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Contents
List of Figures, Tables and Boxes vii
Preface and Acknowledgements ix
List of Acronyms and Abbreviations xi
Glossary xiii
1 Sustainability Challenges in a Dynamic World 1
2 Dynamic Systems: Environment and Development Challenges 15
3 Pathways to Sustainability: Responding to Dynamic Contexts 37
4 Governance in a Dynamic World 65
5 Opening Up, Broadening Out: Empowering Designs for
Sustainability 99
6 An Alternative Politics for Sustainability 125
7 Towards Pathways to Sustainability 155
Notes 173
References 175
Index 205
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Chapter 1
Sustainability Challenges in
a Dynamic World
Today’s world is highly complex and dynamic. Environmental conditions
are changing fast as water, land and other ecological systems interact with
climate change and new patterns of disease incidence. Developments in
science and technology are proceeding faster than ever, with the spread of
technologies shaped by new and often highly globalized patterns of
investment and information. Social systems are changing rapidly too,
linked to population growth, urbanization and market relationships. Such
dynamics are, in turn, driven by shifting patterns of mobility – of people,
practices, microbes, ideas and technologies – and globalized economic
change, as some areas of the world transform, while others remain in deep
poverty.
Yet the policies and institutions that have to deal with this new dynamic
context are often premised on far more static views of the world. Where the
rapidity of change is acknowledged, it is often seen to follow relatively
clearly determined, single linear trajectories. Either way, assumptions of
stability, equilibrium and predictable, controllable risks dominate. Yet the
failures of such approaches to intervention and policy are everywhere to
see. Simple blueprints, technological fixes or the transfer of technologies
and regulations developed elsewhere frequently fail to work and create fur-
ther problems. Standard approaches all too often betray their intended
beneficiaries. Complex, dynamic contexts often undermine the neat
assumptions of imported models. Emerging backlashes – from nature, from
social movements, from politics – reveal this widening gap between stan-
dard policy approaches and dynamic systems.
Indeed, a major contradiction is emerging in contemporary responses to
environment and development challenges. On the one hand, there is now a
wide recognition of growing complexity and dynamism – evident across
high science, popular media and the experiences of daily life. On the other
hand, there appears to be an ever-more urgent search for big, technically
driven managerial solutions – whether in the form of ‘magic bullet’ seeds
and drugs, continent-wide roll-outs of high-impact solutions or top-down
emergency-type responses aimed at shoring up stability and providing
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security. When such responses falter in the face of local dynamics and
uncertainties, the response tends to be to implement with greater force or to
blame locals or critics – rather than to question the underlying assumptions.
The result can be a perpetuating cycle that narrows options, excludes alter-
native and dissenting voices, and fails to learn from mistakes and failures.
This matters because it ultimately fails to tackle big problems of environ-
ment and development that affect us all, while often perpetuating
inequalities and injustices.
All this raises some major policy and development challenges. For
instance, how are shifting human–animal interactions and food production
systems altering the likelihood of new global pandemics? How can the
world respond to these interactions in ways that do not constrain poor peo-
ple’s livelihoods and freedom? What are the challenges of sustainability in
rapidly growing Asian cities? As technology and economic growth bring
wealth for some, how can the fall-out for those living on the margins – in
overcrowding, pollution, ill-health and hazard – be addressed? How are
farmers in dry parts of Africa coping with the challenges of climate change
and disease? Can the potentials of new agricultural and health biotechnolo-
gies be harnessed to help, or will they provoke new uncertainties and missed
opportunities to build on farmers’ own adaptations? And how, in a world of
rapidly advancing technologies and markets for drugs, seeds, energy and
water use, can supply and regulatory arrangements be developed that suit
the interests of the poor? How must global models of regulation be
rethought to work in dynamic social and political settings? And how can
these models respond to poorer and marginalized people’s own perspec-
tives on risk and uncertainty, grounded in their everyday lives and
livelihoods?
Today, such questions are becoming ever more pressing. This book
offers a way of thinking about these core relationships between ecology,
technology, poverty and justice in a world of pervasive and growing
inequality. Our starting point is that linking environmental sustainability
with poverty reduction and social justice, and making science and tech-
nology work for people who are poor have become central practical,
political and moral challenges of our times. We argue that meeting these
challenges in a dynamic world requires an approach that embraces the
dynamic interactions between social, technological and ecological
processes; takes seriously the ways that diverse people and groups under-
stand and value these; and acknowledges the role of economic and
institutional power in shaping the resulting choices. In short, we need to
recognize the essentially plural and political nature of our quest for path-
ways to sustainability.
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Why are dynamics and complexity so important?
In meeting the challenges of sustainability, why is it so critical to take a per-
spective that treats dynamics and complexity seriously? Newspaper
headlines across the world regularly highlight rapid rates of environmental
and social change – and their threats and consequences. Even the World
Bank acknowledges (Chen and Ravallion, 2008) that one and a half billion
people are currently living ‘without sufficient means for human survival’
(Parsons, 2008). As disparities between rich and poor worsen (Worldwatch
Institute, 2003), global environments are deteriorating (UNEP,12007).
Carbon emissions are increasing (Met Office, 2009). Climate change is
accelerating dangerously (Houghton, 2008). Multiple threats are posed to
global food supplies (Beddington, 2009; Watson, 2009); and an array of
other vulnerabilities are increasing (UNISDR, 2009).
Such reports and the dramatic statistics they cite can easily give the
impression of impending catastrophe and disaster. While not diminishing
the existence of serious environment and development problems, however,
we argue that responding to these effectively requires a closer look at these
dynamic systems and a deeper, more nuanced analytical approach that
allows us to respond in effective ways. This requires looking at the interac-
tions of different systems (social, ecological, technological) across multiple
scales and as they play out in particular places with particular contexts. It
also requires looking from the perspectives of different people with differ-
ent views of these dynamics and their consequences. In particular this book
argues that four major hurdles have to be addressed if more effective
approaches to sustainable development are to be realized.
First, dynamics have often been ignored in conventional policy
approaches for development and sustainability. Conventional approaches
have often been rooted in standard equilibrium thinking, underlain by
deeper-rooted notions of a ‘balance’ in nature. This tends to centre analy-
ses – and so recommendations – on what are assumed to be aggregative,
equilibrium patterns and on attempts to control variability, rather than
adapt and respond to it. Equally, conventional methods often assume that
models developed for one setting – usually the more controlled, managed
contexts favoured by privileged interests – will work in others. This is so
whether the export of models is from the developed to the developing world
or from the laboratory or research station to the field. By contrast, this book
recognizes the limits to planned intervention and argues for a more located,
context-specific approach.
Second, governments and institutions are of course increasingly preoc-
cupied with risk and with the insecurities that real and perceived threats
seem to pose. However, as we argue in this book, dominant approaches
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involve a narrow focus on a particular (highly incomplete) notion of risk.
This assumes that complex challenges can be calculated, controlled and
managed – excluding other situations where understandings of possible
future outcomes are more intractable. Some of these involve uncertainty,
where the possible outcomes are known but there is no basis for assigning
probabilities, and judgement must prevail. Other situations involve ambi-
guity, where there is disagreement over the nature of the outcomes, or
different groups prioritize concerns that are incommensurable. Finally,
some social, technological and ecological dynamics involve ignorance,
where we don’t know what we don’t know, and the possibility of surprise is
ever-present. Whereas conventional, expert-led approaches to analysis and
policy are well-attuned to handling risk, they become highly inadequate in
the increasingly common situations in which these other kinds of incom-
plete knowledge can be recognized to prevail. A wider appreciation of the
dimensions of incomplete knowledge, this book argues, is essential if we are
to avoid the dangers of creating illusory, control-based approaches to com-
plex and dynamic realities.
Third, underlying such approaches are often wider assumptions about
what constitutes the goals of ‘development’ or ‘sustainability’, often assum-
ing a singular path to ‘progress’ and a singular, ‘objective’ view of what the
problem might be. Yet of course different people and groups often under-
stand system functions and dynamics in very different ways. They bring
diverse kinds of knowledge and experience to bear – combining informal
and more experiential ways of knowing with the disciplines and procedures
associated with formal science. People also value particular goals and out-
comes in very different ways. Rather than singular notions of ‘progress’ in
relation to environment, technology or development, we can increasingly
recognize situations in which there is a multiplicity of possible goals, which
are often contested. Put another way, systems, and their goals and proper-
ties, are open to multiple ‘framings’. Here, the concept of framing refers to
the particular contextual assumptions, methods, forms of interpretation
and values that different groups might bring to a problem, shaping how it is
bounded and understood. In many situations, such understandings take the
form of diverse narratives or storylines about a given problem: how it has
arisen, why it matters and what to do about it. Paying serious attention to
multiple, diverse framings and narratives, we argue, brings vital opportuni-
ties to advance debates about sustainability and connect them more firmly
with questions of social justice.
Fourth, while debates about sustainability have become mainstream over
the last two decades, they have also given rise to a great deal of confusion
and fuzziness, in which easy rhetorical use masks lack of real change and
commitment. In addition, ideas of sustainability have become co-opted into
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inappropriately managerial and bureaucratic attempts to ‘solve’ problems
which are actually far more complex and political. This has led some to sug-
gest abandoning the term ‘sustainability’ altogether. However, in this book
we re-cast the notion of sustainability as a more explicitly normative (and so
overtly political) concept. Rather than treat sustainability in a general, collo-
quial sense, implying the maintenance of (unspecified) features of systems
over time, we are concerned with its specific normative implications. Thus
sustainability refers to explicit qualities of human well-being, social equity
and environmental integrity, and the particular system qualities that can sus-
tain these. All these goals of sustainability are context-specific and inevitably
contested. This makes it essential to recognize the roles of public delibera-
tion and negotiation – both of the definition of what is to be sustained and of
how to get there – in what must be seen as a highly political (rather than
technical) process.
These are the reasons why we elaborate in this book an approach both to
understanding sustainability and responding to challenges which we term a
pathways approach. This addresses these four hurdles, highlighting the
importance of ‘dynamics’, ‘incomplete knowledge’, ‘multiple framings’ and
‘normativity’. Our pathways approach is thus explicitly normative, focused
on reductions in poverty and social injustice as defined by/for particular
people in diverse settings. Particular narratives are produced by particular
actors and so co-construct particular pathways of response. Some are dom-
inant; shaped by powerful institutions and substantial financial backing –
these are the ‘motorways’ that channel current mainstream environment
and development efforts. But these can often obscure and overrun alterna-
tives; the smaller by-ways and bush paths that define and respond to
different goals, values and forms of knowledge. This is what we mean by
‘pathways’: alternative possible trajectories for knowledge, intervention and
change which prioritize different goals, values and functions. These path-
ways may in turn envisage different strategies to deal with dynamics – to
control or respond to shocks or stresses. And they envisage different ways
of dealing with incomplete knowledge, highlighting and responding to the
different aspects of risk, uncertainty, ambiguity and ignorance in radically
different ways.
We argue in this book that there is a pervasive tendency – supported by
professional, institutional and political pressures – for powerful actors and
institutions to ‘close down’ around particular framings, committing to par-
ticular pathways that emphasize maintaining stability and control. In so
doing, these often create universalizing and generalizing approaches.
These can in turn obscure or deny the reality of alternatives. Yet address-
ing the full implications of dynamics and incomplete knowledge requires,
we argue, ‘opening up’ to methods and practices that involve flexibility,
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diversity, adaptation, learning and reflexivity, and an alternative politics of
sustainability that highlights and supports alternative pathways.
Some examples
So how might such an approach respond to some of the major environment
and development challenges of our times? In this section we introduce a
series of examples, drawn from a range of research from the STEPS Centre
and beyond, which we return to throughout the book. These include a
focus on water in dryland India, seeds in Africa, policymaking on epidemic
disease and energy systems as responses to climate change. Across the
book, these cases illustrate both the contradictions between dominant
approaches and dynamic realities and how a pathways approach helps to
pose questions, unpack problems and identify alternative ways forward.
Water in dryland India2
Solutions to the problems of drought, climate change and agricultural
development in dryland India often rest on two competing narratives about
water. Perhaps the longest running and most heavily backed narrative,
politically and financially, is centred on aggregated notions of water scarcity
which need to be addressed through large-scale technical and infrastruc-
tural solutions, such as large dams, river diversions and massive irrigation
schemes. This is often set in the context of an impending water crisis, where
violence and conflict might be the result unless urgent action is taken at
scale. A competing narrative contests this vision and focuses instead on
small-scale, often community-based solutions responding to a similar
scarcity and water crisis narrative. Yet both of these offer planning-based
technological solutions which assume that the need is to fill a scarcity gap.
Yet, for example, farmers in the dry zones of Kutch in Gujarat, India,
approach the issue of water scarcity in a different way. There are multiple
scarcities – it depends on the place, the time and the purpose to which the
water is being used. Water carries multiple meanings, with cultural values
and symbolic importance interplaying with people’s material needs. There
is huge uncertainty and a number of ways of responding to the situation,
some of which involve living with and responding to uncertainty in a more
flexible way, adjusting cropping, livestock-grazing and domestic practices
accordingly. There is thus not one solution, but many. And the issue is not
so much one about absolute amounts of water, but its distribution. Who
gets access, and when? Here, as well as for the small-scale irrigation tanks of
southern India (Mosse, 2003), the dynamics of gender, caste and power –
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often deeply embedded in history and cultural context – shape patterns and
inequalities in resource use in ways that confound comfortable assumptions
that small-scale, community-based approaches will be sustainable, equi-
table or both. Hydrological solutions, at whatever scale, often fail to
respond to inherent uncertainties and are not geared up to cope with sur-
prises. Given the unfolding dynamics of climate change in dryland areas
across the world, how might diverse pathways be built that respond to
cross-scale water dynamics in ways that meet the needs and values of cur-
rently marginalized groups?
Seeds in Africa3
Debates about the global food crisis have re-energized green revolution nar-
ratives which were present in the 1960s and 1970s, which see technology-
driven solutions as the core to any response. Thus investments in new seeds,
genetic modification and breeding programmes, and associated packages of
inputs (fertilizers etc) are seen by some advocates as the solution to Africa’s
food production problems and hunger more generally. Yet this supply-led,
technology-push narrative is challenged by others. They argue that the chal-
lenge of hunger is less a question of production than of distribution and
entitlement to food and that processes of market failure, social and power
relations and the politics of access to resources influence who goes hungry.
Others agree that production remains a challenge, but question both the
appropriateness and efficacy of so-called modern seed technologies and sys-
tems. Instead, alternative technology pathways are suggested based on low
external inputs, which are argued to be more ecologically and socially appro-
priate in the complex, diverse and uncertain settings in which farming
happens. Another narrative focuses less on the technological end-products
and more on the processes through which innovation occurs and who defines
its proprieties. In particular, a ‘farmer first’ approach advocates a process of
research and innovation in which farmers themselves are in the driving seat.
Local social networks through which farmers exchange knowledge and seeds
often enable them to respond to highly complex and embedded socio-
ecological systems. Given the unfolding dynamics of environmental change,
markets and politics that constitute the global food crisis, what pathways of
innovation and mixes of technology make sense for poorer farmers as they
live and work in diverse African settings?
Epidemics and health systems
Concerns about the emergence and re-emergence of infectious diseases and
their capacity to spread rapidly in an interconnected world of mobile people
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and microbes have defined at least two major narratives guiding health pol-
icy and practice in recent years. The first focuses on the control of outbreaks
through pervasive surveillance, rapid response, contingency planning and
the timely delivery of medical technologies in outbreak settings. For example
in recent years the response to highly pathogenic avian influenza has been
characterized by a massive global effort directed at controlling the avian dis-
ease at source and so reducing the potential of pandemic spread. Responses
to Ebola and other haemorrhagic fevers have focused on urgent control of
outbreaks of these rapid-killing diseases, using a standard package of exter-
nally led responses. The second narrative responds to widespread endemic
diseases of the poor (including malaria, HIV, tuberculosis and others)
through technological solutions to be rolled out and applied at scale. Thus
drugs, vaccines, bednets and associated therapeutic/educational/counselling
packages (voluntary counselling and testing, direct observation systems to
ensure drugs compliance, immunization information and education) are
promoted as part of grand challenges to which donors, philanthropic organ-
izations and public–private partnerships are now devoting major resources
in the interests of global health. Yet other narratives point to the mixed
effects and sometimes local resistance that such interventions encounter
when they face the complex, diverse social, political and ecological settings
in the developing world. Standardized programmes, whether in outbreak
mode or technology roll-out mode, must confront highly diverse and
dynamic disease–ecological settings, where uncertainty and surprise may
rule – potentially confounding the best laid plans and models of health pro-
fessionals. They confront diverse local social dynamics and cultural logics
regarding how diseases and their ecologies and technologies operate; logics
which alternative narratives see as valuable starting points for approaches to
health which work in context. And they confront a diversity of institutional,
political and market settings, involving diverse sources of authority and
bureaucratic control, as well as diverse suppliers of knowledge and technol-
ogy in health systems. Alternative narratives highlight a blossoming of
innovative local governance arrangements and citizen responses which offer
the potential to bring access to appropriate health technologies and services
to poorer and marginalized people. Given the major health challenges, epi-
demic and endemic, facing the world, and given the particular disease
challenges of poorer people, what pathways of response would ensure good
health in an equitable, socially just and sustainable way?
Energy and climate
Debates about climate change have triggered a renewed series of debates
about energy for development. In the past, debates about energy were
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framed in terms of narratives about energy ‘gaps’ (shortfalls and resources
scarcity), whether of fossil fuel or woodfuel. Today attention has shifted to
low-carbon alternatives as routes to achieving greenhouse gas reductions.
However, approaches may still be centred on a single-fix technological solu-
tion to perceived energy security problems as dependence on fossil fuels is
reduced. Thus for example, nuclear energy, biofuels and even some renew-
able sources are seen as the ‘solution’ to national energy requirements.
Across the world, major controversies have arisen over the appropriateness
of nuclear responses to energy problems, as in the case of India. Equally, bio-
fuels have provoked controversy over the trade-offs around the use of land
for food crops and the appropriation of land for large-scale biofuel planta-
tions. Alternative narratives focus on the diverse energy needs of different
people and places and the need to match these with a variety of technologi-
cal and institutional options. They point out the way that energy technologies
become part of socio-technical and political systems and thus transitions to
low-carbon pathways must take account not only of technologies but also of
broader social, political and governance settings. A shift is often advocated
from a national energy planning and system mode to more decentralized
approaches to technology and system design and the appraisal of different
options, encompassing participatory, deliberative and community-based
approaches. Given the imperative of a transition to a low-carbon economy,
how might technological and energy system pathways emerge which respond
to the diversity of both national and local demands?
Each of these cases thus generates a series of challenges and questions. We
pick up on these throughout the book, exploring in more detail the particular
examples and drawing in a variety of particular literatures on each. As we
explore what a pathways approach means in practice, the cases are used to
demonstrate and test the approach and the way it illuminates both the differ-
ent implications of different narratives and the consequences of choices made
on sustainability. In the concluding chapter, we return to the cases and revisit
the challenges posed by each, asking how these might be addressed differ-
ently through the lens of a pathways approach. The pathways approach, as
the book demonstrates, is not only a useful analytical tool, but one that high-
lights and makes clearer policy options and trade-offs and the real politics of
sustainable development in ways that, we hope, will be useful to social move-
ment activists as much as donor agencies and government policymakers.
Moving forward
The central questions of this book focus on how we might genuinely build
pathways to sustainability in a complex, dynamic world – and the analytical,
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policy and appraisal approaches that can guide this. The chapters that fol-
low combine an examination of existing approaches to understanding and
intervention, addressing both their insights and shortcomings, with a
forward-looking agenda that synthesizes elements of these into a new path-
ways approach.
This is an intrinsically collective and thoroughly interdisciplinary
endeavour. Indeed, the book draws on and draws together a wide range of
perspectives and analytical traditions that are rarely considered together –
from development studies, science and technology studies, anthropology,
political and policy sciences, to evolutionary economics, ecology and work
on complexity in the natural sciences. Our aim is not to review any of these
areas or their sub-fields comprehensively, but rather to distil key strands
and convergences, including some unexpected and productive ones.
Drawing from this array of work, a core argument of this book is that we
must define new ways of thinking and doing that take complex dynamics
seriously. This is perhaps one of the major challenges for development in
the 21st century. We are optimistic that there are new ways forward, how-
ever, and this optimism derives from three sources. First, that the failures of
equilibrium approaches to intervention and policy are everywhere to see.
The new dynamic contexts presented by a globalized, interconnected world
make these all the more evident. There are emerging backlashes against the
standard view which help encourage alternatives, opening up the chinks
and spaces for a new politics of sustainability to flourish.
Second, despite the often confusing and contradictory debate about sus-
tainability and sustainable development in particular, the broad, normative
perspectives at the core of this discourse, highlighting the intersection of
economic, social and environmental objectives, are now centre-stage and
barely disputed across geographical location – North and South – and polit-
ical persuasion – Left and Right. The widely recognized imperative of
addressing climate change, for example, has brought global environmental
change and development issues to the top of the political agenda interna-
tionally. This agenda – and the wider challenges of sustainability – are par
excellence cases where social–ecological–economic–political dynamics must
be at the core of any analysis. Public and political buy-in, it seems, has
arrived and with it a more welcome context for what is currently lacking:
clear thinking about how to conceptualize and address sustainability chal-
lenges in a dynamic world.
Third, there are many strands of work that can help in this thinking.
There is an emergent yet rather remarkable convergence of thinking, across
an array of fields of enquiry and disciplinary perspectives, which points
towards the importance of dynamics, complexity, diversity, nonlinearity
and uncertainty as critical to both understanding and, importantly, policy
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and practice. Such areas of work are often rather nascent and certainly
remain largely peripheral to the core disciplines to which they refer. But
there are some important common themes – as well as interesting diver-
gences and dissonances – between them. This book is about drawing these
strands together and relating them to real-world dilemmas.
Signposts towards pathways to sustainability
In subsequent chapters we elaborate on these issues and concerns, illustrat-
ing them in relation to the case examples introduced in this chapter. The
chapters introduce a set of simple diagrams to facilitate thinking around key
concepts and their application to real-world problems.
The next chapter focuses in on the question of dynamics and how they
have – and have not – been addressed in debates around sustainability and
development. The chapter begins by illustrating how each of our four
examples involves highly dynamic, complex and interacting socio-
ecological-technological systems. Nonlinear dynamics create thresholds and
tipping points, often unleashing deep uncertainty and the possibility of sur-
prise. Indeed wherever one looks – in biological, social, economic or political
systems and particularly in their interactions – complex dynamics are impor-
tant and have long been so. Yet dynamics – both old and new – have often
been ignored in conventional approaches to development. The chapter
identifies a number of reasons for this, adding up to a problematic political
economy of equilibrium thinking and practice. It then briefly reviews five
fields in which equilibrium views have been challenged. It addresses the sci-
ence and economics of complexity, drawing on wider work on complexity
sciences, before turning to perspectives from non-equilibrium thinking in
the ecological sciences. The third field explored draws on recent thinking in
science, technology and innovation studies to address the dynamics of tech-
nical change and socio-technical transitions. The fourth field turns to policy,
organizational and management responses to dynamic settings, highlighting
perspectives from soft-systems approaches to management, nonlinear per-
spectives on policy processes and the rethinking of the role of expertise in a
‘post-normal’ science responsive to conditions of uncertainty. The final sub-
section, in turn, begins to look forward to a new dynamic systems approach
for development.
Chapter 3 begins to construct a more integrated framework for address-
ing sustainability challenges in the dynamic contexts discussed in Chapter
2. Following a discussion of the notion of sustainability, establishing the
need to treat this in normative and political terms, we introduce a set of
building blocks of a pathways approach, using simple diagrams to assist
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explanation and illustration of key concepts. First, we discuss system fram-
ing and how different actors come to construct narratives about problems
and solutions. We then explore how narratives differ in addressing the
incomplete knowledge that pervades dynamic settings: whether narrow
notions of risk are emphasized or whether uncertainty, ambiguity and igno-
rance/surprise are acknowledged. We go on to explore the kinds of
intervention envisaged to address shocks and stresses – whether emphasiz-
ing stability or durability, resilience or robustness. The chapter argues that
pathways to sustainability are thus constructed through decisions which
must explicitly address contestation and trade-offs between such different
dynamic system properties as seen under different framings and narratives.
Negotiating pathways to sustainability is therefore necessarily a political
process.
Then follow three chapters which, in different ways, explore the political
processes around negotiating pathways to sustainability and offer ways for-
ward. Chapter 4 focuses on governance. Which narratives come to
prominence and which remain hidden, and which become powerful path-
ways and which remain marginalized depends heavily on governance, which
we define here in a broad sense as political processes and institutions. The
chapter begins by reviewing briefly a range of processes, styles and practices
of governance in the contemporary world. These include an emphasis on
networked, multi-scale governance processes, interacting with state institu-
tions in various ways. Increasingly evident, too, are participatory processes
and the power relations of these: the realities of politics and governance in
practice, involving messy, day-to-day interactions and the locatedness of
unfolding governance arrangements in particular cultural and historical con-
texts. Politics is today very much the politics of nature and technology, and
the politics of knowledge. In the context of these aspects of governance, the
chapter explores and illustrates how institutional, political and power/knowl-
edge processes often interact to ‘close down’ around narrow notions of risk
and stability. Other important dimensions of incomplete knowledge and of
sustainability are thus ignored. Exposing the problems with this, the chapter
also argues that it does not have to be this way. We consider how processes
of networked, multi-level governance might enable alternative narratives and
pathways to prevail, and how adaptive, deliberative and reflexive governance
approaches offer prospects for addressing multiple dynamic properties of
sustainability and multiple dimensions of incomplete knowledge.
Chapters 5 and 6 turn explicitly to ways of ‘opening up’ and ‘broadening
out’ analysis and action. This, we argue, is essential if the narratives and
potential pathways that attend to the full range of dynamic properties of sus-
tainability, and to goals around reducing poverty and promoting social
justice, are to be pursued. The focus in Chapter 5 is on ‘designs’, or
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approaches and methods for appraisal. We explore what we term ‘empow-
ering designs’: diverse ways of consciously engaging with the challenges of
sustainability through broadening out the inputs to appraisal and opening up
the outputs to decision-making and policy. Empowering designs aim at elic-
iting and exposing hidden narratives and pathways, and getting all potential
pathways on the table – by being inclusive. Empowering designs also aim at
facilitating processes of negotiation among narratives and potential path-
ways, through deliberation. The chapter focuses in on a potential array of
methods and tools that can be used in the appraisal of sustainability issues.
Following a discussion of what is meant by social appraisal, we examine a
range of approaches which offer good prospects for broadening out and
opening up complexity and addressing the diverse dimensions of incomplete
knowledge and sustainability. The chapter then returns to the discussion of
framing and looks in particular at the interaction between different method-
ological approaches and framing effects. In this context, it outlines four
elements of effective appraisal for pathways to sustainability.
Chapter 6 asks what would it take for governance processes themselves
to broaden out and open up – to receive and act on the outputs of appraisal,
incorporating them into pathways to sustainability? What is taken up and
acted upon is clearly influenced by power, politics and interests. In this
chapter, we pursue further the argument that there are chinks and spaces in
existing governance arrangements which, if opened up, might enable alter-
native narratives to be acknowledged, appreciated and become pathways;
and for the adaptive and reflexive approaches needed to cope with dynam-
ics and uncertainty to become real. The chapter outlines two key arenas and
forms of engagement which offer prospects for opening up governance
processes. First, we look at understanding and influencing policy processes.
Second, we move to an exploration of the way citizen action and social
movements can affect change. Finally, we address roles for researchers,
public intellectuals and the media in seeking out and supporting pathways
to sustainability.
In the concluding chapter, we summarize the book’s argument. We
revisit the major contradiction it started with – the growing gulf between
complex dynamics and approaches premised on a stable, manageable world
– in this light. We return to the four case examples – of epidemics and
health systems, water in dryland India, seeds in Africa, and energy and cli-
mate – and to the specific questions being asked by policymakers now.
Systematically, the chapter considers how these might be addressed differ-
ently through the pathways approach. Finally, we draw together the
potential ways forward outlined in earlier chapters and consider how these
add up to a new agenda for thinking and action towards pathways to sus-
tainability and social justice.
Sustainability Challenges in a Dynamic World 13
01_Dynamic_001-014 16/3/10 12:00 Page 13
Chapter 3
Pathways to Sustainability:
Responding to Dynamic Contexts
Debating sustainability
How does an understanding of complexity and dynamics influence our
understanding of sustainability? The incorporation of an explicitly norma-
tive stance, as discussed in Chapter 1, together with a dynamic complexity
perspective, discussed in Chapter 2, contrasts strikingly with more techno-
cratic, managerial and equilibrium approaches to sustainability. An
emphasis on pathways implies debates about politically contested goals and
objectives. Given the way such pathways are constructed in highly
dynamic, uncertain and complex settings, there is also a need for reflexivity
in path-building, whereby destination, routes and directions are continu-
ously reconsidered by multiple participants.
As discussed in Chapter 1, sustainability has become one of the most
debated and contested terms of recent times.6But, like all such terms, sus-
tainability has a history. It did not always have such significant
connotations. Several hundred years ago the term was first coined in an
environmental context by a German forester, Hans Carl von Carlowitz in
his 1712 text Sylvicultura Oeconomica, to prescribe how forests should be
managed on a long-term basis. It was, however, not until the 1980s that
‘sustainability’ came into much wider currency. With the birth of the con-
temporary environmental movement in the late 1960s and 1970s, and
debates about the ‘limits to growth’ (Meadows, 1972), environmentalists
were keen to show how environmental issues could be linked to mainstream
questions of development. The commission chaired by Gro Brundtland,
former prime minister of Norway, became the focal point for this debate in
the mid-1980s, culminating in the landmark report ‘Our Common Future’
in 1987 (Brundtland, 1987). This offered the now classic modern defini-
tion of sustainable development:
Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the
present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet
their own needs (Brundtland, 1987, p43).
03_Dynamic_037-064 25/3/10 16:17 Page 37
The term ‘sustainability’, and more particularly ‘sustainable development’,
drew on longer intellectual debates across disciplines (Scoones, 2007).
From the 1980s there was an explosion of academic debate about these
issues, as the terms were projected onto the centre stage of policy debates
globally, particularly in the run-up to the World Conference on
Environment and Development held in Rio in 1992.
As Chapter 2 has already discussed, ecologists have long been con-
cerned with how ecosystems respond to shocks and stresses. In particular,
mathematical ecology had blossomed through the 1980s, with important
work on this issue from the likes of Buzz Holling and Robert May on the
stability and resilience properties of both model and real biological systems
(May, 1977; Holling, 1978). Sustainability could thus be defined in these
terms as the ability of a system to bounce back from such shocks and
stresses and adopt stable states (Holling, 1993; Ludwig et al, 1997; Folke et
al, 2002). Neo-classical economists drew on theories of substitutable capi-
tal to define (weak) sustainability in terms of the constancy of human and
natural capital in delivering constant consumption goods over time, with
market failures due to externalities corrected. Within economics, debates
raged over whether such a ‘weak’ definition of sustainability was adequate
or whether a stronger definition highlighting the lack of substitutability of
‘critical natural capital’ was needed (Turner, 1992; Pearce and Atkinson,
1993; Goodland, 1995; Goodland and Daly, 1996).7Ecological economics
traces more concrete links with ecological systems, generating such fields as
life-cycle analysis, ecological-footprint assessment and alternative national
accounting systems (Common and Perrings, 1992; Common and Stagl,
2005). Building on these different debates, Herman Daly and others devel-
oped an economic vision of sustainable development which challenged
standard growth models (Lele, 1991; Daly 1991, 1996). Elements of this
were picked up by the business community and notions of the ‘triple bot-
tom line’ emerged, where sustainability was seen as one among other more
conventional business objectives, resulting in a whole plethora of new
accounting and auditing measures which brought sustainability concerns
into business planning and accounting practice (Welford, 1995; Elkington,
1997). The World Business Council for Sustainable Development was
launched with much fanfare (Schmidheiny, 1992; Holliday et al, 2002),
bringing on board some big corporate players. Drawing on wider popular
political concerns about the relationships between environment, well-being
and struggles for social justice, political scientists such as Andrew Dobson
(1999) delineated political theories that incorporated a ‘green’ politics per-
spective and where sustainability concerns were put at the centre of a
normative understanding of social and political change. Others offered inte-
grative syntheses, linking the economic, environmental and socio-political
38Dynamic Sustainabilities
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goals of sustainability into what Robert Kates and colleagues dubbed a ‘sus-
tainability science’ (Kates et al, 2001).
By the 1990s, then, we had multiple versions of sustainability: broad
and narrow, strong and weak, and more. Different technical meanings
were constructed alongside different visions of how the wider project of
sustainable development should be conceived. Each competed with each
other in a vibrant, if confusing, debate. But how would all this intense
debate translate into practical policy and action on the ground? The 1992
Rio conference, convened by the United Nations and attended by 178
governments, numerous heads of states and a veritable army of over a
thousand NGOs, civil society and campaign groups, was perhaps the high
point – the coming of age of sustainability and sustainable development.
This was the moment when many hoped that sustainability would find its
way to the top of the global political agenda and would become a perma-
nent feature of the way development, both North and South, would be
done (Holmberg et al, 1991).
The Rio conference launched a number of high-level convention
processes – on climate change, biodiversity and desertification – all with the
aim of realizing sustainable development ideals on key global environmental
issues (Young, 1997, 1999). Commissions were established and national
action planning processes set in train for a global reporting system against
agreed objectives (Dalal-Clayton et al, 1994), and a whole plethora of eco-
nomic valuation, indicator measurement and auditing/accounting techniques
were elaborated. For example, David Pearce, Kerry Turner and colleagues at
the ESRC Centre for Social and Economic Research on the Global
Environment (CSERGE) developed approaches to environmental valuation
as a means to ensure that environmental issues were taken into account in
economic accounting and appraisal (Barbier et al, 1990; Pearce and Turner,
1990; Pearce and Warford, 1993; Turner et al, 1994),8while others joined
the growth industry in producing sustainable development indicators (Pearce
et al, 1996; Rennings and Wiggering, 1997; Bell and Morse, 1999; Bossel,
1999; Pannell and Glenn, 2000). At the same time a more local-level,
community-led process was conceived – Agenda 21 – which envisaged sus-
tainability being built from the bottom up through local initiatives by local
governments, community groups and citizens (Lafferty and Eckerberg,
1998; Selman, 1998). These were heady days indeed. But what did imple-
menting sustainability mean? The result was an exponential growth in
planning approaches, analysis frameworks, measurement indicators, audit
systems and evaluation protocols which were to help governments, busi-
nesses, communities and individuals make sustainability real.
However, the simplistic managerialism of many initiatives labelled ‘sus-
tainable development’ left much to be desired (Berkhout et al, 2003;
Pathways to Sustainability: Responding to Dynamic Contexts 39
03_Dynamic_037-064 25/3/10 16:17 Page 39
Scoones, 2007; Jordan and Adger, 2009). Critiques focused on the lack of
progress on major targets set in 1992, the endless repackaging of old initia-
tives as ‘sustainable’ this or that, and the lack of capacity and commitment
within governments and international organizations genuinely to make the
ideals of sustainability real in day-to-day practice (Vogler and Jordan,
2003). With the default bureaucratic mode of managerialism dominating –
and its focus on action plans, indicators and the rest – the wider political
economy of sustainable development was being ignored, with key elements
of the sustainability debate being captured by powerful interest groups
(Redclift, 1987, 1992; Meadowcroft, 1999). With mainstreaming and
bureaucratization, the urgency and political vibrancy was lost, and with this
came a dilution and loss of dynamism in a previously energetic and com-
mitted debate.
But all was not lost. Debates in recent years have refocused on some big
issues which hit the headlines internationally, substituting for the emblem-
atic issues – of the ozone hole, acidification, biodiversity loss and
desertification – that dominated the run up to Rio. These have resulted in
both public and, usually later, political reactions. For example, the contro-
versy around genetically modified (GM) crops, which peaked in Europe in
the late 1990s/early 2000s, had many political and policy reverberations
internationally (GEC, 1999). This was a debate about, inter alia, the sus-
tainability of farming systems, the future of food, human health and
biodiversity and corporate control of the agri-food system (Thompson et
al, 2007). In the same way, the climate change debate really only began to
be taken seriously post-2000. No longer was this a discussion on the arcane
specifics of global climate models but, as became clear, a real political and
economic issue, which people and governments had to take seriously
(Munasinghe and Swart, 2005; Roberts and Parks, 2007; Giddens, 2009).
Concerns about the environment and development drivers of new global
diseases and pandemics were also pitched into the public and political
realm, first with severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and then avian
and H1N1 influenzas (Abraham, 2005; Greger, 2006; Bloom et al, 2007;
Dry, 2008; Scoones and Forster, 2008). All of these issues – and the list
could go on – are centred around classic ‘sustainability’ questions: they
each involve complex and changing environmental dynamics having an
impact on human livelihoods and well-being; they all have intersecting
ecological, economic and socio-political dimensions; and, as with an
increasing array of environment–development issues, they have both local
and global dimensions.
But what is equally sure is that the existing ‘sustainable development’
institutional and policy machinery is incapable of dealing with them effec-
tively. Options for a post-Kyoto climate change agreement, which involves
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03_Dynamic_037-064 25/3/10 16:17 Page 40
the USA, China and India, have yet to be elaborated. Questions of biosafety
surrounding GM crops have not been resolved and nor does the UN
Biosafety Protocol necessarily deal with these effectively. Also, recent dis-
ease scares have shown that neither global institutions nor local health
systems are able to deal with a global pandemic.
So what of the future? Will sustainability become the unifying concept
of the 21st century as many so boldly proclaimed just a few years ago?
Certainly the 1990s managerialism and routinized bureaucratization has
been shown to have its limits. While sustainability-related commissions,
committees and processes persist in various guises, they have perhaps less
political hold than before. But with climate change in particular – and wider
risks associated with environmental change, whether in disease, biodiversity
loss or water scarcity – now being seen as central to economic strategy and
planning, there are clear opportunities for the insertion of sustainability
agendas into policy discourse and practice in new ways.
What is required, this book argues, is a more concrete clarification of
what is meant by ‘sustainability’. For example, the classic Brundtland defi-
nition of ‘sustainable development’ highlights notions of needs and
limitations. Explaining these concepts, it defines ‘needs’ as ‘in particular the
essential needs of the world’s poor, to which overriding priority should be
given’, and limitations are seen in relation to ‘the state of technology and
social organization on the environment’s ability to meet present and future
needs’ (Brundtland, 1987, p43). However, we must ask whether, given the
complex, uncertain and dynamic contexts in which negotiations of sustain-
ability must take place, such static notions of needs and limits are
appropriate. Colloquial usage of the term ‘sustainability’ simply refers to
the general quality of being ‘capable of being maintained at a certain rate or
level’ (OED, 1989) and is inherently conservative and not dynamic. What
exactly is to be maintained is often not specified.
Towards a normative, politicized perspective
on sustainability
In the post-Brundtland, post-Agenda 21 policy debates on sustainability,
however, the usage is explicitly normative. Sustainability refers to a
broadly identifiable, but often poorly specified, set of social, environmen-
tal and economic values. Although the details are often ambiguous,
contested and context-dependent, the functions concerned include the
securing of particular standards of social equity, economic well-being or
environmental quality. In this policy context, then, structures – such as
particular laws, technologies, infrastructures or institutions – are not ends
Pathways to Sustainability: Responding to Dynamic Contexts 41
03_Dynamic_037-064 25/3/10 16:17 Page 41
in themselves, but means to the ends of delivering on these broad norma-
tive aims.
We share this spirit, but go further. We argue that it is useful to distin-
guish between different normative views of sustainability, recognizing that
there are multiple sustainabilities which need to be defined quite precisely
for particular issues and groups. Thus sustainability neither carries its collo-
quial connotations, implying the maintenance of system properties in a
general sense, nor its broad normative connotations, in Brundtland’s terms.
Rather, we need to specify versions of sustainability in terms of the particu-
lar properties and flows of goods and services valued by particular social
groups or in the pursuit of particular goals. Rhetorical appeals to sustain-
ability can be, and often are, used to obscure complex or contested
interpretations and interests around such particular versions of sustainabil-
ity. Digging beneath such rhetoric and uncovering particular interpretations
and their links with particular goals and interests is a key task.
It follows from this that the sustainability debate must shed its manage-
rial pretensions. Rather, sustainability must become recognized as a
contested, discursive resource – a boundary object (Gieryn, 1983) – that
facilitates argument about diverse pathways to different futures. This
brings sustainability firmly into the realm of the political, where debates
around ‘justice’, ‘democracy’ and ‘citizenship’ have been for centuries.
Across our four case studies, it is thus not surprising that we find highly
contested versions of sustainability. For example, in dryland India sustain-
able water management may be defined in relation to the sustained
provision of urban water supply or the sustainability of irrigated farming –
which might both be served through the building of large dams. In contrast,
sustainability may be defined in relation to sustaining rain-fed farming
livelihoods in particular dryland areas and the provision of groundwater-
based village water supplies there. In the case of debates about the
sustainability of seed systems, the focus may be on their contribution to
national food security goals and sustaining overall aggregate production.
Alternatively, the focus may be the ability to sustain the livelihoods of
poorer farmers in the face of increasing shocks and stresses. Even within
such a small-farmer focus, men and women, or elders and youth, might pri-
oritize the sustainability of different crops or varieties. In the case of
epidemics, the sustainability of the response system may be defined in
terms of its ability to protect global populations from disease outbreaks. Yet
in other versions sustainability may mean responding to the specific vulner-
abilities and livelihood contexts of those confronting diseases on a
day-to-day basis. In the case of energy systems, sustainability is routinely
restricted – and not just in the industrialized world – to the single question
of carbon intensity. Yet many of the alternatives to fossil fuels present their
42Dynamic Sustainabilities
03_Dynamic_037-064 25/3/10 16:17 Page 42
own sustainability challenges, suggesting different versions of sustainabil-
ity centred on, for instance, the toxicity and risks associated with nuclear
materials, the resource implications of certain renewable strategies or the
agronomic and land-use implications of wholesale shifts to biomass.
Across the cases, these versions – and indeed many others – are not just
different, but are the subject of highly politicized contestation. This may
occur at all scales, from disputes within and between households and com-
munities to those between local, national and global priorities. Therefore
what is defined as sustainable (or otherwise) and the indicators that are
used must be subject to deliberation, with a clear and careful unpicking of
the particular goals and their trade-offs.
A systems perspective
Although the world is endlessly complex and dynamic, it is useful for ana-
lytical and practical purposes to think in terms of particular systems.
Systems, as we consider them in this book, consist of social, institutional,
ecological and technological elements interacting in dynamic ways.
Such systems need to be understood in relation to both their structures
and their functions. Structures concern the ways in which the system and its
boundaries are constituted, its internal and external relationships and the
patterns in which its processes unfold. System functions, on the other hand,
concern things such as services, outputs and consequences. These are the
‘outcomes’ that are held to be delivered by the system, as well as associated
notions of purpose and meaning.
How these structures and functions are understood and prioritized can
vary markedly, as the examples above indicate. Thus the ‘water manage-
ment system’ of interest may be bounded at the regional or national level in
relation to fulfilling water supply functions for irrigators or urban popula-
tions. Or it may be bounded and understood as a local water-agro-ecological
system with very different functional qualities in terms of contributing to a
flow of livelihood benefits. As in this example, systems might be bounded at
very different scales, with different consequences for how structures and
functions are defined. System-bounding can, however, also involve the same
scale, but with different priority given to particular elements, relationships
and functions. Thus, in the case of seed systems, a national system for
research, innovation and supply of new seeds might be geared to high-value
crops for high potential zones, or to crops and varieties suited to the circum-
stances of poorer farmers.
The ways that system structures and boundaries are understood and func-
tions prioritized constitute central dimensions of what we term ‘framing’.
Pathways to Sustainability: Responding to Dynamic Contexts 43
03_Dynamic_037-064 25/3/10 16:17 Page 43
This concern with framing, or the different ways of understanding or repre-
senting a system – drawing from the insights of methodological
constructivism in the social sciences – is a central building block of our path-
ways approach. Thus we recognize that system boundaries, dynamics,
functions and outcomes are always open to multiple, particular, contextual,
positioned and subjective assumptions, methods, forms of interpretation, val-
ues and goals. These might be held, for instance, by diverse international
organizations, technical agencies, sectoral ministries, professional disciplines,
civil society or local actors, different community members or networks which
connect members of these different groups (see Figure 3.1 and Box 3.1).
So whereas much systems thinking – including in debates about sus-
tainability – seeks to reflect comprehensively a full range and diversity of
elements, linkages and dynamics in a system and its environment, our
pathways approach adds a reflexive dimension. This recognizes that all
analysis of a system – whether by researchers, policy actors or different
local people – involves framing. All framing involves not just choices about
which elements to highlight, but also subjective and value judgements.
Such framings are produced by particular actors and co-constituted with
their particular institutional, political and life settings. Attention to the
44Dynamic Sustainabilities
Figure 3.1 Multiple framings
03_Dynamic_037-064 25/3/10 16:17 Page 44
ways in which particular actors and networks produce – and sometimes
seek to promote – particular framings is an important addition to systems
perspectives which otherwise have a tendency to downplay the roles of
particular actors and their agency.
Framing and narratives
Particular system-framings often become part of narratives about a prob-
lem or issue. These are simple stories with beginnings defining the problem,
middles elaborating its consequences and ends outlining the solutions (Roe,
1994). Narratives often start with a particular framing of a system and its
dynamics and suggest particular ways in which these should develop or
transform to bring about a particular set of outcomes. Thus, in relation to
the case of water in dryland India, an example of a mainstream policy nar-
rative might be: ‘Major water scarcities are developing and undermining
economic development; therefore the construction of large dams and
investment in the infrastructure for water delivery must take place.’ In the
case of epidemics, a frequently heard narrative holds that ‘the global threat
of a pandemic and its consequences for massive mortalities and economic
costs require substantial investments in surveillance, drug stockpiling and
intervention in areas of the world where outbreaks originate, in order to
protect us all.’ In the case of seeds in Africa, we often hear a narrative that
‘growing food deficits require massive boosts to agricultural productivity
and only GM crops will provide the answer.’ In the case of energy, we often
hear the narrative that ‘the challenges of dealing with climate change and
energy security can only be dealt with through a centralized system includ-
ing nuclear power generation.’
Table 3.1 highlights a number of ways by which narratives are formed,
involving value judgements about what and who is included and excluded
and what issues, questions and solutions are prioritized.
Pathways to Sustainability: Responding to Dynamic Contexts 45
Choice of elements: Subjective judgements:
• Scale • Perspectives
• Boundaries • Interests
• Key elements and relationships • Values
• Dynamics in play • Notions of relevant experience
• Outputs • Goals
Box 3.1 Dimensions of framing
03_Dynamic_037-064 25/3/10 16:17 Page 45
Let us work through narratives related to two of our case examples in more
detail, to consider how a system is framed, identify which actors are
involved and consider the elements of system framing, as well as how these
aspects are drawn into a particular narrative, through some of the practices
highlighted in Table 3.1.
In the case of pandemic threats, an ‘outbreak narrative’ is often pushed
by international agencies and governments in northern settings. As Wald
(2008, p2) puts it:
[This] begins with the identification of an emerging infection, includes
discussion of the global networks throughout which it travels, and
chronicles the epidemiological work that ends with its containment. As
epidemiologists trace the routes of the microbes, they catalogue the
spaces and interactions of global modernity. Microbes, spaces and
interactions blend together as they animate the landscape and motivate
the plot of the outbreak narrative: a contradictory but compelling story
of the perils of human interdependence and the triumph of human con-
nection and co-operation, scientific authority and the evolutionary
advantages of the microbe, ecological balance and impending disaster.
The narrative therefore defines and bounds the system in global terms. In
terms of objective elements of system framing, it focuses on a particular inter-
pretation of disease dynamics (sudden emergence, speedy, far-reaching,
often global spread) and a particular version of response (universalized,
generic emergency-oriented control, at source, aimed at eradication). More
subjective dimensions include the value placed on protecting global popula-
tions, which often implies protecting particular populations in richer
countries. Goals are defined in terms of impacts on human mortality and
national economies and business viability. This narrative calls upon particu-
lar kinds of knowledge and expertise – notably formal science and
epidemiology – in diagnosing and solving the problem.
Such an overall outbreak narrative has been typical of the international
responses to highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), for example, with
46Dynamic Sustainabilities
Table 3.1 Creating narratives: Practices
Stating goals Defining problems Including disciplines
Setting agendas Prioritizing issues Interpreting results
Posing questions Setting baselines Highlighting values
Deciding context Choosing methods Drawing boundaries
Discounting time Recruiting expertise Formulating criteria
Handling uncertainties Characterizing options
Constituting ‘proof’ Exploring sensitivities
03_Dynamic_037-064 25/3/10 16:17 Page 46
distinct versions associated with veterinary, human public health and pan-
demic preparedness strands of the response. The HPAI outbreak narrative
in particular has been framed in terms of a globalized version of ‘health
security’ (WHO, 2007; Scoones and Forster, 2008; Scoones, 2010). This,
in turn, has given rise to a plethora of initiatives and associated institutional
arrangements focused on early warning, risk assessment, intensive surveil-
lance, outbreak monitoring, pandemic-preparedness planning, rapid
response teams, contingency plans and so on. With disease-specific varia-
tions, dominant narratives around SARS and Ebola similarly emphasize
short-term, acute outbreaks requiring rapid identification and control – to
‘stamp out’ the outbreak and prevent dangerous spread ultimately to global
populations (Heymann et al, 1999; Crawford, 2007; Leach, 2008; Dry and
Leach, 2010). Specific elements of the institutional response have included
the creation by the WHO of a revised set of International Health
Regulations in 2005 (WHO, 2005) and of the Global Outbreak Alert and
Response Network (GOARN) (WHO, 2009) which mobilizes multiple
agencies to respond to epidemic shocks as they arise.
Yet there are alternative narratives produced by different actors which
frame the system in different ways. One alternative narrative, for instance,
promoted by certain researchers, technical agencies and non-governmental
organizations, emphasizes a local intervention model focused on reducing
disease risk and exposure in a particular area. The system is thus bounded
here in more local or regional terms. Relevant dynamics include the social,
political and ecological processes which result in disease outbreaks and make
particular people vulnerable to them. Variants of this narrative therefore
embrace attention to long-term changes in human–animal–environment
interactions (for example, trends in farming, livelihoods and land use in the
context of climate change) as a focus for development and adaptation.
These might include, for instance, land-use and ecosystem interventions
such as integrated vector management, or the restructuring of market chains
– for example in the poultry industry (Parkes et al, 2004; Waltner-Toews
and Wall, 1997). In some versions, dynamic disease ecology comes to the
fore, with attention to the often-unpredictable ways that viruses, social and
environmental dynamics co-evolve in particular settings such as to render
particular people and places vulnerable (Slingenbergh et al, 2004). Thus
deforestation through agriculture and logging, and its political, economic
and poverty-related causes, has been argued to contribute to viral haemor-
rhagic fevers, by bringing populations closer to their forest animal viral
reservoirs and secondary vectors. Outbreaks of haemorrhagic fevers have
often centred on the forest–savannah boundary zone, suggesting interac-
tions with nonlinear forest–savannah dynamics and land use (Fairhead and
Leach, 1998), and with agricultural and bushmeat-trading livelihoods
Pathways to Sustainability: Responding to Dynamic Contexts 47
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(Hardin, 2008), which may themselves be influenced by the uncertain
effects of climate change. Subjective goals and values in this alternative nar-
rative focus more on addressing the underlying structural causes of inequity
and disease vulnerability among particular populations (Farmer, 2003), and
addressing the longer-term social justice and livelihood implications of dis-
ease and response.
In a related alternative narrative, advocated by some field practitioners
with long experience of engagement with local populations, infectious dis-
eases are seen as more endemic than epidemic; long present among local
populations who have developed culturally embedded ways to live and deal
with them, as with haemorrhagic fevers for example (Hewlett and Hewlett,
2008). Like the previous alternative narrative, the system is bounded in
local terms. But here, the system relationships highlighted include local
knowledge and social protocols which can, so this narrative argues, inform
and be integrated into participatory surveillance and response strategies,
helping to make these more context-specific, locally appropriate and
acceptable.
Thus different actors and networks, framing system dynamics, bound-
aries and goals in different ways, produce very different narratives about
what a response should be and what might make it effective. A similar array
of contrasting narratives can be found across all our case examples. To take
another, let us look at water in Western India.
The case of water-scarce Kutch, a region of Gujarat in Western India,
has become iconic in the debate about water scarcity in India, particularly
around the controversial Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP) (Mehta, 2005).
Those promoting large-dam building as a solution to regional water scarcity,
including certain state planners, water engineers and elite land owners with
potential access to irrigation water, promote a narrative which sees the cre-
ation of a massive dam across the Narmada river as necessary to supply
downstream irrigation and urban water needs. The system is bounded as a
large, regional watershed, linking water supplies to a range of users. System
dynamics are characterized in terms of declining water availability, portray-
ing scarcity as natural – attributed to low and ever-decreasing rainfall and
perennial droughts. As research by Mehta (2005) has shown, there is a
widespread view in Kutch that due to the harsh climate, erratic water supply,
declining groundwater sources and frequent droughts, the only solution is to
get water from the rivers of Gujarat, with hopes pinned on the ambitious
dam project SSP. These arguments have become incorporated into popular
and media discourses, which have also become a way of expressing concerns
about the political marginalization of the region. Kutchi identity is moulded
around water or the lack of it. Villagers across the length and breadth of the
district say in certain contexts that the lack of water is the cause of their
48Dynamic Sustainabilities
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misery, the depopulated villages and mass migration out of Kutch (Mehta,
2005). Thus the subjective values and goals in this narrative include not just
increasing physical water availability, but also the rescuing of the region
from political marginality.
In contrast, farmers and pastoralists living in Kutch express in their
everyday lives and practices a highly contrasting narrative. Their framings
of the system focus on local dryland livelihoods and on the knowledge and
livelihood strategies that allow them to adapt to the unpredictability and
temporary scarcity of water. This narrative also draws attention to distribu-
tional issues and the social and political dynamics which enable some to
access water while others do not. The water ‘crisis’ in Kutch in this view is
largely human-induced and intensely political, and not simply ‘natural’
(Mehta, 2005). Emphasis is placed on the culpability of large farmers, bad
water-management practices, misuse of water and the circumventing of
legislation. Activists and researchers allied with this narrative, in turn, take
a different view on the SSP. They argue that much of the water made avail-
able downstream will either be utilized by the industrial complex in
southern Kutch or be diverted to meet the needs of big irrigation farmers
whose use of water is neither economic nor judicious. They argue that, fol-
lowing present plans, SSP water will not help to recharge the groundwater
aquifers of Kutch or reduce soil salinity; neither will it meet the water needs
of poor dryland cultivators, women and pastoralists. Therefore with differ-
ent subjective values and goals, as well as a different understanding of
dynamics, the narrative emphasizes different solutions. These focus on
learning lessons from history. In the past, even though rainfall was precari-
ous and scanty, the region’s water resources were managed either by local
people or by the Raos of Bhuj, using principles and practices compatible
with Kutch’s needs: for example, earthen dams, tanks and other water-
harvesting methods.
Thus, for any given issue, it is possible to identify a range of different
narratives which link different system framings to particular goals and
values. While narratives are produced by particular actors and networks,
the same people may become allied with different narratives at different
times and in different contexts. Thus, in the case of debates about water in
Kutch, farmers may represent water scarcity as natural when they speak in
popular, politicized terms about the region’s marginalization, yet express
very different perspectives as they live with water uncertainty in their day-
to-day farming livelihoods.
As we see in these examples, different narratives lead to radically differ-
ent assessments of policy options. Even among different actors in the policy
field, different system framings are important and often lead to very differ-
ent narratives around intervention and action. In the energy sector, for
Pathways to Sustainability: Responding to Dynamic Contexts 49
03_Dynamic_037-064 25/3/10 16:17 Page 49
instance, great efforts have been expended to conduct comprehensive com-
parative assessments across a full range of policy options (CEC, 2004).
Results have been influential in areas of policymaking such as climate
change, nuclear power and utility regulation.
Figure 3.2 shows the results obtained across 63 international cost-
benefit studies, looking at the adverse effects caused by a range of
different electricity-generating options – from coal to biomass. Each
study was conducted according to comparably stringent disciplinary
principles and subject to similarly rigorous processes of expert accredi-
tation or peer review. Not every study reviews every energy option,
which is why the values of non the right-hand side do not add up to 63.
The impacts of energy technologies are expressed in this literature as
‘economic externalities’. This involves taking all the different kinds of
environmental, health and wider social pros and cons of each energy
option and calculating a monetary value to represent the relative magni-
tude of each. In Figure 3.2, the results are represented as the additional
‘external cost’ (in US cents at 1998 prices) that would have to be added
to the existing market price of one unit of electricity (a kilowatt-hour,
kWh) if this were to reflect the full ‘social cost’ of electricity production
50Dynamic Sustainabilities
adverse impacts – as economic ‘externality’ (cus/kWh)
lowest result specific study 25 percentile median result 75 percentile highest result
Note: Results obtained across 63 detailed risk- and cost-benefit comparative studies (n).
Source: Adapted from Sundqvist et al, 2004
Figure 3.2 Variability in assessment of policy options for electricity supply
03_Dynamic_037-064 25/3/10 16:17 Page 50
by each means (Sundqvist et al, 2004). Although the expression of these
results in terms of monetary values is controversial (Stirling, 1997), it is
standard procedure in this energy-assessment literature, as across other
areas of technology assessment such as chemicals, agriculture and trans-
port (Amendola, 1992; Saltelli, 2008). Whereas individual studies
typically express their results as very precise, there is enormous variabil-
ity in the literature as a whole, extending to several orders of magnitude
around the median values for each range in Figure 3.2. Thus, depend-
ing which result is chosen from within the range associated with each
option, contending energy supply technologies could be ranked very dif-
ferently. These contrasts between the results obtained by different
studies are due to the divergent framings of their analyses. Although pri-
vately well known to analysts, this importance of subjective judgement is
rarely reflected in the presentation of results, let alone policy discus-
sions, which routinely refer to this kind of ‘science based’ analysis as
offering clear prescription for choice among alternative technology
options (Stirling, 2008).
In the same way, Figure 3.3 displays the variety of judgements exer-
cised by different experts involved in advising the UK government on the
regulation of GM crops in the late 1990s. Using an elicitation method
called ‘multicriteria mapping’ (MCM) (Stirling, 1997; Stirling and Mayer,
1999), each individual expert explored their own understandings of the
options, evaluation criteria, policy priorities and technical uncertainties.
The result in each case included an individual picture of the relative per-
formance rankings for a series of different agricultural strategies. Each
chart in Figure 3.3 summarizes these individual pictures for six agricultural
strategies that were comparable across all experts. The results reveal large
uncertainties within individual views (shown by the lengths of the bars)
and stark ambiguities across different perspectives (shown by the contrast-
ing rankings across individual charts). The detailed picture of the
underlying framings provided by MCM contrasts strongly with the typi-
cally quite precise prescriptive collective findings expressed by the
advisory committees on which these same experts sit. Each framing is sim-
ilarly ‘expert’ and ‘legitimate’, yet yields radically divergent implications
for policymaking. Conventional unified recommendations ‘close down’
these uncertainties and ambiguities and obscure the importance for policy-
making of divergent ‘expert’ framings.
The reason that expert assessment procedures such as these can yield
such contrasting pictures is that the answers that are derived typically
depend on the framing of analysis (Goffman, 1975). As Chapter 5 illus-
trates further, framing effects such as these shape the application of
appraisal tools, methods and procedures of all kinds.
Pathways to Sustainability: Responding to Dynamic Contexts 51
03_Dynamic_037-064 25/3/10 16:17 Page 51
As we now go on to explore, narratives differ not just in how they frame sys-
tems and prioritize particular goals, they also differ in how they address risk
and uncertainty, and in the particular dynamic properties of sustainability
that they emphasize. We now deal with these themes in turn.
Addressing risk and uncertainty
As seen from these examples from the field energy policy and agriculture,
the world involves both complex dynamics and radical differences in fram-
ings of them. For our understandings (and policymaking) to be as effective
52Dynamic Sustainabilities
KEY
Each chart shows option rankings obtained by
individual exper t committee members on a
subjective interval scale of ‘performance’.
low high
performance performance
options
org organic agricultur al methods
ipm integrated pest management
cnv conventional intens ive farming
gm1 GM with segr egation & l abelling
gm2 GM with monitori ng
gm3 GM with vol untary contr ols
Source: After Stirling and Gee, 2003
Figure 3.3 Variation in policy judgements on alternative
agricultural policy options
03_Dynamic_037-064 25/3/10 16:17 Page 52
as possible, attention must therefore focus very directly on the risks, uncer-
tainties and ambiguities which result.
Yet there are many ways of thinking about risk and uncertainty. These
can be illustrated by building on the two basic dimensions that constitute
the mainstream policy concept of ‘risk’. First, there are the things that might
happen: ‘hazards’, ‘possibilities’, ‘benefits’ or ‘costs’ – which can be referred
to as ‘outcomes’. A second dimension is the likelihood of each outcome
happening – conventionally represented as a numerical probability between
zero and one. Routine economic and policy analysis represents ‘risk’ as the
simple product of these two parameters. But what is neglected in this kind
of approach is that either of these dimensions may itself be subject to vari-
ously incomplete or problematic knowledge.
As Figure 3.4 shows, this conventional definition of ‘risk’ actually
implies three other idealized possible states of knowledge about likelihoods
and outcomes (Stirling, 1999). In naming these, Figure 3.4 employs terms
in a sense that reflects both their colloquial meanings and their strict (and
original) technical definitions. The crucial point here, however, lies not in
terminology or taxonomy. The four distinguished aspects of incomplete
knowledge are ‘ideal types’, reflecting different facets of incomplete knowl-
edge that typically occur together in varying degrees. The value of this
Pathways to Sustainability: Responding to Dynamic Contexts 53
knowledge about
outcomes
knowledge about
not
problematic
problematic
not
problematic problematic
RISK
UNCERTAINTY
AMBIGUITY
IGNORANCE
likelihoods
Figure 3.4 Dimensions of incomplete knowledge
03_Dynamic_037-064 25/3/10 16:17 Page 53
picture lies rather in the substance of the distinctions, highlighting their very
different implications for practical and policy responses. By recognizing the
different properties of these contrasting states of knowledge, we can gain
important insights into the challenges for sustainability.
The top left-hand quadrant defines risk in the strict sense of the term.
This refers to a situation where there is confidence that probabilities can be
calculated across a range of known outcomes. However, the three other
dimensions of incomplete knowledge are situations where these conditions
do not apply: uncertainty, ambiguity and ignorance. These describe a range
of circumstances under which reductive, analytic methods – such as risk
assessment – are, even in their own terms, quite simply not applicable.
Under the strict definition of uncertainty in Figure 3.4 (lower left quad-
rant), we can be confident in our characterization of the different possible
outcomes, but the available empirical information or analytical models do
not present a definitive basis for assigning probabilities (Keynes, 1921;
Knight, 1921; Rowe, 1994). It is under these conditions – in the words of
the celebrated probability theorist de Finetti – that ‘probability does not
exist’ (1974). Of course, we can still exercise subjective judgements and
treat these as a basis for systematic analysis (Luce and Raiffa, 1957;
Morgan et al, 1990). However, the challenge of uncertainty is that such
judgements may take a number of different – equally plausible – forms
(Wynne, 1992). Rather than reducing these to a single expected value or
prescriptive recommendation, the rigorous approach is therefore to
acknowledge the open nature of a variety of possible interpretations.
Under the condition of ambiguity (upper right quadrant), it is not the
probabilities but the characterization of the outcomes themselves that is
problematic. This may be the case even for events that are certain or have
occurred already. Disagreements may exist, for instance, over the selection,
partitioning, bounding, measurement, prioritization or interpretation of
outcomes (Wynne, 2002; Stirling, 2003). Examples may be found in deci-
sions over the right questions to pose in regulation: ‘Is this safe?’,
‘sustainable?’, ‘sustainable enough?’, ‘acceptable?’ or ‘the most sustainable
option?’. For instance, in the regulation of genetically modified seeds, ambi-
guities arise over contending ecological, agronomic, safety, economic or
social criteria of harm (Grove-White et al, 1997; Levidow et al, 1998;
Stirling and Mayer, 1999). Similar ambiguities emerge when we are forced
to compare ‘apples and oranges’. These might be qualitatively different
forms of damage; impacts on different people (e.g. workers or the public;
children or adults); consequences over different time-frames (e.g. present
or future generations) or on different life-forms (e.g. humans or nonhu-
mans). When faced with such questions over ‘contradictory certainties’
(Thompson and Warburton, 1985), Nobel prize-winning work in rational
54Dynamic Sustainabilities
03_Dynamic_037-064 25/3/10 16:17 Page 54
choice theory has shown that analysis alone is unable to guarantee definitive
answers (Arrow, 1963; Kelly, 1978; MacKay, 1980). Where there is ambi-
guity, then, reductions to a single ‘sound scientific’ picture are also neither
rigorous nor rational (Collingridge, 1982; Bonner, 1986).
Finally, there is the condition of ignorance (lower right quadrant). Here,
neither probabilities nor outcomes can be fully characterized (Keynes, 1921;
Loasby, 1976; Collingridge, 1980). Where ‘we don’t know what we don’t
know’ (Wynne, 1992, 2002), we face the ever-present prospect of ‘surprise’
(Brooks, 1986; Rosenberg, 1996). This differs from uncertainty, which
focuses on agreed known parameters (such as carcinogenicity or flood dam-
age). It differs from ambiguity, in that the parameters are not just contestable
but are acknowledged to be at least partly unknown. Some of the most impor-
tant challenges of sustainability involve issues that were – at least at their
outset – of just this kind (Funtowicz and Ravetz, 1990). In the early histories
of stratospheric ozone depletion (Farman, 2001), novel zoonotic diseases
such as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) (van Zwanenberg and
Millstone, 2001) or highly pathogenic avian influenza (Stirling and Scoones,
2010), and the recognition of new mechanisms of chemical toxicity such as
endocrine disruption (Thornton, 2000), for instance, the initial problem was
not so much divergent expert views or mistakes over probability; rather, it
was straightforward ignorance over the possibilities themselves.
Returning to the case example of seed systems in Africa, one of the
hottest debates of recent years has been over the potential role of GM food
crops. At the heart of this has been an intense discussion about multiple
dimensions of risk and uncertainty, with different actors articulating differ-
ent narratives with different emphases. Perhaps the most dominant of these
has focused on the classic, narrow definition of risk. Here the potential toxi-
city or biosafety risks of GM food and crops are assessed in controlled
conditions or through extrapolating from experiences in the USA and
Europe. Principles such as ‘substantial equivalence’ (Millstone et al, 1999)
are deployed, which not only assume the appropriateness and completeness
of risk assessment, but seek to elevate these assumptions to the status of a
global regulatory principle. On this basis, it becomes an institutional imper-
ative to confine attention to ‘risk based’ assessments of the probabilities of a
set of specific forms of harm to people and environments. However, both
potential consequences and associated probabilities may be viewed very dif-
ferently. Take the emergence of ‘superweeds’ or the toxic effects of GM
food, for instance. The consequences of superweeds depend on assump-
tions about the efficacy, accessibility and affordability of management
techniques, which can look very different for different groups. Toxic effects
appear differently depending on whether they are understood as aggregate
statistical effects over large populations or as specific impacts on genetically
Pathways to Sustainability: Responding to Dynamic Contexts 55
03_Dynamic_037-064 25/3/10 16:17 Page 55
susceptible sub-populations. In either case, the probabilities of such out-
comes occurring in particular places or conditions are typically deeply
uncertain. This applies in particular to agro-ecological and social settings in
Africa, for example, where standard experimental models designed for other
contexts may not apply. In many situations, furthermore, conditions of igno-
rance may arise – where we simply don’t know what we don’t know. The
synergistic impacts of GM foods on immune-suppressed populations, for
example, may result in very different and wholly unforeseen toxicity reac-
tions. Or the impacts of shifts in climate and agro-ecology may interact with
crop weed genetic dynamics in ways that cannot be foreseen, particularly in
biodiverse areas. Finally, the GM debate has been fraught with conditions of
ambiguity, where different views on potential outcomes and why they
matter prevail. Thus for example, GM may be discussed in terms of its
potential for boosting crop productivity, disease and pest resistance and
nutritional value. However, it may also be discussed in quite different terms
in relation to the political economy of corporate control of agriculture and
the implications this has for autonomy, dependence and livelihood options
for the future (Scoones, 2005; Glover, 2009). Such different categories of
incomplete knowledge in relation to GM crops are illustrated in Figure 3.5.
56Dynamic Sustainabilities
knowledge about
outcomes
knowledge about
not
problematic
problematic
not
problematic problematic
RISK
UNCERTAINTY
AMBIGUITY
IGNORANCE
specified probabilities of
identified potential harms
(toxicity, genetic escape)
unknown probabilities of
identified potential harms
(in particular African agro-
ecological and social contexts)
different terms of
discussion (production,
political economy etc.)
unforeseen impacts
(synergistic effects
between seeds and
bodies/environments)
likelihoods
Figure 3.5 GM foods and crops: Dimensions of incomplete knowledge
in African settings
03_Dynamic_037-064 25/3/10 16:17 Page 56
Let us take another of our examples and look at how different dimen-
sions of incomplete knowledge are invoked in the debate on avian influenza
(Figure 3.6). Much of the debate has been dominated by quantitative prob-
abilistic models of risk which sometimes present information about
outcomes and likelihoods in far more definitive terms than is warranted. In
2005, for example, two models were presented in the journals Nature
(Ferguson et al, 2005) and Science (Longini et al, 2005) which together had
a huge influence in framing the response as one that needed to be focused
on containment at the source of the outbreak. But of course a wide range of
uncertainties exist – from the big uncertainty (will a devastating pandemic
happen at all, and if so when?) to more specific uncertainties (about the
impacts of veterinary control measures, about vaccination and drug effi-
cacy, about behaviour change in situations of crisis and so on) (Scoones
and Forster, 2008; Scoones, 2010). Thus, for example, the interplay
between viral ecology and genetics (such as patterns of antigenic shift and
drift), transmission mechanisms (such as the role of wild birds or poultry,
backyard chickens or large factory units) and impacts (such as the conse-
quences in immuno-compromised individuals and populations) are highly
complex and contingent. There are also ambiguities: How do we define an
‘outbreak’? What different perspectives are there on the potential distribu-
tional consequences and associated implications for the ‘fairness’ of
different possible interventions? Outcomes can be defined, for example, in
terms of potential impacts of pandemic influenza on human mortality. Up
to 150 million deaths may occur in a major global pandemic according to
some estimates (although there are huge variations in the numbers quoted).
Human mortality impacts may also be more tightly defined, in relation to
particular groups at risk – for example, women or children handling poul-
try. Potential economic impacts of a global pandemic are also quoted, with
some estimating the cost at US$3 trillion. Yet cast in a different way, out-
comes may be seen in terms of lost livelihoods and impacts on poverty and
well-being. These outcomes may emerge from the response itself, as culling
campaigns have resulted in around two billion chickens being slaughtered,
many of which were backyard birds owned by poor families in developing
countries (Scoones and Forster, 2008).
The condition of ignorance has also characterized debates over avian
and pandemic influenza. The possible importance of hitherto unknown fur-
ther mutations means that no one knows whether sustained human–human
transmission will arise from the H5N1 virus or not. The possibility of as-yet
undocumented transmission mechanisms and vectors means, further, that
no one knows whether (if this occurs) it will result in rapid, global trans-
mission with huge mortalities or not. And the possible importance of
unexplored determinants of efficacy and wider consequences of response
Pathways to Sustainability: Responding to Dynamic Contexts 57
03_Dynamic_037-064 25/3/10 16:17 Page 57
measures (e.g. containment, anti-viral drugs, vaccination) further com-
pound the unknown implications for the spread of a pandemic. Of course,
it is inherent in the nature of surprise that it is difficult to give possible
examples of ignorance ex ante. However, possible surprises may plausibly
be anticipated around the emergence of radically new strains of the virus
(such as new combinations of avian and swine flu viruses), unexpected
transmission mechanisms or unanticipated health outcomes, including
those arising in complex interactions with other health/social conditions.
Beyond this, there is always the broader possibility of the emergence of
entirely novel pathogens; indeed more than 70 per cent of new infectious
diseases affecting humans that have emerged over the last 30 years have
emerged unexpectedly from non-human animal populations (Woolhouse
and Gaunt, 2007; Jones et al, 2008).
Addressing dynamic properties of sustainability
Narratives about actions aiming to promote sustainability also involve
assumptions about the nature, or ‘temporalities’, of the changes these
58Dynamic Sustainabilities
knowledge about
outcomes
knowledge about
not
problematic
problematic
not
problematic problematic
RISK
UNCERTAINTY
AMBIGUITY
IGNORANCE
ostensibly definitive
quantitative probabilistic
models of ri sk
pandemic or not?
impacts of veterinary controls?
behaviour change in crisis?
interplay in viral ecology/genetics
definition of ‘outbreak’?
distributional consequences?
mortality/morbidity?
vulnerable groups?
economic costs?
livelihoods impacts?
new strains of the virus?
unexpected transmission vectors?
unanticipated healt h outcomes?
complex social interactions?
entirely novel pathogens?
likelihoods
Figure 3.6 Avian and human pandemic influenza: Dimensions of
incomplete knowledge
03_Dynamic_037-064 25/3/10 16:17 Page 58
actions are intended to counter. Are changes seen as short-term shocks or
long-term stresses? And these narratives also differ strongly in terms of the
styles of actions that are envisaged. Is the aim to control the causes or driv-
ers of change, or to respond to them? These are important practical
distinctions that are often elided or ignored in existing analysis for policy-
making on sustainability. Figure 3.7 maps out these further distinctions and
the dynamic properties of sustainability associated with them. The vertical
axis rests on a distinction between temporalities of change – the dynamics
of the system in question. If changes are characterized mainly as shocks,
then disruptions are seen as transient under otherwise continuous trajecto-
ries. On the other hand, if changes are seen as stresses, then we are talking
of enduring, long-run shifts to the directions of the trajectories themselves.
The horizontal axis rests on the distinction between different kinds of
strategic action or intervention. If sources or drivers of disruption are seen
as tractable to control, then relatively ambitious measures of control may be
held justifiable. If the driving causes of change are more intractable, then it
may be that only relatively modest forms of response are appropriate. Such
styles of action reflect the distinction between more conventional, control-
oriented management and responsive, adaptive management.
Thus we might ask, within any given policy narrative: Are intervention
strategies aimed at exercising control in order to resist disturbance or shocks
to what is otherwise assumed to be an essentially unchanging trajectory
Pathways to Sustainability: Responding to Dynamic Contexts 59
STABILITY
DURABILITY
RESILIENCE
ROBUSTNESS
STABILITY RESILIENCE
DURABILITY ROBUSTNESS
shock
(transient disruption)
stress
(enduring shift)
control respond
(tractable drivers ) (intractable drivers )
temporality
of change
style of action
Source: From Stirling, 2007b
Figure 3.7 Dynamic properties of sustainability
03_Dynamic_037-064 25/3/10 16:17 Page 59
(stability)? Or is there an acknowledgement that there may be limits to con-
trol, and thus that interventions should resist shocks in a more responsive
fashion (resilience)? In other circumstances, the system may be subject to
important stresses, driving long-run shifts. In this case, interventions might
attempt to control the potential changes – aiming at durability. Alternatively,
embracing both the limits to control and an openness to enduring shifts
would suggest strategies aimed at robustness.
In dealing with epidemics, an emphasis on stability is the case for many
outbreak narratives, which, as we have seen, emphasize ‘stamping out’
short-term disease shocks to return to a previous status quo. Thus control-
oriented responses to outbreaks of Ebola in East and Central Africa,
involving rapid response, containment and public health measures to limit
contact and spread, have often proved highly effective (Heymann et al,
1999). This is a classic case of a control response to a short-term shock,
with the aim of ensuring stability. However, in thinking about a sustainable
disease response system over wider areas and longer time frames, there is a
need to respond to outbreaks as they arise in a more flexible manner. A flex-
ible response network that can be mobilized as and when needed can, in this
context, be seen as a strategy for resilience. The WHO’s Global Outbreak
Alert and Response Network (GOARN) (WHO, 2009) is a potential
example, although most of its activities focus on control responses to imme-
diate shocks. The responses thus mobilized emphasize one-off, short-term
disease-eradication efforts, often with little attention to longer-term stresses.
For instance, in the case of Ebola, there are questions over how response
infrastructures might respond to longer-term evolutionary changes in
viruses and their ecological interactions (Pinzon et al, 2004; Walsh et al,
2005). Yet existing strategies are conventionally built on assumptions of
internal stability, in which the fundamental dynamics are assumed to stay
the same. In this way the property of durability is downplayed at the
expense of stability.
Finally, there is the property of robustness – a conjunction of challenges
both of intervention and change as represented in the bottom right of
Figure 3.7. Like durability, this requires consideration of possible stresses
towards secular long run shifts in conditions. But in this case these are rec-
ognized to lie beyond the ready reach of control. In dealing with Ebola,
there exist numerous examples which point to this latter challenge of
robustness (Leach, 2008): changes in viral susceptibility in different pop-
ulations; long-term shifts in forest–savannah dynamics and their effects on
the populations of rats that are the main vectors for the disease (Denys et
al, 2005); ecological shifts and stresses resulting in more human–animal
contact and the effects of climate change on these. These issues have not
been addressed at a fundamental level in mainstream policy narratives.
60Dynamic Sustainabilities
03_Dynamic_037-064 25/3/10 16:17 Page 60
There is an argument (usually geared to funders), that investment in epi-
demic responses and infrastructure networks at a global level will proof the
system against future outbreaks by improving capacity (surveillance, diag-
nosis and so on) – and so ensuring, in our language, durability and
robustness. Yet there is very little attention to the specific challenges pre-
sented by long-term, external changes which are not amenable to
prediction and control.
In the case of water management – in India as elsewhere – short-term
shocks creating variability in water supply have been responded to through
engineering systems with an emphasis on water control through dams,
pipes and pumps. The definition of sustainability therefore is centred on
the maintenance of stability of supply. However, increasingly, water sup-
ply engineers and managers are having to confront long-term secular shifts
in rainfall and hydrological patterns as a result of climate change. Again,
control-oriented strategies are linking engineering solutions to long-term
predictions of climate-related stresses. So, for example, dam infrastruc-
tures are built with margins to accommodate extra water or to operate with
less. Thus, conceptions of sustainability extend from stability to durability,
but still remain within a control-oriented paradigm.
In many instances, though, the tractability of the drivers of future envi-
ronmental shocks and stresses affecting water supply and hydrology is
understood to be limited. Here, more response-oriented strategies are essen-
tial in assuring sustainability. Thus, in cases of short-term shocks such as
droughts or sharp, high rainfall episodes leading to floods, strategies for
resilience are required. This involves moving beyond a control-oriented
engineering approach to consider a diversity of response strategies and man-
agement interventions. In the Indian case, this might include building on
local understandings, techniques and technologies – such as tank systems,
water harvesting and so on, or strategies for pastoral mobility or inter-annual
shifts in crop mixes. Water engineering for resilience requires inbuilt flexi-
bility and an ability to manage flows in a responsive and adaptive manner.
However, given long-term stresses associated with climate change in
places such as Kutch in Western India, acting in conjunction with other
long-term stresses linked to population shifts, economic change and alter-
ations of land use, adaptation to short-term shocks may be insufficient.
Strategies to ensure robustness of water supply for users would need to
respond not just to inter-annual variability or episodes of infrastructure fail-
ure, but to long-term changes in water supply and its use. This might
involve longer-term shifts in land use, in agricultural practices, in crop types
and varieties, and in the overall dependence on rain-fed agriculture in peo-
ple’s livelihoods. The suite of technologies and management practices
required for sustainability focused on robustness will look different. Again,
Pathways to Sustainability: Responding to Dynamic Contexts 61
03_Dynamic_037-064 25/3/10 16:17 Page 61
engineering solutions will be important but might, for instance, focus on a
variegated system of smaller dams which can be adjusted more flexibly in
response to long-term shifts in water availability. There are no simple
answers; indeed debate and experimentation around strategies for respond-
ing to shocks, stresses and their less tractable causes in the Indian context,
as elsewhere in South Asia, is live and ongoing (Moench and Dixit, 2004).
Sustainability is about the maintenance of qualities of human well-being,
social equity and environmental integrity over time. This inherently encom-
passes both shocks and shifts (as the kinds of change against which qualities
are maintained) and control and response actions (as the kinds of interven-
tion that might be adopted to achieve these ends). The four properties
mapped out in Figure 3.7 may therefore be seen as individually necessary
and collectively sufficient elements of sustainability (see Figure 3.8).
‘Sustainable solutions’ are thus those that offer stability, durability,
resilience and robustness in specified qualities of human well-being, social
equity and environmental quality. Defined in this way, these dynamic prop-
erties of sustainability relate to benefits and flows delivered in any particular
system, as framed in a particular way.
These quite fundamental conceptual distinctions give rise to some very
practical policy implications. For instance, rather than speaking about some
particular policy aim in terms of undifferentiated ‘strategies for sustainabil-
ity’, we cannot assume that particular strategies fostering one aspect of the
dynamics of sustainability will necessarily promote others. Thus, in the case
of an epidemic response system, a sustainable system would combine not
62Dynamic Sustainabilities
STABILITY
DURABILITY
RESILIENCE
ROBUSTNESS
S
SUSTAINABILITY
TABILITY RESILIENCE
DURABILITY ROBUSTNESS
shock
(transient disruption)
stress
(enduring shift)
control respond
(tractable drivers ) (intractable drivers )
temporality
of change
style of action
Figure 3.8 Combining dynamic properties of sustainability
03_Dynamic_037-064 25/3/10 16:17 Page 62
only measures to control outbreaks at source as they arise, but also be posi-
tioned to respond adaptively to emergent outbreaks, thus conferring
resilience and to identify, track and respond to longer-term shifts in disease
incidence linked to changes in ecological and demographic conditions –
both those that can be relatively easily controlled (durability) and those that
require more adaptive responses (robustness). The relative emphasis on
each of these dynamic properties of sustainability will depend on how the
system is framed (its structures, elements and relationships) and on the
associated policy goals and objectives. Thus narratives aimed at controlling
global outbreaks of avian influenza, and those focused on more localized
livelihood goals of Asian farmers affected by this as a long-term poultry
disease, would highlight different dynamic properties and different goals of
sustainability.
A new science for sustainability?
Following the discussion above, the task faced in thinking about and apprais-
ing issues of sustainability involves more than just a technical assessment of
the dynamic properties of stability, durability, resilience and robustness. We
must ask: What is the system? What are its purposes, functions and mean-
ings? What is to be sustained and for whom? Who is to define each of these
things and how? All such aspects are inevitably contested.
Drawing together the various sets of distinctions discussed above, for
any issue we might therefore identify an array of narratives – different
stories about the nature of a problem and potential solution. For each par-
ticular narrative we might ask:
• Who are the actors and networks articulating the narrative?
• What is the specific framing of ‘the system’ and its dynamics – including
the treatment of different notions of bounding and spatial and temporal
scale, and the goals and values prioritized for system change (Figure 3.1)?
• How is incomplete knowledge dealt with? To what extent does the narra-
tive address the issue in terms of risk, uncertainty, ambiguity or ignorance
(Figure 3.4)?
• Which dynamic properties of sustainability are prioritized? In particular,
to what extent is the narrative focused on shocks or stresses, control or
response (Figures 3.7 and 3.8)?
Narratives are important not just as stories about the world. Some of them, at
least, justify and become entwined with particular pathways of intervention
and system change. As we have discussed above, for any particular issue it is
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often possible to identify multiple narratives, each suggesting different path-
ways to different sustainabilities. Some exist, some are hidden and some are,
currently, only imagined. But all must be subject to analysis, consideration
and debate.
Pathways to sustainability are thus constructed through decisions which
must explicitly address contestation and trade-offs between different
dynamic system properties as seen under different framings and narratives.
Critically, this requires a reflexive process, whereby assessments become
necessarily positioned and partial, constructed in relation to the social–
economic–political subjectivities of the analyst.
A new science for sustainability thus requires a joining together of now
well elaborated non-equilibrium perspectives from the natural sciences
(see Chapter 2) with social science perspectives which take the issue of
framing seriously in an integrated manner. With Holling (1998) we agree
that a positivist, sometimes reductionist analytic is needed alongside more
integrative, holistic sciences. This requires greater dialogue and interaction
across disciplines, sectors and policy debates. As Holling (1998, p5) notes,
even ‘Those more comfortable in exercising only one of these have the
responsibility to understand the other.’
Central to the approach that we have developed in this chapter is what
we might call a ‘reflexive turn’, by which we mean taking account of how
analysis and understanding always depend on the position and assumptions
of the analyst. This derives from a position on understanding systems, their
structures, properties and functions, in relation to particular, normative
goals and values. Any negotiation of pathways to sustainability in dynamic,
complex systems must therefore be centrally about focusing on framings of
systems and their properties – recognizing divergent epistemological (ways
of knowing) and ontological (ways of being) positions, associated with dif-
ferent actors and interests. It must also involve negotiating the trade-offs
across diverse pathways (actual, potential and imagined) in relation to the
political-normative positions, goals and values of diverse actors.
Negotiating pathways to sustainability is therefore necessarily a political
process. It can be informed by scientific analyses of contexts, systems and
their properties but fundamentally requires an opening up of debate,
through a diversification of knowledge bases and processes of inclusive
deliberation at all steps. This needs to be supported by reflexive institu-
tional frameworks and governance systems – and perhaps above all an
increased humility and attention to power relations in processes of appraisal
and decision-making. Just how this might come about – and often why it
does not – both in terms of wider governance issues and particular appraisal
designs – is the subject of the next three chapters.
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