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Page added on June 3, 2015
Sustainable development: achievable or just a dream?
It is possible that some readers are not aware that the United Nations launched the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) earlier this year. It may have slipped the minds of others that the SDGs replaced the MDGs – the Millennium Development Goals. And it is barely conceivable that some are so cynically disposed that they might agree with the British-Indian economist Meghnad Desai, who believes that all such goals are a part of the UN’s “non-stop search for relevance”.
“Most likely,” he wrote in an essay two years ago, “as in the case of all the UN Decades, the targets will be missed. Doubtless the MDGs will be relaunched as Super MDGs with a new deadline and more urgent appeals for greater effort. More conferences and more reports will follow. Plus a change …”
It is true that even those who harbour greater optimism about the UN’s power to do good question whether the SDGs are too many, at 17, and in some cases just too vague. Who could disagree with Number 3: “Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages”?
At least the MDGs had the virtue of being only eight, and also contained clear, quantifiable targets. Take the first MDG: “Halve the proportion of people whose income is less than $1 a day.” By 2013, that target had been met. Tick box.
Similarly realisable goals or tangible ambitions would be useful for the SDGs. And I came across a rather amazing one the other day, while reading Kishore Mahbubani’s new collection of essays, Can Singapore Survive?
“If the rest of the world could agree to accept the living conditions of Singaporeans,” he writes, then the Earth’s nearly 7 billion population “may need only an area the size of South Africa to live in. Somehow, this possibility does make the planet appear less crowded.” Leave aside all the rankings in which Singapore scores so highly, from education to transparency, to per capita income and ease of doing business, which would make this a tempting prospect in any case.
What’s remarkable about this is that Singapore is not just a city. It is a country – and, considering its population density, it is an extremely green one, dotted with parks, lakes, foliage and beachfronts. If the whole world could live like that, with the rest of the Earth left to regenerate and be used and developed sustainably, isn’t rethinking the city the kind of big idea we should all be contemplating?
This is pressing, as urbanisation is only increasing. By 2009, more than half the world’s population was living in cities, and the trend is towards megalopolises, with smaller ones frequently in decline. This week’s Economist reports that one in 10 US cities is shrinking, as are over one-third in Germany. Meanwhile, the likes of Beijing and Shanghai in China, Mumbai and Delhi in India, Lagos in Nigeria and Jakarta in Indonesia are expanding rapidly. The population of Delhi, for instance, increased by 40 per cent from 2003 to 2013.
How this growth is managed is crucial. Delhi is a good case in point, with a recent study finding that just under half the city’s 4.4 million schoolchildren are growing up with irreversible lung damage from the terrible pollution. Beijing’s smog is better known but, according to the World Health Organisation, it is only half as bad as Delhi’s.
If careful husbandry of the environment is key to a successful city, then all might take lessons from Singapore and Manhattan. Prof Mahbubani, Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, dreams of his city-state becoming near car-less. He admits this may strike many as risible, especially given the extent to which personal vehicles are considered status symbols. But then one evening, he writes, “I saw the former chairman of Citibank, Walter Wriston, and his wife Kathryn standing on First Avenue trying to hail a cab. Clearly, Mr Wriston was then one of the richest men on our planet. He could easily have bought a car in Manhattan. Yet, it just did not make sense”.
Create the right ecosystem, with excellent public transport, plentiful taxis, and before long, a system whereby an app can send a driverless electric car to your doorstep within minutes (why not?), and you instantly have a much cleaner and less congested urban landscape.
The importance of public transport has been recognised in the Gulf’s rapidly expanding metropolises. Dubai’s elegantly designed metro is an adornment to the city. Abu Dhabi is considering its own plans, while half of Doha seems to have been dug up to accommodate what a Londoner such as myself will always insist on calling “the tube”, wherever it is in the world.
The Manhattan-Singapore model suggests high density, with large open spaces and a wide variety of communal destinations for socialising, the arts, sports, dining, shopping and other activities. Clearly this would also require strong civic pride and the careful nurturing of commonalities and tolerance. Yet both of those places are home to extraordinarily diverse populations; and they work.
So just hold that thought again: the whole planet could live in developed-world circumstances, with a highly developed infrastructure, green spaces, excellent career prospects, health care and a welfare safety net, all in an area actually less than the size of South Africa.
Yes, it’s a dream. But maybe such imagination is what we need to demand of the planners of our cities. That, surely, is a sustainable development goal we could all sign up to. For it is in those cities that we are increasingly going to live.
Sholto Byrnes is a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Strategic and International Studies, Malaysia
9 Comments on "Sustainable development: achievable or just a dream?"
Davy on Wed, 3rd Jun 2015 8:23 am
There is no sustainable development there is only adjustment and mitigation of the coming descent. These articles, UN policies, and the whole spectrum of other agencies are nothing but BAUtopian mouth pieces for a global system that is in denial of death.
Without adequate fossil fuel energy and all other resources increasing we are doomed to a descent that could be catastrophic. This is especially true in those areas with gross overpopulation and or overconsumption. Both situations put nations at risk of failure systematically from a global failure. All locals have been delocalized and require the global for vitals of food, fuel, and products of all kinds.
No local of any size is sustainable. Efficiency, complexity, and energy intensity are at limits and in diminishing returns. Growth is not an aggregate healthy growth now. It is a wealth transferring mutant of the healthy growth we knew a few decades ago. The ecosystem is being destroyed globally and the climate is destabilizing.
This article mentioned the mega cities in the developing world growing rapidly. This will surely be tragic as is any increase in global population. What is ahead now is a rebalance of population and consumption that is unavoidable. Our foundational commodity oil is in depletion and our global economic system is near a bifurcation to a lower economic level. Both these conditions will destroy the system systematically.
This destruction may be short and violent or a longish emergency. Either way the system is going to descend not grow. This descent has never been more dangerous than the current situation with so many billions dependent on a fragile system for all manner of life support. This is truly a dangerous situation that can only end badly. There is no happy ending and in fact no hope.
The only condolence is we can make it less painful. You can do this mostly through your local and this effort may only buy you a small amount of time at best. Longer term prep has no guarantee because the longer term is completely dependent on the health of your local in regards to the community, ecosystem, and climate.
All this goal seeking BAUtopian talk is just a denial of our coming death as a global people. You can choose the false hopium of the majority or you can embrace reality and try to find yourself some safety if only a few months or years. We have no way of knowing how this system will fly apart but it is broken and cannot be fixed so we need to quit talking like it can be fixed.
penury on Wed, 3rd Jun 2015 9:35 am
I will echo Davy, As each million are added humans lose a little more.
Lawfish1964 on Wed, 3rd Jun 2015 11:24 am
“If careful husbandry of the environment is key to a successful city, then all might take lessons from Singapore and Manhattan.” Manhattan as an example of environmental husbandry? GMAFB! I wouldn’t live there on a dare.
GregT on Wed, 3rd Jun 2015 11:45 am
The UN is the lapdog of the globalists. The big cities are not sustainable and not the places to be in the not so distant future. They will be death traps. Get out while the going is still good.
dubya on Wed, 3rd Jun 2015 2:03 pm
I rather like Singapore & Manhattan – they are quite nicely done cities. Hong Kong, Vancouver, Copenhagen, Paris. Not Houston or LA.
But the article seems to imply that we could all squeeze into (South Africa/Texas/ Manitoba/Japan) at those densities. The next implication is that we could then populate the earth to this density.
I don’t know if the author realizes that Singapore used to be part of Malaysia, and that it still is entirely dependent on that peninsula and the rest of the world for it’s survival. It takes a lot of food entering the city each day to keep millions of people fed.
I was in London in 2000 during the truckers strike; apparently the PM advised the protestors that it was time to return to work. I have never been so close to the expression “9 meals from anarchy”. (though I think the actual word should be “chaos”).
Speculawyer on Wed, 3rd Jun 2015 5:51 pm
Well it has to occur eventually.
Non-sustainable development will by definition . . . not sustain.
The question is only how much will we suffer when the change occurs. Will we direct it? Or will it be forced upon us in a painful way?
GregT on Wed, 3rd Jun 2015 6:01 pm
The questions should be Spec,
How much will YOU suffer when the change occurs? Will YOU direct it? Or will it be forced upon YOU in a painful way?
YOU still have an opportunity to do something for yourself. Expecting others to come to your rescue in a less than desirable situation, is a recipe for disappointment. There is still time left, what are YOU going to do?
Makati1 on Wed, 3rd Jun 2015 10:41 pm
The future belongs to the prepared, not the procrastinators…
Apneaman on Thu, 4th Jun 2015 12:41 pm
It never ceases to amaze me how entire societies buy into bullshit simply because they like the way it sounds and makes them feel. Anyone who has a basic grasp of the language and/or access to a dictionary would know that Sustainable Development is just one more BAU oxymoron dreamt up by the PR machine. The truth is the techno carbon ape cannot stop degrading energy and never will.
sus·tain·a·ble
səˈstānəb(ə)l/
adjective
1.
able to be maintained at a certain rate or level.
“sustainable fusion reactions”
2.
able to be upheld or defended.
“sustainable definitions of good educational practice”
de·vel·op·ment
dəˈveləpmənt/
noun
1.
the process of developing or being developed.
“she traces the development of the novel”
synonyms: evolution, growth, maturation, expansion, enlargement, spread, progress; More
http://prosperouswaydown.com/principles-of-self-organization/empower-basis/maximum-empower/