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RETHINKING DEVELOPMENT –
AS IF THE PLANET AND ITS PEOPLE REALLY MATTERED
John Fien1, David Goldney2 and Tom Murphy2
1. RMIT University, Melbourne Australia
2. Western Research Institute, Charles Sturt University,
Bathurst, Australia
The Planetary Context
The publication of Silent Spring (Carson 1962) and The Tragedy of the Commons
(Harden 1968) galvanized a worldwide environmental movement, that included many
members of the scientific community and many civil society groups to think much more
about the inherent connectivity between organisms and processes and, through parable,
reminding us that humans live in a world where there are inherent limits to growth. This
was possibly a watershed in human thinking and propelled us from observing and
exploring species diversity to beginning to embrace the concept of biodiversity, that is
that species link together in complex pathways and systems that underwrite life itself and
all that that this entails. The Club of Rome built on this understanding with the
publication of Limits to Growth (Meadows et al 1972), which offered a major correction
to economic models that offer humanity a seeming nirvana of wealth based on never
ending consumption and growth, albeit often at the expense of less wealthy countries.
James Lovelock’s Gaia (1979) theory, that Earth is a complex organism with processes
continually adjusting through complex feedback processes also entered the psyche of
20th Century humans.
All this, of course, was but a belated rediscovery of what indigenous people and the
world’s great religions have known for millennia. To quote but one example: the
Australian Aborigines who possess the world’s oldest surviving culture. The indigenous
peoples of Australia came in a series of migratory waves from Asia and gradually
populated the country, establishing a human ecology which was in harmony with the
natural ecology. The land was respected and loved as a mother. Indeed, the land is
considered sacred by Aborigines. The land not only yields resources to sustain life; it is
life. Pat Dodson, a former Chairperson of the Australian Reconciliation Council,
describes the Aboriginal land ethic in this way:
For the Aboriginal people land is a dynamic notion; it is something that is
creative... Land is the generation point of existence; it’s the spirit from which
Aboriginal existence comes. It’s a place, a living thing made up of sky, of
clouds, of rivers, of trees, of the wind, of the sand, and of the Spirit that has
created all those things; the Spirit that has planted my own spirit there, my
own country ... It belongs to me; I belong to the land; I rest in it; I come from
it. (cited in Fien 1997)
As might be expected, this sensitive vision produced only slight impacts on the
environment. Yet it should not be assumed that the Aborigines lived in a static or passive
relationship with the land during the many thousands of years prior to 1788 when the first
European settlement was established. Aborigines had very clear goals for their use of the
Australian environment as evidenced, for example, in their use of fire in the process
known as fire-stick farming to generate new grass growth to attract game.
The Aboriginal people also had elaborate systems for codifying their knowledge of the
land, its cycles, the need to respect it, and the management practices that would allow
them to use the land and its resources in a sustainable way. This knowledge was passed
down through the generations through stories, dance, ceremonies and the establishment of
a network of sacred places. The Aboriginal system of environmental education continues
today through family relationships and through special programmes in Aboriginal
community schools and even in some progressive non-Aboriginal schools.
However, the Aboriginal vision of the land has not been widely accepted by non-
Aboriginal Australians despite the work of many committed people over the last two
centuries. The same story of “paradise lost” can be told of almost everywhere on Earth
and, as a result, we are now living in a world beset by deleterious changes, driven by a
downward spiral of unsustainable development. Although the rate of population growth is
slowing down, world population continues to grow, placing unsustainable demands on
natural systems as they are exploited to satisfy our basic human needs for food, shelter,
clothing and transportation – and the ever increasing demand for superfluous resource-
and energy-wasteful products and services, especially by rich industrialised countries of
the North and the members of the rapidly growing “world consumer class” in the South.
This human demand for more and more things in a world of rising population numbers is
driving an exponential loss of naturalness, unparalleled rates of species loss, exponential
increases in land degradation almost wholly due to inappropriate agricultural practices,
with shortages of key resources, such as water and oil, beginning to appear. Furthermore
there are signs that many of our ‘natural’ and agricultural systems have been seriously
impaired, with the crossing of ecological thresholds, requiring expensive and resource
demanding restoration strategies rather than relying on natural regenerative processes.
Cultural landscapes built up over millennia of human presence, and very much
ecosystems in their own right, are also being adversely affected due to population
pressures and perceived needs to intensify agricultural production. The oceans have not
escaped the pressures of development and there is genuine concern that many of our
fisheries have been over exploited.
A more insidious set of exponential changes is the increase of thousands of pollutants that
are caught up in critical system cycles (water and carbon in particular) that can and do
contaminate our food chains and impact on personal health. Many naturally produced
substances such as greenhouse gases have led to accelerating global warming with the
likelihood of very adverse impacts on our weather, oceanic heat transfer cycles and sea
levels.
In the last 200 years worldwide, we have created human-dominated cultural landscapes of
a different ilk than in any previous human era. People flock to cities thereby becoming
disconnected from nature and obvious links with food chains and water catchments.
Cities, whilst often offering cultural gains can be sinks for dysfunctional living not to
mention their very significant ecological footprints and their penchant for being
associated with assorted pollutants and major heat sinks.
However, all over the world, people from diverse nations, cultures and religions have
been reflecting and struggling with concepts of conservation and sustainability for nearly
two centuries firstly in response to nature as wonder and mystery, then to concern about
the global loss of species and latterly with the notion of sustainability of the human
species itself as we face seemingly intractable problems. This reflection is seen within
indigenous cultures, the writings of the great 19th and 20th Century natural history
mystics, and the rise of the global conservation and environmental movements.
Scientifically, the study of natural history has given way to understanding the role of
species in terms of ecosystem processes and communities of plants and animals that
underwrite the very nature of our most fundamental economic activities.
The very heart of human values has been vigorously re-appraised in the last half century
by almost every major religion and philosophical worldview as they have examined their
creation stories and/or historical roots in a re-evaluation of the whole of creation, with
humans as but one small component, very dependent on the health of the whole. A
defining moment in human history may well have been in our initial space explorations
as we ‘saw’ for the first time from an outsiders’ perspective, the rather frail earth
spaceship in a new cosmic light. Initially ‘re-evaluation’ appears to have led to a
polarisation of societies with greens on the left and developers to the right and every
conceivable shade of green and pink in between. Conflict, both local and global, formed
part of the milieu in the reflecting process with industry and global players in open
cultural ware-fare with greens and their various political allies. Increasingly however,
industry is beginning to drive development in ways that bring ‘green’ and ‘brown’
together, not just out of self-interest. The agricultural sector is desperately seeking ways
to better integrate nature conservation and production to the point that exporting nations
are already having to ‘lift their game’ in order to gain access to ‘greening’ markets that
demand ISO accreditation.
Sustainability and Sustainable Development
Definitions of sustainability and sustainable development are commonplace, often elusive
as to their intent and meaning, and vague enough to allow participation under its banner
by almost anyone. The roots of the most commonly held definitions of sustainable
development are found in the Brundtland Commission’s oft-repeated argument:
The environment does not exist as a sphere separate from human actions,
ambitions, and needs, and attempts to defend it in isolation from human
concerns have given the word ‘environment’ a connotation of naivety in
some political circles. The word ‘development’ has also been narrowed by
some into a very limited focus, along the lines of ‘what poor nations do to
become richer,’ and thus again is automatically dismissed by many in the
international arena as being a concern of specialists, of those involved in
questions of ‘development assistance.’ But the ‘environment’ is where we
live; and ‘development’ is what we all do in attempting to improve our lot
within that abode. The two are inseparable. (World Commission on
Environment and Development, 1987)
Thus, the Commission defined sustainable development as “the ability to make
development sustainable – to ensure that it meets the needs of the present without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs… It went on to
add that “the concept of sustainable development does imply limits – not absolute limits
but limitations imposed by the present state of technology and social organization on
environmental resources and by the ability of the biosphere to absorb the effects of
human activities”.
However so advanced is the state and rate of increase in planetary environmental
degradation that the implementation of notions of ‘sustainability’ and ‘sustainable
development’ must now realistically be seen as transitionary processes. The US National
Academy of Sciences pointed in the transition direction in its milestone report Our
Common Journey: A Transition Towards Sustainability (U.S. National Research Council
1999). Figure 1 from this report captures the parameters that now appear to be most
widely adopted in the range of definitions of ‘sustainability’. These parameters constitute
a three-way matrix:
Interdependence of what are often described as the three pillars of sustainable
development: economic, social and environmental (The Johannesburg Declaration
on Sustainable Development 2002)
The time factor: Over how long a period of time are different elements of the
three different pillars to be sustained?
Trade-offs: How are decision about apparent contradictions – at least in the short
term – between elements of the environment and of development – in order to
maximise sustainable outcomes?
However what is fundamentally missing from such current thinking about sustainability
is the nature of the future world that we are creating. In a global context and over a very
short period of human history, we have moved from either landscapes dominated by
more-or-less pristine albeit dynamic ecosystems, or long established cultural landscapes
that embraced the very heart of sustainability over the periods that they were created (e.g.
the terraced irrigation landscapes of South-East Asia, and the hedgerows of England), to
human-dominated landscapes where we are attempting to integrate nature and
development without giving significant thought to the ultimate consequences. Worse still
is the reality that cultural landscapes have already emerged or are emerging that are about
as far removed from the Brundtland vision as one might imagine.
In their books A Short History of Progress and Collapse: How Communities Choose to
Fail or Succeed, Ronald Wright (2004) and Jared Diamond (2005), respectively remind
us there are all too numerous accounts of how once-prosperous societies have collapsed.
While, as authors, we have no intention of adopting a doomsday philosophy, the reality is
that we are moving globally into unchartered waters and almost certainly not all current
societies are likely to be sustainable into the future and will be ousted by the laws of
nature they intentionally or unintentionally flout. Instead of the collapse that Diamond
predicts, we can choose to accelerate the transition to a sustainable future.
This transitionary approach recognizes that sustainable development is at best a
transitionary process with different time lines possible (Millennium Declaration 2002).
The Global Scenario Group (1995) together with the US Board on Sustainable
Development did find that it was possible to achieve quite significant achievements in
realising a sustainable future but only if nations were prepared to adopt very disciplined
commitment to resource conservation and eco-efficiency, and to abandon wasteful
consumption (Raskin et al 2002).
The great many interpretations possible in Figure 1 means that, as it stands, sustainable
development is a grand compromise between ecosystem health, economics, and improved
social well-being and justice (Kates et al 2005). So can there be an agreed international
understanding of what sustainable development actually is?
TAKE IN FIGURE 1 ABOUT HERE
In 1992 at the Rio Earth Summit, almost all countries became signatories to Agenda 21,
which sets out an extensive action plan for development, society and the environment in
the 21st century. The primary legacy of Rio has been an increased awareness and policy
agenda concerned with achieving environmental sustainability. This is despite Agenda 21
requiring substantial reforms across a broad range of social, cultural, economic and
political arenas (Bennett, 2001). Ten years later, at the World Summit for Sustainable
Development in 2002, however, a review of progress on nations shifting towards
sustainability indicated that little had changed (PCE 2004). The World Summit
recognised that greater urgency was required on eradicating poverty for peace, security
and global stability, and the adoption of sustainable consumption and production
practices. These priorities for global action along with several others make up the
Millennium Development Goals, which are now the major focus of the international
sustainable development agenda.
All this requires an “unpacking” of what sustainable development means. The UK
Sustainable Development Commission (2001) defined sustainable development as
encompassing a range of processes for "ensuring a better qualify of life for everyone,
now and for generations to come" and that this would involve meeting four
objectives at the same time:
social progress that recognises the needs of everyone;
effective protection of the environment;
prudent use of natural resources;
maintenance of high and stable levels of economic growth and employment.
The Commission’s report then went on to outline a number of different ways of
conceptualising sustainable development: the Natural Step approach, the “five
capitals” approach, the Triple Bottom Line approach, the environmental space
approach, the social justice approach, and so on. All, however, are complementary
and, indeed, overlap and often duplicate each other. A summary of the first two of
these illustrates the core principles of sustainable development, with particular
relevance for technical and vocational education.
A Swedish cancer surgeon concerned to discover the scientific bases of sustainability
conferred with the world’s leading scholars over a period of many years to develop what
he called “The Natural Step”. Karl Henrik Robèrt’s desire to ground sustainability in
science led him to apply the basic principles of thermodynamics and cellular biology to
identify four key concepts, or 'System Conditions' necessary for human and ecosystem
survival:
Materials from the earth's crust must not systematically increase in the Biosphere.
This means that fossil fuels, metals and other substances should not be extracted
at a faster pace than their slow redeposit into Earth's crust.
Substances produced by humans must not systematically increase in nature. This
means that products should not be produced at a faster rate than they can be
broken down in nature or into Earth's crust.
The physical basis for the productivity and the diversity of nature must not be
systematically diminished. This means that the ecosystems should not diminished
in quality or quantity, and we should not harvest more from nature than can be
recreated.
We must be fair and efficient in meeting basic human needs. This means that basic
human needs must be met with the most resource-efficient methods possible,
including a just resource distribution between people all over the world.
These System Conditions are the principles of a sustainable society, providing a guide to
how we need to operate our human systems so that they do not breach the limits set by
the biophysical world. Approaching sustainability from an economic rather than a bio-
physical framework, the “five capitals” approach identifies essentially the same principles
for a sustainable society. An extension of the “triple bottom line” of financial,
environmental and social accountability, the “five capitals” approach is based upon the
five types of capital an organisation needs to function properly:
Natural capital: The life support systems that provide air, water, materials and
energy that support all life both bio-physically and socio-economically. Natural
capital provides the renewable (timber, grain, fish and water) and non-renewable
(fossil fuels) resources used to satisfy human wants and needs, as well as the
physical processes, such as wind and climate regulation, we depend upon as well
as the “sinks” that absorb, neutralise or recycle wastes.
Human capital: The systems and processes developed by a society for advancing
the health, knowledge, skills and motivation of individuals, and which give them
the personal resources with which to engage with the world.
Social capital: The structures or institutions such as families, communities,
businesses, trade unions, schools, and voluntary organisations that enable
individuals to maintain and develop their dignity and skills in partnership with
others, thus, enhancing the vitality and resilience not only of individual human
capital but also of a community.
Manufactured capital: The tools, machines, buildings and other forms of
infrastructure produced by humans, which enable us to more efficiently utilise
natural capital in the extraction, production, distribution and consumption of
goods and services.
Financial capital: The system of exchange value established by society that other
types of capital to be owned, compared and traded.
Maintaining a dynamic and balanced integration of the five forms of capital is essential
for sustainable development. For example, where long term (ie sustainable) economic
development is the result of increasing the stocks of capital, under- or mal-development
results when an unbalanced emphasis on consumption outweighs investment in
maintaining natural, human, social and manufactured capital. However, if consumption
results in net capital depletion, so that the stocks of any form of capital decline, then such
consumption is not sustainable and will need to be reduced in the future. Similarly, the
on-going creation of manufactured capital is dependent upon sustainable stocks of the
natural resources (natural capital) from which to make them, the workforce skills
provided by human capital and the financial capital to invest in industry.
The Natural Step and “five capitals” approaches have much in common, especially in
their integration of all aspects of sustainability and the values that underpin them. And,
increasingly, those values are transforming the consciousness of individuals, governments
and industry alike. While the transformation is uneven and progressing at different rates,
only those very few in the business and political world whose short-term interests are
served by maintaining world-wide poverty and environmental degradation - or those
captured by the hedonism and materialism of contemporary society - dispute the need for
such a transition. The rise of general public awareness and concern for such matters
means that the sustainability debate no longer needs to focus on the need for change. The
consciousness raising task set by the environmental predicament has been completed
successfully over the last thirty or so years despite economic recession and the recent
resurgence of political conservatism in many parts of the world. Thus, many world
business and industry leaders have recognised the need to change direction. In it
manifesto, Changing Course: A Global Business Perspective on Development and
Environment, the Business Council for Sustainable Development argued that:
The environmental challenge has grown from local pollution to global threats
and choices. The business challenge has likewise grown - from relatively
simple technical fixes and additional costs to a corporate wide collection of
threats, choices, and opportunities that are of central importance in separating
tomorrow’s winners from tomorrow’s losers. Corporate leaders must take this
into account when designing strategic plans of business and deciding the
priorities of their own work.
Sustainable development is also about redefining the roles of the economic
game in order to move from a situation of wasteful consumption and pollution
to one of conservation, and from one of privilege and protectionism to one of
fair and equitable chances open to all. Business leaders will want to
participate in devising the rules of the new game, striving to make them
simple, practical, and efficient.
No one can reasonably doubt that fundamental change is needed. This fact
offers us two basic options: we can resist as long as possible, or we can join
those shaping the future. (Schmidheiny 1992, p.13)
Pathways to Sustainability
There are two broad approaches to shaping a sustainable future. The first, sometimes
labelled “green growth” or “sustainable growth”, demands a continued emphasis on
economic development to provide the financial capital needed to eradicate poverty
(through building social and human capital) and solve environmental problems (and thus
enhancing natural capital). The second calls for fundamental reductions in the resource
and energy throughputs of present day levels of economic activity. The difference is more
than one of semantics, however. Thus, it is necessary to review the differences in detail in
this chapter.
The sustainable growth mode is reformist: it does not involve any radical transformation
of the current system of production. In this approach, the environment is conceived in
functional or utilitarian ways with conservation treated as one of several policy options,
along with the technological and economic tools, which can be used to shift the economic
development path gradually towards one which maintains the regenerative capacities of
renewable resources and switches from non-renewable to renewable ones. By contrast,
the integrated sustainable development mode demands marked departures from the
current system. Orr (1992) states that:
The primary differences between the two [approaches] have to do with
assumptions about future growth, the scale of economic activity, the balance
between top-down and grass-roots activism, the kinds of technology, and the
relationship between communities and larger political and economic
structures. Without anyone saying as much, the former approach reinforces a
tendency toward a global technocracy and a continuation along the present
path of development, albeit more efficiently. The other view requires a
rejuvenation of civic culture and the rise of an ecologically literate and
ecologically competent citizenry who understand global issues. (p.1)
Advocates of the sustainable growth mode of sustainability are often environmental or
economic functionalists: they see the environment as functioning to provide all the goods
and services people want and need. While functionalists share a technocentric world
view, they may be seen to occupy several points along a continuum, point that differ
markedly in their social visions and in their ideas for attaining them (Rees 1990).
Combining these four with the integrated sustainable development approach, a total of
five points may be identified on the continuum (Figure 3).
TAKE IN FIGURE 2 ABOUT HERE
The first position is not really a genuine one: it uses environmental claims to promote
particular products or development projects. To members of this group, for example,
nuclear power is the clear alternative to the climate changes produced by fossil fuel-fired
power stations, agro-forestry plantations help reduce global warning, and genetically
engineered plants are beneficial to nature because they require reduced inputs of
agricultural chemicals. Unfortunately, some green business, green industry and green
consumerism are based on this opportunistic view of sustainable development in which
any environmentally sensitive development can be justified under the umbrella of
sustainability. However, in such cases, sustainability is little more than “a bargaining
device or marketing tool” rather than a policy objective (Rees 1990, p. 438).
The second group of functionalists believe that sustainable development can be achieved
through finding technological answers to specific environmental problems. Rees (1990)
calls this the “technological response and regulate” group. This is the approach to
sustainability presently being adopted by the governments of most industrialised
countries and many industries. However, it tends to be a reactive approach in which
technological solutions are introduced and legislative controls enacted after government
and industry are convinced there is a problem. Rees argues that this approach to
sustainability does not address the root causes of environmental problems but that,
therein, lies its popularity:
Although this damage repair approach tends to be costly and never addresses
the roots of the environmental problems... it has the political advantage of not
requiring any significant change in management institutions, investment
patterns, economic policies, or economic structures. (Rees 1990, p. 439)
The third group believes that sustainability can be achieved through the adoption of the
principles and accounting tools of the new environmental economics. This is the “market
solution” equivalent of the “technological response and regulate” perspective and is
becoming increasingly popular. This group seeks to redirect the nature of economic
growth through “a shift in the balance of the way economic growth is pursued” so that a
stock of natural and social capital can be reserved for future generations (Pearce,
Markandya and Barbier 1989, p.xiv). This “redirect economic growth” approach to
sustainability involves fundamental changes in the way businesses operate, e.g. changes
in investment patterns towards conserving natural capital, changes in production and
consumption patterns towards environmentally benign products, and changes in
government taxing and regulatory powers so that individuals and corporations are
encouraged to pay the real social and environmental costs of their actions as well as the
surface economic costs.
The fourth group argues that economic growth needs to be directed towards solving the
problem of global inequalities of wealth and social well-being. This vewpoint is central to
the recommendations of the Rio Earth Summit and the Johannesburg World Summit on
Sustainable Development. Sir Shridath Ramphal, a member of the original Brundltand
Commission, expressed this viewpoint when he wrote, “Eradicating the causes of poverty
and making wealth creation more benign in its impact on the environment are the
essential challenges we must meet if we are to find a path to sustainable development and
ensure human survival” (Ramphal 1992, p. 18). The “growth with equity” group
recognises that poverty leaves many people with little option but to extract what they can
from Earth’s soils and forests in order to meet their basic human needs. For many in the
South, poverty and environmental decline are interdependent parts of the cycle of
underdevelopment. This “growth with equity” perspective argues that economic growth
can be a way of breaking this cycle if it is directed not at meeting rising living standards
in the North but at meeting the basic human needs of all people and at redressing the
imbalance of resource consumption between rich and poor countries.
The third and fourth approaches to technological sustainability represent changes to the
values, practices and institutions of industry and government that foster economic growth
and at the expense of natural and social capital.
There have been many attempts in recent years to outline the nature of the fifth position
on the continuum. This is the integrated approach to sustainability and the type of society
it demands. All stress the integration of ecological principles into the practices of just,
caring and democratic societies. In Caring for the Earth: A Strategy for Sustainable
Living, the world’s leading environmental organisations, the International Union for the
Conservation of Nature (IUCN) the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)
and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) stress that this would be:
... a kind of development that provides real improvements in the quality of
human life and at the same time conserves the vitality and diversity of the
Earth. The goal is development that meets these needs in a sustainable way....
Living sustainability depends on a duty to seek harmony with other people
and with nature. The guiding rules are that people must share with each other
and care for the Earth. Humanity must take no more from nature than nature
can replenish. This in turn means adopting lifestyles and development paths
that respect and work within nature’s limits. It can be done without rejecting
the many benefits that modern technology has brought, provided that
technology also works within those limits (IUCN, UNEP and WWF 1991, p.
8)
Like the “five capitals” model, integrated sustainable development therefore represents a
commonwealth of social, economic and environmental goals (as shown at the centre of
Figure 4) in which environmental, economic and social imperatives equally define the
parameters of sustainable development. The previous four approaches do not do this. For
example, they involve an integration of social and economic goals (“growth with equity”)
or economic and environmental goals (“technological response and regulate” and
“redirect economic growth”). Similarly, the “conservation with equity” sector represents
a concern primarily for ecological and social values. All dimensions of development,
ecological, social and economic, must be closely linked for integrated sustainable
development.
Caring for the Earth also outlines four criteria for living and working sustainably which
are almost identical to the goals set out by the UK Sustainable Development Commission
near the beginning of this chapter:
1. Improved quality of human life
Economic growth must not be identified with development. Development must be
about ensuring that all are provided with adequate resources for a dignified,
healthy and happy life The limits to growth demand that our goal should be
sufficient material living standards, not affluence. Appropriate development
focuses on full and equal access to food, clean water, education, health care,
political freedom, etc., not on endless increases in consumption
2. The earth’s vitality and diversity conserved
Development must aim at conserving the physical and ecological life-support
systems that shape climate, cleanse the air and water, recycle essential elements,
and create and regenerate soil. This means preserving the diversity of species,
especially by reducing the damage to habitats caused by the expansion of human
activities.
3. Depletion of non-renewable resources minimised
Approaches to development must be found which reduce human dependence on
oil, gas, coal, and minerals, use less resources and energy, utilise renewable
resources, and encourage recycling and reuse.
4. The earth’s carrying capacity respected
Human populations and resource consumption patterns must be in harmony with
nature’s capacity to provide. There is a biophysical limit to the impacts that the
earth can withstand without deterioration. We muct urgently stabilise population
growth in many regions of the South and reduce resource consumption in the
overdeveloped North.
Meadows, Meadows and Randers, the authors of the original Limits to Growth (1972)
describe a society that lives by such criteria for sustainability as one which is “interested
in qualitative development not physical expansion” and which applies “its values and
best knowledge of the earth’s limits to choose only those kinds of growth that actually
serve social goals and enhance sustainability” (1992, p. 210). These researchers recognise
the quality of life imperative in a steady-state economy (Daly 1991) or in what the liberal
philosopher, John Stuart Mill, described as an ever-evolving and improving society
within a “stationary state”. They cite Mills’ 1848 statement as a rationale for the viability
and desirability of living by the principles of integrated sustainable development:
I cannot ... regard the stationary state of capital and wealth with unaffected
aversion so generally manifested towards it by political economists of the old
school. I am inclined to believe that it would be, on the whole, a very
considerable improvement on our present condition. I confess I am not
charmed with the ideal of life held out by those who think that the normal
state of human being is that of struggling to get on; that the trampling,
crushing, elbowing, and treading on each other’s heels ... It is scarcely
necessary to remark that a stationary state of capital and population implies no
stationary state of human improvement. There would be as much scope as
ever of all kinds of mental culture and moral and social progress; as much
room for improving the Art of Living, and much more likelihood of its being
improved. (quoted in Meadows, Meadows and Randers 1992, pp. 211-212)
Such principles for an “Art of Living” are central to integrated sustainable development.
These principles also outline the duty of care for other people and other forms of life that
indigenous societies and the world’s great religious have always taught and which now
need to be re-disseminated through all sectors of society. This requires a comprehensive
philosophy of education for sustainability.
Towards a Philosophy of Education for Sustainable Development in TVET1
Two principles are paramount in a philosophy for TVET based upon integrated
sustainable development. First, TVET must promote an understanding of our ecological
predicament, the many problems involved, their origins in the unsustainable nature of the
“growth and greed” society of the modern world, and the need for a transition to a
sustainable society. Second, integrated sustainable development demands that learners be
tuned to the functioning of the whole global system and to the connections between its
parts. This means having a deep concern about the welfare of the planet, its ecosystems,
its cultures and its people, thinking in terms of whole systems, being aware of the effects
parts can have on each other, and avoiding attending solely to selected narrow aspects of
the whole.
Thinking and living sustainably means overcoming many dualisms, especially those
which encourage humans to distinguish the knower from the known. One of our mistakes
has been to think that we are separate from nature and can understand, intervene and
control nature as if we were not part of it. We must think more in terms of systems of
which we are a part, rather than in terms of mechanisms we can understand, know and
manipulate from a distance. This means understanding that most of the big problems
confronting us have many common causes, interconnections and solutions. As Fritjof
1This section is based upon a set of points rst published in Trainer (1990, pp. 105-107).
Capra (1983) emphasised in The Turning Point, we must learn to think less in atomistic,
analytic, reductionist and mechanical terms. Above all we must guard against the
production of professionals obsessed with and aware of nothing but their specialism,
people who can, for example, produce a magnificent dam without any understanding of
or concern for its ecological or social consequences.
These two imperatives mean that education for sustainability encompasses, but goes far
beyond, education for the wise management of Earth’s ecosystems in order to sustain
yields. TVET for sustainable development involves developing respect, indeed reverence,
for Earth through the detailed understanding and appreciation of the many miraculous
processes through which nature maintains the conditions necessary for life. It must also
involve some sense of community with, responsibility for, and dependence on the other
species with which we share this planet.
What contribution can TVET make if we are to achieve the transition to a sustainable
society? There should be no doubt that: (a) the consequences of a failure to make the
transition will be catastrophic for humans and for the biosphere, or (b) there is no
possibility of making the transition without a huge educational effort of all kinds for all
sectors of society. The transition is primarily an educational problem.
The transition to a sustainable society will involve an historically unprecedented
revolution in institutions, systems, lifestyles and values. Much of Western culture has to
be reversed in a few decades. We have to balance a long list of cultural traits by their
opposites, particularly obsessions with material affluence (a sense of “enoughness”),
getting richer (being happy with one’s lot), competing (cooperating), winning (sharing),
exercising power (sharing power), and controlling nature (respective and living within
nature). Our powerful economic systems need to be turned the war on global poverty and
its effects, and vast sums of financial capital need to be invested in reorienting transport
and production systems to ones that do not waste energy and resources.
All such changes require a skilled and committed workforce that appreciates the
important roles it plays in either continuing “business as usual” without heed to the future
or living and working in ways that advance he transition that is required.
We could easily make Ho Chi Minh City or London or Beijing into very satisfactory
places in which to live and Siemens, General Motors or Aunty’s Bakery great places at
which to work - if there were the will to do so. That is the key: the task for TVET for
sustainable development is primarily that of helping a sufficient number of people to
understand that transition to a sustainable society is necessary, attain the skills to work
towards it and, more importantly, believes that the alternative will bring sustainable
human development for all.
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WHAT IS TO BE
SUSTAINED
NATURE
Earth
Biodiversity
Ecosystems
LIFE SUPPORT
Ecosystem
Services
Resources
Environment
COMMUNITY
Cultures
Groups
Places
FOR HOW
LONG?
25 Years
‘Now and in
the future’
Forever
LINKED BY
But
Or
Mostly
Only
And
WHAT IS TO BE
DEVELOPED:
PEOPLE
Child survival
Life expectancy
Education
Equity
Equal opportunity
ECONOMY
Wealth
Productive sectors
Consumption
SOCIETY
Institutions
Social capital
States
Regions
Figure 1: Analysing Aspects of Sustainable Development
Source: National Research Council, 1999).
Figure 2: Five Interpretations of Sustainable Development
Tending towards an integrated approach
Tending towards a functionalist approach
Functionalist approach
without integration
Integrated approach
1
Sustainable Growth
(“Green Wash”)
5
Integrated
Sustainable
Development
3
Green
Market
Reform
2
Technology
and
Regulation
4
Growth
with
Equity
