Is Sustainability still Possible?

You could be forgiven if you thought that the world was moving towards sustainable development. There is so much going on to improve our relations with nature and society. But if you look closely this is not the case. We are still heading towards a future of disasters large and small.

The World Watch Institute in Washington DC looks closely at sustainable development. In their State of the World 2012 report they write: “Despite multiplying numbers of solemn declarations, plans, and goals, no nation is even close to evolving toward a sustainable economy.” (Renner 2012, p. 3).

There are many reasons for this inability to realise sustainable development. The first may be that the required changes are so significant and the problems so intractable that much time is needed for changes to take place. We do not have the luxury of time!!

Another reason why we cannot become sustainable is because many people do not want to be sustainable. It is not that they want widespread devastation; rather they do not want to see their own – often luxurious – lifestyles threatened. From oil to financial markets, there are many people who want to see their unsustainable ways of living prolonged. Tom Bigg of The International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) argues that movement toward sustainable development is blocked because of : “…the interests of powerful constituencies that defend their turf and can manipulate the political system to stymie change; the hierarchy of policy and politics in almost every country which places environmental issues towards the bottom and economic growth and military security at the top; and the difficulty of achieving strong global regimes to effect change at a time when multilateralism is on the retreat.” (Bigg  2011, p. 28).

So there is still a very real and pertinent question about whether or not we can change before greater disasters overtake us. It seems as if two decades of trying to change towards more sustainable ways has achieved little to nothing!

Changing economics and business are key to bringing about a more sustainable world. Several new paradigms¹  have been proposed for new more sustainable business models and economic systems. A quick search on the PR Blog will identify some of these. But if we are to ask “Can humankind change the economic myth?” that dominates our lives – then the answer at the moment must be no, we cannot change.

It was in 1994 that this question was first asked and at that time, no answer was provided: “Whether or not such paradigm shifts can occur within the organizations that form the economic subsystem of the planet is far from certain. The change efforts necessary to accomplish pervasively an ecologically sustainable economic myth are nothing short of monumental – requiring system-wide, fundamental changes in the way organizations perceive their relationships to the natural environment. Thus we end where we began: by asking the question, “Can humankind change the economic myth? (Stead and Stead 1994, p. 29).

It seems then as if changing a paradigm does not work. Perhaps the reason for this is that there are many paradigms – some support sustainable development but many do not and unfortunately it is the latter category of paradigms that dominate our present world. With so many paradigms around, one paradigm is like any other and it comes down to a matter of choice. So if a globally unsustainable paradigm supports your local economic interest, why not choose it and keep your own corner of the world in good shape?

What is needed is indeed something like a paradigm insofar as it provides and new way of doing things and of looking at the world. But it has to be unlike a paradigm insofar as there are not a lot of them around and you do not really have the option of choice. In fact there is such a device and it is called an Episteme (Foucault 1970; Birkin & Polesie 2011).

An episteme opens up a new world and whilst this can be an exciting adventure, you cannot decide to adopt another episteme no more than you can decide to live on Mars!

Follow PR to find out more about epistemes and how we can use them to save the world.

The Philosopher Rene Descartes effectively
created the Classical Episteme

1. Footnote on Paradigms & Epistemes

The note below is taken from the paper with the title “The Relevance of Epistemic Analysis to Sustainability Economics and the Capability Approach” by Frank Birkin, Sheffield University, and Thomas Polesie, Gothenburg University, forthcoming (2013) in the Journal of Ecological Economics.

“An episteme may seem similar to the more popular concept of a paradigm that was introduced in Kuhn’s 1962 book “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”.  From an epistemic perspective however a paradigm describes an historical situation in the evolution of science and as such it differs from an episteme since (i) epistemes themselves are not historic and it is their consequences that create history; and (ii) an episteme relates to the dominant order of knowledge for an age in major respects and it is not be confined to a science. Furthermore the root meaning of a “paradigm” is derived from the ancient Greek word for “showing side by side” (Oxford English Dictionary) as, for example, with a template used to maintain the consistency of Greek column sculpting. In contrast a change in episteme occurs at a meta-level deeper than that of a technically or scientifically best example or typology. An episteme relates to the order of knowledge within which such best examples or typologies reside - an episteme may change a paradigm but not vice versa.  Additionally an episteme is more about how we know rather than what we know.”

References

Bigg, T. (2011). Development Governance and the Green Economy: A Matter of Life and Death? In H. Selin and A. Najam, “Beyond Rio+20: Governance for a Green Economy”, Boston: Boston University.

Birkin, F.K. and Polesie, T. 2011. Intrinsic Sustainable Development: epistemes, science, business and sustainability. World Scientific Press, Singapore.

Foucault, M. 1970. The Order of Things: an archaeology of the human sciences. Routledge, London.

Kuhn, T. 1962. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Renner, M. (2012). Making the Green Economy Work for Everyone. In Worldwatch Institute, “State of the World 2012: Moving Towards Sustainable Prosperity.” Washington, DC: Worldwatch Institute.

Stead, W.E. and Stead, J.G. (1994). “Can Humankind Change the Economic Myth? Paradigm Shifts Necessary for Ecologically Sustainable Business”. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 7 (4), pp. 15-31.