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Page added on July 11, 2014
The End of Sustainability
The time has come for us to collectively reexamine — and ultimately move past — the concept of sustainability. The continued invocation of sustainability in policy discussions ignores the emerging realities of the Anthropocene, which is creating a world characterized by extreme complexity, radical uncertainty and unprecedented change. From a policy perspective, we must face the impossibility of even defining — let alone pursuing — a goal of “sustainability” in such a world. It’s not that sustainability is a bad idea. The question is whether the concept of sustainability is still useful as an environmental governance framework.
In general, “sustainability” refers to the long-term ability to continue to engage in a particular activity. “Sustainable development” reflects a broader goal about how development should proceed — namely, with sufficient consideration of the environment to ensure the continued availability of natural capital. The international community embraced sustainable development at the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, incorporating it into both the Rio Declaration and Agenda 21.
Policy discussions remain framed by the goal of sustainability, ignoring the fact that the concept has failed to meaningfully change human behavior.The idea of sustainable development developed in an era of emerging concern about climate change. The pursuit of sustainable development goals, however, has not resulted in either sustainability or effective mitigation of climate change. Greenhouse gas emissions and resource consumption patterns have continued to increase. In anticipation of Rio+20, the U.N. Environment Programme released a report concluding that as human pressures on the planet accelerate, critical global, regional and local thresholds are quickly being approached or, in some cases, have already been exceeded.
Despite this alarming and unpredictable situation, policy discussions remain framed by the goal of sustainability, ignoring the fact that the concept has failed to meaningfully change human behavior.
By definition, sustainability assumes that there are desirable states of being for social-ecological systems, or SESs, that humans can maintain indefinitely. In practice, sustainability goals proved difficult to achieve in many SESs even before climate change impacts became noticeable. With climate change, we face a future in which we have no idea what we can sustain. Therefore, we must begin to formulate environmental governance goals by some metric other than sustainability.
Shifting the governance focus from sustainability to resilience is not admitting defeat. It re-orients us to focus on coping with change.The concept of resilience holds promise as a new way of addressing the challenges ahead. While not inherently incompatible concepts, resilience and sustainability are not the same. The pursuit of sustainability assumes that we a) know what can be sustained and b) have the capacity to maintain stationarity (i.e., keep the system operating within an unchanging envelope of variability). In contrast, resilience thinking acknowledges disequilibrium and nonlinear, continual change — often as a result of crossing a “tipping point” or threshold — and offers a tool for assessing the dynamic relationships between systems, which is a facet of SESs that will become increasingly important given current rates of globalization and increasingly complex socio-ecological challenges. It also has the potential to be more helpful than sustainability when examining social justice and other human development concerns because it requires an assessment of not only what we value but also the extent to which those values are reflected in our policies and approaches.
Shifting the governance focus from sustainability to resilience is not admitting defeat. It reorients us to focus on coping with change. Research to develop baseline data is still important —not as a guide for what we can “sustain,” but instead to identify tipping points that might provide insight into future systems change and help to identify critical ecological thresholds.
Unfortunately, while the concept of resilience is gaining the attention of natural resource managers and policy makers, it is already in danger of becoming — like sustainability — a rhetorical device with little influence on actual decision making. Adaptive governance and adaptive management offer promise in terms of putting these ideas into practice but, to date, they have not yet been integrated into legal and regulatory frameworks in enforceable ways.
What we need are new policies and institutions that accommodate uncertainty and anticipate nonlinear change, both of which are realities of the Anthropocene. Scientists, policy makers and others must work together to design and implement environmental policies that promote and build adaptive capacity while also providing stronger, more legally enforceable and institutionally supported goals — goals that reflect the adaptation strategies necessary to negotiate our complex and rapidly changing world.
17 Comments on "The End of Sustainability"
Richard Ralph Roehl on Fri, 11th Jul 2014 9:34 am
Coping with change?
It would be more accurate to say that humanity must cope and accept their inevitable extinction. Fukushima and GMO give a hint.
Human baboonies are certainly colorful and creative and imaginative… but as a whole (and ass-a-hole) they lack prescience and common sense. Humans are running outdated or flawed DNA software in their brain meat.
Davy on Fri, 11th Jul 2014 9:59 am
Rich, the human large brain is an evolutionary dead end. How big is too big? How smart is too smart? If only those spiritual, moral, and ethical parts of that large brain had developed properly before the advent of the oil age maybe we would of had a chance.
Newfie on Fri, 11th Jul 2014 10:15 am
Never ending growth is a fairy tale.
J-Gav on Fri, 11th Jul 2014 3:14 pm
To the article’s credit, the first sentence does spell out something which has been obvious for years but which has remained pretty much taboo in polite conversation.
‘Resilience’ is a more reality-based concept, even if building it will be a daunting task both for individuals and communities. Under present politico-economic circumstances, it is hardly a given that it will win out over BAU before TSHTF.
JuanP on Fri, 11th Jul 2014 3:24 pm
Sustainability has been unsustainable for a very long time, since long before I was born in 1969. Adaptability will become the key to survival during the coming bottleneck. Resilience is a better place to be than sustainability right now. There is very little in our lives that is sustainable right now.
GregT on Fri, 11th Jul 2014 3:45 pm
“Shifting the governance focus from sustainability to resilience is not admitting defeat. It re-orients us to focus on coping with change.”
In other words, instead of being proactive and planning for the future, we will simply react to the consequence of our inactions.
Sounds like a recipe for disaster.
JuanP on Fri, 11th Jul 2014 4:09 pm
Greg,
Isn’t “being proactive and planning for the future” as an individual, reacting to the consequences of our previous and current actions and inactions as a species?
J-Gav on Fri, 11th Jul 2014 4:37 pm
GregT – As we all do from time to time, you let some gut-feeling out there. But of course when you say: “instead of being proactive and planning for the future …” (Who has ever done that?), the best we can hope for might include ‘resilience’ as a trampoline leading to a higher point of view re: our world-wide predicament. We both know that no catch-word will ever turn into a panacea, but I’d suggest that a step-by-step(cognitive)process would be better than none at all.
Makati1 on Fri, 11th Jul 2014 9:52 pm
“… With climate change, we face a future in which we have no idea what we can sustain. …” BINGO!
“…The pursuit of sustainability assumes that we a) know what can be sustained and b) have the capacity to maintain stationarity (i.e., keep the system operating within an unchanging envelope of variability). In contrast, resilience thinking acknowledges disequilibrium and nonlinear, continual change — often as a result of crossing a “tipping point” or threshold …”
There can be no ” policies and institutions ” to support those ideas because there is no financial profit involved. No profit, no action in today’s capitalist world. So we continue along the path to the extinction cliff. Running faster and faster to keep with the herd.
Perk Earl on Sat, 12th Jul 2014 2:14 am
Sustainability? Maybe the best we can ever achieve is an attempt (if possible) at a reduced rate of degradation of land/water and decimation/extinction of other species.
GregT on Sat, 12th Jul 2014 11:10 am
“Isn’t “being proactive and planning for the future” as an individual, reacting to the consequences of our previous and current actions and inactions as a species?”
Yes it is JuanP, but not reacting and continuing down the same path only makes the consequences that much worse. Eventually we will hit a point of no return, and sadly that point of no return is extinction. Resilience is not an option if our species no longer exists.
We either learn how to live sustainably, or we will not be sustainable.
JuanP on Sat, 12th Jul 2014 12:08 pm
Greg, I guess I no longer believe we can be sustainable, and I agree with you on the consequence being we are not sustainable. That is why I had a Vasectomy and no children, I don’t believe this will end well. For me the point of no return has passed, and we are living in the times before guaranteed global collapse, but I am not 100% certain about our immediate extinction. Extinction is only a matter of time any way.
Davy on Sat, 12th Jul 2014 12:19 pm
Juan, most species have gone extinct over time. I wonder why we think we will be different considering we are a large land animal with a narrow survival window. It would be different if we were an anorobic bacteria living in the earth or in deep ocean
Northwest Resident on Sat, 12th Jul 2014 12:55 pm
“I wonder why we think we will be different…”?
Because, we’re smart?
ahhahahahahaha. Damn, that cracks me up.
Smart enough to tie a noose and hang ourselves with the rope we’ve been given, that’s about it, when taken as an entire species.
JuanP on Sat, 12th Jul 2014 1:38 pm
Davy & NWR, I seem to recall more than 99.9% of all species that have existed on this planet have gone extinct. The average species lifetime is 10 million years. We’ve only been around for less than a million years, so it seems we won’t make it to average as a species. 😉
Northwest Resident on Sat, 12th Jul 2014 2:35 pm
Not if I have anything to say about it, JuanP. Or Davy too, for that matter, speaking on his behalf.
We are indeed zooming in on a probably narrow bottleneck through which not a lot of people will be able to pass.
The ones who come out the other end of that bottleneck are, on average, going to much smarter, more fit, more aware and much more determined to survive than your average Joe and Jane Sixpacks.
This is a Darwin event coming up, a moment in time where only the fittest — actually only the luckiest of the fittest — will survive.
From that small group of much more “fit” (and lucky) survivors, the gene pool for future humanity will likely be that of greatly increased intelligence, physical vitality and social awareness than the average gene pool that exists today. Not saying that a race of “super humans” will result, but that the ones coming through that bottleneck are likely to be on the whole a significant cut above the average pack of humans that are walking the planet today. And those humans might be able to launch humanity on a much different and more long term survivable path than the current seven billion dumb apes have been on.
We can only hope.
Davy on Sat, 12th Jul 2014 4:07 pm
True NR bottlenecks have a way of rooting out the weak and sick. Let’s hope the population is not too small to interbreeding in those widely dispersed areas of habitation.