. In addition, the Rio Earth Summit produced the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Convention on Biological Diversity, and a nonlegally binding document on forestry known as Forest Principles. Immediately after the summit, in December 1992, the United Nations General Assembly established the Commission on Sustainable Development, with the objective of implementing Agenda 21 throughout the world. The sustainable development discourse was disseminated globally and became well implanted in some countries, creating the minimum conditions needed to start acting. However, over the next 10 years, new sources of resistance were encountered and little was done for its effective worldwide implementation. As expected there was much more reservation and pessimism at the World Summit on Sustainable Development held in Johannesburg, from 26 August to 4 September 2002, than in the Rio Earth Summit. President George H.W. Bush was present and participated actively in Rio, but his son George W. Bush boycotted the event, rendering it partially inoperative. This attitude had the political support of conservatives in the USA. A letter written to President Bush by various US corporate-sponsored think tanks, including 5.15 Hope in Rio de Janeiro, Uneasiness in Johannesburg, and Resignation in Rio+20 321 the American Enterprise Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, praised his firm decision in spite of all the efforts that were made for him to be present at the summit. The industrialized countries, led by the USA, saw Johannesburg primarily as an opportunity to safeguard global trade rather than a chance to agree on an effective plan of action to combat poverty and stop the continuous deterioration of the natural environment. The Johannesburg Declaration reaffirms the commitment to agreements made at the Stockholm and Rio Summits but sets weaker goals than those agreed upon at those meetings. It also lacks the provisions for substantial enforcement, making it very difficult to evaluate future progress. The most important innovation from Johannesburg was the launching of about 300 voluntary partnerships of non-state parties among themselves or with governments, involving about US $ 235 million of pledged resources. This development is welcome and reflects the increasing role of NGOs and business in international environmental issues. In the end, some said that sustainable development had lost the edge it had at Rio and become more of a rhetorical discourse, although it remains the politically accepted discourse internationally. The summit left many people worried about the sustainability of our collective future. The hope of Rio de Janeiro had given way to a greater unease about the coming decades. The next United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, known as Rio+20, will take place in Rio de Janeiro in 2012. The emphasis continues to be on sustainable development. Its overall objective is “to secure renewed political commitment for sustainable development, assessing the progress to date and the remaining gaps in the implementation of the outcomes of the major summits on sustainable development and addressing new and emerging challenges” (UNGA, 2009). Rio+20 will take place in a very different world to the Stockholm, Rio, and Johannesburg meetings. We are now facing multiple and interrelated crises regarding development and the environment: financial and economic uncertainty, increasing food prices and decreasing food security, water scarcity, volatile energy prices (particularly for oil), continued lack of safe drinking water and sanitation for hundreds of millions of people, high unemployment in many countries, particularly in the most industrialised countries, unsustainable consumption patterns, climate change, increased desertification, accelerating ecosystem degradation, biodiversity loss, and many more. Moreover, the balance of economic and financial power in the world has changed significantly since Johannesburg. The emerging economies are now the main engines for economic growth and employment, while the more industrialized countries are still battling the consequences of the financial and economic crisis and struggling with high structural unemployment and persistent deficits and debts. Rio+20 will focus on “a green economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication and the institutional framework for sustainable development” (UNGA, 2009). The emphasis on the green economy echoes the appeals for a Global Green New Deal (UNEP, 2009) to face the challenges of the credit crisis, poverty, environmental degradation, climate change, and high oil prices. 322 5 Human Development and Environmental Discourses Furthermore, it is significant that the countries with the highest green funding percentage of the national GDP in the world are two Asiatic countries, currently with high economic growth: South Korea, a developed country, with 6.99%, and China, a developing country with an emerging economy, with 5.24% (UNEP, 2009). In view of the new world landscape regarding the economy and environment, at Rio+20, Western countries are likely to lose part of the leading role they had in previous Earth Summits. Rio+20 may be the time to renew our hope for a global sustainable development, but it may also be the opportunity to acknowledge our incapacity to move significantly in that direction during the last 20 years. Maybe this recognition could assist in making a more precise identification of the obstacles that must be overcome. 5.16 Sustainable Development and Global Governance: Present Situation and Future Prospects The sustainable development discourse is relatively weak in the USA, both at the federal and state government levels, and also in civil society. It was only during the government of W.J. Clinton, in 1993, that a President’s Council on Sustainable Development was established, largely due to the support of Vice-President Al Gore. In Europe, there is generally greater knowledge and receptivity with regard to this discourse. The European Community established an idealistic environmental program through its Environmental Action Plans beginning in 1973, following the recommendations of the Stockholm Earth Summit. From the beginning of the 1990s sustainable development gradually became a normative principle for EU environmental policy. The principle of sustainable development was included in the text of the EU Amsterdam Treaty, approved in 1997. In 2001 the EU Council, meeting in Gothenburg, formulated a sustainable development strategy for the EU for the first time. Moreover, sustainable development was established as a key objective in the Lisbon Treaty of 2007, although its compatibility with other EU plans, especially the Lisbon Strategy, the development plan of the EU for the economy between 2000 and 2010, was problematic. In spite of all these achievements, the implementation of the EU environmental policies has always been relegated to a secondary priority during economic downturns. The environmental component of sustainability in different countries has been compared using an index developed by the Universities of Yale and Columbia, the World Economic Forum, and the European Commission Joint Research Centre (ESI, 2005). According to this methodology, the five countries with highest Environmental Sustainability Index in 2005 were Finland, Norway, Uruguay, Sweden, and Iceland, a clear majority of North European countries. In 2006 the Environmental Sustainability Index was superseded by the Environmental Performance Index developed by the same institutions, which has a stronger emphasis on outcome-oriented indicators. In 2010, the five countries with higher Environmental Performance In- 5.16 Sustainable Development and Global Governance: Present and Future 323 dex were Iceland, Switzerland, Costa Rica, Sweden, and Norway. Costa Rica is a remarkable exception among developing countries, and it may become a model for this group of economies. At the bottom of the list, the countries with lowest Environmental Performance Index were Togo, Angola, Mauritania, the Central African Republic, and Sierra Leone, all in Africa. There is no well established comparative index of sustainable development that includes the social, economic, and environmental components. This is quite comprehensible since it is very difficult to establish universal criteria to compare the sustainable development performance of different countries with the current dualism of development in the world. If all countries in the world share the same objective of continuous economic growth, how should we measure sustainable development in that area? Does sustainable development impose any limits on economic growth? What are those limits? To what extent are the more industrialized countries good models for sustainable development? If they are, and if sustainable development is in fact an acceptable guideline for the future of humans on Earth, the desirable outcome could be for the developing countries to achieve the average level of consumption and production and the quality of life currently enjoyed in the industrialized countries. Nevertheless this program is very likely to be incompatible with the sustainability of natural resource use, the stability of ecosystem services, the protection of the environment, and the preservation of biodiversity. Thus it would not be a program likely to achieve a higher degree of global sustainable development. The way out of this impasse would be to identify and establish the constraints that sustainable development should impose on economic growth, primarily in the more developed countries. Since the Rio Earth Summit of 1992, businesses have been increasingly concerned, and many have been mobilized to contribute to sustainable development. This is a very important and positive development. The World Business Council for Sustainable Development established in 1995 is a global association of some 200 companies entirely dedicated to the promotion of the role of business in achieving sustainable development. Its aim is to share knowledge, experience, and best practice, to advocate business positions on sustainable development, and to establish partnerships with governmental and non-governmental organizations. Recently, it published a courageous report entitled Vision 2050: The New Agenda for Business, which indicates the pathway to reach 2050 with enough food, clean water, sanitation, safe housing, mobility, education, and health for the 9 billion people that will probably be living at that time within the limits of what the Earth can supply and renew. The critical pathways of change identified in the report are (WBCSD, 2010): [. . . ] addressing the development needs of billions of people, enabling education and economic empowerment, particularly of women, and developing radically more eco-efficient solutions, lifestyles and behaviour, incorporation of the costs of externalities, starting with carbon, ecosystem services and water, doubling agricultural output without increasing the amount of land or water used, halting deforestation and increasing yields from planted forests, halving carbon emissions worldwide (based on 2005 levels) by 2050 through a shift to low-carbon energy systems and highly improved demand-side energy efficiency, providing 324 5 Human Development and Environmental Discourses universal access to low-carbon mobility and delivering a four-to-tenfold improvement in the use of resources and materials. It is significant that this revolutionary program is proposed by a business association. Its implementation requires a very high degree of political commitment throughout the world and an effective coordination between the policies of all governments. How can we achieve that level of commitment and coordination in a highly fragmented world riddled by deep inequalities of development, corruption, and bad governance? Vision 2050 demonstrates that there are indeed pathways to sustainable development in the next 40 years, but it is difficult to see how they can be reached without the establishment of strong institutional structures for international governance. The move to sustainable development in an increasingly complex and diverse world requires a broad political agreement, an enormous coordination effort, and the capacity to enforce the agreed plans of action. This brings us to the questions of international governance. As early as 2000, the Global Ministerial Environment Forum, organized by the UNEP, stated in its final declaration that (UNEP, 2000): The 2002 conference (Johannesburg Earth Summit) should review the requirements for a greatly strengthened institutional structure for international environmental governance based on an assessment of future needs for an institutional architecture that has the capacity to effectively address the wide-ranging environmental threats in a globalizing world. However, no significant progress toward that goal has been achieved since then. As frequently happens with environmental problems, there are alarming discrepancies between commitments and action. All too often the institutions of the UN system have insufficient funding or authority to efficiently and effectively tackle the issues under their responsibility. UNEP remains one of the smaller UN programs with very little authority over other sections of the UN. The creation of a World Environmental Organization standing side by side with the World Trade Organization and the World Health Organization would be a very important step toward addressing the global challenges of sustainable development in an institutionally balanced way. It will be impossible to integrate the environment into the mainstream of decision-making without a global inter-governmental institution with the powers to take legal action, to enforce laws, and to use a binding dispute settlement system. A more ambitious goal is to strengthen the institutions of global governance, giving them the power to enforce compliance. If we are to follow the pathway of strongly institutionalized global governance, we should start by strengthening a world community interested in the process that would then proceed to establish a global constitution with clearly defined rights, duties, and objectives of global sustainable development. It is essential that people recognize the benefits and the legitimacy of strong global governance institutions and that states agree on their goals and procedures. The United Nations is well aware that it should play an important role in this process. Note for instance that the issue proposed by the United Nations General Assembly President for the 2010 General Assembly general debate was Reaffirming 5.17 Environmental Economics, Ecological Economics, and Ecological Modernization 325 the central role of the United Nations in global governance. Also recently, on 9 August 2010, the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced the establishment of a High-Level Panel on Sustainability formed by 21 members, to be co-chaired by Finland’s President Tarja Halonen and South African President Jacob Zuma. The panel is expected to come up with practical solutions to address the institutional and financial arrangements needed to promote a low-carbon economy, enhance the resilience to climate change impacts, and tackle the interconnected challenges of poverty, hunger, water, and energy security. The final report of the panel is to be delivered at the end of 2011 in order to serve as input to the Rio+20 Earth Summit. The main objective of these initiatives is to increase the commitment of Member States to the pursuit of sustainable development. Let us hope that they will be successful in the Rio+20 Conference. Support for sustainable development is very far from unanimous. Many people, some with high visibility, are firmly against it, particularly among US conservatives. Their argument is that sustainable development corresponds to the implementation by the government of the universal principles of Agenda 21, which implies a form of global governance that affects all aspects of human life (Lamb, 1996). This interference is considered to be a severe limitation to human freedom and to the free market economy, and should therefore be repudiated. Pronunciations against science have recently become more frequent in the USA, especially among the conservatives. This tendency is part of the anti-science movement, analysed in Chap. 2, and is likely to become stronger and more widespread in the future. For the conservatives, science is very probably flawed, or should be ignored when its application leads to the establishment of norms that regulate the market, restrictions on certain forms of economic activity, increased government intrusion in people’s lives, or indeed any challenge to the sustainability of the paradigm of continuous economic growth. In particular, it should be ignored when it collides with religious dogma. In such a movement, science is not considered to be neutral since science should always mean progress: only devious liberal and socialist minds can try to break that relationship. Rush Limbaugh a very popular radio host in the USA has stated that “science has become a home for displaced socialists and communists” and called climate change science “the biggest scam in the history of the world” (Nature, 2010). These anti-science voices are unable to influence the majority of the American people, but they can gradually reduce the competitiveness of the USA if they become more powerful. 5.17 Environmental Economics, Ecological Economics, and Ecological Modernization The relation between the environment and the economy is at the core of the current challenges of sustainable development. Not surprisingly, there is a great wealth of 326 5 Human Development and Environmental Discourses theoretical analysis and practical proposals on how to make the sustainable use of resources and the protection of the environment compatible with economic growth. Environmental economics follows neoclassical economics in its aim to shift the economic system towards an efficient allocation of natural resources. The objective is to bring the question of increasingly scarce natural resources into mainstream economic analysis and practice. When resources are not allocated efficiently, in part because of the environmental incompatibility of their use, this is interpreted as a market failure that can always be corrected. One of the major concerns of environmental economics is the valuation of externalities so that they can be internalized. There are specific methodologies for doing so, such as hedonic pricing, the travel cost method, and the contingent valuation method (Perman, 1999; Markandaya, 2002). Ecological economics is a trans-disciplinary field of study that goes beyond the usual scope of analysis of conventional neoclassical economics by addressing the interdependence between economics and natural ecosystems. The core idea is that the economy of the human society is a subsystem of an overall economic–ecological ecosystem that co-evolves with the natural world. There is a recognition that the environment poses natural constraints on the provision of natural resources and on the absorption of the wastes of production and consumption. Some concepts of the natural and physical sciences are frequently used in ecological economics, such as throughput, carrying capacity, and entropy (GeorgescuRoegen, 1971). In accordance with the second law of thermodynamics, all physical processes that occur in the economic system convert low-entropy energy and materials into high-entropy wastes. For instance, when transforming a high entropy copper ore into a low entropy sheet of copper, the decrease is more than compensated by a larger entropy increase associated with the mining process. In terms of entropy, the cost of any economic or biological activity is always higher than the product (Georgescu-Roegen, 1971). The question is whether or not the increase in the open system of the human economy relative to the surrounding closed system of the global environment on Earth leads to entropic constraints on economic growth. The emphasis on natural and physical constraints to economic growth in ecological economics places it closer to the limits discourse. On the other hand, environmental economics has more affinity with the Promethean discourse. Most industrialized countries already have a significant experience of environmental problem-solving within the framework of their economic policies. These experiences give varying emphasis to regulatory administrative mechanisms based on the advice of experts, to a more participative democratic process, or to greater reliance on market forces. Nature conservation has improved significantly and the negative impact of some economic activities on the environment at the local and national level has generally decreased. Finland, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden are among the countries with the most successful environmental policy performance in the 1980s and 1990s (Dryzek, 2005). One of the reasons for these successes was the practice of ecological modernization, a process proposed at the beginning of the 1980s in Germany by the sociologists Joseph Huber (Huber, 1982; Huber, 1985) and Martin Janicke (Janicke, 1985). 5.17 Environmental Economics, Ecological Economics, and Ecological Modernization 327 The main idea is that environmental degradation can be stopped in the industrialized countries within the current political and economic system through a restructuring of the processes associated with production and consumption. Ecological modernization is based on the conviction that it is possible to decouple economic growth from environmental degradation. Furthermore, it considers that economic growth and the protection of the environment can mutually reinforce one another, and that only this synergy can guarantee economic sustainability. Environmental problems can harm the basis of production, which implies that environmental regulation is not necessarily in conflict with economic growth. The success of this strategy is synthesised in the well known slogan ‘pollution prevention pays’ (Hajer, 1995), which presupposes that business has sufficient money to adhere to ecological modernization and is willing to wait for the beneficial returns from its investment rather than expecting quick profits. Science and technology are the main driving forces of reform in the ecological modernization of industry. The most important social agents in this restructuring process are scientists and engineers, engaged in the search for innovative solutions, and businessmen, motivated by the advantages of a greater environmental sustainability and a higher competitiveness resulting from their public green image. A promising sign is that there is a growing desire in the market for products and processes that are environmentally friendly. Some companies take advantage of this trend through greenwashing, a form of deception in which their production processes and products are misleadingly promoted as protecting the environment. For ecological modernization to be successful, it will be necessary to reach compromises involving the whole of society, but especially business and the political decision-makers. It is also important to develop a strategic vision of the environmental problems in the medium to long term, implement mechanisms that support the sustainability of the ecosystem services, understand in detail the processes of production and transport of pollutants, and systematically apply the precautionary principle. Ecological modernization relies on pollution prevention, waste reduction, product life-cycle assessment, and the analysis of material and energy flows. It promotes ‘cradle to cradle’ as opposed to ‘cradle to grave’ forms of manufacturing (Braungart, 2002). Instead of repairing the adverse effects of pollutants at the end of the production and consumption processes, the objective is to try to identify the processes that cause pollution in order to modify or replace them. Another important goal is to evaluate the various forms of environmental degradation in economic and financial terms so that the response measures can be quantified and optimized. Only in this way will it be possible to internalise the costs of the negative environmental externalities of industrial activities, production processes, and patterns of consumption. The success of ecological modernization depends largely on a political and economic system able to adopt environmental policies and regulations that prevail over liberal business practices privileging competitiveness and profit above all else. To achieve this goal it is necessary to promote negotiations and consensual compromises between the public and private stakeholders. The followers of the Promethean discourse consider ecological modernization a waste of wealth and economic gro- 328 5 Human Development and Environmental Discourses wing potential on excessive, onerous, and expensive regulations. Their proposal is to let the market function freely, and to rely on science and technology to solve the environmental and natural resource scarcity problems on a case-by-case basis when they become pressing. Compared with the sustainable development discourse, ecological modernization is much more focused since it has the specific aim of decreasing environmental degradation through technology-driven innovations in production and consumption. Its practical application has been successful in a few developed countries with a consensual and interventionist policy style, particularly Germany and the Netherlands, where it was first developed. In countries with a more adversarial policymaking style and with strong liberal economic competition, as in the Englishspeaking developed countries, particularly the USA and Australia (Jahn, 1998; Fisher, 2001), it has been much less successful. Ecological modernization is a reforming discourse that promotes confidence in the future of the developed countries as regards the environmental sustainability of their economic growth. It is a discourse of reassurance for the citizens of the more prosperous and industrialized countries. The applicability of ecological modernization in the developing countries is very limited because of the relatively low industrialization. Moreover, in these countries, the problem of environmental degradation has a relatively low priority, and production and consumption are at much lower levels than in the more industrialized countries. The analysis of economic and environmental indicators reveals that it has been possible to advance considerably toward decoupling economic growth from environmental degradation at the local and national levels in several developed countries, particularly in Europe, such as Finland, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden. However, the situation becomes much more complex when considering the contribution to environmental degradation at the global level. All countries, and in particular the developed countries, contribute directly to global environmental degradation and pollution and also indirectly through the products they import from outside countries. The distinction between the two components becomes clearer if we consider the environmental Kuznets curves (Kuznets, 1955). These curves represent the environmental indicators in a given country as a function of the income per capita. They are supposed to have an inverted U-shape, which results from a greater demand for improved environmental quality when the GDP per capita in the country goes above a certain threshold. Although some indicators at the country level, such as SO2 emissions, follow a Kuznets curve, others such as CO2 emissions do not. The more industrialized countries are effectively ‘outsourcing’ their greenhouse gas emissions to the developing countries. About one third of the CO2 emissions associated with the goods and services consumed by the more industrialized countries are emitted outside their borders, and mostly in the developing countries. Europe is responsible for about four tonnes of CO2 emissions per capita in the form of products containing embedded carbon imported from abroad, while in the USA the corresponding value is two and a half tonnes per capita (Davis, 2010). Moreover, tighter controls on CO2 emissions in Europe and in other developed countries tend 5.18 Current and Future Global Energy Scenarios and the Patterns of Growth 329 to drive factories that produce aluminium, steel, iron, and cement to relocate abroad, where they will increase CO2 emissions, a process that is known as carbon leakage. Another example of environmental degradation outsourcing by industrialized countries is provided by Japan, where the effects of its large ecological footprint are felt mostly outside the country, in particular with the massive timber importation from the Southeast Asian tropical rainforests and the very intensive fishing activity on the global scale. Other examples are the relocation of polluting industries to less developed countries that export most of their products to the industrialized countries. If the economy continues to depend on the importation of relatively large amounts of energy and natural resources, the negative environmental externalities persist and are just relocated. It is therefore necessary to analyse the decoupling between economic growth and environmental degradation in the more industrialized countries not only at the local and national level, but also at the global level, taking into account the external impacts of the internal production and consumption patterns. As for the developing countries, the behaviour of the environmental and economic indicators shows that, in most of them, there is no decoupling of economic growth from environmental degradation at the local and national level, and that it is much more difficult to apply ecological modernization. Nonetheless, it is a very important theoretical framework to reduce environmental degradation and pollution in developed countries, and it may be possible to apply it to all countries in the future. 5.18 Current and Future Global Energy Scenarios and the Patterns of Growth Energy is the main basis for the sustainability of the current paradigm of economic growth. Without abundant and relatively inexpensive primary energy sources, it is impossible to ensure economic growth in the more industrialized countries, in the emerging economies, or in the other developing countries. Energy plays a central role in determining the future development trends in the short, medium, and long term. It is therefore very important to analyse the global energy situation, to determine the trends of its recent evolution, and to discuss the future projections of supply and demand within the framework of the different environmental and development discourses. We are manifestly in a transition phase from an energy age dominated by the supremacy of fossil fuels to another age still permeated by many uncertainties. There are two main reasons that should encourage us to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels. One is that they are not environmentally compatible because of the CO2 emissions. The other reason is that, with the current rate of consumption, we are probably less than a century away from the fossil fuel Hubert peak. As already mentioned in Chap. 3, we do not now the exact position in time of the Hubert peak for conventional oil, but most experts think that we are very close to it. Nevertheless, fossil fuels continue to be very competitive in the energy market, especially coal, whose 330 5 Human Development and Environmental Discourses reserves are relatively abundant. It is very likely that both the conventional forms of fossil fuels — coal, petroleum, and natural gas — and the unconventional forms, such as oil sands, oil shale, shale gas, and other types of deposits will be exploited until all reserves are completely exhausted. What solutions are available for this transition to a non-fossil fuel age? The time factor is very important in this analysis. If we consider the short and medium term, up to 50 years, it is essential to improve energy efficiency, to develop and deploy the modern renewable energies and to use clean coal technologies, particularly carbon capture and storage. For the next 20 to 30 years, most probably, we will have to continue to rely heavily on fossil fuels, and increasingly on coal. The modern renewable energies (small hydro, modern biomass, wind, solar, geothermal, and biofuels) are growing fast but at present they account for only 2.7% of the global final energy consumption. Energy from nuclear fission is an important primary energy source, especially in the emerging economies, but its contribution to the global market will probably remain relatively small. In the medium to long term, after 50 and 100 years, the problems become different. If the current rate of global consumption of energy is maintained, fossil fuels, particularly oil and natural gas, will have to be replaced on a massive scale by other primary forms of energy. The new renewable energies are likely to become increasingly important, sharing more than 50% of the global final energy consumption, but this goal will require huge investments worldwide in deployment, grid infrastructures, research, and innovation. Research and development may lead to more attractive nuclear fission reactors. Moreover it is hoped that we will be able to exploit nuclear fusion energy within 50 years, although as previously shown the uncertainties are very great. From the environmental point of view, insistence on the use of fossil fuels up to their exhaustion is likely to bring about severe problems. Let us imagine that all the known reserves of fossil fuels are burned to produce energy and that all the resulting CO2 emissions are released into the atmosphere. In this scenario the atmospheric concentration of CO2 is likely to reach values of the order of 4 500 ppmv. The average global temperature will then increase by more than 9◦ C, and the average sea level will rise by more than ten metres above the present level (Hasselmann, 2003). The transition to the new equilibrium state of the Earth climate system would be long, taking many hundreds of years, but it would be irreversible. This is a brutal scenario, with dire consequences that would profoundly transform human society and the geography of the world. The scenario becomes less harsh, but still very serious, if we fully deploy capture and storage of the CO2 emissions, especially in coal-fired power plants. An analysis of the behaviour of energy demand and price trends in recent years reveals the challenges that we are facing at the beginning of the 21st century. In the five years from 2001 to 2005, the world economy grew significantly, with an average annual rate of about 4.4%, measured at purchasing power parity exchange rates, while in the previous five years it had been only 3.5% (Davies, 2007). The emerging economies, in particular China, were largely responsible for the accelera- 5.18 Current and Future Global Energy Scenarios and the Patterns of Growth 331 tion in growth. In the OECD countries, the average annual growth rate was lower, at 2.5%. What was the energy consumption growth associated with this global economic growth? Before answering this question, it is important to emphasize that the global energy intensity has been decreasing, being approximately 33% lower in 2006 than in 1970 (IPCC, 2007). During the last 25 years the decline in energy intensity has been about three times faster in the OECD countries than in non-OECD countries (IEA, 2008). The energy consumption grew faster relative to GDP growth from 2001 to 2005 than in the previous five year period. Energy consumption accelerated from an average annual growth of 1.2% in the period of 1996 to 2000 to 3% in the period of 2001 to 2006 (Davies, 2007). China accounted for almost half of the global energy growth in the last five year period. In the same period, the average energy consumption growth diminished in the OECD countries, which shows the large and increasing weight of the developing countries, particularly the emerging economies, in world energy demand. The large increase in energy consumption from 2001 to 2006 occurred when the cost of energy, especially oil, was also fast increasing. From 1996 to 2000, the cost of fossil fuels remained relatively stable, with an average increase of around 8%. However, from 2001 to 2005, they increased significantly. Nominal prices of oil more than doubled, natural gas rose by around 75%, and a weighted average of coal prices by 46%, relative to the previous five-year period (Davies, 2007). Market mechanisms worked well to promote robust world economic growth in an environment of high energy prices. However, the resilience lasted only until 2008, when the price of the oil barrel reached US $ 148 in July. This oil shock contributed significantly to transforming the financial crisis in major oil importing countries into a full-blown recession (Roubini, 2010). Data from the US Energy Information Administration indicates that in the period 2004–2010 global conventional oil production has oscillated in a band between about 72 and 74 million barrels per day, reaching a plateau that some oil experts have interpreted as an announcement of a peak in conventional oil (EIA, 2011). On a yearly basis, conventional oil production had a peak in 2005 with an average daily production of 73.719 million barrels (EIA, 2010). In 2008 the average daily production in a month reached an overall maximum of 74.666 million barrels in July (EIA, 2010), but due to the very significant increase in oil prices, both demand and production crashed. It is relatively well established that growth in global conventional oil production depends mostly on an increase in Saudi Arabia’s production, and also that it will probably be very difficult to go above a global output of 77 million barrels a day. We are likely to be near the conventional oil peak, which implies future higher price volatility and increased supply uncertainty. The growing demand for oil has been met by the availability of biofuels and non-conventional oil. The all-liquid supply, including conventional oil, reached an average of 87.5 million barrels per day in July 2010 (EIA, 2010). Regarding the carbon intensity of energy consumption (the amount of CO2 emissions per unit of primary energy consumed), recent statistics are upsetting. The 332 5 Human Development and Environmental Discourses average global carbon intensity decreased systematically after the 1970s, remained constant in the period of 1996 to 2000, and then increased due to the growing dependency on coal, led by China. This recent trend accelerated the global CO2 emissions into the atmosphere, which up to 2008 were close to the highest emission scenarios considered by the IPCC in 2001 (IPCC, 2001). Between 1970 and 2004, greenhouse gas emissions from the energy sector increased by 145%, and in 2004, CO2 represented 77% of global anthropogenic emissions (IPCC, 2007). Things changed in 2009. In that year, for the first time since 1998, CO2 emissions from fossil fuels decreased by 1.1% relative to 2008, from 31.55 to 31.13 billion tonnes of CO2 (BP, 2010), because of the decrease in fuel consumption and industrial output resulting from the financial and economic crisis. However, the change in emissions was profoundly differentiated throughout the world. In the USA, emissions in 2009 fell by 6.5%, while in China they increased by 9%. Emissions from emerging economies, which now account for about half of the world’s emissions, grew by more than 5%, while in the OECD countries they fell by 6%. Regarding the future, the IPCC (IPCC, 2007) business-as-usual scenarios, meaning with no specific mitigation measures, project an increase in greenhouse gas emissions between 25 to 90% between the years 2000 and 2030. In these scenarios, fossil fuels maintain their dominant role among primary energy sources, and CO2 emissions increase by 45% to 110% in the same period. More recent estimates that take into account the recent financial and economic crisis project an increase in annual global greenhouse gas emissions of 45% from 2005 to 2030, reaching 65.6 GtCO2 e (McKinsey, 2010). This business-as-usual scenario, made after the crisis, estimates an overall reduction of emissions by 3.6 GtCO2 e by 2020 and 4.3 GtCO2 e by 2030, relative to the business-as-usual pre-crisis scenario. Again one finds that the projected changes in emissions are strongly differentiated throughout the world. The more industrialized countries experience the largest decline in the after-the-crisis scenario, estimated at 11% in the USA and 6% in Europe. Large reductions are also expected in many developing countries in Africa and Latin America, and also India. However, China and the rest of developing Asia are expected to increase their emissions relative to the business-as-usual pre-crisis scenario, by 1% and 2% respectively. The McKinsey study (McKinsey, 2010) identifies a mitigation potential of 38 GtCO2 e (corresponding to 58% of the annual emissions) through technical measures costing below 80 euros per tonne of CO2 e, relative to the business-as-usual emission scenario of 65.6 GtCO2 e in 2030. With an additional 8 GtCO2 e mitigation potential of more expensive technical measures in all regions of the world and in all sectors, the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases would peak at about 480 ppmv of CO2 e, a value likely to lead to a global average temperature increase above pre-industrial levels at equilibrium between 2.0 and 2.4◦ C. This would mean that dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system would very probably be avoided. Thus it is still possible to avoid such interference, but the probability of the required measures being implemented is very low. The International Energy Agency (IEA, 2010) has also developed a scenario where the greenhouse gas concentration peaks at 450 ppmv of CO2 e, and shown 5.18 Current and Future Global Energy Scenarios and the Patterns of Growth 333 that it is possible to achieve that goal through appropriate mitigation measures. The total cost of these measures relative to the business-as-usual scenario is estimated at 10.5 trillion US $, to be spent until 2030. This may seem an enormous and prohibitive amount of money, but it is not. To have a measure for comparison, note that on 15 October 2010 the total outstanding public debt in the USA was 13.6 trillion US $, of which approximately 66% is debt held by the public. Regarding citizens, their mortgages and other debts amount to around 13 trillion US $, which is almost 120% of their annual disposable income (The Economist, 2010). There is a very large discrepancy between the international consensus about what should be done to avoid dangerous anthropogenic climate change and what is actually done to avoid it. At the moment the world remains squarely on a trajectory of rising atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, and there are no clear signs that it seriously intends to change its course. The shift in economic power from the more industrialized countries to the developing countries is very clearly reflected in the energy sector. At the beginning of this century, the rich countries contributed about two-thirds to the world GDP, allowing for purchasing power parity. They now contribute just over half, and in 2020 they are likely to drop to 40%. China began to dominate the change in the structure of world energy consumption at the turn of the century. In the period from 2001 to 2006, it accounted for 46% of world energy growth, of which 73% was coal. China’s share of world energy consumption increased to 16% from 9% in 1991. Among the fossil fuels, coal is now the fastest growing fuel. Meanwhile, oil is losing its global share and gas has stabilised. As regards energy trade, the balance of energy markets and energy production is shifting geographically. The imbalance between imports and exports is becoming stronger, aggravating the costs of transportation and security risks. About 64% of the world’s oil, 26% of natural gas, and 17% of coal are traded internationally. Security of oil supply in OECD countries has been decreasing since its production peaked in 1997, due to the decline in North Sea production. Oil remains a very powerful instrument of potential conflict between the oil importing industrialized countries and the oil exporting developing countries. These risks coupled with the looming prospect of reaching the conventional oil peak could create potentially dangerous situations. A recent study by the Future Analysis Department of the German Bundeswehr Transformation Centre that was leaked to Der Spiegel (Der Spiegel, 2010) recognizes the threat of imminent peak oil, when supply gradually starts to decline and prices tend to increase significantly. The study indicates that there is some probability that we are very near peak oil and that major consequences will be felt within the next 15 to 30 years. The document shows how preoccupied the German government is, and also how unwilling it is to share its concerns openly. There are indications of a similar situation in the UK where documents from the British Department of Energy and Climate about a potential oil supply crisis and its foreseeable consequences on society are kept secret. In the USA Glen Sweetnam of the Department of Energy recently acknowledged that there is a chance of a decline in world liquid 334 5 Human Development and Environmental Discourses fuel production as of 2011 (Le Monde, 2010). Higher investments would have to be made to continue to satisfy oil demand, and this implies an increase in its price. In spite of these risks, worldwide government budgets for energy research, development, and demonstration have been decreasing from about US $ 20 billion in 1980 to about half that value in 2006 (IEA, 2008a). Private sector spending has also been gradually declining. These trends appear to be reversing, leading to a renewal of private and public investment in energy research and development. The many encouraging efforts to improve the efficiency of energy conversion from renewables and to develop new renewable energy sources need to be adequately supported. They cover the whole range of modern renewable energies: modern biomass, wind, solar, ocean, geothermal, and biofuels. One of the most promising is to optimize photosynthesis, the outstanding natural conversion process that originally made the development of higher life forms possible. The average efficiency of plant photosynthesis is only about 5%, but there are organisms, such as the green sulphur bacteria Chlorobaculum tepidum, that can convert around 10% of incident sunlight into chemical energy. These live in the deep, dark layers of oceans and lakes and have special photosynthetic antennae called chlorosomes that are very efficient solar power converters. The idea is to understand how these chlorosomes function and use them as a model to develop more efficient energy conversion systems. Another approach is to improve the machinery of photosynthesis at the molecular level, for instance by modifying a protein called rubisco that plays a fundamental role in the process, or by applying synthetic biology to improve the efficiency of photosynthesis in algae. A promising line of research is to develop photobioreactors to produce oil from microalgae and other organisms. Cultivated algae can also be used to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by making them grow off the carbon- and nitrogen-rich exhaust from traditional power plants. An example of physics research that may lead to far-reaching rewards in the future is the quest to increase the efficiency of photovoltaic solar energy converters. The current best commercially available photovoltaic devices are semiconductor photodiodes that reach energy conversion efficiencies of only 20–25%. It is possible to reach much better values. The efficiency of a photovoltaic system is limited by the Carnot efficiency, derived from the second law of thermodynamics. In the case of a photovoltaic device, the hot source is the Sun’s surface at a temperature of about 6 000 K and the cold source is the Earth environment with a temperature around 288 K. Thus it is theoretically possible to reach efficiencies of 95%. Conversion efficiencies of about 85% are very likely to be achieved through various methods, such as the use of photonic devices, optimised absorption materials, and heat engines. Multiple-junction photonic devices involving very advanced fabrication technologies have already attained a maximum energy conversion efficiency of 42.8% in the laboratory. If we are able to solve the problem of energy storage associated with intermittence, solar power has the potential to provide more than 1000 times the current global energy consumption. However, solar power satisfied only 0.02% of the global energy demand in 2008. The main problem is the lack of competitiveness with fossil 5.19 Can We Have Prosperity and Well-Being in a Non-Growth Economy? 335 fuels and the low efficiencies of the solar power devices. The two problems are likely to be solved in the next 5 to 10 years if the necessary investments are forthcoming. A solar energy revolution may lie in the not too distant future. Two technological roadmaps (IEA, 2010; IEA, 2010a) released by the International Energy Agency on May 2010 state that solar photovoltaics and concentrated solar power could account for between 20 and 25% of electricity production worldwide by 2050. Before ending this analysis, it is important to emphasize that water and energy are deeply and increasingly interdependent. Huge quantities of water are needed to generate energy and huge quantities of energy are required to obtain clean water. The availability of each resource is increasingly dependent on the availability of the other, and this forces us to manage them in a strongly integrated way. Countries affected by water scarcity can desalinate seawater or brackish water from deep aquifers, recycle wastewater, or transport water over long distances from water-rich regions, but all these solutions require vast energy supplies. On the other hand energy generation requires increasing quantities of water. In the transport sector the replacement of petrol and diesel by biofuels and by plugin electrical vehicles requires the consumption of much larger quantities of water. Furthermore, thermal power plants functioning with coal, oil, natural gas, or uranium consume large amounts of water in their cooling systems. Energy and water resources must therefore be managed in a coherent and integrated way. Under extreme conditions water is more essential to human life than commercialized energy systems. Without water, life as we know it is simply not possible. 5.19 Can We Have Prosperity and Well-Being in a Non-Growth Economy? This is an intriguing question when all countries in the world, except possibly for a very few exceptions, make economic growth their foremost objective. Two years after the peak of the 2008–2009 financial and economic crisis, the world is economically on two tracks. In 2010–2011, most developing countries, especially emerging economies like China and India, are growing fast, while some of the industrialized countries have weaker growth, others are not growing, and still others, like some EU countries, are actually suffering recessions. For countries that are not enjoying robust economic growth, the most important question is how to grow or how to grow more. Economic growth has been the dominant myth of human society since the end of World War II. Since that time the global economy has grown by a factor of more than five. We have created a situation where growth is necessary to prevent collapse. Although some of the most important contributors to neoclassical economic theory, such as John Stuart Mill and John Maynard Keynes, foresaw a time in which growth would have to stop, we still do not have a macro-economic model for achieving a steady-state economy. To reach it, we need a new framework that incorporates the medium and long term dependence of the economy on ecological variables, 336 5 Human Development and Environmental Discourses such as natural resources and biodiversity. Furthermore this new model must lead to extreme poverty eradication, reduce inequalities, protect employment, and ensure distributional equity of natural resource revenues. All of these are objectives with regard to which the current model has failed. At present about a fifth of the world’s population earns 2% of the global income. De-growth or economic contraction is just an expression created by radical critics of economic growth theory who promote the search for alternative models (Fournier, 2008). Non-growth would be a more suitable expression since the main objective is to reach a steady-state economy that incorporates ecological variables and social equity. What we need then is a non-growth economic theory that can lead to practical implementation. It may even be utopian to think that we can reach a steady-state economy in a controlled, rational way without causing repeated financial, economic, and environmental crises. It is nevertheless worth exploring the ideas that may lead to a non-growth economy. The proponents of non-growth economies wish to create integrated, materially responsible, and self-sufficient societies among both the developed and developing countries. Thus non-growth is not a way to prevent the developing world from resolving its current problems. The point is that developing countries should disentangle themselves from the orthodox path of development that has been followed by the industrialized countries, and seek alternative pathways. It is important to emphasize that the straight application of Western forms of development to the poorer countries has led to a decrease in self-sufficiency, an increase in corruption, and much greater inequalities (Sachs, 1992), except for a few success stories. On the other hand, the creation of non-growth economies would have much better chances of success if the more industrialized countries led the way by adopting some form of economic stabilization. We are clearly very far from this situation. The two-track world economy is a welcome process of economic convergence between the more industrialized countries and the developing countries, especially the emerging economies. Still, the developed world is uncomfortable with the current situation and is forcefully trying to increase its rates of economic growth in order to avoid another recession and stop the widening disparity with the growth rates of the emerging economies. The current paradigm of economic growth is very strongly linked with the predominant notion of prosperity. Different visions of prosperity would lead to other paradigms and in particular to a non-growth economy (SDC, 2009). Each culture has its own concept of prosperity, which co-evolves with it. Furthermore, there is a plurality of notions of prosperity which are operative in any society, particularly in the most industrialized ones. The origin of the dominant present-day view of prosperity can be traced back to the Reformation and to the global expansion of Europe, which immensely increased its material wealth. At that time, a new relation to faith and reason was established that included the secularisation of religious property, the dissolution of monasteries, a new concept of good living, and a vision in which success was interpreted as God’s dividend to the righteous. The good life was essentially based on the power to explore the world and its natural resources, and enjoy the resulting lifestyles. 5.19 Can We Have Prosperity and Well-Being in a Non-Growth Economy? 337 Prosperity became increasingly associated with the ownership of private property and ever more diversified and luxurious goods and services. The material component of prosperity was further strengthened by the Anglo-Saxon idea of progress based on utilitarianism and on the moral and economic freedom from the state defended by John Stuart Mill in his book On Liberty, published in 1859. There are signs of disaffection with the notion of prosperity associated with the consumerist lifestyles that support and are supported by economic growth. A growing number of people resent the stress, pollution, congestion, noise, and diminishing level of personal contact and friendship that result from the competitive spiral of the work and spend cycle. However, getting out of the cycle usually involves difficult options with regard to personal relationships, employment, and social status. Since the beginning of the Great Acceleration after the end of World War II, people in the more industrialized countries have tended to own and consume more, but also to have on average considerably less leisure time. Among the most important factors that influence well-being are the partner/spouse and family relationships, health, personal and political freedom, friendship and community integration, employment, a stable financial situation, home, and home environment (SDC, 2009). Various studies have indicated that, beyond a certain level of GDP per capita of about 15 000 US $ in Purchasing Power Parity of 1995 US $, life satisfaction reaches a maximum and barely responds to further increases in the GDP per capita (WI, 2008; Donovan, 2002). Some countries with high levels of life satisfaction, such as the Netherlands and Sweden, have a lower GDP per capita than countries such as the USA with a lower level of life satisfaction. However, in countries with very low incomes, life satisfaction increases steeply with GDP per capita. The important message here is that it is essential to pursue economic convergence if we want to have a more equitable and secure world. Developing countries should continue to have economic growth, but the more industrialized countries should reach a stable, non-growth economy. The way to reach this goal is to refocus on goods that are strongly correlated with life satisfaction and not on those that require ever-increasing consumption. In spite of these findings the conventional notion of prosperity based on material satisfaction and opulence is deeply ingrained on societies all over the world, in both developed and developing countries. Prosperity has social, psychological, and material dimensions. All are indispensable, but different weights can be attached to each of them. A weaker emphasis on the material component would pave the way for a less uncertain future with diminished risks of resource scarcity, environmental degradation, and potential armed conflicts induced by the competition for natural resources. Amartya Sen (Sen, 1984) has clearly defined two alternative notions of prosperity with reduced dependence on material consumption. The first is characterized by the term utility, and centred on the satisfaction that commodities provide through their intrinsic quality and not through their quantity. Furthermore, this notion of prosperity is based on the awareness that the overriding pursuit of immediate gratification reduces long term security. The second is defined through the concept of flourishing capabilities. Here there is more emphasis on the social and psychological components of prosperity. 338 5 Human Development and Environmental Discourses The capacity to flourish corresponds to the most important factors contributing to well-being. A prosperous world would imply a more equitable world where people everywhere would have the capability to flourish in certain fundamental ways. The important point is to recognize that these capabilities must necessarily be bounded by the functioning of the Earth system, the finite nature of natural resources, and the sustainability of ecosystem services. The new notion of prosperity should ensure that humans can flourish in more equitable societies, and achieve higher levels of social cohesion and well-being, while reducing their material consumption. Such prosperity presupposes the effective acceptance and practice of intra- and intergenerational solidarity. It may seem an impossible task, but the alternatives are frightening: they are likely to lead to greater inequalities and to a more unstable and belligerent world with higher risk of repeated financial, economic, and environmental crises.