Is an ecologically sustainable development possible?

by Sumanasiri Liyanage

(August 22, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) While I was preparing a lecture on sustainable development for my political economy class, I received an invitation to a seminar entitled Greening the Economy organised by the Central Environment Authority. However, this is not a comment on the event as I was not in a position to attend it. My lecture at the university fell on the same day. The question I posed at the lecture was: Is an ecologically sustainable development possible? Although I presented multiple answers given to this question by numerous authors and institutions so that students were given an option to arrive at their own answer, my own answer the question was: ‘Probably not’. I gave the same negative answer to the related issue: Can the development be made ecologically sustainable? Here, I define development in a narrow sense to portray the process of continuous increase in per capita output/ income. As far as the global economy in its totality is concerned, I am against that kind of development in the sense that there is no need to increase the total output of the world.

The economists of the early nineteenth century did not see nature as a constraint restraining economic development. This is what David Ricardo had to say: "The brewer, the distiller, the dyer, make incessant use of the air and water for the production of their commodities: but as the supply is boundless, they bear no price. If all the land had the same properties, if it were unlimited in quantity, and uniform in quality, no charge could be made for its use" (On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation). Although he hinted at the possibility of an emerging problem, it was not an issue in the early nineteenth century. Today posing the problem in this manner is untenable for two reasons. First, given the magnitude of natural resources used in the production processes in the last 200 years or so the statement of boundless supply is no longer valid. In the 1970s, the increase in oil prices by the OPEC nations signified the emerging scarcity of natural resources for future use. Secondly, the production process not only gets resources from nature but it also adds waste back to the nature. This entropic irreversibility has endangered so many life forms and the very existence of the earth. The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas contributed by human actions, has increased by more than a third over the pre-industrial level due mainly to the use of fossil fuels and to large-scale deforestation.The concentration of methane, another greenhouse gas, is about 150 percent above pre-industrial levels. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its fourth report, released in 2007, emphasises the reality that human activities are already changing the planet in multiple ways. As John Bellamy Foster has informed us, leading scientists have proposed nine planetary boundaries, which mark the safe operating space for the planet. Three of these boundaries (climate change, biodiversity, and the nitrogen cycle) have already been crossed, while others, such as fresh water use and ocean acidification, are emerging planetary rifts. In ecological terms, the economy has now grown to a scale and intrusiveness that is both overshooting planetary boundaries and tearing apart the biogeochemical cycles of the planet. Hence, it could be argued that the existence of ‘mother earth’ is at stake. Advanced capitalist countries have shown their reluctance to take serious immediate action to overcome this situation. It is interesting to note that the two governments in South America, Bolivia and Ecuador are in the forefront of a campaign to address the issue of climate change and other ecological issues. Both countries have become exemplary by proposing the need for breaking the binary between humans and nature and treating other life forms on par with humans. This has become the most significant breakthrough and contribution to ecological praxis since the ecological issue has emerged as one of the most critical problematic of human history.

The answers to the two questions listed above may be classified into three broad categories, minor differences of opinion within each category notwithstanding. Let me first introduce three categories of thoughts. The writers in Category 1 answer the question in the affirmative and perceive that if new ‘greener’ technology were adopted, ecologically sustainable development would be possible. The answer given by the writers who belong to Category 2 is that ecologically sustainable development would not be possible if the development process was organised under capitalistic market system. Nonetheless, development guided by different principles and rules could be made ecologically sustainable. Theorists of Category 3 posit that we have reached a stage where it is not possible for us to make development ecologically sustainable whatever the system within which the development process is organised. Hence, their conclusion is that development should come to an end.

1. Change Technologies: Those who subscribe to the views of Category 1 are apologists for the existing system dominated by multinationals. Jeffry Sachs, who was well known for his notion of shock treatment, is one of the key theorists of this group. The ideas he developed in his book Common Wealth: The Economics for the Crowded Planet (2008) support the view that existing system based on market and profit motive can resolve the issue of sustainability without systemic change in the capitalist system. He assures us that with modest investment in existing ‘smarter’ technologies, new energy sources would eliminate/alleviate poverty and reduce ecological destruction. He opines: "I do not believe that the solution to this problem is a massive cutback of our consumption levels or our living standards. I think the solution is smarter living. I do believe that technology is absolutely critical, and I do not believe . . . that the essence of the problem is that we face a zero sum that must be redistributed. I’m going to argue that there’s a way for us to use the knowledge that we have, the technology that we have, to make broad progress in material conditions, to not require or ask the rich to take sharp cuts of living standards, but rather to live with smarter technologies that are sustainable, and thereby to find a way for the rest of the world, which yearns for it, and deserves it as far as I’m concerned, to raise their own material conditions as well. The costs are much less than people think." This view seems to suggest that nature ecology should be subsumed to the strict logic of capital accumulation assigning to them prices that reflect ecological damage, both present and future. Hence, those resources will be used effectively. However, this raises two questions. First, since we have no definite knowledge of the future cost of ecological destruction, it would not be possible for prices to reflect it in the market system. Secondly, if prices reflect unknown elements, that would generate new imperfections in the price mechanism. This would be practically impossible in the present global context that promotes deregulation and governmental interventions.

2. Change the System: Writers of the second category argue that even if smarter and green technology were available, they would not be used in a system in which capital accumulation is guided by short term profit motive. In other words, they stress the incompatibility between green technology and the market mechanism. Hence, their submission is that in order to protect the earth from ecological destruction, a new system has to be devised in order to replace profit-led system of capital accumulation. Although it is true that new green technology may be easily deployed in a production system in which technological decisions are separated from short-term profit motive. However, the experience of the former USSR showed that different control mechanism in itself failed to produce ecology friendly system. Hence, this argument also suffers from the modernist outlook, according to which humans are supposed to control nature for their benefit.

3. Stop Development and follow De-growth Strategy: Theorists of the third category go against the binary between humans and nature in the current hegemonic anthropocentric ecological discourse. Humans are not controllers but an inseparable part of Nature. Development might have been necessary when human needs (not greed) were not satisfied at reasonable level; but when the human kind achieves such a level, development has metamorphosed into a bad and ugly thing. For economists like Serge Latouche, the concept of ‘degrowth’ signifies a major social change: a radical shift from growth as the main objective of the modern economy, towards its opposite (contraction, downshifting). The world has reached a stage where what Bolivia and Ecuador have shown us should be upgraded as a new global norm.

The writer teaches political economy at the University of Peradeniya. He can be reached at : sumane_l@yahoo.com