The Global Transition
For Better or Worse
Rob Coppock
Deputy Director and Head, Washington Office
German-American Academic Council
Senior Staff Officer
National Academy of Sciences Board on Sustainable Development
Abstract
Rob Coppock -- a scientist who ran a state-of-the-art think tank in the USA called the 2050 Project -- proposes a framework for thinking about sustainability. He identifies key dimensions of sustainability: reducing dissipation of potential entropy; optimising matter and energy throughput; conserving natural and human capital; improving human carrying capacity, and others. In order to act in the future, he says we need to understand the basic driving forces of change (demography, economic growth, technological change) and the way those forces are affected by key contributing factors (globalisation, decentralization, governance).We should look for linkages between these drivers and contributing factors and between them and key sustainability problems (energy, water, food, materials, families, employment, equity, safety/security). Coppock concludes by arguing for an integrated analysis that can be communicated by narrative scenarios.
Introduction
Humanity faces a profound global transition -- since 1950, global population has doubled, energy production more than tripled, economic output risen by a factor of five, and computer processing speed and storage have both increased over a million-fold. During the lives of most of us, human claims on environmental resources and disruption of natural systems have reached scales that exceed natural renewal and assimilative capacities. Can humanity continue for long on its current path? Do we even know how to choose one path as opposed to another for humanity as a whole?
These concerns were part of the Brundtland Commission's clarion call for sustainable development -- development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs -- that helped motivate preparations for the 1992 Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro. But despite the signing of the 'Agenda 21' program at that Summit, both what we 'need' today and how to safeguard future generations, remain controversial.
Sustainability of Socio-Economic Systems
Because of the complexity of both human societies and the natural world, sustainable socio-ecological systems require balancing many components that interact in elaborate ways. Several different dimensions of sustainability must be considered in order to encompass the fullness of this complexity and identify practical actions that can actually enhance overall sustainability.
Reducing Dissipation of Potential Entropy.
The scientifically most fundamental concerns about sustainability derive from the second law of thermodynamics and dictate the advantages of physical processes that have no unused excess energy that can 'drive' unintended environmental changes. Fully implementing these ideas would require fundamental restructuring of most modern industrial practices processes.
Managing Material and Energy Throughput.
Both physical and chemical first principles and the economic and managerial profit motive provide incentives for improving the efficiency with which materials and energy are processed and used. Current incentives, however, appear too weak to stimulate needed changes rapidly enough.
Conserving Capital.
Sustainability implies conservation of overall wealth, broadly defined -- including not only traditional 'built' capital (machines, factories, infrastructure) but also natural capital (soil, minerals, forests, water), human capital (the manifest results of investment in education, health, and nutrition) and social capital (the institutional and cultural fabric of society). Major changes in the system of national income accounts are required to measure the full range of capital.
Improving Human Carrying Capacity.
Nearly all the factors determining the Earth's maximum supportable human population can be, and are being, adjusted over time. The number of people supportable, or the level of support for a given population, can be increased through adjustments at the household level, changes in institutional and market mechanisms, and alterations in communal and common property practices.
Balancing Socio-Ecological Politics.
Transition to more sustainable socio-ecological systems requires transformation of political and cultural institutions, involving political as well as scientific or technical goals. Human communities at all levels need mutually supportive and dynamic balance between social well-being, economic opportunity and environmental quality.
Thinking About the Future -- And Acting
Carefully reasoned strategies for the transition to sustainability require innovative approaches. Socio-ecological systems are extremely complex, and decomposing them into separate sub-processes to be analysed in isolation and then aggregated into an overall prescription for sustainability is likely to miss crucial linkages. The focus on linkages as opposed to separate components, however, is somewhat at odds with the traditional reductionism of science.
The 2050 Project, an international assessment of strategies for achieving global sustainability organised by the World Resources Institute, the Brookings Institution, and the Santa Fe Institute, addressed this analytical problem by gathering basic data about key parts of the socio-ecological system, assessing the basic driving forces of change and they way those forces are augmented or ameliorated by key contributing factors, and examined how the resulting pressures combine with natural endowments to create bottlenecks and barriers, or key sustainability problems in particular regions.
Driving Forces
Demography. The number of people, where they live, and the age structure of the population are critical structural elements that set the stage for particular stresses on socio-ecological systems.
Economic Growth.
With economic development comes not only increases in consumption, but shifts in the pattern of consumption -- even for a basic need like food, resource requirements do not satiate abruptly as income rises.
Technological Change.
Some technologies, especially in medicine and hygiene, have increased life expectancy and eased conditions throughout the world; others have introduced new stresses.
Contributing Factors
Globalisation. The global system directly affects local and national decisions. As developing country farmers turn to commodity markets, their production options are reduced because relatively few crops are traded. International financial flows are massive, virtually instantaneous, and largely unregulated so that they can on occasion undermine and even negate the actions of nation states or international organisations.
Decentralisation.
Recent experience in both the government and industry suggests that strong centralised control is often inefficient for problem solving and priority setting. New information technologies offer possibilities for providing the information and cross-links necessary for appropriately devolving authority and responsibility.
Governance.
The world over, people are calling for reform, demanding that authorities be more accountable to the people they affect, that civic education be combined with process reform to enable greater public engagement, that institutions provide and protect a better balance of interests and powers. These are mechanisms that affect the daily lives of people and their interactions with the natural world.
Key Sustainability Problems
Energy. Analyses of current trends show clearly the need for greater efficiency in production, conversion, and use of energy and for increased use of renewable resources. Most production, distribution and use systems lag far beyond 'best practice' -- we know how to do much better than we are.
Water.
Already in short supply in many places, identifying where, and when, demand for water can be expected to exceed supply -- and what can be done to reduce demand or increase supply -- is a pressing need. Some parts of the world, like Israel, set the standard. Again, simply applying current knowledge and technologies could make a substantial difference.
Food.
Increasing food production without impairing natural systems calls for new and modified production systems, improvement of infrastructure and distribution systems, and assistance for poor farmers who, because they lack access to resources, are more likely to produce little and degrade the land than the better endowed. Recent attention on distribution and consumption issues has opened up new possibilities for improving food security.
Materials.
Considerable 'dematerialisation' of economic activity is called for in the long run. This implies a substantial restructuring of industrial processes that will be expensive, at least initially.
Families.
Data from the last decade indicate five global trends: 1) families and households have become smaller, 2) the burden of working age parents of supporting younger and older dependants has increased, 3) women's average age at first marriage and childbirth has risen, 4) the proportion of female-headed households has increased, and 5) women's participation in labour markets has increased at the same time that men's has decreased. In addition, there appears to be a systematic, world-wide reduction in the resources invested in the next generation.
Employment.
Technological advances have increased efficiency and reduced the size of the workforce. Globalisation has shifted production from locations of high to low pay. There appears increasing polarisation between affluent two-income families and barely surviving and often unemployed single-parent families.
Equity.
Large differences in income and access to resources may not lead to social disruption when everyone perceives their lot to be improving over time. Data show, however, that during the 1980s, the richest fifth of US males enjoyed a 12 percent increase in income while the poorest fifth suffered a 24 percent loss. Global data is less solid, but there appears to be increasing income divergence in most parts of the world.
Safety and Security.
Political violence representing dissatisfaction with state performance is found in many parts of the world, as is violence pitting ethnic, racial, or religious groups against each other. Perhaps most disturbing are the increases in criminal and anomic violence, the wanton acts of destruction, armed robbery, assault, murder and racketeering. The extent that violence represents alienation from society, or a calculation that the potential gains of ignoring society's rules exceed the cost of doing so, indicates a breakdown in the moral authority of society as a whole.
These various components need to be considered in an integrated analysis, with explicit attention given to the linkages among them. Equally important, however, the geographic context must be considered -- the dynamics of the water problem in northern China, for example, differ dramatically from that of the water problem in the Middle East. Finally, improving the sustainability of socio-ecological systems requires effort over several decades -- sustainability is an attribute of a system over time, not a `crisis' requiring immediate and limited action. Narrative scenarios and numerical trend projections are very informative regarding such long-term alternatives.
Appropriate analytic techniques and strategies that accommodate these various requirements are emerging. Simply formulating the issues in this way and tracing the key linkages among the most important problems is illuminating. At the same time, innumerable groups of people around the world are organising to find solutions for their own communities. Lacing these activities into an overall program for helping humanity choose constructive paths through the current global transition is one of today's most exciting prospects.
Concluding Comment
Not all trends shaping the world are disquieting -- overall life expectancy is rising, new information and biological technologies open promising possibilities, global population growth rates are slowing. In addition, people are paying attention to crucial problems and working on solutions. But, even if actions are found that satisfy the technical, economic and political requirements for more sustainable socio-biological systems, they probably will not be implemented if they are not expressed in ways that relate directly to the desires and concerns of the people who must make the system work. Perhaps the most challenging piece of the sustainability puzzle is communicating the complex web of problems and solutions to ordinary people in ways that make clear the actions they themselves can take. |