Search for an Enduring Balance between Environment and Society

Before going into Chap. 2 we’ll finish our discussion of the hypothetical “cultural carrying capacity” illustrated in Fig. 1.9.

The authors accept a “Limits to Growth” model of env and society relationships. That’s their diagnostic (or descriptive) model (e.g., they argue that pop growth is the root of all environmental problems—not all analysts agree). They even offer a rather pessimistic assessment, arguing that humans, when faced with limits, tend to over-use resources, to “overshoot” in pop and consumption. They do usefully argue that raw population is not the only variable, that Technology and Consumerism, and the land use and resource systems in place, magnify the impacts of some populations.

[some of you will be familiar with I = PAT, or Impact on environment is a function of population times technology times affluence (or consumption). A certain “P” may have more or less “I” given its “A” and “T”]

Chap. 2:

Their prescriptive model is “Sustainable Development.” (briefly introduced in Chap. 2).

The great proposal put forward in this chapter, in reflection of a growing movement worldwide (of scholars, policy-makers, activists and others) is that our resource and technology systems must be reformed to achieve a sustainable relationship with environment.

Sustainability is difficult to define, and can be viewed differently by different perspectives. As the book points out, very big differences in production/consumption patterns exist between the developed and developing countries.

Developing countries wrestle with population growth, increasing demand for land for agriculture, and local to regional environmental degradation. Their economic status tends to preclude how much they can invest in environmental protection. The poorest nations spiral downward in a pattern of population growth, and env degradation.

Developed (industrial) nations: consume more resources per capita and produce wastes like CO2 into the atmosphere that further transform the environment. But developed nations also have put efforts into environmental clean-up and protection.

The text offers a roster of problems associated with human production and consumption growth, making its strongest case for the fact that human transformations have now grown to global proportions (affecting whole ecosystems, the climate, and oceans) and thus more threatening and even more difficult to mitigate (e.g., requires international cooperation, etc.).

So, what are the main PRESCRIPTIONS associated with calls for SUSTAINABLE DEVLEOPMENT?

· Recognition that humans are part of nature, of the role of natural systems in human well-being; that even in heavily mechanized, technical production systems, natural processes and materials are essential, that our resource systems are inevitably embedded in a natural matrix.

· Better assessment of benefits and costs associated with our use of natural resources----“ENVIRONMENTAL ACCOUNTING.” This includes better ways to measure costs (e.g., what is lost when a species diappears) and benefits (what “ecological services” we get from, say, healthy forests and wetlands); and incorporating all of the costs of production and consumption into the price of goods and services. Especially “INTERNALIZING” the costs to commons pool resources like oceans, atmosphere, species that have been left out of the economic calculus. They should be allocated to the producer/user, not distributed across the commons (this creates an incentive for reducing those costs).

· Find a way to include the status of renewable natural resources into national economic indices----“NATURAL RESOURCE ACCOUNTING”----treat them as capital before they are transformed into goods and services. So if you liquidate old growth forest assess both the loss and the gain to the national economy.

· Reduce poverty/increase development---this is much more general, and seems something of a truism until you get into the debate about development. The idea is that poverty accelerates environmental degradation while wealth, although itself built on some env degradation, allows resources to protect the environment. This is a conundrum, maybe even a contradiction, but the text suggests that the basic idea of sustainable development is that we must have development to have a better environment, that the choice is not between using and not using land and resources but using them more carefully, more sustainably. I mentioned this in class Thursday---and that an economist—Simon Kuztnets, had offered it as fundamental theory of development. (part of why he won a Nobel prize).

This may not seem very radical to you, but it was an idea resisted in some circles, especially those most skeptical of development, those who saw development and industrialization as the problem, and not conceivably part of the solution.

· Reform Agricultural systems: diverse crops, better land and water management practices, reduced subsidies (discussed at WTO last week as an economic issue, but if subsidies encourage spread beyond what markets would, then subsidies increase transformation of natural environment)).

· Reform materials and energy use: efficiency is the etach-word here, including recycling and conservation, but also efforts to educate on use, and reduce subsidies that encourage consumption above what market forces would occasion.

Constraints:

Gloomy view: production/consumption rising faster than pop; everyone wants to live like wealthy industrial societies, and even they want to consume more per capita (e.g., SUVs and what they did to our transport energy use ).

Optimistic view: a mixture of technology and education can win out. You are asked in the second recitation exercise to examine the more optimistic assessment of human dev and the environment.