Ideologue's column, Summer 2006

Sustainability, In the Vineyard and Beyond

Everyone's talking about sustainability these days. So what is this thing called sustainability? The concept of sustainable development first entered the public consciousness in 1987 when the United Nations published the report of the World Commission on Environment and Development, known to most as the Brundtland report.

Why was the United Nations discussing this subject?

In 1987 two global forces were converging: on the one hand, issues of environmental degradation were gaining an ascendancy and credibility throughout the world. Rapid economic development in both north and south was bringing with it destructive urbanization, toxic pollution, loss of soil, clean water and breathable air, rapid depletion of the planet's natural resources, and climate change.

On the other hand, as the cold war neared its end, deregulated economic growth was being relentlessly pursued through trade negotiations as well as by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.

The Brundtland commission was established to examine the relationship between these two forces. Their report, entitled "Our Common Future," called for "sustainable development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."

Since 1987, the concept of sustainability has been studied and discussed, used and abused, to the point where it is in danger of losing its impact and meaning.

 ** in biology, sustainability has come to be associated with the protection of biodiversity. It concerns itself with the need to save natural capital on behalf of future generations.

 ** in economics, it is advanced by those who favor accounting for natural resources by internalizing costs to the environment of production, distribution, consumption and disposal of all manufactured goods. Ecological economics examines how markets, as conventionally conceived, fail to protect the environment.

 ** in business, sustainability has come to mean more ethical and less short sighted business and environmental practices, although it is often criticized for lacking a more rigorous definition.

 ** in sociology, sustainability involves the advance of environmental justice in situations where some groups make decisions over the use of natural resources by which other groups are affected in their daily lives.

 ** in planning, it is the process of urban revitalization where there is a pursuit of a design science that will integrate urbanization, social welfare, and nature preservation.

 ** in environmental sciences, it means alternatively preservation, conservation or 'sustainable use' of natural resources. This probes the domain where humans ponder whether they are part of, or apart from, nature, and how this should guide moral choice.

 ** in agriculture, sustainability means those farming practices which have the least negative impact on the soil and water and produce nutritious food while protecting habitat for plant and animal wildlife.

According to the Brundtland definition, sustainability is the ability of human society to survive over generations. It is possible to look at sustainability as either a moral imperative or a biological imperative. If human beings continue to deplete the planet's natural resources, and poison the water, air and soil at our present pace, our species will go the way of the dinosaur. Really the only question at that point is whether other species will outlive us or whether we will take them all with us.

There is some evidence that human beings may in fact not care much at all about future generations, even their own progeny. One certainly has that suspicion when one sees the ever growing number of SUVs on the road or learns of the reluctance of taxpayers to support public education. We certainly don't work nearly as hard at preserving our own species as, say, the salmon do.

But since we have to start with some assumptions, let us assume that the human species does in fact care about the happiness and well-being of their grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and that their actions to the contrary are out of ignorance not willful selfishness.

But there is a second step that ecological economics forces upon us: that we care not only about our own family's future generations, or even our own community's, country's or race's future generations, but indeed about future generations globally. Ecological economists tell us that there is no such thing as a sustainable local economy isolated within an unsustainable global economy.

We live in a web of life, a web of carbon dioxide emissions, airborne and waterborne pollutants, creative and mobile viruses. To ensure the future of our own children's children, we must worry about the entire planet. We cannot build walls or missile defense shields high enough to protect us from global warming or avian flu.

It is, however, not the technological solutions which evade us, but the political will to discover and implement them.

Robert Heilbroner, 25 years ago, outlined the basic dilemma that faces us:

"Ecological disequilibrium reflects a profound unbalance between the technological and scientific capabilities of society and its social and self-governing capacities. The first are cumulative, the second are not.

"The result is a technology which continuously escapes confinement, that develops in unforeseen directions, and that disturbs social systems by exerting its influences in unanticipated and unwelcome ways, such as the poisoning of the environment.

All of this is placed in the charge of men who are in no way whatsoever enlarged in their capability to govern, or even to understand, the world."

While scientists and engineers stand on the shoulders of those who went before, and build more and more complex and efficient technology, our ability to govern or even to understand the world has not improved at a comparable pace. And thus technological advances so often work to humankind's detriment rather than our betterment. That is as true in agriculture as in other areas of human endeavor.

Many of the advances of the Twentieth Century which have enabled us to grow more crops and preserve crops as they travel farther to market have in fact been detrimental to both human and ecological health. Thus many farmers today are looking to new approaches to farming which stress less use of chemicals, buffer zones for wildlife, and protection of soil from erosion and water from contamination. Farmers and consumers alike are beginning to focus on local markets, eliminating the energy and nutrition costs involved in global agricultural trade.

Sustainability is not a synonym for stability. The point is not to maintain the status quo (an impossibility in any case) but rather to create the possibility of change, of accommodation to ever changing realities - environmental, social, demographic, economic. A society is sustainable when it is adaptable. That's as true for human society as for tree frogs or cockroaches. Agriculture is central to our survival as a species. It is encouraging that so many farmers are starting to think about and implement sustainable agricultural practices. At Bethel Heights, sustainable farming practices are at the heart of our viticulture.