Changing Direction Toward Sustainable Culture

Northwest Report January 1996

Why is there so much talk about sustainability? And what does that concept really mean? Paul Wilson, the guest editor for this issue of Northwest Report, examines these questions and sets the context for the articles that follow. Wilson, who holds a law degree from Lewis & Clark Law School and a forestry degree from Yale University, has worked in government, corporate, and academic settings, most recently as director of the environmental law program at Lewis & Clark Law School. Wilson currently mediates natural resource disputes and "tends a family and garden" at the headwaters of Tryon Creek in Portland, Oregon.

Editors' Note
An increasing polarization between economic and environmental interests threatens to make the concept of sustainable development little more than an oxymoron. New voices, however, are cautioning against accepting this false dichotomy. Development can occur sustainably. We can protect jobs and the environment. In fact, these voices argue, unless we promote development, we cannot sustain quality of life; unless we preserve the environment, we won't have jobs in the future.

This special issue of Northwest Report examines the concept and practice of sustainable development from a number of perspectives and includes recommendations for how rural and urban communities, private enterprise, and individuals can foster a more sustainable society. Paul Wilson, former director of the environmental law program at Lewis & Clark Law School, has served as guest editor in the preparation of this issue. While the perspectives presented in these articles are not necessarily those of the Foundation, we hope they will stimulate discussion on this important topic. Future issues of Northwest Report will include articles on how sustainable development considerations affect specific natural resource sectors, the distribution of resources in urban areas, and the lives of the nation's most vulnerable citizens.

Northwest Area Foundation's interest in sustainable development is an outgrowth of its commitment to the vitality of its eight-state upper Midwest and Northwest region. Foundation grantmaking seeks to balance economic development with resource conservation and find common ground between opposing camps. To this end, Foundation grants support responsible stewardship of water and fisheries resources and the exploration of how sustainability can be achieved by a number of specific industries, including agriculture, aquaculture, energy, and others. More detailed information about the Foundation's current funding interests is available in the 1995 Annual Report and in the Guidelines for Grant Applicants.

The Foundation welcomes comments on this issue of Northwest Report and on sustainable development. Readers are invited to address their comments to the editors or to Cris Stainbrook, senior program officer responsible for the Foundation's sustainable development grantmaking.

Yellow bicycles - left on the street for free public use. Pick one up and ride it across town. When you're done, just leave it for someone else to use.

Reality shifted slightly in Portland, Oregon, last year. At least 450 yellow, one-speed bikes are already scattered around the city. All are donated. A local business has volunteered to paint them bright yellow. U-Haul distributes them across the city. If a tire goes flat, the rider calls a number on the bike, a volunteer picks it up, and it's repaired by at-risk kids at the Community Cycling Center. The large number of people involved make the program self-policing.

The program encourages trust and a sense of community, while providing an environmentally friendly way to get around. Tom O'Keefe of the United Community Action Network had dreamed about the idea for years, after reading about a similar program in Amsterdam. He started Portland's program after his own bike was stolen.

The bike program in Portland is one small piece of a growing movement toward a sustainable culture - a way of life that can be sustained for a long time because it does not deplete the social and environmental systems that make it possible.

The Current Problem

Environmental problems are not what we thought they were. In the 1970s, after Earth Day, we talked about air and water pollution, toxic chemicals, and hazardous waste. We also thought we knew how to solve these problems: government regulations would limit pollution and require enterprises to use the best available technology to reduce it, thus including the costs in the price of goods. The more we learned, the more we regulated. Twenty-five years later, the air and water are cleaner, or at least not much worse. We have made progress.

But we have also fallen behind. We still face those same problems, plus more. Acid rain is changing the chemistry of lakes and the soil, stressing and killing forests worldwide. The earth's climate is probably changing. We are depleting stratospheric ozone, increasing the planet's exposure to ultraviolet rays. We are witnessing an accelerating loss of biodiversity, from declining songbird and fish populations to mass extinction of tropical insects. Much of the earth faces shortages of water, or fuel, or both. The overall problem is not only bigger than we thought, it is a different sort of problem. Humans are changing the planet's basic chemistry and biology, on a grand scale and at an increasing rate.

A population - of any species - uses resources and produces wastes. The surrounding environment's ability to provide those resources and absorb those wastes limits the size to which the population can grow and remain healthy. Our technological abilities have permitted us to carry resource use and waste production to an unprecedented level. We have assumed that those same technological abilities, combined with the planet's size and bounty, will allow us to continue that expansion. As is becoming increasingly apparent, however, that assumption is not only unproven, it is potentially dangerous. Our technology might act as a buffer, but it cannot isolate us from the significant changes we are causing in our surrounding environment.

Human beings are a part of a vast web of interconnected species and systems that fit together in intricate ways, enabling the whole system to continue. There are limits to how much our population can grow, and how much we can alter our surrounding environment, without causing changes that will reverberate throughout that web and jeopardize our own future. The warning signs are as close as the daily news.

Technological fixes and single solutions for single problems are not enough. Instead, what is required is a fundamental change in the way we meet our needs and a reassessment of what those needs really are.

Population Growth
Today, there are about 5.8 billion people on the planet; one out of every five is desperately poor. That population total, which has taken thousands of years to achieve, is expected to double in the next 50 years. Overpopulation is already a serious problem, especially in less industrialized countries. With 4.3 billion people, these countries account for 78 percent of the world's population yet have only 15 percent of the world's wealth and income, and use only 12 percent of its natural resources and 27 percent of its energy each year. One implication is that 40 million desperately poor people die each year (110,000 per day) from malnutrition or related diseases or from contaminated drinking water.

Each year less industrialized countries pay industrialized countries four times more in debt interest than they receive in aid. These debt payments create enormous pressure to extract natural resources and grow cash crops for export, further threatening ecosystems and resources vital to the whole planet, siphoning off money, and increasing political instability. This same pattern is also found in rural parts of otherwise developed countries, Although the consequences of this situation are felt most strongly by people in less industrialized areas, they affect us all.

Consumption of Resources
The planet's resources are being consumed at an astounding rate. Our one species already appropriates for its use 40 percent of all the plant matter produced on land. Currently, global resource use by humans is growing at about 5.5 percent each year; at that rate, human demand on the earth's resources doubles every 13 years.

Many of our most important resources, such as fossil fuels and metals, are nonrenewable and will eventually run out. Known world oil supplies, for example, will last for about 40 years at the current rate of consumption; potential sources might extend the supply for another 20 to 40 years. Even renewable resources are being degraded rapidly. On about one-third of the world's cropland, top-soil is eroding faster than it forms. Fish catches in the northwest Atlantic have fallen by a third since 1970. Other problems engendered by this pattern of rapid consumption and degradation include depletion and contamination of groundwater, deforestation, desertification, and species loss. As scarcities increase, we are likely to see not only absolute shortages, but also increasing political conflict over what remains. This conflict will create economic disruptions akin to the oil price shocks of the early 1970s and early 1980s.

Pollution
The wastes created from consuming resources, meanwhile, are accumulating at a frightening pace. Fossil fuels burned in 1994 released 5,925 million tons of carbon into the atmosphere; that compares to only 2,543 million tons in 1960. The biosphere is disrupted by the sheer volume of our wastes - and also by the fact that many of those wastes are compounds that biospheric systems cannot absorb and recycle. Pesticides and toxic wastes, for example, can render soil and water unusable. Global warming and probable climate change, acid rain, depletion of stratospheric ozone, and urban air pollution all stem from chemicals we have put into the atmosphere.

Social Inequity
Compounding the problem of exponential growth of population, resource use, and pollution is the inequitable distribution of resources. Access to wealth, resources, and even basic necessities is unevenly divided among nations. Industrialized countries, with 1.2 billion people (22 percent of the world's population), command about 85 percent of the world's wealth and income, use 88 percent of its natural resources, consume 73 percent of its energy, and generate most of its pollution and wastes. Even within industrialized countries, there is great disparity. These inequities not only cause serious hardship for many segments of the earth's population, they also aggravate social conflict.

Expectations and Values
Another factor compounding the problems of exponential increases in population, resource use, and pollution relates to the way we think - our expectations and values. Among them are the following:

Rising expectations - Most people living in industrialized countries expect to experience a more or less continuous rise in their standard of living. People who are less fortunate seek to emulate the way of life they see among the more fortunate. In our current way of doing things, the environmental costs of improving standards of living are increased resource use and pollution.

Economic values - In our industrial society, we tend to believe that more is better, and to measure our economic success or well-being in terms of continued growth or increase. The Gross National Product (GNP), which measures the total value of goods and services a nation produces, is one example. Expectations that the GNP should increase by 3 to 4 percent a year are directly linked to our pattern of exponential growth in resource depletion and environmental degradation. Significantly, there is no quantitative way to measure the environmental cost at which this growth is achieved.

Sustainability
Among other species, a population that exceeds the carrying capacity of its environment dies back. Our unceasing growth has created a pattern of increasing resource use and waste production that cannot be sustained over the long term. Instead, we must adopt a new mindset and seek a way of life that can be sustained over the long term - a way of life that is sustainable.

A sustainable society would not undermine its resource base, the assimilative capacity of its surroundings, or the biotic stocks on which its future prosperity depends. Sustainability means living on interest, not drawing down capital. The idea of sustained yield of natural resources is far from new; it means, for example, harvesting trees at a rate within the forest's capacity for regrowth. Sustainable development, according to the United Nations- sponsored World Commission on Environment and Development, "meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."

The question is, how do we do that? Can our society become sustainable through more efficient technologies and pricing that more accurately reflects the true cost of goods? Or does sustainability mean a transition to a fundamentally different way of life? Both approaches are needed. Social scientist Lester Milbrath, in Envisioning a Sustainable Society, draws an analogy to treating a heart attack victim: stabilizing the victim is essential, but so is the longer process of finding and addressing the causes of the patient's heart disease.

We need to apply a similar dual process to environmental issues. We must identify and "stabilize" specific environmental problems, but we must also find alternatives to the practices that have gotten us in trouble in the first place.

Where Do We Go from Here?
What do we know about the prospects for transition to a sustainable society? In Beyond the Limits, systems scientist Donella Meadows and her co-authors suggest some generalizations from their work with computer models:

We can probably develop a sustainable society without reducing either population or industrial output.

However, neither population nor industrial production can grow further. Plus, we will need to improve significantly the technical efficiency with which we use the earth's resources.

A sustainable society can be structured in a variety of ways. We have many choices about numbers of people, living standards, technological investments, and allocation of industrial goods, services, food, and other material needs.

Approaching - or exceeding - the earth's limits for sustaining human life leads to unavoidable tradeoffs between the number of people than can be supported and the material level at which each person can be supported. The exact numerical tradeoffs are not knowable, and will also change as technology, knowledge, human coping ability, and the earth's support systems change. Supportable population sizes and living standards may move up and down, but the general implication will remain the same: more people means fewer material resources available for each person - or higher risk of essential support systems collapsing.

The longer that regional and world economies take to reduce resource use and pollution and move toward sustainability, the lower the population and standard of living that will be supportable. At some point, delay means collapse.

The higher a society sets its targets for a material standard of living, the higher its risk of exceeding and eroding those limits.

Economist Herman Daly has described three necessary conditions for physically sustaining the amount of resources a society uses:

The rate at which renewable resources are used should not exceed their rate of regeneration.

The rate at which nonrenewable resources are used should not exceed the rate at which sustainable, renewable substitutes are developed.

The rate of pollution emission should not exceed the assimilative capacity of the environment.

Meadows adds two additional conditions: human population levels must be kept low enough to allow these three conditions to be met; and all four of these conditions must be met through processes that are democratic and equitable enough that people will accept them.

Sustainability means thinking in terms of whole systems, with all their interconnections, consequences, and feedback loops. This way of thinking avoids artificial and often misleading categories such as humanity versus nature, or jobs versus the environment. Instead, it places a high value on responding to problems realistically, but through learning and innovation rather than critique and complaint. Implementing the necessary changes involves removing artificial barriers and creating partnerships, seeking leverage points where small shifts can set in motion processes that have beneficial, system wide effects.

Beginning the Transformation
From yellow community bicycles to a new agricultural techniques, people around the world are experimenting with new ideas that can move our societies toward a more sustainable way of life. This issue of Northwest Report is about the beginnings of that transformation. The articles that follow provide sketches of what is being done - and still needs to be done - by communities, private enterprise, and individuals. Although the articles demonstrate different approaches and points of view, they all tend to reflect seven themes:

Problems are multifaceted and interrelated - Burning fossil fuels to use increasing amounts of resources, for example, leads to depletion, oil spills, air pollution, acid rain, and global warming.

However, solutions are multifaceted as well - Reusing materials decreases landfill use as well as air and water pollution, and also conserves resources and diminishes the environmental consequences of extracting them. Local changes produce both local and global benefits.

Crises, then, offer both risk and opportunity - When a crisis looms, and neither the conventional explanations nor the usual solutions seem to be working, fear of the unknown can lead us to grasp even more tightly at our old ways of behaving. Being open to change, however, is what leads to solutions.

Equity is essential - The people who use a disproportionate share of resources and contribute a disproportionate amount of pollution will also bear most of the financial costs of changing the practices that have led to the present situation. And ecosystem preservation cannot happen unless basic human needs are met.

Bigger (or smaller) is not inevitably better - Appropriate size-of a business, a national economy, an area to be governed, or even a monthly paycheck-is not a simple, inevitable outcome of fixed factors. Instead, size is a complex variable; appropriate size can be determined through testing, discussion, and adjustment.

Place matters - People and cultures thrive when they adapt to the necessities and pleasures of life as they are uniquely presented by a particular place, and evolve ways to ensure that they can occupy that place successfully over the long term.

Both the individual and the community play crucial roles - The activities of involved people, and the models they provide, transform the lives of other people, organizations, and entire societies, often in unanticipated ways and with surprising speed. People working together are vastly more powerful than individuals alone. In North America, the transition to sustainability is happening from the bottom up as countless people and organizations respond to current crises by modifying the ways they live and work; larger organizations are being transformed as changes ripple through them.

The ideas suggested in these articles might be the beginning, but they are far from the end. Every aspect of our lives together on earth will change in the next few decades. Through awareness, innovation, and participation, we can help shape the direction those changes will take.

What Does Exponential Growth Really Mean?
We have accommodated our increasing human population by using more resources and producing more wastes, counting on our planet to provide whatever we want and absorb whatever we discard. Each of these factors - population, resource use, and pollution - has been growing exponentially, but what does that concept really mean? Exponential growth means doubling and then doubling again and then again. Simple examples can create a vivid picture.

Suppose you agree to eat one peanut on the first day of the month, two on the second, four on the third, and keep doubling the number every day. How long will a one-pound can of peanuts last?

Well, you'll have eaten the first half of that pound by the eighth day; the second half will be gone on the ninth day. On the tenth day, you'll open a new can and eat the whole thing. On the fifteenth day you'll eat 32 pounds of peanuts. On the seventeenth you'll eat your own weight in peanuts, on the twenty-first a ton, and on the last day of the month, 500 tons. Doublings add up ferociously fast.

Worse, when problems grow exponentially you don't get much reaction time; they sneak up on you. Imagine a pond with a water lily growing in it. The lily pad doubles in size every day. After 30 days it covers the pond. On what day would you notice that the lily pad is growing? On which day does it cover half the pond? The lily pad does not become large enough to cover half the pond until the twenty-ninth day. Then it takes only one additional day to cover the rest of the pond.

What Do Growth and Development Really Mean?
According to our current mindset, economic development is usually assumed to mean the same thing as economic growth; the result is expanding use of resources. But is that assumption necessarily correct?

Growth means an increase in size or number. Development, on the other hand, means bringing something to a fuller or better state. A society can certainly grow without developing - but it can also develop without growing. Consider economist Herman Daly's example of a steady-state library. The stock of books is constant but not static. As a book wears out or becomes obsolete, it is replaced by a newer or better one. The quantity of books does not grow, and the quality of the library actually improves. The library develops without growing.

Sustainable development of human culture means improving the quality of human life while living within the carrying capacity of supporting ecosystems. What is sustained is not a rate of growth, but rather a level of physical resource use. What is developed is the capacity to convert those physical resources into improved goods and services for satisfying human needs, without degrading the supporting systems.

Reprinted with permission from Northwest Report
Number 19, January 1996 ISSN 1040-855X
A Newsletter of the Northwest Area Foundation
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