by Edward Milford
3. July 2009 11:46
While it is relatively rare to hear something startlingly new at a conference, a lot of the value at such events comes in hearing familiar arguments rephrased from a different perspective. This struck me again at the Sustainable Development Commission conference convened to mark the end of (Earthscan author) Jonathan Porritt’s 9-year term as chair.
Alan Knight, one of the SDC Commissioners, reminded the audience that, by definition, sustainability is NOT a choice. It is not some sort of option that we can adopt if it suits us and we think that we can afford it, or turn away from if it is too difficult. Instead, what we are choosing is what type of sustainability we are heading towards as a species on this planet. Will it be a future characterised by deserts and large scale death on a parched and bare earth? Will it be one plagued by inequality, with two thirds or more of the world’s population living in poverty to support a more comfortable life-style for the rest of the world’s population? Is it some sort of back-to-nature subsistence lifestyle that we want?
The business and policy community certainly holds on to the idea that we could have some nine billion people living at current Western levels of comfort by somehow learning to consume less in the way of resources. However, it seems very doubtful that this is an honest expectation of a lifestyle for everybody in the world to be able to adopt. Can we really consume our way to sustainability?
Politicians love talking about tough choices. I don’t think they have even begun to grasp quite how tough these choices are. But it will be vital to make them explicit, rather than implicit.
