Global change and sustainability

3 books:

- understanding sustainable development

- Climate change and social inequality

- Climate change, policy

Climate change or global change global change and not climate change of

course climate change contributes a lot in defining global change. There are many

other aspects that defines global change: demography, problem of energy transition,

migration, financial shocks, resilience of social and economic systems to financial

shocks, biodiversity.

Sustainable development is a very complex context, we try to consider the most

important issues in the challenge of sustainability

J. Blewitt, Understanding Sustainable Development, Routledge, 2018

Chapter 1: Towards sustainable development

• This chapter aims to introduce the most important elements that characterize the

concept of sustainable development.

• It traces the basic steps in the evolution of the concept and of international

initiatives aimed at promoting the idea of sustainability in politics and governance.

• The chapter points out the complexity of the concept of sustainable development

and the difficulty to translate it into actions.

• It suggests that the difficulties to cope with its inherent complexity can be

addressed only if it is considered as a «dialogue of values»

Understand the relationship between climate change and sustainable

development.

All the measures that we’re considering in order to oppose the impacts of climate

change, all the mitigation and adaptation measures, are these measures a step

towards sustainable development?

A very simple example is the nuclear power: Gibbens in his book defines himself as a

reluctant supporter of the nuclear power, in order to cope with climate change we

have to build our energy future on nuclear power. Because at the moment renewable

resources are not developed enough in order to sustain the way our society is working,

we need a transition window over about 20-30 ys, in this period what is the best

option? Continue to work with Gas? That is less polluting than oil but it is a fossil fuel

or we have to turn to nuclear power?

Other example: China the Chinese government is trying to adopt powerplants,

there are a lot of mega projects for the realization of new hydroelectric plants and

hydroelectric plants are considered a good measure in order to oppose climate change

because they do not pollute but these plants are going towards a new direction for

sustainable development?

What are the policies to implement in order to promote sustainable development?

The road to sustainable development, rooted in the history of ideas:

Sustainable development the concept of sustainability or the problem of

harmonizing economic development and environmental protection is routed in the

history of ideas. Sustainability is a new concept that started to develop in the 80s but

there are a lot of ideas regarding the protection of environment that date back to

centuries ago.

Some examples of this aspect: forest management (timber logging and

consumption; focus on environment management, the environment must be

managed/productivity) started to consider the problem of managing the environment

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during the 19 century, it was a functional approach to protect environment. We

protect the forests in order to ensure the sustainability of the wood industry, it was an

economic goal that contributed to the definition of the first tools for managing

environment. But in Europe this element played a very important role for the

development of the first firm of environment protection. I protect the environment

because I need a well managing of the environment in order to meet the economic

needs of my political system.

Second perspective related to the concept of beauty and order of nature and

landscape. In EU context there are 2 main different set of ideas:

- Related with work of White (England) wrote in 1899 “the natural history of

Selborne”, the focus is on the concept of harmony and peace, the order of

landscapes. There is also the first focus on the nature as an organism where the

different parts are related to each other, “nature is a great economist, as it

transforms an animal’s partime into support for another”. Nature has in itself a

beauty order to be protected and preserved.

- Related with the work Thoreau he wrote in 1850 a book on its experience in

Walden Lake, his approach is related with romanticism. The idea is that nature

related with the soul of the man, we can find God in nature, the earth is living,

“walking” and living in simplicity is the best way to experience nature.

Important in this approach is the idea of responsibility we have a responsibility

as humans to respect and care for nature (ecocentrism).

- Emerging of conservationism movement in USA and EU that took place in

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the 19 century. Here there is the first idea of the nature as wilderness to be

protected, wilderness is a very complex idea: “wilderness as a state of mind”

(Yosemite, 1864) However the debate about it represented one of the most

important element in the development evolution of the idea that nature is

something to be protected from the ecological point of view. In this respect

important was the rise of the science of ecology with Ernst Haeckel in

1866 that defined ecology as the study of the “economy of nature”. 1923 British

Ecological Society

1960s: a «global» environmental movement emerges (Western world);

«conventional» concept of development (economic growth & modernization)

started being questioned

If we consider these elements we can say that they proved very well that the problem

of the protection of nature and environment have different meanings, the most

important aspect is that the problem of environmental protection was not consider a

global problem, but something related with very specific places or very specific

features to be protected, environment becomes global as an idea and a concern in the

second half of last century, some points that we have to remind:

1- publication in early 60 of a book entitled “Silent spring” by Carson important

precursor because for the first time a naturalist, a scientist, point out how dangerous

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the development of 20 century in terms of chemical products was for the survival of

the planet

2- “Toxic debt tragedy” an issue that emerged in the US during the 70s. It was the

acknowledgment of the problem of soil pollution caused by a century of industrial

development and important was also the experience of “love canal” a canal near

the Niagara Falls close to the border between US and Canada

3- social and cultural impact of the Apollo missions during the 60s because for the

first time humanity had the opportunity to look at the planet from the universe/open

space, we had a very important representation of the earth as a whole seen by

outside, important aspect because this element changed our attitudes regarding the

environment. A very effective entity in order to manage those kinds of problem,

promoting the idea that the environment is a global common concern.

K. Boulding contribution to the «the Spaceship Earth» 1960s1970s → «The Earth Day»;

the Limits to growth 1972

4- publication of the book “only one earth” in 1972, general idea: due to

demographic trends and due to the spreading of a western way of living across the

world we’re going to crush against physical limits in terms of availability of resources.

The author was the Club of Rome. Many scientists of the MIT in US. (predicting an

increase in global temperature) → Stockholm 1972

In 1972 UN started to play an important role in a debate about how to protect

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environment at a global scale. In London in the 19 century we had thousands of th

people that died due to air pollution but only this element in the second half of the 20

century the environment started to perceive as a global issue and a global concern. In

1972 the United Nation Environmental Program (UNEP) was established in Nairobi in

Kenya, the location of the headquarter was a sort of emphasis that environment is

related with the problem of development, you cannot consider in the UNEP the idea of

economic growth in opposition from the idea of protecting environment.

In that period started to emerge the idea that economic growth can no longer drive

society. The idea that economic growth that has been experienced in the previous

decades is not sustainable.

Criticism on the idea that «economic growth» can continue to drive society,

ethos of expansion is unsustainable (link with the problem of equity), see p. 8 the

ethos of expansion is not sustainable, its termination within the lifetime of someone

born today is inevitable unless it continues to be sustained for a wide longer by a

minority of people at the cost of imposing re-suffering on the rest of mankind it

shows how in the UNEP perspective the problem of economic growth is linked to

problem of environmental protection to the problem of how to sustain development in

less developed countries and to the problem of social equity.

The Limits to growth, 1972, limits as constraints by the Club of Rome

(attention on «input», raw materials and food resources); In 2005 this book was

revised and the attention was placed not to the problem of the limit to growth from the

point of view of the input of raw materials like oil, minerals, gas ecc, because in 1972

the main argument of the Club of Rome was that is not possible to continue to develop

in that way, because the demographic trends and the spreading of west living across

the world will make unsustainable development because of the scarcity in the input

system. IN 2005 for the first time the focus is on the concept of the new limits, limits

are not in perspective of the input but on the perspective of being able to manage the

output of economic growth in terms of pollution and climate change.(can we manage

the effects of continuous growth?).

There is an example according to this: we will force to abandon fossil fuels such as

coal and oil not because they are limited or going to finish in 20 ys but because we are

able to manage the effects on fossil fuels in terms of climate change and climate

governance these are the limits that our society are confronting with.

«How/when the environment became ‘Global’»

The awareness that societies are dealing with a «global environmental problem» dates

back to 1960-1980.

In that period it became clear that the main issue we are confronting with is the

structural relationship between society, economy and politics on one side, and

ecosystems on the other.

This questions the very role of science and technology, the possibility for a steadily

increasing world population to respect the ecological limits imposed by the Planet, the

ways in which we value and conceptualize nature, the role of economic growth in

sustaining human well-being. At the same time, the acknowledgement that we are

facing a «global problem» questions the role of the nation state in environmental

management and governance This is what constitute the new element of the second

half of the century, the idea that modern science and society represent not the

solution of the problem but the very source of the problem, in the way that capitalist

society relates with environment.

1960s - 1980s:

Environmentalism as a «global discourse» that affects all the different dimensions of

society: economics, politics, culture the general idea that emerged during the 70s

was that economic growth as we have witnessed so far is no longer sustainable this

idea comes from Focault This sentence seems simple but as we see this is the core

of the problem, the relation between economic growth and sustainability and climate

change.

1970s: Very lively debate, optimists (human ingenuity: science and technology, and

creativity will enable us to overcome limits and manage problems) against pessimists

(resource constraints are real and with us today)

«Forerunners»

• The «Love Canal Tragedy» and the «toxic debt» in the 1970s: polluted industrial

areas – acknowledgment of the «hard heredity» left behind by 2° post war industrial

development

• Acid rains: «Pollution doesn’t stop at nations’ borders»

• R. Carson’s book Silent Spring: chemical products threaten life

• 1970 Club of Rome’s famous book: the «Limits to growth»

• Apollo space missions and aerospace industry development (1960s): for the first

time we have a picture of the Earth seen by «outside» - the economics of spaceship

• Earth Day – early 1970s

All these elements contributed to define one of the most important global events

sponsored by the UN and it is called the Earth day, in march, this initiative started in

1971-72 with Nixon

1- The Love Canal Tragedy One of the best-known cases of environmental

injustice in the US (1970s): houses and schools built upon a dump site and heavy

incidence of diseases and respiratory illnesses take residents to reclaim justice. The

problem was that a dump used to store chemical products was utilized to build

hospitals, urban districts and so on at 60s. After 10 years people started to die

because of leukaemia. This event marked the beginning of the international debate on

the need for the environmental reclamation of polluting industrial sites. This problem

that characterized US, Italy, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Uk, China and so on,

the problem to how clean up the old industrial areas that have been abandoned and

how to include environmental condition of these areas. Why environmental injustice?

Because very often people who lived in these areas belonged to poor social class, they

are unemployed people, they suffered from environmental problems of living very

close that area.

This experience was very important to the sign up of the document of the first

environmental policies, designed to oppose soil pollution. US were the forerunner in

this perspective through taxes they created a fund the super fund in order to promote

and sustain from the financial point of view, the cleaning up of these areas. These are

the most important polluting sites of US.

Love Canal, NY

- The government allowed housing to be build over the toxic waste dump and

people got sick

- Problem first discovered in 1978

- First national emergency in the US because of toxic waste

- Led to the superfund legislation

Superfund sites:

- Dollars comes from taxes on chemical industries

- 50% of the dollars spent on legal costs

2- Acid rain: «trans-national pollution», «pollution doesn’t stop at the national

borders» (Scandinavia)

Scheme of an industry that pollutes and this pollution causes problem for forest in

order regions in other countries. This is what happened in the relation between Japan

and Indonesia. Indonesia during the 80s suffered of a very important crises of the

wood industry because the problem caused by the acid rain caused by the pollution

produced by the Japanese industrial sector.

The same was in Scandinavia: the wood industry suffered from the pollution originated

in Scotland and in Wales. This aspect is important because it was a clear

demonstration of the transnational nature of environmental problems. Pollution does

not stop at national borders and this for the firs time urged the definition of

international initiatives deal with those problems: international cooperation and

diplomacy.

3- Rachel Carson she wrote “Silent Spring”, biologist, ecologist and writer. She

protested the use of chemicals, pesticides in the environment for farming. It resulted

in the Water Quality Act and triggered the Modern Environmental Movement. She

pointed out the «hidden cost» of industrial development: chemical pollution

threatens Life on Earth at an unprecedented pace This was a very important

moment in the definition and spreading of a global awareness and concerns in respect

to the potential effects of chemical pollution.

The club of Rome- the limits to the growth

“If the present growth trends in world population, industrialization, pollution, food

production and resource depletion continue unchanged, the limits to growth on this

planet will be reached sometime within the next one hundred years”.

They failed completely because this did not occur from the cultural point of view this

was a very important confirmation of the need to start thinking about the

sustainability of economic growth and unlimited economic growth.

Modern society are reaching the Planet’s limits:

- Consumer society

- Demographic growth

- Non-renewable resources

Economic collapse and eventually population collapse, as a consequence of

environmental degradation and resource exploitation

• Under-estimation of science & technological innovation.

• The main point remains = the Earth can not sustain a never-ending process of

economic and population growth

The Earth seen by Apollo 17 1972 (final mission of NASA's Apollo program).

The mission ended in 1972 and for the first time we had the opportunity to see the

“Blue Planet” from outside water is the main essence of life

There are no borders on the Earth revolutionary perception of the relationship

between society and the Earth

We have only this planet and we have to try to manage it.

An important exponent was Kennet Boulding an economist that wrote “The

economics of the coming spaceship Earth” We have to move from the «cowboy

economy» – «the economy of the frontier» to «the economy of the spaceship» «the

closed economy of the future» The ingenuity is the basic element that can sustain

our economic growth. Main character of the economy of the spaceship: everything

has to be managed in a very careful way, there is a close space in which we can move

the flows of materials and energy has to be carefully managed.

EXTRACT OF THE ECONOMICS OF THE COMING SPACESHIP EARTH By Kenneth

E. Boulding, 1966

We are now in the